This Week in Space 142 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 - Tariq Malik (Host)
On this episode of this Week in Space. It's 2025 and we're looking at the coming year in spaceflight. That means maybe 25 flights of Starship trips to the Moon, maybe even out to Venus, but tune in and see what's coming up.

00:17 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Tolt. This is TORT in Space edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Van Astor Magazine, as always, and I'm joined as always by my good friend, the behatted Tarek Malik, editor-in-chief of Spacecom 2025. It's here Bringing credit to his career achievements with that cool hat. Tell us what your cool hat is. It's not Mickey Mouse gone robotic.

01:04 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, it's a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft that we got from one of the Antares launches way back when out of Wallops, when they were still launching Antares rockets out of Wallops there. So I may have taken it from my child.

01:18 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You may have stolen it from your daughter. Come on, don't soft pedal it.

01:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
She was given it by the president, by the, the president of space north of grumman space systems, back when, I think, it was still orbital. It was a long time ago that she got it when we're eating um rocket fuel ice cream at the local ice cream shop. Uh in wallops.

01:38 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So you know how to live. You know that's how.

01:40 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, I thought they make it with cayenne pepper. If you anyone ever goes to a wallops launch, go to chinky tig island and go to the ice cream shop there you'll get uh, you'll get rocket fuel or come to la.

01:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You get small flavored ice cream it's the most.

01:52 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's the most festive hat that I have. That doesn't say anything, because I forgot to buy 2025 glasses or something for this episode and I I reread it now I have.

02:02 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, you'll have to make up for it by just being extra engaged in the headlines Now, before we start, even though he kind of already did please don't forget to do us a solid. Make sure to like, subscribe and do the other podcast things, because we need your love. Also, it's time for the 2025 TWIT Audience Survey. This is the annual survey that helps us understand our audience so we can improve your listening experience. It only takes a few minutes, so go to twittv slash survey to take it. Don't wait. Take it before it closes in mid-January, and thanks for helping us make TWIT even better. Our New Year's gift to you a space joke from Tom Melton, who happens to be National Space Society member 2053109.

02:51
All right he actually sent me his membership number with the joke Are you ready? I'm ready, I'm ready, tom, lay it on me. Why was the request for a donut shop on the International Space Station denied?

03:03 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Why.

03:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Because it would be full of holes.

03:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I get it. I get what they did there.

03:09 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Wow, that was the smallest laugh bump I've had in a while. Nicely done, all right. Well, before we sink too far, let's oh hey, I missed. Oh, here we go. Now I've heard that was a bad segue that some folks want to drill holes in the nearest Soyuz capsule when they hear our jokes.

03:30 - Tariq Malik (Host)
But you can help.

03:31 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Tennis your best, worst or most indifferent space joke to us at TwistedTwittv. Okay, wow, just go ahead and step in it, ron.

03:43 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Headline news. It's brand new Brand Rod Headline News. It's brand new, brand new Headline News.

03:51 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Headline News. Thank you, Bethany, or whatever your AI name was. So did you go through these? I don't know if you had a chance.

03:59 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I did, I went through the whole thing. You always doubt me, you always doubt me, but I come in clutch.

04:03 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's like my modus operandi right, you're like I'm sliding at the last second I may have been adding things like in the last five minutes.

04:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I don't know, you don't know rod, you don't know right clearly, clearly, I barely even know you.

04:17 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Who the heck are you? Um, hey, the parker solar probe did its big thing, which?

04:21 - Tariq Malik (Host)
is oh, yeah, yeah yeah and okay.

04:25 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So, uh, I want you to give us the whole story. But well, just give us the whole story.

04:30 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, well, this is from spacecom, but also from NASA and the Johns Hopkins University. In fact, since you and I first mapped this out, there have been developments in the last day too. But as we were all getting ready for Christmas on Earth, here, on Christmas Eve, nasa's Parker Solar Probe made the closest ever and fastest and hottest and hottest yeah, whipped by the sun, it flew within what is it about? 3.8 million miles of the sun. We're 93 million miles from the sun, if memory serves, so that's the closest that we've ever got. It's the closest that any human-made object has gotten from the sun, if memory serves, so that's the closest that we've ever get. It's the closest that any human-made object has gotten to the sun, and it's the closest that Parker Solar Probe is going to get.

05:11
It was its 22nd flyby and it was kind of like one of those what does JPL like to call them Like the seven minutes of terror type things Except this was like over a week and a half, because on December 20th, four days before this flyby Parker Solar Probe went into like an automated mode, it sent a ping back to Mission Control, which is over at John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, maryland, and it says all right, I'm starting my approach. You know my trench run. If this was Star Wars, oh wow, that's really apt. Right, because it's a star, right, it's the sun. You see, are you picking up what I'm putting down there, Rod, right Anyway. So I'm sorry.

05:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I was taking a little nap, but pray continue.

05:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So it accelerated up to 430,000 miles an hour, which is absolutely crazy, and it did this not just in this flyby, but over the course of seven different flybys of Venus and then the other 21 ever closer approaches that it made over the last years. I think it launched in 2018. So it's been quite some time to make this journey and the really interesting thing is, like you said, it got hot 1800 degrees is what they were expecting to see at this point as it flew through the sun's corona. It got hot 1,800 degrees is what they were expecting to see at this point as it flew through the sun's corona. It's the hottest bit of the sun, so it's flying through the atmosphere. They call it kissing the sun or touching the sun, essentially and it has this really thick heat shield on the front that's super advanced, in a way that all of the instruments the 110-pound package behind that heat shield is kept at room temperature, so it's as comfortable as well.

06:51
I don't know how you run your house, rod, so it's about 60, 65 degrees. It's about 65 degrees here. I don't know if it was like that cool, because we run a cold house, but it survived and they didn't find out if it did. It was all automated. They had a lot of confidence because of how the spacecraft has performed to date, but they didn't hear anything until December 27th when at midnight it sent like a beacon home like boop, which means you know, hey, I'm still here. That's literally all they got, but they were like hey, this is great Our spacecraft is beeping.

07:24
And then just actually yesterday, they got all the telemetry down, so they got the download that says this is how fast I'm at. This is where I am right now. I'm on track for two more flybys at the same distance and speed and whatnot, and now the long process of getting all of that data that it collected from the flyby is going to begin. They don't expect to start getting it until like the end of the month of January, as we're recording this 2025. But a smashing success for something that we've never done before.

07:56 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And at its top flyby speed of 430 miles per hour. If it took a straight line home which it wouldn't because it would take a long chunk of a spiral, but if it did, it would reach Earth in nine days at that speed. Nine days, that's great. How about?

08:12
that huh, I even had my calculations checked by a real, honest to God engineer. Yeah, I'm still a little curious and I meant to see if I could look it up but I ran out of time. But, being that, it dipped into the corona, correct? Yes, corona, photosphere, corona.

08:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, yeah, the outer outer layer.

08:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, I mean that region. I'm trying to remember my read, my solar regions, because the sun's really weird. You know, it's got these areas that are hot and then then cool and then really hot, and I thought the area it was going had hot ambience beyond just the solar radiation part, which means that the instrument package behind that shield would still be exposed to fairly high temperatures. But apparently, not.

09:00 - Tariq Malik (Host)
They were hoping that the speed that they went through would kind of counteract that, because, you are right, the corona actually is really weird and this is one of the mysteries they were hoping that this mission is going to uncover. It's hard for me to take myself seriously with the hat while we're talking about the news. I'm going to take it off.

09:17 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And we're taking you seriously, because Anthony just wrote we're not going to get through all these stories today. I know I keep reflecting of your long answers we're not going to get through all these stories today.

