This Week in Space 211 Transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.

Tariq Malik [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this Week in Space, Rod and I get an up close look at SpaceX's finances. With their IPO filing. JPL has got a shakeup coming because NASA wants someone else to run it. And we're going to find out what the deal is with Oysters in Space and how they can help clean the life support systems for astronauts in the future. With Jacob Scoccimerra of Monolith Space. Check it out.

Rod Pyle [00:00:31]:
This is this Week in space, episode number 211, recorded on May 22, 2026.

Tariq Malik [00:00:37]:
Oysters in space.

Rod Pyle [00:00:40]:
Hello and welcome to another episode this week of Space, the Oysters in Space edition.

Tariq Malik [00:00:44]:
Why oysters in Space?

Rod Pyle [00:00:47]:
Because what's more fun than talk about oysters, I ask you? I'm Rod Pyle, editor in chief at Aster magazine. I'm here with Tariq Malik, perennially of space Dot com. How are you, sir?

Tariq Malik [00:00:58]:
I'm doing well. I'm doing well. I feel like an azalea. Right. If I'm the perennial, isn't that all right? So, doing well. How are you doing today?

Rod Pyle [00:01:08]:
I was thinking more of you calcifying, but I'm okay. You know, a little disappointed we didn't get a launch yesterday, but better they get it right than worry about launching on time just for us.

Tariq Malik [00:01:18]:
Well, we'll talk about that in a minute. Yep.

Rod Pyle [00:01:21]:
But we'll be chatting today after our news with Jacob Scoccimerra, the founder of Monolith Space, which has worked on an important experiment with students at Harrisburg University on space based aquaculture with oysters at the center of it. Because as I've already noted, oysters are fun. Yeah, I will never eat an oyster, but I know.

Tariq Malik [00:01:44]:
No, I can't either. I'm allergic to them.

Rod Pyle [00:01:46]:
I'm not allergic to them. I just think they're as revolting as avocados.

Tariq Malik [00:01:49]:
But first, well, we can agree to disagree on the avocado front there, my friend.

Rod Pyle [00:01:53]:
It's time for a space joke. This one from Scott Haley, I hope I God correctly. Hey, Tarik.

Tariq Malik [00:02:00]:
Yes, Rod?

Rod Pyle [00:02:01]:
Why did the sun try to steal one of Saturn's moons? I don't know why it wanted to tighten its belt.

Tariq Malik [00:02:10]:
We are getting off early with the puns. Okay. I love it.

Rod Pyle [00:02:15]:
I've heard that some people want to steal our microphones when it's joke time in this show. But you can help by sending us your best, worst, or mostly different space joke to us at Twist tv and we'll be happy to blame it on you. On the air. Because what's more important than getting your, your name on our show?

Tariq Malik [00:02:31]:
But first,

Rod Pyle [00:02:34]:
let's go to headline News.

Tariq Malik [00:02:40]:
Headline news. I got that one. I think. I think you redeemed yourself from last week. Yeah, last week I spaced out.

Rod Pyle [00:02:49]:
Oh, he's got a, a higher lift than that. All right, so we have an IPO coming. The most valuable in history.

Tariq Malik [00:02:58]:
That's right.

Rod Pyle [00:02:58]:
The way I like to look at it is SpaceX is defiling for its IPO. But, hey, finally, after a quarter century, we've seen inside the company. What did we see?

Tariq Malik [00:03:11]:
Yeah, this is a really great story. The one that I cited here is from the New York Times, but the space news and a lot of the other industry analysts took a look at it. But this week, on Wednesday, SpaceX filed the required SEC paperwork for their initial public offering that is coming up in June. I think it's like around the 5th of June or so is what they are targeting. And we've been like, hearing a lot of rumblings and discussions about this IPO filing since, like December. And for the first time now, because they have to disclose this information in order to, you know, make the IPO, we learned so much about SpaceX's finances. So we learned that in 2024, they made over $700 million in profit. And last year, in 2025, they lost $4.9 billion on 18.9 billion in.

Tariq Malik [00:04:06]:
In. In revenue, which was still their highest revenue ever. And then they lost 4.3 billion in the first three months of 2026 alone, which is nearly as much as they lost all of last year. And yet still they made 4.7 billion, like, in. So they made more money in that three months than they'd before, too. So it's a really interesting kind of, kind of situation where we're seeing all of the ins and outs on, on the, like, the, the business side of things and seeing where their expenditures are. Because since SpaceX formed in 2002, you know, with Elon Musk wanting to go to Mars, they have now absorbed Xai. So now it's SpaceX AI, who actually already absorbed what was formerly Twitter X.

Tariq Malik [00:04:48]:
So SpaceX owns X too. And they're, you know, they're building a Starlink Internet constellation. It's a who thing. It's one of their big moneymakers that we learned from this filing. And they want to do orbital data centers and the railgun stuff on Mars and, or on the moon, a moon colony and. And now a trip to Mars. Like, it's, it's It's a lot of, a lot of stuff, but it's all in the filing now. And so now we can see exactly what they're saying they want to do in terms of industry and diversifying everything and then also how much it's all costing them.

Tariq Malik [00:05:20]:
Because it's clear they need the money now because they're running at a loss, a really big loss. Yeah, all due to. All due to AI.

Rod Pyle [00:05:26]:
Yeah, that would put a dam went into Elon's coffee stirrer money. $4 billion is like snorting money for him, you know.

Tariq Malik [00:05:35]:
Well, I don't know about that. But what's really clear though is that a lot of the overspend has been through investment in AI because it seems like Elon and SpaceX clearly see that as the future of their business. And we're actually seeing a lot of other businesses glom on and chase the Orbital Data Cent thing too because of that.

Rod Pyle [00:06:01]:
So moving ahead, would part of the continually accruing losses also be because of Grok losing money?

Tariq Malik [00:06:08]:
Well, I mean, all of those, all of those companies that they've absorbed, if they're losing money, then SpaceX absorbs all of that loss. Right. And it gets reflected now in these sheets. So they need to turn all of that around. And the investment, I think right now the philosophy seems, and I am not like an industry analyst, like I didn't go to school for that. I took one economics class and it was about being in on you did we know how well that all worked out. Right. My entrepreneurship class.

Tariq Malik [00:06:36]:
So take this with a grain of salt for from what I understand, they clearly need this investment to take the businesses to the next level. And now they've kind of finished their collective aggregate kind of phase when they bring all these technologies under one roof and they're going to put it all into, into this development phase. And a lot of that hinges on Starship, which we're going to talk about in a bit about how important that is to their Starlink stuff, to their data center stuff, to their AI and space types of stuff. It all depends on that. And they need a lot because they have to build a lot of those. And that's really expensive too.

