This Week in Space 161 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.

0:00:00 - Tariq Malik
Coming up on This Week in Space. The top falls off a private rocket in Australia. Voyager 1 resurrects some cool thrusters in interstellar space and it's going to be all space jokes, all space news all This Week in Space, all the time on this episode. So tune in and don't touch that dial.

0:00:27 - Rod Pyle
This is This Week in Space, episode number 161, recorded on May 16th 2025. The Twist Comedy Hour. Hello and welcome to another episode of This Week in Space, the very special I'm sorry to say it This Week in Space Comedy Hour Edition. We'll see how that plays out. I am, of course, rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Bad Aster Magazine, among other things, and I'm joined by my fellow funny man, Tariq Malik, editor-in-chief of space.com. Hello sir, hey, hey, rod, how are you today? Well, apparently not quite as jubilant as you, but I'm here, I get my participation. You know, I never got a trophy in sports. I won my sixth grade. The only thing I ever won that was sporting was my sixth grade handball competition, not because I was any good, but because the other guy fouled himself out and I got a couple of sneers and jeers and that was it. No trophies at all. I have other trophies, but they're all for things that involve thinking well, I have, I have some little league trophies and soon you're going to have

soon, oh yeah the space pioneer award the space pioneer award very exciting did you opt for the moon or mars globe I believe I opt for the mars globe yeah, I think it's. It's really cool.

0:01:44 - Tariq Malik
Maybe I'll be surprised it's copper tinted.

0:01:46 - Rod Pyle
It's great, okay, but before we start and waste the entirety of your hour, please don't forget, do us a solid, make sure to like, subscribe and do other podcast things to keep us going, because we need your love or something. But we're counting on you All right, admiration, jubilant praise For something, but we're counting on you all right now, jubilant praise for right now we're going to spare you from the usual space dad joke, because a whole flotilla of them are coming up as we unleash the twist comedy hour.

0:02:14 - Tariq Malik
You'll see, that's all I first annual.

0:02:17 - Rod Pyle
Get ready to plug your ears first ever, first ever, we had such a bag, a backload of jokes, some, some good, some great, some squirmy.

0:02:26 - Tariq Malik
That's great.

0:02:27 - Rod Pyle
You know, let's burn through those because it's it's headlines week, so we're going to do headline joke, headline joke, headline joke. Now I've heard that some people want to plug us instead of their ears when it's joke time on this show. And won't that be disappointing?

but you can help send your best, worst or most indifferent space joke, and I mean it. You're lagging. I'm burning through a whole bunch of them this week, so it's time to step up. Don't just go to 101 space jokes on the web. Ai can do it sometimes, but its sense of humor is pretty undeveloped.

0:03:01 - Tariq Malik
It's kind of like asking a six-year-old for a real question. But you better laugh, because they're coming for us all, that's right.

0:03:05 - Rod Pyle
That's right, that's true. So make our machine overlords happy, Send us your best, worst or most indifferent space jokes to us at twisttv. Until then, we're going to burn off some inventory this week. But first let's do a couple of headlines.

0:03:23 - Mikah Sargent
Headline news, headline news.

0:03:27 - Tariq Malik
Ah, I got it.

0:03:27 - Rod Pyle
Now speaking of AI right that's my voice well, on alternate weekends. So we had an interesting launch attempt this week, that's right, which was very reminiscent. You won't remember it probably, but the infamous Mercury-Redstone four-inch flight, which was a test of the Mercury capsule, back in, I think, 1961, before the first crewed Mercury flight with Alan Shepard, where they fired the rocket and it lifted four inches off the pad and then, because of an improper fitting of a cable and a plug and if you ever go look at a Redstone rocket, at the bottom there's a connector about this big, around maybe two inches in diameter, full of big fat pins, and that was the cable that went up and talked to it while it was still on the pad. Well, that didn't disconnect properly. So the rocket stopped firing and fell four inches back to the pad, perfectly vertical, right back on the launch bolts. It was pretty amazing and sat there and then the parachute popped out of the capsule and that was it um, this isn't that, but this is something also embarrassing.

But one more thing, one more thing the cool part of that story is that the blockhouse so this was when launch control was still at at the cape in florida and launch control was staffed primarily by von braun's german team, which he brought over from germany at the end of the war. They're trying to figure out what do we do now? This rocket's still armed and ticking, it's filled with fuel, it's very dangerous. And what do we do? So the germans, being ever practical, said we get the hunting rifle and shoot holes and decide to drain it. And um well, chris kraft said over my dead body. And they didn't. So um, oh, my phone is going nuts here. Oh, I see. Um, so so that was that. But today we are this week.

0:05:24 - Tariq Malik
That is, rodyle History Hour, brought to you by this Week in.

0:05:28 - Mikah Sargent
Space. I remember like it was yesterday. Now let's talk about the news this week.

0:05:33 - Rod Pyle
Yes yes, yes, Okay go ahead Sorry. No this is.

0:05:36 - John Ashley
And pause done.

0:05:37 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, this is a new company called Gilmore Space. They're based out of Australia and this was going to be Australia's first ever orbital commercial launch, like native, right from the nation. Very exciting, this is their. It's not their first attempt. They have been delaying this flight of their rocket but as they were preparing to launch the rocket, something went wrong at their pad in western, or in where are they? They're in northeastern Australia and their Ares rocket triggered its payload fairing separation before doing anything.

On the pad. On the pad. So basically the nose cone popped off of their rocket while they were getting ready for launch, which you don't want to happen, right? So you don't want that to happen on a normal thing. So you know. They say that their payload, which is apparently a bunch of Vegemite, is okay.

0:06:32 - Rod Pyle
Are you serious?

0:06:34 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, that's what they say. They say and I quote last night, during final checks, an unexpected issue triggered the rocket's payload fairing, so that's the nose cone popping off. No payload fairing, so that's the nose cone popping off. No fuel was loaded, so that's great. No one was hurt. Even better, and early inspections show no damage to the rocket or the pad, except for the fact that it has no nose cone, right? So if you're watching our video stream, the nose cone is that pointy part at the end.

0:06:54 - Rod Pyle
Right, that's the front of the vegemite. I mean, what a way to signal the aliens. We don't deserve to continue living well, I'm just saying that.

0:07:02 - Tariq Malik
Uh, they say that the payload, theegemite payload, was unharmed you know, in a subsequent in a subsequent post, and so so, yeah, you know they're gonna launch Vegemite into space. They're gonna get there. They're gonna have to learn what happened. Obviously, some kind of either electrical or hardware issue may be at fault for this on their pad, but you know better. It's something like this and not like an explosion or a failure where you lose the entire vehicle. Uh, if this is your first uh test flight, so you know, uh, the, the, the calendar is still out for eris and they're gonna have to go, uh, probably get it off the pad and figure out what went wrong and then, you know, prepare everything else later on. Oh, but watch gilmore space, because you know spacex blew up three times before they got that's right so all right.

0:07:47 - Rod Pyle
Next up for mars technica. Also, as was the last one, woe to sls. So yeah, the new skinny budget suggests cancellation of the space launch system and the orion capsule, which is a little bit of a head scratcher, and lunar gateway, which is not a at scratcher, not immediately, at least for SLS and Orion, probably after the first landing. Reactions to this span from quote Artemis III is the last human mission we'll ever have, to quote full speed ahead, going commercial. But Congress, of course, overseeing dozens of job-saturated districts, may have their differences with the administration because they have to agree at least in the majority. So we're probably looking at a long debate and possible ultimate impoundment by the Office of Management and Budget, if this gets stuck, where they can just stop giving out money. So I guess the question marks are what about Jared Isaacman, our incoming NASA administrator? And what about a possible reboot of the National Space Council, which we really ought to have because it does serve a purpose? And what about Lunar Cots? So tell us all.