09:26 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I know I keep reflecting of your long answers, but you know what Well, I mean, we've never done this before.

09:29 - Rod Pyle (Host)
This was a historic thing. Yes, and this is a new year.

09:31 - Tariq Malik (Host)
One of the mysteries is why is the corona so hot? Why is it harder than the surface of the sun?

09:34 - Rod Pyle (Host)
We should let you have your answers, okay, moving on. Hey, we got a new rocket coming up New Glenn. After 24 years of all that stuff going into that factory, finally a big thing extruded out the back and it's the new glenn rocket and it's on the pad. The uh recovery vessel was dispatched, I think yesterday, right yeah, jacklyn named after jeff bezos's mom.

10:01 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, it is.

10:01 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It is on the well, that's okay, that's the tug, but the actual platform has a spacex worthy goofy name that I can't remember I thought it was called.

10:09 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I thought it's called jacklyn. It says jacklyn right on the top of it they wrote it on there.

10:13 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You're talking about the boat of the platform the platform because it I saw another name. Like you know, pray to jesus, it'll come. So you think there's a chance. It's the's a chance.

10:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's the name of the booster, it's the name of the rocket, oh.

10:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, oh, that's okay. Okay, well, thank you for that correction.

10:30 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm hearing at least.

10:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, no, I think you're right, we haven't heard much from Blue Ward.

10:34 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Joe. We were talking about this while you were, you know, getting your dog. Before we started recording the episode I was talking to our fellow Discord folks about it. But yeah, so this is the big moment.

10:48
Over the holiday break, blue Origin got an FAA launch license for their first new Glenn rocket. They did a hot fire as well of all seven first stage engines and it went swimmingly, which is great. You know you want to see that happen, and I believe they did a hot fire of the second stage a few weeks prior, so it seems like all of their ducks are in a row. They said all they had to do now was encapsulate their blue ring adapter demonstration payload, because there isn't an actual payload. There is not Jeff Bezos' car on this flight. They want it to be taken seriously so they can get qualified for military launches later in the year, and so it seems like they're really set to go. The FAA license gives them several different windows. That open on January 6th, the Monday, and so that'll go through I'm getting the hook here. That'll go through January 12th, and we're waiting to find out what the actual date's going to be.

11:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So anthony this time next week we should be talking about an actual launch rod I well, I hope so, because it's been an awful long time and I know I whine about this continually, so I apologize, but when you see the process, the the progress that spacex has made in the time that it's been around, which is two years less Blue Origin it's been a real head scratcher to watch New Shepard launch and then launch some more and they get grounded and then start launching again. But given the scale of what they've been working on and given the fact that they're actually selling their rocket engines to United Launch Alliance in a form of competition to let them launch first, it was just a real head scratcher as to what took so long. But there we go. I think that they yeah, they Blue Origin.

12:29 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Just I don't mean to interrupt, but they have a very different ethos than SpaceX.

12:34
SpaceX is really pushed by Elon to test it first, and if it fails, all right, but you know, let's learn from it and make sure it doesn't fail again.

12:45
Blue Origin tends to do everything behind the scenes and then announce something once it's successful. In fact, when they did their first ever suborbital hop, it didn't even go into space. They announced it like a year afterward or something like three months afterward something crazy like that because they wanted to wait until everything was done and they understood when it happened. Now the delay, though, has been very lengthy. It's why you saw a leadership change at Blue Origin in recent years, and Jeff Bezos kind of leave Amazon's helm and then come in so that he could spend more attention on it to get to this point, so there has been a bit of whip cracking, I think, to get things on track so that they can get where they need to go, because this is the vehicle that'll launch the bulk of their Kuiper satellites for Amazon, and they want to have it up there to be a competitor for, I guess, starship and the Falcons of the world.

13:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And yeah, if I recall correctly, its lifting capacity is somewhere between Falcon Heavy and Starship right, it's between Falcon Heavy and Starship.

13:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Just because Starship's the biggest rocket ever built, it does have a wider fairing size I think it's like seven meters instead of the normal five and it's designed to be fully reusable as well, if memory serves, eventually. And so you know, as opposed to Falcon 9, which you throw away the upper stage, they eventually want to be able to bring that upper stage back if memory serves. I could be wrong about that, though, if they've changed their plans.

14:09 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, in that case, why are we doing this podcast? If you're not an expert, well, expert.

14:15 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I could be wrong. I remember them saying that, but yeah, we'll see.

14:18 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, and to be fair to both of us as writers, they do change their tune from time to time. These fair to both of us as writers. They do change their tune from time to time. These new companies, and they don't always update us on the news. But it's nice to see not just this rocket but news coming out of blue origin, because for a long time it's been getting news out of north korea and that's difficult too. All right, so uh, elon announces on twitter, slash x, that they're working on the last Crew Dragon or Dragon Capsule. It might not have been Crew Dragon, it might have been cargo at Hawthorne, california, before they move everything to Texas.

14:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I didn't see this tweet. I did not. When did he tweet this out? I?

14:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
didn't check the date, but I saw it yesterday, so it was probably the day before. The story's been out for a while, which is why I put that note in there for you, which is that we knew they were moving to Hawthorne. I guess he just wanted to rub it in a little bit to us Californians who will be losing every trace of SpaceX.

15:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I was really surprised to hear that, because when they said they were moving to Texas, I found it really hard to believe that they would. What's that word? Untrenchify, decamp, Decamp. The whole manufacturing process, Untrenchify I don't know what you call it.

15:27 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah yeah, like decamp the full manufacturing apparatus out of. Hawthorne, because Hawthorne's a big operation. It's huge.

15:36 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, yeah, and you know, as far as I know, that was where they were building everything, you know, and cranking everything out. Now, if they moved the Raptor engine. Not Starship. Yeah, if they move the raptor engine uh uh out to to to starbase, then that would explain a lot, because they're they're building like they want to build. I think one of those an hour is what they said, I think, back in in november.

15:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, so, um, it's something crazy like that well, if he's going to relocate everything to starbase, let's just tap him on the shoulder, remind him he can't keep using those big kevlar tents because they get hurricanes there oh, they don't have those anymore, though they, they, they have they built like all buildings and there's like four vabs and all that stuff there. Yeah, but art aren't the main fabrication plants still those big, uh like what's the name of the company? They have really low manufacturing structures there now.

16:30 - Tariq Malik (Host)
There were these big aviation tents when I was there, but that was 2019. Now they actually have a lot of physical structures there.

16:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Because you get to go to those things. All right, last story, and this is a quickie we saw Ingenuity the Mars helicopter fly once again at the Rose Parade this year. Did you see this? Did you again?

16:47 - Tariq Malik (Host)
at the Rose Parade this year. Did you see this?

16:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Did you go to the Rose Parade in Los Angeles? It's what. It takes me 10 minutes to get up there. You're crazy, no. I went a lot as a young person and to do it over and over, especially if you spend the night out, there is enough. But this was the float for Flintridge, La Cunada, if I'm correct.

17:05 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, yeah, this is from Robert Perlman at collectspacecom. He's the one that found this story, but you know we always look for actually I missed this float. I actually fun fact I have marched in the Rose Parade before. Oh, please. When USC went to the Rose Bowl in 1996. On.

17:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
January 1st. Yeah well, you had to wait until university.

17:35
My high school band march the rose parade because so anyway, so they have a float that has the the perseverance, mars rover on it or a semblance of it, stubbed with flowers and seeds and all that, and an astronaut riding it like we, and astronaut looks like he's about ready to fall off, and a real drone flying from the front and then coming back and flying for the front, coming back, coming back and flying for the front and coming back.