Rod Pyle [00:07:15]:
Well, and just so it said, as you touched on, we are not financial experts, we are not financial advisors. We're not even financial successes.

Tariq Malik [00:07:22]:
Look at our studios, we got to be honest. Right?

Rod Pyle [00:07:25]:
But you know, if there's a listener out there that has advice about this IPO and you want to write us privately, I'd be interested to hear about It John way of shaking your head. Is that wrong? Kind of. Okay.

Tariq Malik [00:07:39]:
Also, always bet on black, right?

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:07:40]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:07:41]:
There you go. 22. 22. I'd advise you to bet on 22. Okay. Next up, JPL Inc. Yeah, this is an interesting one.

Tariq Malik [00:07:51]:
You pick this one up.

Rod Pyle [00:07:53]:
This grinds my gear.

Tariq Malik [00:07:54]:
So now it just happened today too. This like detention?

Rod Pyle [00:07:57]:
Yeah. NASA had a flutter of press releases this day, none particularly pleasant. They've announced their intention to open the operation of JPL to newcomers. I. E. Their. Their. What's.

Rod Pyle [00:08:10]:
What's it called? Fm that contract arrangement to run field centers.

Tariq Malik [00:08:16]:
The Space act agreement.

Rod Pyle [00:08:17]:
Now there's nothing FMCBB or something. Anyway, they.

Tariq Malik [00:08:21]:
I love that you think that I would know exactly what that is.

Rod Pyle [00:08:24]:
Smart. But. But JPL has always been unique with NASA in that it's not run by NASA. It's run under contract for NASA by Caltech because they do mighty things well. And the Caltech JPL arrangement dates back to the 1930s or early 40s and whenever it was handed over in the US Army. And it's been a success. And you've got this, you know, this institute, Caltech, which has a bevy of Nobel laureates and some of the smartest people in the country, if not the planet, working with the staff and the very intelligent crew of scientists and engineers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That seems like a really good blend.

Rod Pyle [00:09:09]:
But of course, as we hear often these days, oh, waste and fraud and blah blah, blah. I will say go to jpl, go to my old office there and you tell me how much waste you see in a 10 by 10 foot room with no windows, burlap on the walls and old steel case chairs and file cabinets from the US Navy from the 1960s. There's your wasted fraud. No, it's not. But anyway, to get back to this, the lab has been operated by Caltech since it started shortly after. So the notice includes language such as to ensure the continued accountability and strong value for U.S. taxpayers. Well, you know, JPL is the very narrow end of the pipeline for money that comes to NASA.

Rod Pyle [00:09:57]:
So it's not like they're exactly living on the fat. And then quote, the rapid growth of the US based economy indicates there may now be a viable competitive market for. For programmatic and institutional elements of the ffrdc. That's what I was trying to think of operations. To me, this smacks of the efficiency air quotes of things like privately operated prisons, which haven't exactly been exemplars of either efficiency or morality. But you know, that's just My opinion, but I think this whole thing kind of stinks.

Tariq Malik [00:10:31]:
Yeah. By the way, we should point out that my colleague Chelsea goad over@space.com wrote this story for us, the one that, that we're citing. But it is based on announcements from both NASA and, and the Caltech as well. And it's, it's, it's, it's very strange. But we do know that this wasn't an island. Actually. NASA made another announcement where they have a big shakeup in their directorates. There's no layoffs is what they're saying, but they're restructuring basically how they're doing all of the leadership work in the different directorates because Jared Isaac been, you know, as part of his ignition event and his acceleration pushes, really wants to see everything go.

Tariq Malik [00:11:15]:
But the part that is really interesting to me is that the JPL contract right now that Caltech has does not expire until 2028. So any new contract would be, you know, after that. And so if this is, and I'm not saying that it is because we saw before Isaacman took charge there was like a lot of hammering at NASA from the administration and questions about closing centers and whatnot. There were a lot of layoffs at JPL alone. And so what?

Rod Pyle [00:11:45]:
20, 20%?

Tariq Malik [00:11:47]:
Yeah, substantial and deep ones. And so you could ask the question, is this a targeting of a center? Because of what we had seen back then, I mean we had a whole big piece@space.com about Goddard Space Flight center because it really seemed that they were being, they were being like targeted.

Rod Pyle [00:12:05]:
Not just a piece, but that was like waving a red flag, wasn't it?

Tariq Malik [00:12:08]:
Yeah. And so, so, you know, but that, that is, that is, that, that is all before Isaac Mint's leadership. And this, this is, you know, I guess it remains to be seen exactly what the, the goals of the, of the, the contract are going to be. Because maybe Caltech still gets it. You know, because this is, this is the organization that landed the first nuclear, the first rover on Mars, the first nuclear rover on Mars, the second nuclear rover on Mars, a helicopter going on.

Rod Pyle [00:12:35]:
Well, and two nuclear powered landers from the 70s.

Tariq Malik [00:12:38]:
Both that, that's right.

Rod Pyle [00:12:40]:
You know, and I suppose, I mean Voyager, you're welcome.

Tariq Malik [00:12:44]:
Right.

Rod Pyle [00:12:47]:
Before I started with JPL as a contractor, I did go up for one contract there for their AV contract. And you know, as usually happens with these things, JPL would compete this contract every three to five years. So this is for Audio Visual Media Services. Right. Well, for the first year everybody behaves great. And then the second year and third year and fourth year, if there is one, the government contracts go on the back burner because it's like, we got that. It's boring. You know, it's just a money, money conveyor belt.

Rod Pyle [00:13:18]:
We got to go out for new stuff. So the service generally drops off. Now, I don't think that's the case here, but I suppose the government being the government, might be thinking, well, if we compete this, it puts Caltech on notice and we could be more aggressive about our terms. Who knows? But anyway, that's that story. Well, eventually we're going to get the director JPL on here and maybe we'll be able to talk about that a bit. I'm going to keep an eye on

Tariq Malik [00:13:41]:
everyone, keep an eye on that, because that can change how spaceflight gets done.

Rod Pyle [00:13:46]:
Well, it's our job to keep an eye on it. What are you talking about?

Tariq Malik [00:13:48]:
They're the taxpayers. We're the taxpayers. Right? They should all be watching it. So we're trying to say them.