0:08:55 - Tariq Malik
O'Safe. This is from a friend of the show, eric Berger, over at Ars Technica, and I put this on headlines just because I really think that if you're a space fan like that, you like to follow the nitty gritty of the space program. This is a must read article because Eric really went through with a fine tooth comb what could happen, what is happening and what might happen down the road for the Artemis program, for SLS itself and then also just for a lot of the hardware that's been built already. And it really puts into perspective kind of the weird, I want to kind of say like limbo, where we are, where we don't have a NASA administrator but we have like all these budget things coming down where the NASA administrator usually has to fight for or against, and he talks about how the Office of Management and Budget are leading to budget-driven policies right now for space science that don't actually align with NASA's goals for space science and leading to things that don't make sense, like canceling the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, for example, or souring on SLS when we haven't even gone back to the moon yet for all of that stuff and the fact that they've, I think, contracted through Artemis 9, or at least laid the groundwork for that, for rockets on it.

So it's just a very interesting read because right now we are in, like you said, rod, this weird kind of place where the skinny budget came down just recently. In the last couple weeks said we're going to cancel this, we're going to put it in favor of something else. They don't say what that something else is. We don't have an administrator to help lead whatever that program or where it's going to be. We have parts of a gateway of other commercial moon flights that are all being built. We don't know what's going to happen with that stuff yet. And there are other things like spacesuits that are being built for SLS, artemis etc. That we don't have ideas about where those are going to be at this point either.

0:10:59 - Rod Pyle
Private moon rovers and that kind of thing, that then NASA would lease over time and, oh, go ahead. Let's just bear in mind that we are saying, and have been saying, that we're racing China back to the moon. We have an expensive moon rocket, we have an expensive launch system being completed, we have an expensive space capsule that we think works, and repurposing commercial stuff as it exists at this time, especially with Starship not yet having flown successfully and certainly nowhere near landing on the moon successfully, is very worrisome. If you're going to stick with that which is why I think they've been talking about well, maybe we'll pivot to Mars, and it's worth mentioning that there's talk of repurposing pieces of Gateway for a long-duration Mars trip, but I don't know if I'd want to be that astronaut sitting on ancient hybrid tech.

0:11:46 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, we saw that with Orion. Right From the ship, from Constellation to Artemis. They kept bits and pieces.

0:11:50 - Rod Pyle
That's true, but they were both going the same place and they weren't going to be in space for seven months.

0:11:54 - Tariq Malik
Yeah.

So the takeaway from this piece by Eric is about what happens to the Artemis program, and you mentioned this, I think, at the get-go.

He suspects that most likely NASA will revisit the COTS system, that's, the Commercial Orbital Transportation System, the one that they created back in 2004, 2005, something like that to say, we're going to use commercial rockets to deliver cargo to the space station, then do astronauts, which is what we use with SpaceX Dragon and Northrop Grumman's now Northrop Grumman's Cygnus it was Orbital ATK, I guess at that point or it was Orbital right back when that came out that he envisions that they're going to go back to that plan because it worked for them and try to use that for the moon and whether or not that will solve their problems, whether or not they can get things cheaper and faster, still remains to be seen, just because of where all these companies are now.

But that could be a playbook that they can open up again and say, hey, this worked last time, now let's use it for the moon, let's use it for Mars, et cetera, especially if they're going to cancel Mars sample return we didn't talk about that, but we did talk about it with the budget. They say, hey, maybe we can do commercial stuff or just send people there too.

0:13:05 - Rod Pyle
So all right, we need to go to a break before we do. I have a question for our lovely listeners. Um, I recently did a I do uh radio on wgn chicago once every month or so and recently expanded that footprint to uh I think it's wabc in new y and one of the things that came up and that we've been doing on the Chicago run is doing movie conversations and we've done a few of those on the show. But what these specific things are is looking at movies and sort of extracting what's good and what ain't so good about the science of the movie and comparing a new movie to an old one. So if that sounds compelling, please send us an email at twisttv. If that sounds revolting, please send us an email at twisttv. Let us know what you think and we might listen to you.

All right, we're going to go to a break. We'll be right back. Keep those cards and letters coming, as they used to say. So here's a cool story from space.com. Thank you, tarik. No, you're welcome, you're very welcome. Voyager lives on. So, uh, due to, as I understand it, they're planning they're planning to do maintenance work or upgrades on one of the big dishes I presume goldstone is it?

0:14:22 - Tariq Malik
I'm assuming it is because they're, they're, they're read. What do you call it? Reviving, re, restoring, fixing, upgrading. They're upgrading, they're upgrading it.

0:14:32 - Rod Pyle
Yeah so to do that. They wanted to make sure before they did that that they had the backup thrusters on voyager working, because the primary thrusters apparently there's some concern about fuel line pressure and build up and corrosion and so forth. So they fired recently the backup thrusters which hadn't been used since 2004.

0:14:52 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, yeah, these roll thrusters on the spacecraft, as I understand it. So that means I've had a whole career at space.com. Basically, since I've been at space.com they haven't fired these thrusters and now they know that they can. I think they did some kind of workaround to understand some of the switching on some computer boards or something like that. It's very engineering the way that NASA described it. In fact, this was written the NASA announcement by Calla Cofield, former space.com writer, now over at JPL. You know her, Rod, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know people don't know, and you're a first-time listener.

The Voyager 1 spacecraft launched in 1977, so an entire taric ago, Because I was also launched in 1977. But it launched. Now it's out in interstellar space, what like 15 billion miles away, something like that, and for the last 21 years it's had only one set of these roll control thrusters. They really need that roll control to be able to make sure that it can stay pointed back at Earth and send back its data. You know such as it is, because it is 48 years old now, its data. You know such as it is because it is 48 years old now.

And, as Rod, you suggested earlier, they're upgrading the Deep Space Network, the primary antenna they use for Voyager, and they want to make sure that the spacecraft is as ready Like any road trip, right? You want to make sure that you have all your supplies, all your fuel, all your whatever, ready to go, that the car is in good shape, and so that's what they're trying to do with Voyager here, and ready to go. That the car is in good shape, and so that's what they're trying to do with voyager here. And they just thought you know what, let's try to see what we can do. We thought these were dead thrusters, let's see if we can figure out a way around it.

And it sounds like they did it. Uh and so, uh. So now they have this, this rule control these thrusters, uh, apparently in working order if voyager needs it, uh, while the deep space network is offline and it can keep itself pointed properly and keep on going. So I think that that's great. It's just another. What did we call it? The Energizer moment for the Voyager spacecraft? They called it a miracle save, and it was yet another miracle save for Voyager, which means that Scotty is probably the chief engineer over there at NASA JPL to keep this thing running on.

0:17:08 - Rod Pyle
Actually, Scotty's a few bits of carbonized ash out. That was just Earth orbit. Right, he went up on Celestis A few times, I think. Actually. Yeah, because Scotty was large enough that he had lots to go around. Okay, sorry From Paul Woolley. Heyik, oh, we're getting the jokes now. Yes, yes, rod, why did the mars rover apply for psychotherapy? Uh, why, rod? Why? Why? Because it had abandonment issues. Okay, thank you, paul. Very, all right, kill that laughter. Let's see. We have a little more detail on the NASA budget cuts. But I think actually we've covered this, haven't we? Is there anything new in there?

0:17:55 - Tariq Malik
Well, I think the new thing here is that people aren't staying quiet.

0:17:59 - Rod Pyle
Oh yeah, yeah, you're right, it was the user groups. You're right, it was the user groups.