17:47
Now, the interesting thing about the Rose Parade is you really want to be in the first half mile where it starts, in the west end of town, because by the time you get to midtown, half the floats are broken and being towed by tow trucks and all the little armatures are just stuck in one position because they don't work anymore. But you know, when you're building something out of wireframe and chicken wire and covering it with seeds and flowers and all that stuff, they do. I mean it's an amazing effort and feat. And every time I go to a regular parade it's like, oh, these floats are just like painted. They don't have flowers on them, so I find that disturbing. Anyway, yeah, so that was cool and they are, I believe, up through the end of today. These floats are still viewable at the east end of Pasadena If you go over and pay some probably quite massive fee to go see them. You can walk around and stare at them.

18:37 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, there were two space floats this year, which is really cool. There was this one and there was another one with a little astronaut guy on it, a little rocket guy. It was really fun.

18:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All right. Well, let's go to a quick ad break to give our, our listeners, some relief, and we'll be right back, so don't go anywhere. All right, it's 2025 in space and we have our resident space expert, tarik malik, here without his hat. I took my. I took the hat off, yes you did and, but you still look devilishly handsome.

19:07
Uh so God bless moms because they like us, no matter what dumb thing we do, right? So, um, let's start with starships. That's a big story and we'll be talking about this in more depth next week, I think.

19:21 - Tariq Malik (Host)
But very appropriate. I got starship news that just happened before we set to record today, starship news that just happened before we set to record today too. Well, go for it, mister. Well, yeah, so actually we just ran a story at Space and you might have seen other folks talking about it too about 2025 being the year of Starship. I think that what you flagged here is that SpaceX currently has an FAA launch license to fly maybe 25.

19:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Starship launches. Excuse me, has the license been granted or is it out for public comment, because I don't think it's actually been formally.

19:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think that I thought that it was fine. I think that they have a license to fly the same type of mission, basically as long as they don't make any changes, and so the Flight 6 and Flight 5 test flights that we saw in October and November were very, very similar in what their profile is, which means they're going to try to do for a catch, but they may land offshore, they're going to splash the Starship down in the Indian Ocean and, because they're the same, they can use the same license that's good for five years, as long as they can get the sign-off scheduling.

20:24 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Excuse me, but at least one outlet reported that they were angling to also get a license to land the ship upper stage.

20:31 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yes, and we're going to talk about that.

20:33 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, okay, because if you're catching the big one of the Mechazilla.

20:36 - Tariq Malik (Host)
They're going to catch the upper stage With what the second pad?

20:41
With the second pad or with the original pad after leaving the upper stage up there. So here's the big news, right? So the big thing for Starship is that SpaceX wants to launch a lot of them. They launched like three last year, they launched one the year before. They want to launch up to 25 this year if they can like, as you say, get through all of those FAA hurdles.

21:01
Trump's going to be president, elon Musk is going to be this whatever efficiency driver. So I think they're going to get whatever they're going to get for that. So the big issue is that, of course, they have to start flying, and the next flight is Flight 7 of Starship, and just before you and I sat down in fact, I was having lunch today as we were getting ready for it SpaceX basically dropped the entire like profile and plan for flight seven. That means that they're probably like a few days away to a week away from planning the flight itself, and I've heard some days like january 10th or 11th, like thrown about uh, which would be next friday, last saturday, as, as we're recording, this uh and this is going to be a brand new ship. So you're saying that you're hearing about them wanting to land the ship, uh, at starship, at the starbase facility. Well, they're flying prototype like they're like, they're like, um, uh, strut things like that, they would catch the catch little things yeah, catch points on on the spacecraft.

22:05
They're not flight worthy, like they're not designed to actually catch the vehicle. They're going to see what the heating environment is on reentry to see how strong they have to make them. So we know that they're going to want to catch this thing, which is interesting because you'd think, because they're experts at vertical landing, they'd want to land it, but no, they're going to do that. They've moved the flaps up, they've made all these upgrades, a brand new avionics and flight computer to try to enhance how long the ship itself can stay up. It's got a new heat shield with a backup layer beneath that heat shield, a lot of things. And and this is what I think is the most exciting they're going to deploy a set of like, like, um, uh, what are they? What is that called? It's like, it's like a simulated Starlink satellites. They're going to deploy satellites, which means they're going to start spitting them out with that Pez dispenser thing that they've got.

22:56 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So Flight 7 is going to carry a load of Starlinks.

22:59 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's going to carry a load of simulated Starlinks, because they're not going to keep them in space. They're going to spit them out with this Pez dispenser thing that they've got and then they're going to fly a similar trajectory behind the main ship, which means that the ship's going to try to land in the ocean and soft land, whereas these things will burn up on the way back down, kind of on the way down behind it. So they're calling this like a new version, like the current Kroog Dragon is. Dragon V2 was initially called. This is like Starship V2 or a new variant of it that they're hoping is going to be either a major step forward, if not like the big definitive vehicle for the next few test flights.

23:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, hey, anthony, look, it's not even the half hour yet and we're through two of our 25 stories. There we go, there we go, look at us. All. Right, let's skip over New Glenn, because we already talked about that. Yeah, and this isn't really a 2025 story, but it will take place during 25, 26, 27, which is, china has announced not that they're working on spacecraft for their crewed lunar mission, but that they're ready, really, which should be sending shockwaves through the halls of the government.

24:17 - Tariq Malik (Host)
They did show off like a lot of hardware at the end of 2024.

24:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
The guy in charge said this stuff's ready, which may have been. You know that may be a bit of a rounding up of a statement, but you know. So just to backtrack for a second, we just finished an op-ed for my magazine, which will soon be in your online magazine Myself and one of my key writers named John Cross, about why getting back to the moon first matters and that's a debate, you know. You can say that matters, you can say that it doesn't. This op-ed kind of straddles the line of. It matters scientifically and it matters for geopolitics, but it also matters for how we look at ourselves, because, you know, I'm old enough to remember the space race the first time around, not old enough to remember Sputnik, but certainly old enough to remember the fact that the United States got poked in the backside and decided, hey, we want to get to the moon because the Russians have beat us and everything else.

25:17
That was back in the 1960s. Now many people perceive the same kind of race quote unquote going on with China. It's a very different thing, but depending on how you look at it, the geopolitics are not dissimilar and I think part of what what john was really going for in this op-ed was just how we look at ourselves. You know we like to be first in everything. We really aren't anymore, depending on what part of our global endeavor you're looking at, but that's okay. You know there's room to share, but the moon's kind of a big deal. And there are concerns about what might happen if, uh, a less western aligned nation got there first and said, okay, this is an exclusion zone, you go land at the equator and that's really the big thing people are worried about.

26:04 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So yeah, I think I think what you're, what you're dancing around is. The big question is does the treaty for outer space hold up if someone is actually living on that other planet? We've never tested that, so that's what we're wondering how that's going to play out.

26:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, or living, or even if there's just a robotic base setup that's in operation, it's extracting resources. Can somebody then use that as logic to try and twist an argument of well, I know what the outer space treaty says, but we all know the outer space treaty, which was signed in 1967 by the then flying spacefaring nations, is is kind of thin you know it's not as specific as we'd like.

26:45
The us has tried to sort of augment that argument politically by saying well, it is okay to take resources out of the moon, but not everybody's agreed to that. So we've got you know us with the artemis accords, trying to leverage what we want that. We've got china and russia with the international lunar I you know research station, uh, trying to leverage their goals, saying no, no, we want to do science. It's those capitalists.

27:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So we're talking about the moon because, like you know, you mentioned that china said that their spacecraft are ready, but uh, like a landing by 2028 2029 is what I think is is you were alluding to there um, still still is pretty far beyond 2025. What we wanted to see in 2025 is artemis 2 sent astronauts back around the moon in September, and we know that that's not happening.

27:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I think that's the one big disappointment. I thought I remember somebody telling me that we're going to land on 2024.

27:39 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, technically, weren't we supposed to land in 2020? That was like the whole big thing. Don't get me started. We've had that discussion like so many times, rod, so, so annoyed, so okay.

27:51 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, let's leave this one behind, because that's really not a 2025 story. I just wanted to sort of squat on that for a minute. But in 2025 we are going to have a new nasa administrator that at least punitively is jared isaacman. So far, that's been trump's recommendation. So unless he changes his mind and we have uh, in the video we have a cool picture of jared looking longingly at the stars in his cool spacex helmet, and it's impossible not to like this guy yeah, he's a nice guy, he's good looking.

28:23
He's very nice. We both met him. I think I met him more than you, but that's okay and he's Well, I met him like once. He's incredibly charitable, he's kind, he's great with kids, for God's sakes, I mean, it's like, as I've said before, his face Jesus. So if he's in charge, how is this different than what we've seen with Bill Nelson and people like Bridenstine? Because this is a huge step outside the traditional circle of NASA.

28:49 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It is it is. We've seen this type of a departure before. Right when you got into faster, better, cheaper for NASA back in the 90s right oh Dan Golden. Yeah, that was a change at that point in time.

29:04
It was a change that left a lot of people kind of unhappy, yeah at that point in time, it was a change that left a lot of people kind of unhappy, yeah, and I would say, after Dan, sean O'Keefe also was a bit of a departure to me, at least from what I would think. And then, of course, they swung around Charlie Bolden Not Charlie, but Mike Griffin who really, I think, got the shuttle program on track for its ending, and I think that had Mike Griffin been given the paycheck that he said that they needed from Congress, then he would have gotten us up to the moon by 2020, like Constellation would have done up to the moon by 2020, like, uh, like constellation would have done. But anyway, uh, uh. I I think, I think it's it's really too early to tell. I think that the intention, like the good intentions, are there. I think that the, the passion is clearly there.

29:58
This is a, a man who, you know, founded, left high school to found a uh, a payment uh system. That has made him a multi. I guess it's, I would assume, a multi-billionaire, if you can afford more than like one private mission.

30:14
I think about Jared Isaacman every day when I check out at the counter, because I see that shift four machine that I wave my credit card on and I'm like, well, that's, thank you, jared. You know so, but I think we'll have to wait and see. Now, of course, um, uh, later this month is the inauguration. That's when trump will become, uh, the 47th president. Uh, after that all of the uh nominations are going to flow out and then they all have to be uh. They all have to be uh approved, uh by congress, I would expect. Mean, on paper, there really isn't too much controversial about Isaac Manning, except that he's a businessman, he's flown to space, he has a good grasp, he's overseen a very complex aviation as well as business aspects. So we'll have to see how that plays on Capitol Hill. So I would know I would be optimistic if I would. Optimistically speaking, I would expect there to be a NASA administrator in place by June, most likely before, but June seems pretty safe to not bet the chair on, I guess, if we'll do that Right.

31:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, and if they can, I mean, this is the earliest suggested nominee we've ever seen, at least in modern times. All right, let's do the exciting thing we're going to roll to a commercial for one of our beloved sponsors and we'll be right back. So stay in your seats. So here's kind of a twofer that I'd like you to comment on. We've got Trump coming in with Elon Musk hard in his ear saying, hey, do this, do that. Here's the best way to go about things.

31:53
And there are some that have expressed concern about the specter of the monopoly of SpaceX, which, to be fair, it's kind of hard at this point anyway for it not to become a monopoly, because they're doing most of the work, they're getting most of the payloads, they're moving faster, better and cheaper than anybody else to invoke the tan golden spirit and they've taken over half the global launch market at least a little bit more, I think. So they kind of almost can't help sliding into the status of a semi-monopoly. But then we have Blue Origin coming up with the new Glenn, which NASA and others have confirmed that they're going to use, and also possibly launching their first lunar lander Pathfinder this year, we hope the Blue Moon Mark I. So how do you see that playing out?

32:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, I think that it could really kickstart a much wider market. It does depend on if these vehicles are successful and if they can fly them at the rate that spacex flies. I mean the this as we, as we're speaking, spacex is counting down to launch their first mission of 2025 the thriya 4 communication satellite for space 42 out in the uae. This is a rocket that they're using, that that has, uh, made it's making its 20th flight, and this is a company that just finished 134 Falcon flights. Just Falcon flights in 2024, right.

33:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
We're looking at Starship, so you're talking about Falcon 9, right?

33:15 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Falcon 9, yeah, and they also launched a Falcon Heavy or two over the year. So I mean, they launched quite a bit last month and they were not only smashing their own records, they were the leader in the US, they were the leader in the world and in fact because of their Starlink flights they raised the global record to its highest ever, according to a Space News analysis that came out this week. So I think it's really hard to make your mark when they've got that rundown. Now they will finish at least a nominal Starlink constellation at some point in time and they will have to ease back on that launch rate and just go to replacements and whatnot. So a lot of that launch rate is SpaceX losing money because they're launching their own stuff into space and paying for it themselves. So we have to put that into perspective.

34:08
There's a lot of other missions out there. I think that New Glenn has at least eight that already. They're already trying to get qualified for national security payloads. That's a fast track type of a thing that usually takes a lot of time. They're thinking ahead on that. So I think they're going to chip away at it and they're not alone. Rocket Lab and I've got it on the list for later on, but we can talk about it now. Rocket Lab is going to launch their own kind of answer to the Falcon 9, and that's their Neutron rocket. That's a crazy rocket that has put the second stage inside the first stage and it's going to spit it out like a hippo mouth when it gets up to altitude. Now, I'm really excited about that one because it has a hippo mouth. I love hippos and I think that's amazing.

34:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You're a strange animal.

34:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I don't think that SpaceX has a monopoly. It's just like they're the ones that have all the stuff to launch as much. If you take away all of the Starlink missions and there are many, dozens upon dozens you are left with maybe 40 or 50 customer flights. Again, they win it because they have the success and they can sell less. But they're not undercutting prices yet because they have to recoup everything that they put into the Falcon 9 to make it reusable, and I think they're still doing that, if memory serves. So Elon Musk has said, I think in recent years, that they're not going to do it for at least five years or so on Twitter until they can get that sorted. So this gives them some breathing room because eventually they'll stop launching as much because of the Starlink stuff.

35:39 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And then the customers, like OneWeb, like Kuiper, which is going to be flying, which is Amazon's own constellation of broadband. Exactly, is OneWeb still a business, I thought.

35:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So they just actually recovered one of their satellites. They lost communications with it for two days, which you don't really want in a mega constellation generation, but they were able to get it back. All right, boy, there's a lot of juicy stories here, but we just got to talk about this one. We got a shotgun through them. The Mars sample return is next.

36:13 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Let's talk about that you of all people we have to shotgun through them. Let me give you an answer. That's a sentence 10 minutes long.

36:20 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I'll do my best.

36:21 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Mars sample return. So just a bit of backstory. As regular listeners will know, mars sample return has been going on for years, trying to develop this thing. It got hung up. I mean, actually it's been under development since the 70s in one way or another, both here and in the Soviet Union, but started seriously about a decade ago. Okay, we're going to go, we're going to take samples of Perseverance rover, we're going to drop them in certain places and keep some on the rover and then we'll go collect them and bring them home Record scratch.