Rod Pyle [00:13:54]:
Okay, I'm going to skip story order. I'm not eliminating them. I just want to get this out of my system. So on your website, space.com, you posted a story about Cardboard Wars.

Tariq Malik [00:14:05]:
Oh, yeah. For May the fourth. That's right.

Rod Pyle [00:14:09]:
You know, coming from the age of, of traditional physical visual effects where you're shooting models and stick them over green screens and all that kind of stuff from shows I won't mention because you guys never give me a moment's peace if I.

Tariq Malik [00:14:25]:
Hey, John, did you know that Star Trek and Galactic on Star Trek DS9

Rod Pyle [00:14:29]:
and Battlestar Galactica, but we call it BSG. Yeah, yeah, BSG reboot. But you know, coming from that world, I'm, you know, kind of a critic, you know, but this was brilliant. I don't know who these people are. I don't know where they got the money and the attention span to make an hour long Star wars tribute. Everything that's made out of cardboard, everything

Tariq Malik [00:14:56]:
is made out of cardboard. The costumes are made out of cardboard.

Rod Pyle [00:14:59]:
That first riveted us all back in the late 1970s of the Rogue ship being followed by the Imperial Star Cruiser that's shooting at it is reproduced in loving care out of cardboard and tape. And you can see the tape peeling off of stuff. I mean, they really went out of their way to make it look kind of goofy, but it's, it's riveting. I have to say. The acting's. Who's the girl that's playing Princess Leia? I recognize her, but I don't know from where, but she's this kind of.

Tariq Malik [00:15:30]:
Oh, I just got a Bronx accent,

Rod Pyle [00:15:33]:
she's popping a gum.

Tariq Malik [00:15:34]:
You know, it is, it is a nanny. It is definitely worth, worth watching especially this weekend because as we're recording this Star wars, the Mandalorian and Grogu is in theaters now. I'm extremely excited and I'm going to go see it this weekend. It's. Oh, it's a holiday weekend. Happy Memorial Day weekend, by the way. Too Rod for that. But this was really fun.

Tariq Malik [00:15:56]:
And you know, when I saw this, everyone was like, oh, this is so, so fresh and so new. When I was in college going around, you could find, you can get your hands on it. There was a VHS bootleg called Hardware Wars. Do you remember Hardware Wars? Because I have it. And that was a, like a, I think it was like a 15 or 20 minute short that was Star wars but made out of like kitchen appliances and stuff like that and like vacuums

Rod Pyle [00:16:25]:
and all that, which was kind of a fun spoof. But. But the craft that went into this thing, yeah, it's made to obviously look dorky, but they did it with such craftsmanship. I was, it was kind of like watching Star Trek continues in a whole different vein of these people that obviously

Tariq Malik [00:16:40]:
make sure don't mix your franchises, man. Like the Trekkies will not like that.

Rod Pyle [00:16:43]:
Yes. Love what they were doing. And you know, when you think of the time it took to build those things, mount them, fly the camera past them, it's a lot easier now than it was years ago back when I was working in the field. But you know, it's still hard and you have to have a big room and a whole lot of friends that you're going to abuse for a while. So anyway, if you get a chance,

Tariq Malik [00:17:05]:
well, Cardboard wars, go check it.

Rod Pyle [00:17:07]:
The whole thing. But did you cross out crypto to Mars?

Tariq Malik [00:17:11]:
No.

Rod Pyle [00:17:12]:
Oh, somebody.

Tariq Malik [00:17:13]:
No, because you said you were skipping it. He just said he was reordering it, John. He didn't say we were cutting the whole story. Yeah, he says for time. We're fine on time.

Rod Pyle [00:17:25]:
So we're barely over. Okay, so before the launch scrub yesterday.

Tariq Malik [00:17:30]:
What do you mean we're barely over? We haven't gotten to the actual interview yet. Right, clearly so.

Rod Pyle [00:17:37]:
That's right, because I live in a time warp. SpaceX announced its first human passenger to Mars.

Tariq Malik [00:17:44]:
This comes.

Rod Pyle [00:17:46]:
This comes on the tale of years ago. Them announcing their first human passenger and small crew going to the moon with dear moon with the Japanese billionaire. I Don't remember his last name.

Tariq Malik [00:17:59]:
Yusaki Maezawa.

Rod Pyle [00:18:01]:
Maezawa. Thank you. I mean, I saw, I was there when Elon was carrying this very small man around on his shoulders. That was a strange moment. But you know, that whole thing blew up and went away and Maezawa pulled out and left I think probably a fair amount of money behind when he did. But now we have a crypto billionaire, Chun Wang, who says, yes, I want to be the first guy to Mars. How hard can it be? So he was. He what?

Tariq Malik [00:18:29]:
I was gonna say, let's, let's set the stage a bit.

Rod Pyle [00:18:31]:
Because I'm trying.

Tariq Malik [00:18:34]:
Let's set the stage faster a bit.

Rod Pyle [00:18:36]:
So he flew. Oh, you should Talk with your 10 minute questions. So he paid for and initiated the frame two flight, which he, you know, he did in 2025 with three other people where they flew over the Earth poles. First polar mission with a crew. So you know, he's got his space chops. But that was like three days, three

Tariq Malik [00:19:00]:
and a half days. Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:19:01]:
Oh, thank you for that correction, Mr. Detail. But you know, here we're talking a two year journey where they fly past the moon. Now I don't know what Mars trajectory does that, but.

Tariq Malik [00:19:11]:
Okay, I'm gonna stop you really quick because this entire run up, you have not said the word starship one time. And this is what I'm talking about, about setting the stage.

Rod Pyle [00:19:21]:
All right, fine.

Tariq Malik [00:19:22]:
15 minutes before the launch.

Rod Pyle [00:19:24]:
I said it was the launch attempt of Starship 12.

Tariq Malik [00:19:28]:
No, I don't think you did, man. So, so if you did, I. If you did, I missed it.

Rod Pyle [00:19:33]:
But let me get my drool rack.

Tariq Malik [00:19:35]:
This is why it was a big surprise, like the whole point of my story last night, which I was up till midnight doing, right? I'm gonna, I'm gonna point that out.

Rod Pyle [00:19:44]:
You poor, you poor thing. Your mother must really be concerned about you.

Tariq Malik [00:19:48]:
Is that, is that.

Rod Pyle [00:19:49]:
Nobody else cares.