0:18:03 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, the chairs of all the advisory committees some of them are people that work at NASA, some of them are just leaders in their field, and we're talking about things like the Mars Exploration Advisory Group, the Venus Exploration Advisory Group, you know, asteroids, et cetera, across the board outer solar system.

They all basically joined together to file a memo to the government to say, hey look, these budget cut plans are crazy, that they're going to cede and I quote our position of leadership to other nations in terms of space exploration if they go through. And it was a statement that the planetary science divisions chairs gave to NASA. So it's an open letter to say, like you need to cool your jets and take a better look. It's not just about cutting money. They really need support from the community, from the public, to say this type of science is important. You know that abandoning, like you just said, things like the Mars sample return mission, which they're talking about, canceling no-transcript the budget has a way just to go, but we're waiting to find out what's going to happen and, again, what a new NASA administrator, an official one, will have to say about it. All you know, because they're the one that's going to get this budget and have to live by it for the next year.

0:19:47 - Rod Pyle
And, as one of the advisory group leaders said, this is eating the seed corn, presumably of NASA's space science, which I think isn't that what happened at Roanoke? Wasn't that the colony that disappeared early on in the settlement of the US from New York.

0:20:02 - Tariq Malik
I thought it was ghosts. I thought it was ghosts. No, okay.

0:20:07 - Rod Pyle
Well, hey, let's turn back to Paul Woolley for a moment. Hey, Tariq, yes, rod. What's the most overused phrase at SpaceX?

0:20:14 - Tariq Malik
I don't know, what is it this time?

0:20:16 - Rod Pyle
for sure, oh, is that a starship joke? Because the last two blown up? I think so. Yeah, because everything else works brilliantly over there. Wow, listen to John Ashley laughing in the background.

0:20:31 - Tariq Malik
He's a jolly fellow. That's a direct quote. It's an open mic right there. That's definitely not a sound effect everybody. Yeah, that's right, that's right. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha.

0:20:41 - Rod Pyle
Oh, that's even better. Oh, now we have bespoke sound effects only for us. Okay, let's package that and sell it for some extra revenue From space.com, the Texas Mars Act to modernize JSC. So Texas governor is suggesting a billion dollars of investment to upgrade and modernize the Johnson Space Center. This includes mission control, the neutral buoyancy lab, the food labs and so forth, and I have to tell you, having worked there for a couple of years, the place can really use it.

I was on that show. I was telling you about Chicago the other night. We were talking about the movie the Martian and if you remember the Martian, they go to JSC and they go to JPL and when they drive into both places, the exterior is fantastic with big, swooping, cool, spacey metal structures and the interior is all cool indirect light and all this stuff. And that ain't what it looks like. There's no JSC where you go there. I mean it was built in the 60s when we had a robust space budget. It has not been upgraded much since. I mean obviously important things like mission control consoles and stuff, but the general facility looks kind of like an office park from 1965, because that's what it is and, as I think I've related on here before in 2010,.

I was there doing some work in the back room of the mission control that was there for the Apollo and Skylab and early shuttle and I was having to do some uh tweaks on a computer there and I'm looking at this thing and I went around the back in 2010. It was a 486 sx. For those of you who love computers, you know that that thing barely worked when it was new, much less uh, that old so they can really use the investment. The question is um, that old, so they can really use the investment. The question is A are they going to get the money? B where is it coming from? And C what are we upgrading it for if they keep cutting the budget?

0:22:32 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, exactly, yeah, this is, by the way, I think, a quick correction. I think you said Texas governor. It's actually Texas Senator John Cornyn. Ah, okay, so it's federal money they're looking for Exactly, yeah, so it's federal money. It's called the Mission to Mars Act. Mars is not the planet Mars, it is the modernized astronautic resources for space. That's exactly it.

0:22:54 - Rod Pyle
Because we do love us.

0:22:55 - Tariq Malik
some acronyms yeah, and so this is interesting.

I think that Cornwin Rod Perlman was telling me earlier I think that he's one of the two signatories also on that bill with Ted Cruz to move the space shuttle out of the Smithsonian and to Texas as well.

So this is like another space bill that he's put in there. The neutral buoyancy laboratory for commercial space stations, because right now it's this giant pool built for the International Space Station and for moon stuff, which they already do and, for whatever reason, collaborations with the Department of Defense. I don't know why you would need a giant pool for the Department of Defense, unless they're going to be doing spacewalks for the military Space combat, I tell you. And then the other part of it that I don't think got mentioned was upgrading the Ellington field for astronaut flight training and then also the astro materials creation and research facility, like giving that a big lift, because they're going to want to do that for samples of the moon and Mars. What samples of the Mars is a big question if you're canceling the Mars sample return program, but I think that NASA is already doing a lot of that and they upgraded it for the samples of Bennu as a way to prepare for moon samples.

0:24:13 - Rod Pyle
Bennu, bennu, bennu. Okay, I'm channeling. What was that horrible show with Robin Williams, mork of Ork, mork of Ork, mork and Mindy?

0:24:23 - Tariq Malik
that was it Mork and.

0:24:24 - Rod Pyle
Mindy, I used to love that show. Of course you did from. David Eckerd yeah from David Eckerd. David, hey, Tariq. Yes, rod, athena landed sideways, odysseus fell over. We gotta find that moon bar and close it that doesn't even deserve a sound.

0:24:40 - John Ashley
Okay, okay, let's go to an ad we'll be right back.

0:24:49 - Tariq Malik
Really quickly. Just to explain that joke at the unit in Odysseus are intuitive machines landers that both crashed because they fell over after trying to land on the moon. So Dave's joke is-.

0:24:59 - Rod Pyle
Now, did they fall over because they crashed or did they crash because they fell over? It's a matter of semantics isn't it?

0:25:04 - Tariq Malik
Apparently, it was because they were at the bar right?

0:25:06 - Rod Pyle
Well, there we go.

0:25:06 - Tariq Malik
Okay, by the way, do we have the intuitive machines story on the budget? I didn't check. The TLDR is that they're going to launch back to the moon in Q1 of 2026 with Intuitive Machines 3, and they have learned what caused it.

0:25:21 - Rod Pyle
Now have they at least widened the legs or reinforced them, or something?

0:25:26 - Tariq Malik
No, they said that they had their big Q1 earnings call this week and they said that it was the fact that the lighting was not as expected at the southern area of the moon that they thought, from the orbital imagery, combined with some telemetry issues, obviously, that they had on the spacecraft itself, that combined into an issue for them to have an off-nominal landing and they think they can fix it for IM3. So they're all systems to go.

0:25:54 - Rod Pyle
The sun got in my eyes. Okay, that was always my excuse in softball. From space.com we have, we hope, the next, the, the next number nine Starship test flight next week and it is reported that our friend Elon Musk wacky Elon will give a talk before the launch to outline his updated Mars plans.

0:26:15 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, yeah, on.

0:26:16 - Rod Pyle
May 21st and, compellingly, this is a reflight of the Test Flight 7 first stage booster. So that's an advancement. We hope to see Starship actually go into orbit this time. But we'll see actually go into orbit this time, but we'll see.

0:26:30 - Tariq Malik
Well, I don't think that they're planning to go into like do a full circle orbit, because I think they're still trying to finish that flight plan that ends in the Indian Ocean with Starship. But we'll have to see because they could be changing things. But, as you said, elon Musk said this week, and I quote just before the Starship flight next week, which gives us the timeline for the launch, I will give a company talk explaining the Mars game plan in Starbase Texas. That will also be live streamed on next. So a couple of things there. Starship flight next week that means that as of our next episode, dear listener, we may have Starship flight nine, although I did hear that it might be slipping till later in the week. Right now and that he says our Mars game plan in Starbase Texas. And for folks that don't recall all, less than 100 or 200 people went to the vote that the polls in in South Texas voted to make Starbase a town or a city.