36:52
They sent in a memo to NASA upon NASA's headquarters request, saying how much is it going to cost? They said, well, between $6.5 and $11 billion, which the NASA administrator decided to announce at a press conference. Well, I'm looking at that as $11 billion and that's too much. So, hey, private industry, step up and save this mission. So so far, to my knowledge, that hasn't happened. Then the Chinese say hey, you know, we've been doing really well on the moon and we've done pretty well on Mars and we think we're going to be able to do a sample return by 2027. So we've got to make a decision this year whether we're going to continue with Mars sample return as the possible runner up in 2030x somewhere in there, or if we just like hand it away that decision is going to come sooner than you would think.

37:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Basically, bill Nelson just at the close of 2024, said that they are looking to refine their plan for Mars sample return before the next administration takes charge. That means sometime this month, in the next couple of weeks before January 20th or whatever, when the inauguration is, nasa should be releasing some sort of new, updated plan Now, china's plan 2027, not inconceivable when you see how they did sample return for the moon. They launched an orbiter, a return vehicle and a lander that had its own return vehicle. That they landed. They scooped some dirt, they put it in the sample container. It launched off very, very tight, very quick, very succinct.

38:21
The current Mars sample return plan, as it is at, is hey, we sent a big rover there. It collected a dozen samples, it dropped a bunch of them in a big pile, you know, and it also has other ones on it. So then we can go and scoop those ones up. Maybe we'll use a helicopter. No, we're not going to use a helicopter. Now, you know, maybe we'll send two rovers. No, we'll just send one rover. It's very complicated, you know. You could just say we're gonna land and scoop some dirt and then come back, you know, and and I think that's the decision that they're looking to make because that stuff is still there, they could always go back and go get it, um, eventually I don't know, I don't know, but that's what we're.

38:59
We expect to get a refined update within the next few weeks.

39:02 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Perhaps so in the next week to kind of excuse me, to kind of just zoom in on a couple things you said. So china basically grabs a contingency the equivalent of an apollo contingency sample. It comes back. Contingency sample is when neil armstrong got down the ladder, it was looking around, going, wow, this is cool here, and nasa's going neil, neil, get the contingency example, which is basically look, just grab something in case you have to come home right away. At least you make it worthwhile. We got some dirt, put it in the baggie, put it in your pocket, and you know, yeah, and I'm simplifying it I mean China's sample was better than that.

39:37
But again, nasa makes these big, complicated, multi-stage plans, which I mean they're good for science.

39:48
But to have this rover driving around for five years now and when it was launched we didn't even have approval for a budget from our sample return, it was still kind of in head-scratching state, at least in the halls of government. And last time I saw JPL what was that? 2017? Maybe I was doing a write-up on the lab that was working on the six Degrees of Freedom arm that they would have to have for the Fetch Rover before they were going to use a helicopter which would land on the Mars Sampler Turncraft drive over to Perseverance, have this very involved multi-axis arm that would be able to extract the samples, because that's very hard to do, and also be able to drive, if necessary, over to wherever the samples that had been dropped had been dropped, pick them up, which means being able to reach under rock overhangs and around boulders and that kind of thing. So I don't want to say it wasn't well thought out, because there are a lot of very smart people working on it.

40:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
But it was so complicated and they know those samples, those samples, they know those dozen whatever. They know exactly what's in them, they know where they got it from and they're very varied. They got maybe more than they would have if it just landed in one spot.

40:58 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You know, what they should do is just build a reverse sky crane and go catch it.

41:01 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Just bring the whole rover back with the samples aboard and everything that would be great.

41:07 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I think there's between 30 and 30 to 40 of them, but that includes, uh, what do they call? The ones they have like ground truth samples that they bring from earth? There's a phrase for those I can't remember, but basically it's like okay, you know, here's earth, air, let's make sure that that it's compared to this and so forth. So anyway, um, yeah, so that's frustrating and we're probably going to lose that one, but that's okay, you know, it's good for science, no matter who brings it back. Um, and of course, there is the conversation on the side from mr musk about well, why would you do all that when I can send an entire spacecraft the size of a big rig to mars and you could lower a robot out of that nick, because he's building robots too, right, so he could lower a robot out of that cargo, hold by rope if he had to have it stomp around and pick up some samples and stick it in its mouth and bring them back.

42:01 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think, make that a contest, make that a commercial challenge who gets there first to get those samples back? You'll get something. You'll get some ideas right. You'll get something.

42:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, and disturbingly and I just want to extend the story very quickly, you know so we've seen what probably is the demise of Mars sample return in this decade, along with the really aggravating device of the Viper lunar rover, which is supposed to land in the South Pole this year and go collect samples of resources, or at least try and prospect resources, see if they're there for volatiles like water and so forth. And the head scratcher, as we've talked about, is it was built, it was finished, it was tested, everything seems to be going right, and then it gets canceled because it's going to do a budget overrun. Well, hello, how many nasa pro big programs have had budget overruns? We have new rules said it can only be what? 33 or something. But come on, guys, you built the thing, so they need to impress another late friday afternoon press conference saying, yeah, it's working really well, but we're gonna cancel it and take it apart and give the pieces to all comers who want to send them on commercial flights. What?

43:17 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yep.

43:18 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Very irritating. So far not a lot of takers on that either, so we'll have to wait and see how that goes kind of an insider about this and he was saying, you know, it just didn't have a lot of, which I found interesting that he said. He said anyway it didn't have a lot of support within NASA because it didn't really align well with the Artemis goals, which I don't completely understand. But you know, whatever.

43:47 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, speaking of moon missions, we should talk about that for 2025. Uh, or are we going to go to a break? What do you?

43:53 - Rod Pyle (Host)
want. Uh, anthony, are we? Uh, are we due for a break? Oh, I like that. He knows we're at a point. This is like carol merrill in an old game show. Go go forth, young tarik.

44:06 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, yeah, so you were just talking about viper and that was like a mission that I think we all had a lot of hopes for 2025 on Actually, for 2024, it was slated to fly by the end of 2024 before it kept getting delayed and pushed back. Yada, yada, yada.

44:21 - Rod Pyle (Host)
By the delivery company, not by the rover itself.

44:25 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Exactly exactly by Astrobotic the builders of the Griffin Lander that we're supposed to do it. In fact, I don't think that they're done yet with that. So we're still waiting to figure out what's going on there. But 2025 is going to be a year of the moon of sorts, much like what we saw around this early part of the year in 2024. We're seeing another flurry of commercial and international missions to the moon. In fact, this month, firefly is supposed to launch their Blue Ghost mission I think it's launching on a SpaceX rocket, if memory serves, but they're going to launch their Blue Ghost lander to fly different COTS things and whatnot there and plus Intuitive Machines is launching their IM2 mission near the South Pole too, and I think they might be launching on both Falcon.

45:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I think Firefly and JAXA's Hakuto.

45:15 - Tariq Malik (Host)
R-2 are on the same one right.

45:17 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Are both flying on the same Falcon 9. I think two of the machines are on different flight.

45:22 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, and so you've got at least three quick missions already. And then there's another mission, I think in the background there is a Japan's M2 mission to the moon which is going to fly on an Epsilon. Is that right, or is it a H3? I'm not certain which one that one's flying on.

45:42 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But that Listen to us, the experts. We should just have the listeners come on and say well, I think it's going to fly on this.