Tariq Malik [00:19:50]:
But 15 minutes before the launch of Starship version 3, you know, the Flight 12 mission, this is the very first of the brand new, biggest ever 408 foot tall Starship rocket. 15 minutes. So that's like the star, right? That's like the big star of the day. No, SpaceX just announced that Chun Wang, who flew on this Fram 2 mission, cryptocurrency billionaire is going to fly to Mars on starship. The first one around it. So you know, there's, you know, as one does, apparently.

Rod Pyle [00:20:21]:
Well, because how hard can it be to sit in the back of a semi truck for two years?

Tariq Malik [00:20:27]:
It's very Interesting. And you bring up a really solid, solid point because we've heard this before from SpaceX and there's one big difference that, that came with this announcement that we didn't see. So Chunwang is a billionaire and an adventurer and an explorer. He has, he is particularly fascinated with Earth's poles and has gone to the Arctic and gone to the Antarctic and

Rod Pyle [00:20:51]:
as he says, he is now a full time traveler.

Tariq Malik [00:20:53]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:20:54]:
And he's rich and he can be.

Tariq Malik [00:20:55]:
Yeah, well, exactly, I mean, you know, as one does, like I mentioned, and he made this announcement from. And I think I'm going to pronounce it wrong, so I apologize to everyone

Rod Pyle [00:21:04]:
from some island at the bottom.

Tariq Malik [00:21:06]:
Bouvet Island. Bouvet. I don't know. It's an island and it's according to Britannica it's the most remote island on the planet.

Rod Pyle [00:21:16]:
And it looks like it's for a good reason. It looks worse than Barstow.

Tariq Malik [00:21:22]:
I hope there's like a reason to go there, you know, like for science or something. But that's far. Anyway, he really enjoys like the hard to reach and the hard, the hard to explore, you know, tasks and whatnot. And that's why they, they launched a whole brand new orbital. His Fram 2 mission in 2025 was the first polar flight by any astronaut, not just by, you know, space tourists. And, and this one would be the first to fly by Mars. It's like you say six months to Mars, a two hour flyby and six months back. And, and so that's, that's a lot of wait.

Rod Pyle [00:22:01]:
For some reason they were saying two years all in.

Tariq Malik [00:22:04]:
Well, it's, it, it's, it's, I imagine a lot of the training. I mean like maybe, maybe it's about

Rod Pyle [00:22:09]:
a two year flight. I mean that was weird to me too because when NASA was looking at this in the 70s, they were going to do it with Apollo hardware and the S4B stage. They were talking about flying past Venus and then Mars and that was a 2 year trip to 2 to 2.22 years or 4 months maybe he would

Tariq Malik [00:22:27]:
fly by the moon and then, and then, and then to Mars.

Rod Pyle [00:22:30]:
Yeah, you know, I could imagine doing this as a moon flight, but can you imagine you're literally sitting in something the size of a large cargo container.

Tariq Malik [00:22:37]:
Dennis Tito wanted to do it and he wanted to do it in an Orion spacecraft in an inflatable habitat that would launch an sls. You know, he's going to be Dragon. Yeah, well, Dragon. And Yes. Sorry. Yeah, well this is the point that, this is the point that I wanted to bring up because we have heard this before. I kicked, I kicked my computer stand. I apologize for the shaky camera.

Tariq Malik [00:22:59]:
We've heard this before. We, we heard it with, with Dennis Tito and back then, of course, that was, I think in 2018 that, that they made that announcement where, where he, he wanted to send a married couple with the inspiration Mars on a flyby trip there. But that was like super dependent on SLS being available in 2018. Rod. How cute, how cute. SLS in 2018. It didn't fly until 2022, everybody. And so, so, so that, that never materialized.

Tariq Malik [00:23:29]:
And then in 2022, YusakiMizawa bought the first flight to the moon on Dear Moon.

Rod Pyle [00:23:34]:
Was that late? I thought it was before the pandemic.

Tariq Malik [00:23:37]:
No, no, it was because it was in 2018 he bought it and then in 2023, four he said no. Right?

Rod Pyle [00:23:44]:
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Because I was gonna say it was the presser.

Tariq Malik [00:23:47]:
Yeah, they, they announced it in 2018. It was two years after.

Rod Pyle [00:23:50]:
Yeah, Tito is 2013 actually.

Tariq Malik [00:23:52]:
Yeah, yeah, that's right. 2013 for, for Tito and, but they wanted to launch, I think in 2018 is what they wanted to do. So. And, and then also in 2022, Jared Isaacman bought. No, not, not Jared Eisenman. Dennis Tito bought a flight around the moon on Starship too. So now that's two billionaires that, that had bought flights on this thing. And then in 2024, 2023, that's when I think it's 2024.

Tariq Malik [00:24:22]:
That's when Jared Isaacman announces his Polaris program to, you know, buy a bunch of flights after the Inspiration2 flight went to space on Dragon and he flies on Dragon again for Polaris dawn. And he was going to have another Dragon flight and then the first crewed flight of Starship. But of course now he is NASA administrator, so he's not going to FL anytime soon. And so that's three now. And now we have Chunwang as the fourth billionaire to have bought a starship flight. Missing from the entire thing is when they're going to fly. And that, that, that, that was, that's key. They don't tell you when they're going to fly.

Tariq Malik [00:24:59]:
They don't tell you who he's going to fly with. And you know, SpaceX has not gotten to orbit yet with Starship, so there's that testing the question if it's ever going to happen.

Rod Pyle [00:25:09]:
Pesky little issue of having a life support system that can run continuously.

Tariq Malik [00:25:12]:
That's what I'm saying, you know, you don't have any of this.

Rod Pyle [00:25:14]:
How hard can it be?

Tariq Malik [00:25:15]:
You know, that's what he told me.

Rod Pyle [00:25:17]:
You are such a downer. Elon told me, us, everyone, that it wasn't going to be hard and we're going to do this in 2016. Oh, wait a minute.

Tariq Malik [00:25:26]:
That's what he told me in 2019 when I.

Rod Pyle [00:25:28]:
Well, anyway. All right now.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:25:30]:
That's right.

Tariq Malik [00:25:31]:
Huh? I asked the question. He said it was going to be easy. I said it was going to be easy. I asked the question.

Rod Pyle [00:25:35]:
2019 and self driving cars and. Yeah, robots. Lots and lots of robots.

Tariq Malik [00:25:41]:
Well, we're gonna get one way or another.

Rod Pyle [00:25:43]:
Before we forget, the June 5 episode of this show will be recorded live ish at the International Space development conference in McLean Tyson's Corner, McLean, Virginia, which is right next to Washington D.C. june 5th at 2pm local time. So hey, if you're there, if you're around, I think you have to pay a day rate to come to ISDC, but it's not very much. It's 20 or 30 bucks or something and we're worth it.