0:27:25 - John Ashley
Most.

0:27:25 - Tariq Malik
Starbase employees shockingly, exactly, exactly. So just a couple of extra things and they're going to have it live. On x the the talk. Elon musk has given an annual talk almost every year since 2016, when he unveiled what has become the starbase or the starship uh super heavy launch system. To really give an update on uh the vehicle, its plans, what's different this year, what's not different, like where they think they're going to be going, and so I don't think we got one last year, and so this is going to be an opportunity to hear, kind of from the horse's mouth, what the current plan is, what their timeline might be, what types of things need to be upgraded or changed and what they've learned from the last two failures. There are other stories that are out there. Propublica has a big in-depth investigation this week about how the UK is asking the FAA to change their Starship flight path clearances. I suspect because they have islands like the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean and they don't want star-based chunks falling on them if they fail again.

0:28:29 - Rod Pyle
People get so picky about things falling out of the sky. Right, am I right? Come on.

0:28:35 - Tariq Malik
Don't get me started about the planetary defense.

0:28:36 - Rod Pyle
It could be a part of spaceflight if it falls into your house.

0:28:39 - Tariq Malik
I was going to say don't get me started about the planetary defense hearing at the house this week too, because that was very interesting to say the least, but you know, so we'll see what they say. The two things I would say, if you're going to tune into this talk, to look for are A what is their timeline for actual orbital flights, as well as their testing timeline for reflight, for refueling the vehicle which they have to refuel. How many times Rod 25 million right to get to the moon, we don't know. Like 15 to 20 or so 16 to 24.

0:29:10 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, and this is with a company whose cadence so far has been to launch once every six to ten weeks yeah, and you've got cryogenics up there fizzling away, boiling away, and even if you keep them chilled you know you're going to lose a significant amount of propellant before the next tanker gets there. So you're kind of half topping up and not half, but some percentage topping up is some percentage refilling boil off, yeah. And then you got to hope that the next one gets there without a problem and there's no scheduling problems on the ground.

It's nuts and let's just bear in mind when this was sold to nasa for a lunar lander, they had said six tanker flights. Now it's multiples of that, so it's a little bit of a head scratcher.

0:29:55 - Tariq Malik
Well, and part of it is because you have the 100% reusability goal that SpaceX has. They are flying the Flight 6 booster, is that?

0:30:06 - John Ashley
right yeah the Flight 6.

0:30:07 - Rod Pyle
Flight 7. The Flight 7.

0:30:09 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, the Flight 7 super heavy booster. That's the one that came back from the first failure this year. I think they've only changed a few engines out, which is pretty amazing, I have to say, of the 33 that are on the first stage there. But so you know, look for that reuse performance, look for the refueling timeline for testing, look for anything about life support too, because he told me in 2019 that that was going to be a cinch, but we haven't seen anything except an empty starship from the inside with a banana, he told you personally. Well, I asked him the question in the press conference.

0:30:41 - Rod Pyle
Oh cool, I didn't know that.

0:30:43 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, and so it wasn't just me, like we were chewing the fat. Yeah, but I bet your taxes are still tagged for an audit now because you asked that question apparently apparently so look look, look for those things, and then also like about docking, because they're gonna have to rendezvous with orion somehow.

0:31:03 - Rod Pyle
So all right, uh, from hector, no last name. Hey, hey, Tariq. Yes, rod and Hector. Why, oh why, did the rocket scientist give up on fusion propulsion? Why, I don't know, because he had no cometment.

0:31:21 - Tariq Malik
Oh, I love it.

0:31:23 - Rod Pyle
I love it. That was good that one hurt me below the belt.

0:31:26 - Tariq Malik
Speaking of comets the comet is in Fortnite OG now for people that play that game, very exciting, very. Speaking of comets the comet is in Fortnite OG now for people that play that game, very exciting, very exciting. So I have a video of it coming out on Space Drop Plays later on, yeah, but not on this show, thank God.

0:31:38 - Rod Pyle
Okay, from space.com. How shocking the end is nigh, look out. So it's all going to be over a little sooner than we thought. We apparently now only have 10 to the power of 78 years left in the universe as we know it, instead of the previously calculated 10 to the 1100 from. That was from 2023, so not a very old calculation, and this is measured, uh, up to the final end of the last white dwarfs and neutron stars, the gray beards of the universe. It has something to do that makes my brain hurt and my cells begin to die, with the cessation of hawking radiation due to the effects of space time, not just local gravity yeah, yeah, it's the ultimate end of the universe cash your 401ks out now.

There's no need no reason to wait no reason party like it's 1965, because the end is coming I love this theoretical theoretical.

0:32:33 - Tariq Malik
You know I'm a spaceship person so I actually don't understand, let alone wrap my head around a lot of this stuff here. But this was a story that we saw coming down from I think I'm going to say this wrong Heino Falki. He's a theoretical astrophysicist at Radboud University in the Netherlands I'm sure I'm saying that wrong and according to their new calculations, they predict that the universe is the most enduring objects, those white dwarfs, the glowing remnants of dead stars and neutron stars. That's when they're going to fade away. You know the decay, what do they call it? The big whimper Is that the big letdown, I don't know.

0:33:13 - Rod Pyle
Oh, big Bang, the final whimper, something like that.

0:33:24 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, something like that, and it's based on Hawking's theory that black holes evaporate over time, that radiation just vanishes, it goes away, and so they've been able to take all of that like what they know about that kind of radiation, about how stars die, how they peter out, and put that into a simulation which then mapped out the exact heat death. That's what it's called the heat death of the universe, right when there is no more anything and it's just black silence.

0:33:52 - John Ashley
Sounds like my first marriage um, okay, right now from james really really quickly tldr don't don't worry, don't worry about that.

0:34:06 - Tariq Malik
Hey, you had a whole preamble about, uh, about a failed Mercury launch, before we started. Just so that everyone knows, because I went through this with my daughter when she was five. Don't worry about the heat death of the universe, right, it's like it doesn't matter to you and to me. I want to know where my next cup of coffee is going to be, and a spoiler alert it's going to be right after this podcast downstairs and I microwave my coffee. So that's what's important to me. You know that we lose maybe like a few hundreds of billions of years on the universe, not so much We'll be cavorting the multiverse by then. You know the distant Malik droids that are out there.

0:34:44 - Rod Pyle
It's going to be great. Why are you showing us your coffee cup? Are we supposed to get excited about that? No, I'm just drinking coffee.

0:34:51 - John Ashley
The fact that you microwave your coffee is a sin amongst its own 90 seconds for Folgers instant coffee.

0:34:58 - Tariq Malik
I have no patience you drink Folgers instant.

0:35:01 - Rod Pyle
Yes, oh my lord.

0:35:02 - Tariq Malik
I'm done with this podcast. I don't even measure it I just pour it straight into the cup.

0:35:06 - Rod Pyle
The only time I ever drink that stuff has been Sanka on Central Pacific Islands, where they have nothing but instant coffee and sugar water and cremora that.

0:35:18 - Tariq Malik
No, not Folgers. No, not Folgers, not Folgers. You're right, you're right, you're right. It's Nescafe. So okay.

0:35:26 - Rod Pyle
Well, hey, you're suited to be an astronaut because they have to drink instant coffee too. All right, we're just about time up, but from Anonymous hey, Tariq. Yes, rod, god, are you getting tired of answering that question. Why did Saturn's name stick? I don't know why, because it had a nice ring to it.

0:35:47 - Tariq Malik
Beyonce would be proud. Right, John's not even stirring.