45:49 - Tariq Malik (Host)
The fact that I'm unclear is because there's so many moon missions right, and so that's. The exciting part is that, while we don't have a Viper which I really think, like you were saying, it's a tragedy that we're going to take this thing that has been built and it's ready to go and just say you know what, scrap it because we change our mind. Yeah, exactly, but there are these other ones that are waiting in the wings. Will they be 100? Successful? Experience says no, right. We saw that last year with astrobotic, with a few others, uh, but um, but it does seem like, uh, there that the momentum is is definitely there, and I think that if you've got four at least going in one year, one of them is going to succeed at least, and that's what we saw. We saw JAXA's kind of auger-in type approach with their moon lander really succeed and deliver some striking pictures of what a nose plant on the moon looks like with their lander, but it was still able to do stuff, so that's pretty cool.

46:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, and the first intuitive machines mission mission, of course, toppled over because when the landing legs collapsed, this intuitive machines flight, by the way, and then we'll go to our break. We'll be landing near the south pole and has a mass spectrometer, which is a very valuable thing when you're looking for things like resources or organics, and a one meter drill package, which is pretty cool. So this is all. It's a pretty small and light machine and I, as far as I could tell it's it's it's static, so it's not going to be driving around and drilling. Yeah, um, and I don't know how we assure that it's inside a permanently shadowed region, which is where you want to look for these things. But they must have sufficient navigation capability to make adjustments at the last minute, and I do see in the notes here I wrote down it is carrying some hoppers. So while they aren't going to be able to I don't think get samples, at least they'll. They should be able to characterize regolith nearby the landing site. Okay, let's go to another break, because we love these, and we'll be right back to blast through our last handful of stories standby.

47:56
So I'm going to skip a couple because I want to make sure we we include this story about vast. So vast we've had uh people from vast on the show before vast, the ceo yes, thank you. Uh. Vast is a company, another comer in the space station area to replace and or augment, in this case replace the iss when it's decommissioned around 2030. But what's interesting about vast is they're pouring oh, can I say it? Vast amounts of capital into building their Haven 1 space station without one of the NASA contracts that companies like Blue Origin and Voyager have received. So they're getting money those two to design and test space station replacement modules. Vas is doing it on their own and they're actually apparently going to be the first to launch this year with their first. Yeah, that's really exciting. That's really exciting, exciting, it's kind of amazing, actually, full disclaimer.

48:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know, as we have talked about on the show, my sister works at vast, so I don't get insider knowledge from her. I made sure that she's really careful. Why not? I know, right, right, um, but, uh, um.

49:06
But this is really exciting the the haven one. You know, it know it's basically they've been building their own module, basically like a free-flying module for a station, but they could also, if they, you know, wanted to attach it to something else, something that is potential we heard Max talk about that but it is fully modular too, that they could put it together with other things, and they did contract with SpaceX to launch that, which is why you see in a lot of their animations a dragon vehicle visiting it, because they've got that relationship in place already, and I think that this would be a big game changer. The big open question right now is what is next for space stations? Nasa and Russia have both committed to an end of life of around 2030, but that could change. For the International Space Station, they're going to burn it up in a fiery blaze of glory over the Pacific Ocean. What is that? Point Nemo? Isn't that what they call it?

50:02 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, it's that piece of nowhere in between landmasses in the vast Pacific where we think it's safe to crash these things. However, you and I are going to get on my boat and drive out there so we can watch it.

50:14 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Let's go.

50:14 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So this will be that experience where you see the white dot in the sky that gets bigger and bigger but doesn't move to the side, and then you realize at the last minute oh, that means it's coming right at me, so we'll be there.

50:24 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know fun fact when Mir, the Russian space station, fell out of space in, uh, what was that? Uh, in 99, in 2000. Uh, anyway, it was right when space X or spacecom was like a little baby and uh, I and they, I, I, I have been told that they, they chartered a plane to chase mirrors. Re-entry.

50:44
Um and they, they missed it, they didn't see anything, and that was sad. That was sad. But let's hope that you and I can get on a jet or a boat and watch this thing come back. Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked.

51:00 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You're going to include me in one of your junkets. How nice that's a first.

51:05 - Tariq Malik (Host)
The big thing about Haven, though, is that if they're able to get this up this year, if they're able to even get a crew to it in the next year, right, then that is a viable replacement or a destination, an overlapping destination, that NASA could have access to. They can't have access to the Chinese space station right now. They don't have those partnerships in place. That's the only other destination currently. Russia has said they're going build their own thing, or maybe they'll take, like, the existing parts of the space station, split them off.

51:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I don't know how that would work well so have the power system to be, but that would be interesting. So they have the power propulsion unit and the life support unit right yeah, sorry, those are the primary module.

51:47
I also have a bunch of docking compartment let's bear in mind the one that's having the the cracking problems right now, which if they're going to reuse it they gotta undock it and probably weld up those cracks was built in 1985. It's much older. It's bad enough. The space station's 25 years old now, closer to 30 if you count when and what pieces are built. But the russian stuff is really old and creaky and it was built from mere two. So the idea of using that, even if you're a russian who has a much, let's say, a wider tolerance for hardware, legacy hardware I'm being kind, that's crazy you know, I'd say, I suspect that they would build something new with some sort of Well.

52:29
they supposedly were, but last I read their space budget was down to about 19 cents. Yeah, yeah, I don't know, I don't know.

52:37 - Tariq Malik (Host)
But that's why I think this mission is really important. To be able to have that crossover station, that crossover destination is really important to continuing the momentum of your spaceflight program and it might put them in real hot demand right of your space flight program. And it might put them in real hot demand right To have the only new game in town that they might be able to tailor to customers for, oh, we'll launch this rack up for three months for you or whatever, because they can deliver it with SpaceX, I don't know Be very interested.

53:04 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, so going completely off the ranch here. Will it be armed? Because the Russians did that once, once, which I thought was remarkable. I only read about this, I don't know.

53:14
10 years ago yeah, the almaz slash salute, which is one of their earliest space stations. One of them was launched with a gatling gun mounted on the end, same thing that was used on the back of I think their uh, their bear propeller driven bombers. They fired it's about a 33 well, so they wanted to test it and the crew said, um, no, let's do it after we leave. And so control says okay. So those guys packed up and left in their soyuz and then they test, fired it and, according to calculations, those uh slugs that they fired from that thing I think it was about 30 rounds have probably re reentered by now. But what a great way to add more pollution to the orbital environment, right.

53:57 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's right. It's like you think if you watch all the sci-fi from the Expanse when they're shooting the point defense systems all that stuff is still out there in deep space, just like hurtling out there Still speeding along right.

54:09 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And this did work, although apparently it rattled the station pretty badly. But you know it was mounted monolithically so basically you had to reorient the whole station to aim the gun. So unless something large was coming at you very slowly, it just didn't make any sense. But you know, somebody's got to try crazy things. So in lack of Elon, we have the Russians.

54:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, space Force turned five last year. We didn't talk about that. That'd be good to talk about, okay.

54:37 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So yeah, well, it's on here. It's the last story, so why don't you, since you just aggressively moved to the top, go for it? Space Force turned five. Space Force, space Force. And there was some question. There was a story I saw recently I don't think it was one of yours, sorry that uh was basically saying uh hey, the public wants to know what space force has been up to, and I think that's interesting. What I think is more interesting is how much money are they getting?

55:04
because there's the budget. We see that the budget we don't.

55:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
But there's a lot to be said about space force, so not bad, yeah, in fact, the Space Force and Patrick well, the Cape Canaveral Space Force I've seen in particular sent out an announcement at the end of the year to say, basically, that they have been more active than ever before. They had more launches from Florida, from the Space Coast that the Space Force oversaw, and so they're expecting like a much busier 2025.