Tariq Malik [00:26:15]:
Yeah, I'm worth it because we'll be. I don't know, Rod, but I'm worth it.

Rod Pyle [00:26:20]:
Do I have to write your mother again? What's worth it is we'll be talking to Jerry Griffin.

Tariq Malik [00:26:25]:
Yes.

Rod Pyle [00:26:27]:
Who is a flight director on all the Apollo missions and the director of Johnson Space center and a bunch of other amazing stuff. And most recently was tapped at the age of 90. Was tapped to oversee the recovery from the floods in Texas of 2024. So Jerry is an amazing guy. Sharp as attack. I wish I could be that sharp now, much less at the age of what he's now 91. But if you can make it, it'll be a lot of fun. And we'll give stuff away.

Rod Pyle [00:26:54]:
We'll give away Tariq space models or something. No, we'll do a book giveaway.

Tariq Malik [00:26:59]:
We will not give away my books.

Rod Pyle [00:27:01]:
I'm going to have lots of books there that nobody will want signed. All right. We are going to be right back with Scoccimerra in just a few moments to talk about seafood in space. Stay with us. And we are back with Scoccimerra. And I learned how to pronounce his name just a few moments ago because that's not how it looks in print. Who is Monolith Space. Monolith Space.

Rod Pyle [00:27:29]:
Welcome to the show, Jacob. Thanks for joining us today.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:27:32]:
Hey, thanks for having me.

Rod Pyle [00:27:33]:
So in a moment, I'm Going to ask you about Monolith Space. But before we get there, Tarek has a question that he just loves to ask.

Tariq Malik [00:27:41]:
Well, yeah, you know, one of the things that I like to ask kind of everybody that comes on the show, Jacob, is what your path to space, you know, actually was, like, what brought you to this moment? I know we're going to talk about oysters in space in a minute, which is really exciting, possibly tasty, I think as well, but. But how did you get to this point? Like, was it something that as a kid you were really interested in and that you were really trying to find, like a way in, in a professional career, or was it an opportunity that came up later that you were like, yeah, this sounds like a great idea. And now I have like a newfound passion that I want to explore, you know, as, as part of monolith space. And how did that come about?

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:28:26]:
Yeah, I, you know, I always feel bad whenever people ask me this question. I never went to space camp as a kid. I never had like a big. I literally for the first time this past year on a very long flight, watched the original Star wars trilogy. So that was the first time I did that was this past year, which I think is sacrilegious in this industry.

Tariq Malik [00:28:46]:
But. Well, it's okay, Jacob. We're Star Trek people here, as you can see. Okay, perfect. It's all right.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:28:51]:
But no, no, I, I studied chemical engineering. I was going to be a chemical engineer and probably make a lot more money than I'm making now, but studied that at Penn State and saw this really cool job opportunity at a company called Nanoracks as a mission manager.

Tariq Malik [00:29:04]:
Oh, yeah.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:29:06]:
Somehow I lucked out and they hired me. And then I. Since then it's become pretty much space is the only, you know, it's a bit. Definitely a passion of mine and I would consider myself a full space nerd at this point. So.

Rod Pyle [00:29:18]:
So you worked with friend of the show, Jeffrey Manber?

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:29:21]:
Certainly, yes. Jeff was, he was in our office. I consider him a mentor of mine. He came in and told us many, many stories at lunchtime every day. And he put a lot of authority and responsibility in a bunch of 20 year old kids. And we did amazing things. So.

Rod Pyle [00:29:37]:
And he has the best stories. So tell us about Monolith, how that started, what you do and your relationship with education, if you would.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:29:47]:
Yeah. So we. I started Monolith. I left Nanoracks, was acquired by Voyager. I left Voyager in 2023, moved to a French company, Interstellar Lab. They were growing plants in space really started to. At Nanoracks, I did a lot of biology research on the iss. And then at Interstellar Lab, I worked on some more food production projects in the space environment.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:30:11]:
So that kind of got the gears turning. And then at one point, I really wanted to start my own company. A friend came to me and said, hey, we should see how oysters grow in space. And I thought that was a really dumb idea. Frankly, very stupid. I don't understand it. And then I just couldn't stop thinking about it and did a bunch of research into it, and it started to make more and more sense. And so that's kind of how the whole thought process got started.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:30:37]:
And then the idea behind Monolith was really 2001 is one of my favorite movies. So I, you know, took the monolith from that, and that's where the name came from.

Rod Pyle [00:30:45]:
Okay.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:30:47]:
But that's kind of the. That's the seed to all of this,

Tariq Malik [00:30:49]:
I would say the shell, if you will, of the story.

Rod Pyle [00:30:55]:
Oh, my God. You were just. You couldn't wait, could you?

Tariq Malik [00:30:58]:
No, no, I could.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:31:00]:
The spat, actually, or the larvae, but that's the correct.

Rod Pyle [00:31:04]:
I like larvae. The larvae, Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:31:05]:
I Lear word. Do they, too? Well, that's great. Well, of course, what caught our eye was this recent experiment, this study at Harrisburg University. And it sounds like you got that interest through work. You made your own company here. But how did you, I guess, start this program? What was the whole goal of this experiment? Now, to look at the role that oysters of all creatures and all kinds of food. You know, when I think of space food, I think of squeezy tubes and dehydrated coffee. You know, I don't think of under the sea type of stuff, I should say, you know, but I know that they've had fish on the space station and that kind of thing.

Tariq Malik [00:31:51]:
But why oysters? Why Harrisburg? And what were you hoping this project would find out?

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:31:57]:
Yeah, yeah. So the why oysters? I would say part of it. Like, my friend asked me that question. We're in the DMV area right now, so very close to the Chesapeake Bay and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. That's kind of where the thoughts really started to come from. We knew from the bay. So oysters play a very pivotal role in our environment. Right now.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:32:13]:
They filter water. An adult oyster can filter like 40 gallons of water a day or something. And in the bay, there's been this huge restoration project going on to replenish the oyster population. They say back in the 1800s or something, you could come into Chesapeake Bay and there's these mounds of oyster shells coming up out of the water. And Abe Lincoln apparently ate an oyster that was the size of his plate or something. I don't know all these very anecdotal stories, but so that's where the, the oyster really came from. Was okay. They are these essential organisms for the environment.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:32:48]:
And then for the, the space aspect there's been a ton of research on the ISS and as well as just hypothetical research of using for bioregenerative life support systems. So right now the ISS uses the eclss, the environmental control life support system. But there's a lot of future insight into like on moon and Mars if we could have bioregenerative life support. So essentially we have plants, you know, insects, fish and other aquatic organisms all filtering this life support system so that we don't have to continue to spend, you know, mechanical resources, chemical resources. It's regenerative.