0:35:50 - John Ashley
No, I'm still shocked by the fact that somebody drinks instant coffee. It's revolting, isn't it? It is.

0:35:57 - Rod Pyle
I'm surprised we haven't had Adam weigh in on the chat. All right, hey, I know. Yep. Hey, Tariq. Yes, ron, let's go to a commercial We'll be right back. Okay, we got 20 minutes left.

0:36:13 - Tariq Malik
man, what are you talking about?

0:36:14 - Rod Pyle
These guys, you know you cut them loose in the back room and they're just all out of whack.

All right from Space News, one I like to call death by a thousand computers. So China has launched its first 12 orbital computing sats. They plan for a total of 2,800. Designed to move power-hungry computer off planet, which is a laudable goal, actually, given that AI is devouring the energy output of most of the Western world at this point and less than environmental impacts, and China, whatever you think of their politics, is leading in green initiatives. It's a little hard to suss out exactly what they are and what depth they go to, because it's all state-run media, but they're doing it. Um, so these will feature ai capability up to 100 gigabits per second of bandwidth from the ground via laser, and it's a collaboration between china's space program, uh cask, and alibaba and the region that alibaba is located in. Now I remember when musk and uh, who's the guy that runs alibaba and the region that Alibaba is located in. Now I remember when Musk and who's the guy that runs Alibaba I forget his name. Kind of interesting looking guy.

0:37:23 - Tariq Malik
I do not know.

0:37:24 - Rod Pyle
Anyway, he had a summit with the leader of Alibaba in Shanghai, which was not a good idea from the beginning because, of course, you're playing in the home of the home team, and so every time elon said something extremely intelligent and he was very good in this talk there was dead silence in the room, and every time what's his name said something about alibaba like I caught ai, alibaba, intelligence the crowd went wild, so it was kind of a wacko talk, but anyway, is that the one where he danced, I said the, the, no, no, he was elon mus, the meeting.

0:37:55 - Tariq Malik
No, no, elon Musk danced.

0:37:56 - Rod Pyle
No, he was dead serious in this thing and actually I have to say you know it's funny. His news bites often come winging out of left field and you're kind of left scratching your head and like can somebody put a sock on this guy? But when you listen to his longer talks not about Doge but about SpaceX and space in general except for the one where he talks about, oh, the sun's going to eat Earth, so we have to go to Mars and conveniently leaves out that a couple hundred million years from then the sun eats Mars and then you've got to go live on Jupiter but whatever. But in this talk in particular he really held his ground and Jack Ma of Alibaba was completely overmatched by opinion. But you sure wouldn't have guessed it from the reactions of the crowd, who were stony, silent, but anyway. So this is kind of a big deal because this puts China in the front seat for big AI. Yeah, yeah you know this.

0:38:51 - Tariq Malik
This isn't surprising to me, because we've actually seen a fairly robust embrace of high-tech computing in space by China for past launches they launched quantum computing satellites into space, quantum satellite communications satellites as prototypes for studying. And so now this new constellation, which actually, as I understand it, these 12 satellites are the three-body computing constellation that's what the name of it is called built apparently by the commercial company ADA Space, which released some details, and then, of course, to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, casc, that you mentioned earlier, and other partners, and so you know they have been really trying to push. Now this constellation eventually is going to have like 2,800 satellites into it with advanced AI capabilities, which I find like really scary, depending on what those are, because I just recently read this week the AI 2027 report, which I don't recommend anyone read if you don't want to fear the immediate future of our AI takeover. But this, no, it's real serious stuff. It's about how AI agents that we talked about on the show earlier in a previous episode are advancing at a clip.

But this shift of computing power into space, I think is interesting because, as Rod and I were talking, I think, on a previous planning call. Interesting because, as Rod and I were talking, I think, on a previous planning call AI, computing takes a lot of power and there is limitless powers of the sun up in space where you just have to be up to have complete direct line of sight all the time and you can have continuous sunshine all the time. Whether or not that's what they're hoping to leverage, I think, remains to be seen. But I mean, the environment is there and also one of the satellites does have a cosmic x-ray polar, polar, polar, polar, polarimeter, polarimeter uh, to detect and identify transient objects like gamma ray bursts, which you don't want, one of those aimed at our planet either, uh, so there is some other science being done by this, uh, at least on these first 12 satellites. We'll see if they continue that trend on the rest of the what? What's? 2,800 minus 12? 2,378.

0:41:03 - Rod Pyle
Oh, I did it. Give that young man a math participation trophy.

0:41:06 - Tariq Malik
No, I missed it. Let's move on.

0:41:10 - Rod Pyle
I think I was off by 10. Hey, keep those cheers in the palm of your hand, because Ken Kramer has set us a stellar space joke. Okay, tara, yes, rod, did you hear about the guy who was charged a million dollars to send his cat into space? No, no, I didn't hear what happened. It was a cat astrophy.

0:41:30 - Tariq Malik
Oh no.

0:41:32 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, that's kind of an oh no Okay from Space News, our friends over at Space News. Starlink hits profitability how about that?

0:41:41 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, that's well, I mean everyone loves the internet. Actually, this is a press release, an announcement from NovaSpace.

0:41:50 - Rod Pyle
Which is an analysis group right.

0:41:53 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, they're a space analyst group. They have estimated that SpaceX, based on their study, has generated an estimated of $11.8 billion in revenue in 2024, with Starlink overtaking its space transportation office. So that means that this is the first time that the satellite internet business has outstripped their launch services business, including crude flight with nasa. Um, you know, since they started, which is pretty amazing, I mean, they do have what? Four thousand plus of these satellites in space right now. Uh, so, uh, it's not surprising that that that's a bulk of it.

In fact, I think they launched, uh, yeah, they have more, is that? Is that? Is that what you're saying, john? So, um, uh, they, they have been launching these, these satellites over and over again. In fact, they just, uh, recently put out a video about how they're building something like a thousand or a hundred, uh, uh, dishes like an hour or something like that from a factory or a day, which just seems mind-boggling. But they have a business model that is clearly working. For starlink, they just signed, I believe, some new deals as we speak, this week in the Middle East as part of the. It was announced along with the Trump visit to the Middle East, so clearly there is a drive there and they are the leaders right now, even though Amazon just launched their Kuiper satellite and there are others that are planned.

0:43:19 - Rod Pyle
They are once again, again the company to beat when it comes to space-based satellite internet? Oh yeah, well, ed, if you're Amazon and you've launched what was their first tranche 12 satellites in the Kuiper project.

0:43:28 - Tariq Malik
I think it was in the 20s. No 22?

0:43:31 - Rod Pyle
Something like that. But I mean it's a tall hill to steep, hill to climb when your competitor has, you know, thousands. But but God bless him for trying. Hey from Sherry Shen, hey Tarek, yes Rod, what is a lazy guy in space called?

0:43:50 - Tariq Malik
I don't know, is it Tarek Malik? Because that would not surprise me.

0:43:54 - Rod Pyle
It's a procrastinate.

0:43:56 - Tariq Malik
Oh, yeah, I love it. Yeah, that's a good one, Sherry. Oh come on Ashley. No, that's the good laughter.

0:44:04 - Rod Pyle
That guy's having a good time, but it's just one guy.

0:44:08 - Mikah Sargent
Where's the crowd goes now. Okay, hey, we have two guys.

0:44:11 - Rod Pyle
Thank you, john, for that contribution. All right, let's go to one more ad and then we're on the home streak. Stand by everybody, from our friend Leonard David, the dean of space reporters. Might we be saving Viper? Viper is a lunar prospecting rover. Rover which, for those who may not remember although I'm sure you probably do, um was scheduled to fly on a private booster. As part of that whole program, viper was completed and in the process of integration when, uh, it was realized the booster was not ready to go, the rocket to launch it.