55:31 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Excuse me, but same with Vandenberg.

55:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
The same event. Yeah, they're hugely busy.

55:35 - Rod Pyle (Host)
We see a couple launches a week frequently.

55:37 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And most of them are SpaceX too, but I think there's two kind of open questions. Number one is, as we have said, there is a new administration coming in. Trump has actually mentioned the Space Force a few times. Remember, trump was the one that started the Space Force in his first term as 45th president, and he has said that space security is going to be a bit of a focus, that he wants to ensure that all of the assets and whatnot that we have in space are protected, so you could see more investment come through that, that goal, that that discussion as well, and then also just the fact that we have so much more infrastructure. Even in the last four years five, you know, six years or so Since Trump started the five, for five years, right since he started the Space Force, you could see much more development in that sector too.

56:33
One thing that will be very interesting, though, is to find out how Space Command will be settled out. There's a lot of discussion right now about is Space Command staying in Colorado? Are they moving to Alabama? That's been heating up since the Trump administration was elected, or since Trump was elected back in November. I'm not sure if that's going to pan out, if they are going to say that they're going to move Space Command out of Colorado to Alabama to try to do things. But similarly, as we expect some sort of reorganization at NASA because of this efficiency push that Elon Musk is going to be bringing to the administration with Vivek Ramaswamy, I would expect some sort of fine-tuning on that score as well, right when they're going to say, hey, stop talking about this, we've got a mission to do. Or they're going to say, yes, we're going to do it and this is why it's more efficient, but we'll have to see how that pans out.

57:33 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, and what you're kind of driving at on the NASA side is the possible consolidation of a couple of the field centers and the possible closure of the remaining field centers left behind. The ones I've seen on that possible list were Ames. What was the other one? Not Goddard Lewis? No, I think it was Ames. And Lewis Marshall would be part of the new Space Force operation, wouldn't it?

58:00 - Tariq Malik (Host)
well, they've got, they've got, uh, uh, um, was it Goddard?

58:03 - Rod Pyle (Host)
then you're talking about no, I don't think it was. I think it was Lewis and Ames, yeah, yeah, which I don't know much about. Lewis, I've been to Ames, I've never been to Lewis, but anyway, I mean, you could expect NASA and parts of congress to fight that tooth and nail. But you know, we got a lot of field centers. These things were stood up in the 50s and 60s and it may be that it's more efficient not to have that many. Um, let's take our last last ad break and then come back with international, because we really owe some credit to the international sector. We will be right back.

58:35 - Tariq Malik (Host)
We've got one minute in the hour to do this right. One minute We'll get it all done.

58:40 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So just because it's got a cool name, tell us about European Space Agency's Space Rider. Space Rider yeah, I love that Big Space Rider.

58:50 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I want to be the Space Rider right, You're a Space rider. Yeah, I love that. That's why I want to be the space rider, right.

58:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You are a space rider.

58:57 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, but a space rider is actually like a reusable space transportation system. I don't want to call it a space plane because it doesn't have like wings and a tail and all of that stuff. It's kind of like a lifting body. But this is really supposed to be kind of their next generation space vehicle that they'd be able to use for many different things, things like experiments, orbital experiments, that it would be autonomous robotic laboratory. It's about the size of I think you have here two minivans, I think, and I've been told that the space shuttle had about as much internal space as like a minivan, a big minivan, so that would be some size of you know You're talking about this pressurized space.

59:42
Pressurized space. Pressurized space.

59:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
This is not a crewed vehicle.

59:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, this is robotic and the idea is that they would launch it on I think a Vega rocket is what they have shown and they would be able to load it up with experiments. It would stay up, it could loiter for a bit with its orbital module and then it would reenter and they could collect everything back in space and then that could be a foundation for using it for other types of things, not just being a free-floating platform in space or scaling it up in the future. It's been a long road for this. They did test some prototypes in the past and they were fairly successful. But they have seen.

01:00:21
It just seems like we were going to get this a few years ago and it still didn't come back in. But it's got payload doors. It can carry up payloads, it can deploy satellites, it can bring them back. It'll be very interesting to see how it comes back. It looks very similar to Dream Chaser, the Sierra Nevada Space Systems vehicle, except that it doesn't have that kind of twin tail that they've got on that thing or the foldable wings. It's really much a lifting body.

01:00:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, it almost looks a little bit like a Biconic thing and, capability-wise, although it may be a little larger, it doesn't look completely dissimilar from the X-37B which is still flying the concept is very similar, yeah, and it's one that we've seen proven out too right.

01:00:59 - Tariq Malik (Host)
The X-37B, built by Boeing for NASA and then given to the Space Force, has those wings. It's very much a mini space shuttle. China's Shenlong is a very much influenced copy of that. I'm not sure how much of it is homegrown or not, but this one is fully. They've been developing it throughout the time that I've been here at spacecom for a good long time, and it just seems like they're finally getting so. Wait, this thing comes back by parachute.

01:01:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It has a parafoil yeah Huh, as a lifting body, I assumed it would just land, like all the other lifting bodies that have been tested Okay.

01:01:39 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, so it's very interesting. Rod is referring to our animation that is playing on the video.

01:01:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
On the video which you should be watching. If you're watching this show or listening to this show, all right, let's jump, because we're getting cramped here. Make sure we get to China. They've got an asteroid sample return mission coming.

01:01:56 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Tianwen-2. It's a very interesting mission because it's going to launch to a near-Earth asteroid, like one of the ones that kind of accompanies us in our orbit, collect some samples and send those back to Earth and then it's going to go off to the belt, to the main belt, to look at some other asteroids too, which is a very ambitious mission. And if they're able to get all of that off, even the asteroid sample return first, for them that would be a big one. And Tianwen is the family of planetary missions. So Tianwen-1 was the Mars lander rover orbiter that they sent, and so this is kind of their sequel to that.

01:02:32
So that'll be really interesting to see if they can get all of the asteroid goals put together for that, because of the fact that they're not just going to visit one asteroid, they're going to visit one land there for some time, collect the samples, return those and then the primary vehicle yeah, the target is called I'm going to say this wrong Camo Aloe, I think is the name of it and once they get that back, then they're going to go out to the main belt to look at some other targets. I think it's a comet. They're going to go see comet 311P, pan-starrs, but they won't get there until the 2030s or so. So they've got two big, ambitious checkmarks for this one.

01:03:13 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's pretty neat. Yeah, that's pretty exciting and also incredibly unique, and I really want to make sure we get this one in, because it's just so wild. Private companies have talked about planetary robotic missions before, but appears that rocket lab will be the first to do it, and I just have to say I know a very small handful of billionaires. I don't know them well. I'm dying to ask them all, especially the ones that have many billions why don't you just have your own space program? Stop, you know, put us out of our misery watching NASA cancel Viper and all that. You can afford to do it yourself. I would, but that's why I'm not rich, because I spend my money foolishly. So Rocket Lab's talking about a Venus Lifefinder mission. That's very cool.

01:04:03 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, this is a mission that Rocket Lab CEO and founder, peter Beck, announced a few years back, when they also announced that they had their free-flying kind of a vehicle, like a bus, to carry these types of things on. And Venus LifeBinder has a mission that they're teaming up with with MIT. I believe too, but Peter Beck I remember saying that he thought Venus was cool. That's why he wanted to go there, and I think so too.

01:04:29 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But not to stay right.