Tariq Malik [00:33:29]:
Well yeah, that was like what is bio regenerative life support like at all? Because it feels like if you put bio in anything it makes it more complicated, not less complicated.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:33:42]:
It certainly does. And I think that's why they haven't like figured this out yet or cracked the nut. But I view this as like in this project was a stepping stone into a potential component of a larger system down the road. I don't think this is, this is, you know, we're a couple of years out from having a truly bioregenerative support system. But for the Moon, you know, it's right now the going rates like around $1 million per kg to go to the moon, to Leo it's much cheaper of course. And then to Mars it's quickly becomes economically very difficult. And so to feed crew members on the lunar surface or the Martian service to continuously replenish oxygen or water resources, it becomes extremely cost prohibitive to have habitats on these locations for long term. So that's what I view this as like a component.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:34:31]:
And there hasn't been a whole lot of research done in the aquatic and marine biology piece of this component. There's the veggie platform on the ISS right now and the aph, the advanced plant habitat, Both of those have done a lot of research in how plants grow in space and how crops grow, but it's been really limited research in how aquatic organisms behave and grow. So that's really how this thought product came along. Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:34:57]:
So my brain of course, as Tarek will attest, is stuck on the idea of Abe Lincoln eating this dinner plate sized oyster And Mary Lincoln sitting across the table thinking, oh, God, no. Okay, well, with that we will move on to a quick break. We're going to break a little early and we'll be right back. So go nowhere. Hold your oysters. So you, you, you touched on this a bit, Jacob, but I just want to go a little more in depth. I worked at Caltech for a couple years and they did a workshop there while I was there about. It was partly about bioregenerative systems, but also about radiation mediation.

Rod Pyle [00:35:36]:
So they were looking largely at freshwater algae breeding inside a water jack and on a spacecraft to provide nutrients for the crew and to block radiation. So the case of oysters, I guess, are all oysters salt water or they're freshwater oysters.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:35:52]:
Too brackish, I think, is the furthest they would get. Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:35:56]:
So you wouldn't be using the water in the water jack for drinking unless you processed it, I guess. But I, I assume part of the attraction, you know, besides the fact that they filter the water and they don't need, you know, you don't need to go in and feed them oyster pellets or oyster chow to keep them alive and you can eat them. And there's a lot of other things you could do with water, including, you know, producing oxygen and so forth. What about. Was radiation mediation part of this research or.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:36:26]:
No, not in, not in this specific project that we did with Harrisburg. This was far more of, you know, and not to, not to put it down or anything, was amazing project, but it was, you know, can we build a, a closed loop system, an aquarium system to keep an aquatic organism alive? In this situation, it was oysters. I think the longer term vision is we are somewhat species agnostic. You had a great point of, you know, salt water could be pretty difficult, I think, in a space environment. So maybe oysters aren't the perfect candidate, but, but it was a, a starting point for our study. And yeah, I, we did not look at the radiation aspect, I guess, to get your question, but water is an amazing blocker of radiation.

Rod Pyle [00:37:11]:
So I guess another thing you're going to have to research, or maybe they already have in some indirect way, is the care and feeding of oysters in zero G. Right. Because now the water is no longer sitting, it's floating. So you got this blob of water and the nutrients are going to circulate in different ways and so forth. Do you think that'll change how this works?

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:37:34]:
I think it certainly will. And those are the pieces of, like we built this classroom demonstration. I would say TRL4 maybe, if you guys are familiar with the TRL chart. And to me it's like, okay, let's really, the next step is to build an actual aquarium that would be able to operate on ISS or on a free flyer or something and try to get some funding to do that. Because I think those are the real questions I think are like, how, how do we ensure the nutrients are properly mixed throughout the water for the organism? I think, frankly, like I said, I put a couple payloads on the iss. I've put a lot of things through the ISS safety panel. My biggest concern is convincing people on the safety panel that we should launch like 30 liters of water to the space station. I think that's a concern I have.

Tariq Malik [00:38:26]:
It's a lot of water and 30

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:38:28]:
liters of water is ultimately 30 kilograms of water. So it's pretty heavy.

Rod Pyle [00:38:32]:
Heavy, yeah, yeah. As expensive, you know.

Tariq Malik [00:38:36]:
Well, I guess I'm still trying to wrap my head around like the concept and I do want to ask like, what type of like technology goes in to a habitat like this? Because I, like I mentioned, I know that we've flown fish. I remember there was a JAXA experiment for fish and that was one kind of an aquarium. But I mean, a fish is not an oyster, right? I mean, they need different things to survive. And I suppose, I guess the core question is how do oysters filter anything, right? Is it just that you put them in a tank and then they'll eat, I guess, algae or whatever, or you put the algae or whatever, your old water into the tank? I mean, how does the system actually work so that they're doing a job in space for astronauts and then I know Rod was talking about eating them after a while, but if they spend like their life filtering all the bad stuff out of the water and that kind of thing, do we really want to eat them after that or, or do we just already do that?

Rod Pyle [00:39:40]:
There are people that are fishing off the pier where I have my boat in Long beach at the bottom of the LA river. So people will eat it.

Tariq Malik [00:39:46]:
I don't eat it. So I guess I should come out. I have a shellfish allergy, so I don't eat oysters. So I don't. I, I had them one time a long time ago, but it was so long ago that I forgot, like, yeah, like so. So this is like me trying to understand and wrap my head around the whole idea, I guess, to muscle in, if you will. I was sitting on that one too. Right?

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:40:11]:
There's a, there's A famous quote. It's like it was a brave, it was a brave man who ate the first oyster is what they say. Just because who would want to eat that thing, I think. But I love them, obviously. I think they're delicious. I can't remember the specific. So we worked with some oyster researchers to like, I'm a space person, I'm not a oyster biologist or marine biologist or anything. I'm fascinated by them.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:40:36]:
And we worked with Hornpoint Laboratory, this group out of, with UMD University of Maryland to really like start kickoff and think about this project. They actually donated the oyster larvae or spat to us for the project. So you get like 300 something oyster spat that are like half the size of your fingernail and they produce those and sell those to oyster farmers on the east coast. But the oyster, they have a specific organ inside of them that they suck in the water, eat the, you know, it's not gills, but they eat the algae out of it. That's their main diet is algae. And then they push the rest of the water out of them.