0:44:54 - Tariq Malik
You mean, you mean lander. It was going to fly on an astrobotic.

0:44:56 - Rod Pyle
Oh sorry, the lander lander, yeah, on an astrobotic lander. Get your facts straight pile. And so, instead of saying okay, we'll wait or hey, let's switch rockets, nasa for some head-scratching reason, said, yeah, okay, we'll cancel it. Now this thing's already the sunk costs are pretty much done yeah, it would have needed integration and operational costs.

The launch, the money for the launch had been allocated and it was just put into mothballs. They had talked about they being nasa talked about. Okay, we'll break it up and we'll we'll sell the bits of it to other companies and they could do what they want with it. And the other companies were startlingly silent on that idea. So then they said okay, other, give us your ideas for how to launch this thing. And I think a couple of suggestions came in, but it hasn't been the kind of response they usually get from industry.

0:45:43 - Tariq Malik
They put an RFP to basically lease or sell off the actual rover to someone, and then they would come up with a business plan to get their investment back, would come up with a business plan to get their investment back, probably by selling data to NASA et cetera from it, and now it sounds like they're looking at ways to try to save it. You know, it's the Lunar Volatile Science. What was it called? The Lunar Volatile? The Volatile's Investigating Polar Explorer Rover. It's going to dig for water ice on the moon's south pole, and so it sounds like they had this plan in place about where they were trying to get people to launch it to the moon, but NASA wouldn't have to pay for it. And now they're looking at other ways to try to figure out how to get VIPER to the moon. They have a statement that says the agency will announce a new strategy for viper in the future, and so we're looking to figure out like what that's going to be. So I, $50 million.

0:46:45 - Rod Pyle
I have to say I have probably inordinate amount of affection for this program, just because we haven't had a lunar rover from NASA well since the lunar rover in the Apollo program. And it was time, especially because it's going to be a prospecting mission. It was going to go drill into the surface, say, hey, I found water, like we keep saying we have up here. Water is good, we can use it for a lot of things. It makes the solar system your background because we can make fuel from it, and blah, blah, blah.

0:47:19 - Tariq Malik
So it's going to go find us water, ice and of all the things to cancel. This seemed a little short-sighted. It's weird, right? Because? And also, like you said it was, it's built already. Yeah, they had. Just, they had just finished building it and all that they needed to do was do all the shake out, bake out tests, all the final, like like making sure the stress test. That was all ready to go and people were just blindsided by it. And it was because astrobotics, it's not Peregrine, it's the other one I don't remember the name of it now.

Griffin, the Griffin Lander wasn't going to be ready in 2024. And they said it's going to cost too much in delays, more in delays than it would cost to wait. And so they're just going to cancel the mission more in delays than it would cost to wait.

0:47:57 - Rod Pyle
And so they're just going to cancel the mission. It's odd because that's basically keeping the people on probably halftime payroll while they're waiting to participate in the program. So I just, you know, it's a little bit like in the first Trump administration, when the executive branch is trying to cancel an instrument on the space station that had already been installed. Its only crime was looking back at Earth.

I think it was a climate monitoring thing it had a 1.8 million dollar per year budget, they're like oh, we gotta cancel that, it's costing too much. That's the coffee creamer budget for the white house, or I know, right, oh, it's like guys just don't go play that golf game and that's a, that's a lunch.

0:48:35 - Tariq Malik
that's a lunch for, like a foreign visitor, you know?

0:48:37 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, or maybe just the air that goes in the tires of that jet they're going to get. Okay, hey, thank you, lottie Jones, for this one. Hey, Tariq. Yes, rod, why don't cell phones work in space? I don't know. Why don't they? Because it's zero G.

0:48:57 - Tariq Malik
Oh no, oh John, phones work in space. I don't know why don't they, because it's zero g. Oh, that's good that's good.

0:49:03 - John Ashley
That was, that was. That was forced that actually don't what no I thought that was pretty good that's really great.

0:49:09 - Tariq Malik
Don't tell nokia, though, because they just paid like how many, no it was actually a good joke.

0:49:13 - John Ashley
Right, I'm just pulling.

0:49:14 - Rod Pyle
I found your teeth I found what I guess would be a 1g phone. The other day I was rooting through my drawer of abandoned technology and I found an iphone 3 wow, wow in, in pretty good shape. Now I don't know if it holds the charge anymore. I didn't try to boot it up because I don't have a charger.

0:49:32 - Tariq Malik
That'll work, but it's I still have a blackberry, I still have my black.

0:49:35 - John Ashley
I thought your website was one of those nokia brick phones.

0:49:38 - Rod Pyle
Those things, those things are okay, I have that I have two motorola um uh, oh god, droids with keyboards. I have two blackberries. I have two motorola raz, one purple, one silver and somewhere I still have my Danger Lab Sidekick, which was my favorite of them all.

0:50:01 - Tariq Malik
Oh, yeah, that screen.

0:50:03 - Rod Pyle
that was the original one to the screen twirled and popped up. Very satisfying. Nice, you had the cursors and keyboard and all kinds of stuff.

0:50:11 - Tariq Malik
My first one was a Nokia.

0:50:13 - Rod Pyle
I left it in the car, and it turns out that when you do that, the lcd screen turns black and oh and I think I actually said in my storage unit I think I still have my first cell phone, which uh was uh, the size of a cigar box and corded handset and all that stuff and insanely expensive to use, from space.com. Oh, you love these.

0:50:35 - Tariq Malik
The biggest solar flare of 2025 yeah, speaking of cell phones, if you're if your signal gets a bit spotty. Uh, uh, you're gonna see why I said that in the minute there we just had. Uh, there's a huge active sunspot region on the sun. That's the spot joke. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, right. You know what you signed up for when you clicked play on the podcast. So, but no, this active region called AR 4087 has just turned off, turned over from the western limb of the sun, which means that it's rotating into view of the Earth, basically to line up, and it unleashed the strongest solar flare of the year, an X2.7 flare. X flares are the strongest explosions on the Sun. They are big eruptions of plasma and radiation when they're aimed directly at Earth. They can also be accompanied with a coronal mass ejection. That's, a massive eruption of solar plasma that sends these charged particles to us, creates great and amazing solar what do you call it? Northern light displays.

0:51:40 - Rod Pyle
It's amazing.

0:51:41 - Tariq Malik
A year ago as of recording this, there was a massive, massive influx of these events and we saw amazing auroras all the way down to where I am in New Jersey and I think even down to Texas and stuff like that. It was crazy.

0:51:54 - Rod Pyle
Actually, if I may lodge a slight correction here, they create amazing auroral displays, because if it's in wintertime it's the aurora australis and if it's summertime it's the aurora borealis, correct? No?

0:52:07 - Tariq Malik
Rod, isn't it?

0:52:08 - Rod Pyle
weighted towards the pole that's facing the sun.

0:52:11 - Tariq Malik
I know a thing that Rod doesn't know, and it makes me so happy that I'm going to stretch it out. No, the aurora borealis are the auroras that are over the North Pole. The aurora australis are the auroras that are over the South Pole. It's not about winter or summer, because it's still the aurora australis when it's summer.

0:52:27 - Rod Pyle
No, I know, but won't one become more prominent in the season that it's tipped towards the sun because we have a significant polar tilt Axial?

0:52:35 - Tariq Malik
tilt no, is tipped towards the sun because we have a significant polar tilt. Uh. Axial tilt no, it's come down. When you look at the maps, it's coming down from the north pole, that's. Those are the I get that they didn't lap the earth and come up above the earth equator and uh the auroras are happening at both poles at the same time okay, is that a jammer b?