01:04:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, well, you know you wouldn't want to live there, but it'd be a nice place to visit, right? And Venus LifeBinder is one of those missions where it's fairly interesting, because it's a dedicated mission to go to Venus to look through its atmosphere, its clouds, for signs of ingredients that would be necessary for life. It would drop a probe into the Venus atmosphere to scan for organic molecules, which is an ingredient that we expect life would need, and it would test a lot of other things. We haven't done that. We haven't gone into the atmosphere of Venus, but not a lander, just to be clear. No, no.

01:05:09
It's going to drop a probe into the atmosphere itself. So I think they should bring back a sample. But that's just me, you know.

01:05:17 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You know, the surface is a really horrible place. It's so much worse just dipping in the. I mean there are parts of the atmosphere, as we've discussed in the past with the whole idea of Venus settlements quote unquote meaning floating cities or floating compounds. There are parts of the atmosphere at certain altitudes that are actually very much like Earth, except for the fact the atmosphere is toxic. But in terms of atmospheric pressure, temperature and all that, if you can float in the upper cloud layer, you can actually hang out there. That's pretty cool. The surface is nasty, bill. Yeah, hang out there, that's pretty cool.

01:05:50 - Tariq Malik (Host)
The surface is nasty, bill, yeah yeah. And Rocket Lab built this photon vehicle to be kind of an all-purpose tug. It could be. It could carry payloads out beyond your low-earth orbit, it could be used as a kickstage and whatnot. That's what would carry this payload to Venus itself, and it would be fairly light 45 pounds. I mean a very small type of a thing, but the and a $10 million at that is steel, right.

01:06:17
When it comes to interplanetary missions, so you know, da Vinci and Veritas were two NASA missions that are kind of on troubled waters, if not outright gone, that were each going to be like a half a billion dollars, and so we'll have to see about the success of this. But it could I mean we were talking about private space programs. If it's that affordable and they've got the backers for it, it might make it a lot easier for different types of this. They have a universal bus. Launch it to the moon, launch it to Mars. That kind of a thing that you could see. We should do a story about how Elon Musk is, or an episode about how Elon Musk is, or an episode about how Elon Musk has turned into Dan Randolph from the Ben Bova books because of the fact that he's built his own reusable rocket program out of South Padre Island.

01:07:04 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I think that's a key point. There works and, of course, you know you're using off the shelf components, so you're not paying half a million dollars for a single outdated processor chip and all that, like you do if you're buying the flight rated stuff. If that works, it could really change the way JPL does business to say okay, just you know, take the Russian approach, throw five of them at the planet instead of just one, and let's hope that it works. All right, this is your chance for the big wrap-up story I have one last one.

01:07:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I mean like there's a few others that we had we had hoped to talk about, you know, east we'll get to them yeah, europe's juice juice mission is going to do some venus flybys.

01:07:40
The lucy mission is going to, you know, keep going. And I think that, uh, um, what's the one we just launched to europa? The europa clipper is going to do a Mars flyby later this year. Those are ones to watch. But there is a new mission from Japan, destiny Plus, that I wanted to flag just because I think it's really, really cool. They are going to launch a spacecraft to asteroid 3200, phaethon Phaethon Am I pronouncing that, right, phaethon? And the reason I think it's cool is because Phaethon is the source of the Geminid meteor shower, one of the most prolific meteor showers of every year, and it's a weird asteroid, that kind of off-gases, and we've talked about it in the past. Some people used to think it was a comet. Now they know it's an asteroid, yada, yada, yada. But this is their mission and I just think that if there is ever a mission that has really stretched the use of an acronym, it is this one. Right, because space people like their acronyms.

01:08:38 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But, man.

01:08:38 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So this is called Destiny Plus, with a plus sign and that stands for Demonstration and Experiment of Space Technology. So that's the dest part For interplanetary, that's the in Voyage. The Y is the Y in the middle of the word. With Phaethon flyby, the L in flyby is capitalized for, I don't know why, and dust, oh, this is the plus. So Phaethon is the P, the L in flyby is the L, and dust the U in dust is the U, and then science. These are what we call tortured acronyms. They really, really went for it.

01:09:14
But hey hey, and it's interesting because they're going to use ion engines to basically launch it into orbit, increase that orbit over time until it does a moon flyby and then flings itself out into deep space to get some phantom, and that'll be really really cool to see if they can make that work and then what Phaethon's going to look like up close, I'm just, and they're going to use their Epsilon like solid rocket too, which is cool, to launch it. I mean, it's just a lot of weird things about this mission that I really hope go well, because I don't know like Phaethon is an interesting target, because I don't know Faithline is an interesting target. Destiny, they've really worked hard to make that acronym work. You want to see that succeed.

01:09:56 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Just for the acronym makers, all right. Well, that was a good one. Thank you for that wrap-up, and I want to thank everybody who's listening, watching and hanging out for joining us today for Episode 142, 2025 in space flight. Mr Malik, where can we find you polishing your high fidelity Vulcan rocket?

01:10:16 - Tariq Malik (Host)
model these days. Well, you can see it right behind me, but no, you can find me at spacecom, as always, on the Twitter, at Tarek J Malik on YouTube, at SpaceDrawn plays a lot of good games. It's a new year, which means new games to play, rod, so if anyone has recommendations, I got a few that I want to try this year.

01:10:35 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I work for a living, so I wouldn't know, give me a shout.

01:10:39 - Tariq Malik (Host)
But, most importantly, looking forward to will New Glenn fly on January 6th? Will it fly next week at all? That is what I am waiting for.

01:10:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, that's what?

01:10:50 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Monday, monday, right? Yeah, it's sometime. Sometime next week, by the time you and I talk, it may have gotten off the ground so by the time you and I talk with leonard david, that's right.

01:11:01 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Coming up next, ooh, spoilers, that's right, all right. And you can find me at pilebookscom or at astromagazinecom or I was looking last night just to make sure nobody was impugning me. The first 18 pages of my Google listings. Do remember to drop us a line if you feel like it, at twis, at twittv, that's T-W-I-S. At twittv, we welcome your comments, suggestions and ideas and one of us will write you back because we're nice people and we love our listeners.

01:11:31
New episodes of this podcast published every friday on your favorite podcatcher, so make sure to subscribe, tell your friends and give us reviews or thumbs up or thumbs in the eye or whatever works. You can also head to the website at twittv slash twists. And don't forget, we're counting on you to join club twit in 2025. Besides supportingit, you'll help keep us on the air. I think that's a good thing. I hope it's a good thing and bringing you great guests and horror jokes, because we're good at both of those. You can also get all the great programming with video streams on the Twit network ad-free on Club Twit, as well as some extras that are only available there for just can I hear it from?

01:12:11 - Tariq Malik (Host)
tarik how much? Seven, seven, seven dollars.

01:12:15 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Seven, ninety, nine, seven dollars, no, seventy seven, even seven dollars a month. What else can you get for seven dollars a month? That's as much fun as this. I ask you, I'm asking are you asking me?

01:12:27 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, apparently a Stanford banner to put on your astronaut, which I just noticed after recording this whole session that that's new for the 2025.

01:12:38 - Rod Pyle (Host)
No, it's been there for about six weeks, but that's okay, and it was a lot more than $7, by the way, but that's just how it is with college collectibles, as you know, because you went to one of the most expensive ones in the world.

01:12:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I will show you my Letterman jacket from USC that I brought back from stocking.

01:12:54 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Don't you dare Save it for next week? We appreciate it. It's $7 a month well spent and it keeps the processes warm and the electrons flowing to you. And you've heard Leo talk about how tough it's gotten with the advertising drought, so be our supporters and step up and be counted. Finally, you can follow the TwitTech Podcast Network at Twit, on Twitter, slash X, and on Facebook and Twittv on Instagram. Thank you, gang, it's been great and we'll see you next week.