Tariq Malik [00:41:14]:
Okay.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:41:15]:
And then they deposit other like hard minerals and things that they're sucking in that way and filter that out. So that's the process of how they do it.

Tariq Malik [00:41:24]:
They're like a bio pump, it sounds like.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:41:26]:
Exactly, they're a bio pump. I would love. It'd be really interesting to see like, what is the actual force of that pump. I have no clue what that is. But whenever they're growing oysters in like a controlled setting, they put them in. A lot of times they put them in what's called an upweller. So they have a cylinder tube with all the oysters on like a mesh. And then they pump water up through that tube.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:41:47]:
And that's how the oysters eat the water. I would say currently we don't necessarily like, use oysters for filtering on Earth because we have better filtration methods. But they are naturally passively filtering, keeping algae populations, I guess, low in the bay. So I think though, to your question, like, would we want to eat the oysters that are filtering out all this gray water that humans are. The crew on the moon is, you know, that's all the waste. I think potentially. No, but I think that really, to me, they are a, a pre gap potential for, okay, maybe they're filtered naturally first and then they go through a classic mechanical filtration process. But the duty on that processor is, is far less now because we've kind of pre filtered it through a natural method.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:42:38]:
So I don't Think it's like an end all, be all. We're gonna put 10 oysters on the moon and everybody can drink the water non stop. I think it's more of like, here's a. Here's a way to help mitigate this extremely expensive process. And again, I love oysters. I. I don't know if they're the perfect organism for this job quite yet. It might be mussels, like you said, which are fresh water.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:42:59]:
Maybe there's another organism. I think there will be algae in there to feed the oysters. To me, it's like, how can we recreate this ecosystem on a. That we have here on Earth that's very good at recycling itself? And how can we put that in a small, confined place on another surface?

Tariq Malik [00:43:15]:
It sounds so sci fi.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:43:16]:
Yeah, it's extremely sci fi. I'm focused on. I just want to do this one part of it. And really the ultimate goal was can we. Can we take what the aph and the veggies done? Can we take the aquatic habitat that's the one that you're referencing, that JAXA built? Can we take those things and just bring it up to the modern era and redo them? The veggies for plants, I want to build the veggie, but for aquatic organisms. Yeah. And the AQH, the habitat that Jackson built was like, I think 1.5 liters total.

Tariq Malik [00:43:46]:
Yeah.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:43:47]:
So you're really limited by what you can study in that because it has to be small. So we just really want to build a bigger tank to see larger organisms.

Tariq Malik [00:43:55]:
Yeah. They were tiny fish. I remember.

Rod Pyle [00:43:57]:
That's like studying and oyster an inch longer.

Tariq Malik [00:44:01]:
Less than that, in fact. So that's kind of the whole.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:44:03]:
That's the whole shebang, really. And the thought behind it.

Rod Pyle [00:44:09]:
All right, well, we're going to clam up for a few minutes and go to a break, so stay with us. So it caught our eye. It caught my eye, I think, when I saw the study was the relationship between you and Monolith and Harrisburg. It was fun to see students, and they look like undergraduates. Although it's my age, it's hard to tell doing this kind of research. So maybe you could talk about. It's kind of a broad question, but your relationship and your company's relationship with education and what exactly the students did for this research and what they built.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:44:41]:
Yeah. So really this. This research was funded by the Keystone Space Collaborative. Collaborative, which is like Pennsylvania's. They're really trying to build up the Space Collaborative and it's Pennsylvania, Virginia, And Ohio. So we submitted a proposal to them to basically to build out this study. Part of that proposal was Harrisburg University. I had a relationship with some of the professors there.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:45:05]:
Dr. Rachel Fogel, who I worked with previously at this plant research company that I was talking about, Interstellar Lab. So we've always been back and forth trying to figure out a way to do something together. She's on the very much on recirculating aquaculture side. So that's what she studies and develops. And like I said, I'm on the space side. So I reached out to Harrisburg, hey, could we do a student project for this experiment to build this TRL4 prototype? So that's how that kind of came about. And I think the longer terms for me for monolith.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:45:39]:
So I was a mission manager at Nanoracks. And I really want to take this education element part of this of like really trying to continue working to teach students how to build these flight payloads, how to go through this process of what it means to build spaceflight hardware. So we worked with these undergrad students and they, I would say they did easily 90% of the engineering on this. I gave them some designs. They were the advanced manufacturing group at Harrisburg University. I gave them designs. Whenever I say designs too, I doodled something on the back of a napkin and gave that to them. And they built up this whole project from it.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:46:19]:
And I was really just a stakeholder throughout the process. And if they wanted some support, I called up some people that I knew in my network to see if they could talk to them about how to build spaceflight hardware. So I hope, I think it was a very good learning lesson for them. I hope they would say the same thing.

Tariq Malik [00:46:35]:
Do they all. So because they're advanced manufacturing, that sounds like a general engineering kind of assignment. These weren't like, I'm in it for the space kind of students. Right. This is something that. It's a project that they. They. It's a little bit different.

Tariq Malik [00:46:50]:
It's got a space thing. But they weren't like space cadets from the get go is what it sounds like.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:46:55]:
No, they were not. Yeah, this was general manufacturing. And I don't know if I don't think Harrisburg University has like a space program either. I really wanted to go at it because I didn't necessarily want to go with aerospace engineers or something. I really wanted to take this angle of could we. Can I teach general engineers? Can I teach recirculating aquaculture people about space instead of the vice versa? Can I teach space engineers about Aquaculture. And it was kind of a thought experiment in that way too, I guess.

Tariq Malik [00:47:29]:
And I know that in reading about the study, some of the students were talking about how they were able to put their 3D design skills to the test here. And one thing I wanted to, to ask about was, you know, was the end result like a working prototype, like a physical one, or was it a computer kind of system that they were running simulations through to like tweak the system to see like what the balance and flow, you know, is it 10 oysters, is it 12, is it 15? I don't know, you know, the big ones, small ones, that kind of thing.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:47:59]:
Yeah. The final project was a physical prototype, but it was, it was an aquarium really. The main engineering came down to the control system behind it. So students developed. They took an advanced manufacturing, like, standard item called the plc. I can't remember what it stands for right now, but it's the main fuse box or in controller that you see in a factory. And they took that, shrunk it down to like a handheld size. And so that thing's like constantly checking all the environmental parameters of the tank.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:48:35]:
And pretty much everything was automated except for we didn't automate the feeding. That was the only thing that we didn't automate that would be future goal, of course. But for now, yeah, we stayed away from that. But yeah, the students really came at this from a lot of the projects I've put in the ISS use like Raspberry PIs and things like that and these microcontrollers. And I think it was really interesting for the students that they came at this from this factory setting of here's this industry standard platform that is super resilient. It cycles like nonstop. It requires super low maintenance. And can we take that and put it in a space setting as opposed to something else?