0:52:53 - Rod Pyle
you're smart about this stuff it's.

0:52:54 - Tariq Malik
It's not the direction right of the tilt, it's the fact that it's all getting folded into the poles.

0:52:59 - Rod Pyle
Anyway. Oh, actually there's another problem I just thought of. You don't see them at the North Pole in the summer or the South Pole in our winter, because the sun's up all the time. That's why they're less prominent. Oh good Lord, why?

0:53:12 - Tariq Malik
do they look like that TLDRdr? We could get a big spike in auroras from the sunspot in like the next few weeks, because that's when the sun's what we aimed right at earth so I can't believe.

0:53:21 - Rod Pyle
I just went through that whole rigmarole and I've been there. I've looked at the sky at midnight and seen the sun cresting the horizon, okay, uh, from sherry clark, sherry dark.

0:53:33 - Tariq Malik
Rod, why did the moon stop eating I don't know Too much cheese, because it was full. Oh, I love it.

0:53:40 - John Ashley
Okay, all right.

0:53:41 - Tariq Malik
That's a good one. That's solid.

0:53:42 - Rod Pyle
I think John's out of sound effects because we're getting live.

0:53:45 - Tariq Malik
Yep.

0:53:47 - John Ashley
No, I'm just trying to add a little variety, because do people really want to constantly hear things like this?

0:53:51 - Rod Pyle
It's like no I don't think people I mean with the joke with all the jokes we're getting I don't think they even want to hear the jokes. I like this. I want to hear the jokes I.

0:54:01 - Tariq Malik
I think this is fun. I don't. I don't know what the listeners online think, but I'm having a good old time, so well, I'm glad you're easy to please.

0:54:09 - Rod Pyle
That makes my life a lot easier. Okay, speaking of auroras, auroras we have images of the first awoas on Mars from the Perseverance rover. That's cool.

0:54:19 - Tariq Malik
Well, just to be a little nitpicky, it's not the first images of auroras on Mars. It's the first visible light auroras on Mars from the surface of Mars, and this actually comes from the Perseverance rover, rover right um, I stand corrected. No, this is, but it's really exciting because it means that, potentially, an observer on the surface would be able to see, one way or another, these auroras too. It's not just something that we're seeing from space, like the mars reconnaissance orbiter or, uh, or some kind of computer eye, but these are our photos, photos that we're seeing right now from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, from the Perseverance rover, where you see, on one side the auroras show up as green, so one side is kind of more green than the other. That's the auroras themselves, and this happened in March 15th of 2024.

And they, I guess, mined it out of the image data when they were doing studies. This is how they found it, and it was from a CME. We were just talking about the coronal mass ejection that reached Mars, and it triggered these auroras, and so they were able to detect them from the surface of the planet for the first time. They said it's an exciting discovery that opens up new possibilities of auroral research and confirms that auroras can be visible to future astronauts on the surface of mars. You know when we retire on uh on on uh planet meridiani. You know uh using opportunity as our, uh, as our, our coaster, right as we drink our beers and our spacesuits, or whatever we can?

0:55:53 - Rod Pyle
we can marvel at the uh, at the uh, the auroras on the surface now I'm gonna enjoy watching you put your visor up to take that first sip of your beer, and then I'll watch your eyes pop out of their sockets and your mouth turn inside out like like total recall, like yeah uh, hey, tarik, yes, rod from mike cheater. Uh, why did the moon run out on its bar tab?

0:56:18 - Tariq Malik
uh, I don't know why. Why?

0:56:19 - Rod Pyle
because it was down to its last quarter that's good, that's good.

0:56:26 - Tariq Malik
So okay, yeah, I got, I got. I know we're at the end, but I have another new story if you want to fit in.

0:56:31 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, actually I was going to ask you about virgin galactic yeah, that's the one I was.

0:56:35 - Tariq Malik
Because I did this?

0:56:35 - Rod Pyle
Because this is from Bloomberg and I personally was kind of having my doubts that they'd finish this thing given the condition they're in, but apparently they are.

0:56:45 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, it's not just from Bloomberg, it's from Bloomberg and Space News too, but Virgin Galactic, like Intuitive Machines, had their first quarter earnings call this week. I actually listened to the whole thing and went through the presentation, and I added Bloomberg and Space News here because they both hit on two different aspects of what's going on at Virgin Galactic. We talked a lot about SpaceX and how they're launching private astronauts into orbit. The next one AX4, is going to launch in June, with India's first astronaut, poland's first astronaut, hungary's first astronaut and Peggy Whitson, astronaut extraordinaire. We've talked about Blue Origin, which launched Katy Perry famously, along with others, to space just last month, as we're recording this. But Virgin Galactic hasn't been launching anybody anywhere for the last year or two, and that's because they stood down from their Spaceship Two flights in order to build a new fleet of ships called Spaceship Delta.

0:57:34 - Rod Pyle
Excuse me, but did we ever hear I suspect airframe wear, but did we ever hear why they were replacing Spaceship 2?

0:57:43 - Tariq Malik
Well, what they say is that they want to go directly up to scale, that they want to have a version of Spaceship 2 that is more robust and can fly twice a week right, not once every few weeks, or something like that and same number of passengers.

0:57:58 - Rod Pyle
Same number of passengers, but they're making Excuse me citizen astronauts. Citizen astronauts yes.

0:58:01 - Tariq Malik
So a spaceship can seat up to eight two pilots, six passengers. They have been flying four passengers or ticket paying people or scientists at the time, and so it's gonna have that same kind of crew size. But the whole idea is that this plan for their new Delta ships and I think they're building a couple of them is that they're on track and they're going to start their initial flights of the first one in early 2026. So they're on track with the ships. Their first launches would be in summer of 2026, the first passenger flights, if everything checks out, would be in the fall of 2026. So that's really important for them because they need to get cash positive. They have been in the red for the last several years with money coming in from investment while they spend it on building the ships themselves. That picture, apparently, is getting a lot better now, like they were in the red less this year than they were year on year. But they really need to get the money from ticket sales coming in and ticket sales will reopen now in January or at least Q1 of 2026.

Why you might want to think before you book that flight is because the ticket price is going to go up. Mike Moses and team said that they're going to raise the ticket price from the $600,000 per seat, that it is now to something quote, unquote that is higher, and they're going to sell the tickets in batches at rates determined by those passengers in those batches. So that suggests that the tickets will be higher. Also, that the price might be variable. They didn't say this, but it seems like they could tailor the ticket price to what the people in those batches are able to afford, something that I suspect, and I have zero proof to this. But I do believe that Blue Origin doesn't say how much your flights cost, because they tailor it to what the people are bidding on at that point in time. Uh, because they had an auction for the first flights and I think everything is based on on that, so I don't know. I could be wrong. Someone at Blue Origin leaked me some files. Tell me how much the tickets cost, let me know.

So I do know you got to put 150 000 down just to ask to, to try to find out how to show you that much right I mean your family doesn't need a house to live in that's like. That's like yeah, that's all in the house. I'll sell that part of the house off, right so?

1:00:23 - Rod Pyle
yeah, there you go. I mean, that's probably what you paid just to get your kitchen fixed. Hey, from scooter x. Thank you, scooter x, good air scooters yeah, what do you call an alien with three eyes? I don't know, an a-l-e-e-n that's good.

1:00:41 - Tariq Malik
That's a good one. I like it.

1:00:43 - Rod Pyle
I like it a lot well, oh so I have a coffee confession to make myself. Yes, rod, tell me, I do drink Starbucks instant, because if you go to Starbucks and get theirs, it tastes like burnt dog hair, but if you get their instant and concoct it properly, it actually tastes to me anyway a lot better.

1:01:07 - John Ashley
I do still make real one. You know why it tastes like burnt dog hair? Right, because it is burnt dog hair. Well, no, how they actually brew the coffee, they actually kind of burn the beans. Why, that's just the roasting process. It's bad.

1:01:20 - Rod Pyle
It is bad, it's nasty stuff, I think. What did I finally buy? I think it's called Volcania or something, some weirdo overpriced brand of beans that you can grind yourself and all that. But I just, you know, in the morning it's like the idea of actually getting beans, grinding them, sniffing them, having that Maxwell House moment where you sit. I used to work in commercials and I always loved we'd have these kitchen sets that we build and you're banging all this light in the window as if it's the morning, and, of course, none of our kitchens look like this, because they're perfect and they're clean and the curtains are brand new and all that. And you'd always have some 26-year-old mother with a 14-year-old kid and you're doing the math in your head, thinking that doesn't work, except in certain states. How can that be? So, yeah, it was a very strange concoction of of middle america, but hey, that's the commercial business lying for your benefit. Uh, any comments?

1:02:18 - John Ashley
john, this is your big chance uh, stop drinking instant coffee anyways, fair enough, and don't microwave your coffees you know, I could just make a pot of coffee.

1:02:30 - Tariq Malik
I ran out of regular coffee. I went to the supermarket and I forgot to buy more regular coffee too.

1:02:34 - Rod Pyle
I gotta buy more so yeah, but when you say bye, are we talking folgers here?

1:02:39 - Tariq Malik
no, no, I usually get uh like a zaragoza uh from whole foods or uh, or an ethiopian yogurt chef. I like that. That's really good coffee.

1:02:49 - Rod Pyle
Have you ever drunk the coffee that is supposed to be so good because it goes through an animal's digestive system?

1:02:55 - Tariq Malik
No, I'm not that interested.

1:02:57 - Rod Pyle
I think it's a fascinating idea, but yeah, poop coffee.

1:03:01 - Tariq Malik
It's the poop coffee. Some kind of cat or something eats it.

1:03:04 - Rod Pyle
I think it's a civet cat.

1:03:06 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, it poops it out and then, they take the beans and something eats it and then live it cat.

1:03:10 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, it poops it out.

1:03:10 - Tariq Malik
And then they take the beans and they maybe watch the beam. Yeah, that they washed them.

1:03:12 - John Ashley
I'm pretty sure you know what I think it's time to wrap up the show.

1:03:18 - Rod Pyle
Well, I'm going to try and experiment, you know, because in extended space flight you won't have civet cats that's right.

1:03:23 - Tariq Malik
That's right.

1:03:24 - Rod Pyle
I'm going to eat some coffee beans I'm going to eat some coffee beans tonight and'm going to eat some coffee beans tonight, and then in the morning I'll prepare them and let you know how it goes. Okay, hey on that note.

1:03:35 - Tariq Malik
Let's end on a high note. Don Pettit written up in the New York Times this week about his amazing space photography and everything. Everyone do check it out. Ken Chang wrote that story and if I find that, I'll put it in our rundown.

But Don Pettit, famously, when he got put in as backup crew for his first space station mission, I believe, did not, according to the book that I read. I could be wrong. The book could be wrong. It was such a late edition that he didn't have his menu on the space station waiting for him. So because he loves coffee, he had to spend his weight allotment to get as much instant coffee as he could take with him on that flight. And when he went back he planned everything in advance and he invented the world's first space coffee cup. And on this last mission that he just came back from, at age 70, as NASA's oldest active astronaut, he had that space coffee that he invented from the cup that he invented in space and it was amazing. I just think that that's awesome and that's instant coffee, but it's instant coffee in space, my friends.

1:04:38 - Rod Pyle
I'm sorry, I fell asleep there for a moment. Okay, wow, speaking of astronauts and cool, just a preview on June 13th, what? What are you laughing at?

1:04:51 - Tariq Malik
oh, john's, like you're the one rod that you're talking about the poop conference june 13th, we're scheduled to have Nick Haig on the show yeah, Nick Haig.

1:04:59 - Rod Pyle
Space force, space force space, force space force yeah, let's play that also an astronaut. Well, that's not All right. Hey everybody, hey Tarek, yes, rod, thanks for joining us today for episode 161, the Twist Comedy Hour. Where can we find you entertaining the masses these days with your jokes?

1:05:19 - Tariq Malik
Well, I'll tell you where you won't be finding me, and that's on a New Jersey transit train into my office in New York, because they're on strike and we don't know when I can get on a train again. But you can find me at space.com, as always on the Twitter and the X at Tarek J Malik on YouTube, at Space Tron Plays, where I will be playing with the AI Darth Vader and asking him questions. He will talk back to you. The brand new update today. That's going to be exciting, and tomorrow I'll be at a Renaissance Fair, so I'll get the AI Darth Vader talk and I will talk to uh, I guess some pirates at the Renaissance fair. It's going to be amazing.

1:05:53 - Rod Pyle
Talk back, you will. Hmm, okay, and of course, you can find me with my horrible impressions and inappropriate comments at pylebooks.com or at adstramagazine.com and uh, soon, at the international space development conference, which is on June 19th through the 22nd in Orlando, Florida, where people will be coming by the thousands to see Tariq and my three loyal fans may show up as well. Always remember, huh, I said book your tickets now.

Oh wait, I'm sorry. Your thousand fans are just your family that we're accommodating and always remember you could drop us a line at twist dot twist at twit.tv. We welcome your comments, jokes, suggestions and criticism, if you must. New episodes of this podcast published every Friday and your favorite podcaster, so make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, give us reviews. We live and die by your reviews and your love and your five stars and all that, don't forget. We're counting on you to step up and join Club Twit in 2025. Besides supporting this show, you'll help support Twit in general, which brings you all the best in technology and other programming Well, and stuff like this and horrid space jokes. And you get all the great content with video streams, stuff you can't see anywhere else, and monthly sorry, annual subscriptions are back. Did I get that right, john?

1:07:21 - John Ashley
No, you did. And also just a note there's a good likelihood we might be raising the prices down the road.

1:07:28 - Rod Pyle
So get grandfathered in because if you do it now, you'll get to keep your low, low, low price. You can also follow the Twit Tech Podcast Network at TWiT on Twitter and on Facebook and Twit.TV on Instagram. Thanks everybody for sticking with us for this whole hour full of terrible jokes and Tairq's meandering experiences, and poop coffee.

1:07:48 - Tariq Malik
That was all wrong.

1:07:50 - Rod Pyle
I'm just saying it was not, I did not use the P word, that was one of you guys.

1:07:55 - John Ashley
Hey, you're the one that I kept talking about and, really going into the details of it, we're looking to contribute.

1:08:02 - Rod Pyle
Everybody's got to have their fetish. Okay, everybody. Oh my God, We'll see you next time. Take care, ta-ta.

1:08:09 - Mikah Sargent
Hey, focus up. That is what I said to Hands On Tech when we looked at the relaunch. It is time for us to focus on one topic at a time and make sure we're answering that question. I am answering that question as thoroughly as possible. If you are a member of Club Twit, you can watch the video version of this show completely ad-free, of course, listen to the audio version ad-free. If you're not a member, the show will still be available to you in both ways. You can watch the video on YouTube with ads or you can watch the audio as you always have. I mean, listen to the audio as you always have in our feeds. In any case, you got to tune in to Hands-On Tech because I guarantee there's going to be a question you're going to want to have the answer to, and from time to time I also review a gadget, a gizmo or something of the sort. You got to check out Hands-On Tech and I can't wait to get your question.