Tariq Malik [00:49:14]:
So that sounds extremely practical for any kind of space thing. It's like, we know it's dependable here and they don't have to tinker with it too much.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:49:23]:
That's what I was really kind of. I think if anything, that's the, I mean, the oyster stuff is super cool, but the like this specific controller and the standard, I was like, wow, it's like an interesting thing. Maybe we should think about that more for these types of scenarios. I don't know if it's really being used right now.

Rod Pyle [00:49:39]:
And think of the money Tarik they can make selling this to the parents of young kids who are constantly killing their tropical fish. You just push a button.

Tariq Malik [00:49:51]:
I resemble that Remark as someone that had a. For two years only as a kid.

Rod Pyle [00:49:55]:
So that's because your angelfish eat everything else. So, you know, one other thing I. I noticed here, and this, I guess, occurred to me because when I was going to Art center out in Pasadena, we did something similar in trying to take the students out of their academic silos and blend their work, which is not often done in a university setting. I mean, Art center is an academy, so it's done more there. But in a place like Harrisburg, I doubt that happens a lot. But the thing is, you know, when you get out of school and you got to go in the field, you have to work with people. You may not like them, you may not understand them, they may not be your tribe, but you got to work across these boundaries. And I think from what it sounds like what you did was, among other things, excellent training for that.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:50:39]:
I think so. And it's like a recurring theme that I'm hearing. You know, I'm now 10 or so years removed from college, so I think you forget of what it feels like to be a college student and how little, you know of the world. These students were amazing. They were amazing. And I, you know, but it's also that, like, they just don't have that life experience yet. And that was definitely part of this, is we walked through and, like, prepared for. We gave a huge presentation to the university, invited a bunch of people at the end of the project to come and listen to the presentation, and the students presented.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:51:12]:
They did an amazing job. And we rehearsed that, like, you know, for. For three or so weeks before that to make sure they felt comfortable doing that. And. And I think those soft skills are really important. And I try to remind them throughout the process, too, of, like, hey, I'm a stakeholder here. You know, we need to make sure that this thing works. And I'm paying money, like, trying to teach, like, as if I was a boss, I think.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:51:35]:
And I think that was important for them to go through that process. And, yeah, there were many times I'd be like, hey, you guys. For example, we had a really major issue with the code at one point, and the students took a very long time to work through that, and they kind of breezed over at the end of it, and I was like, hey, guys, like, this is the big thing that if you're ever in an interview with a boss or, you know, if you're in an interview and they say, tell us about a time that there was a problem and how you were through, like, that's what they want to hear. Is that thought process that you worked through that situation like this is a perfect example. I think so. I don't know. I, I hope in that way beyond the space stuff again, I think that the soft skills throughout the process and we worked together for about a year. I think they would say that they learned something.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:52:20]:
Yeah, I hope so.

Tariq Malik [00:52:22]:
That's really interesting.

Rod Pyle [00:52:23]:
And it sounds a little bit like just to go back and touch on the closed loop nature of this. Were you attempting to do something like a little aquatic version of biosphere where you really wanted to lock the box and make it a completely closed circuit?

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:52:37]:
Definitely. That is the ultimate goal, I think is how, how close to completely closed can we, can we make this system? Right now it's open, like I said, we were feeding, was open to the environment. But the longer term is can we close it? And what's the minimal unit, I guess that you can close?

Tariq Malik [00:52:58]:
I can think of how astronauts would be so sad that they wouldn't be able to feed the oysters because it's already all closed loop, that they don't need it. They just sit there. I know. When they have.

Rod Pyle [00:53:09]:
Other than squirting algae at them, how are you going to feed an oyster?

Tariq Malik [00:53:13]:
Well, no, you like, it's like a, it's like a daily routine, Right. So when they send them, when they send them the mouse hotels and we all know what happens to the mice that they send to the International Space Station. I know, I know. But when they send the mice up there and when they send the spiders that they've sent up there, one thing that we've always enjoyed is seeing the astronauts check in on them and like, it's kind of like they have. We hear it in my interviews from the plants that you mentioned, the veggie habitat, that it's a bit of an extra source of joy that the astronauts have because they're taking care of something in space. And then here they would have something they could take care of that would also, that would also, I guess, take care of them. And I can see a bit of appreciation there. But it sounds so pretty, right? So Rod is laughing at me like I'm a schmuck and a SAP.

Rod Pyle [00:54:05]:
I can see somebody up there at zero G petting this dinner plate sized oyster. That's right, it's Freddy, my oyster. I love it.

Tariq Malik [00:54:14]:
But then what happens if it goes wrong? And then, oh no, they'll be so sad.

Rod Pyle [00:54:19]:
Okay, well, after that pearl of wisdom, we're going to jump to a break and we'll be right back. So go nowhere.

Tariq Malik [00:54:25]:
Jacob, what is the next step now? So this initial study that lasted a year, you work with the students, you've got this prototype out, I guess. What did you learn at Monolith from it and what's like the next step? Is it another study, a refined design? Like what are you looking at right now?

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:54:45]:
Yeah, I think the next step is I'm actively trying to figure out some ways of getting a flight demonstration of this and it might not be the same system. We might have to modify some things. Whenever you launch something there's a lot more consideration that comes into play. But next step really for me is to try to gather some funding through, be that through an RFP or a solicitation or something. Gather some funding, get a launch opportunity potentially on a commercial space platform, potentially on the iss, if there's ways for that. There's a lot of private astronaut missions coming up, so maybe there's an avenue there for a smaller demonstration of this. But that's definitely the next step for the OYSTER project. And then I think in general what I really learned throughout this process was like the working with the students was something that I really enjoyed and I view that as kind of a pilot as well.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:55:36]:
I really want to try to develop that further and turn that into something that we can explore. And that would be, you know, working with more universities trying to build other payload, hardware, whether it's prototypes are actually going to space and really taking like, I want to take this knowledge that I have as a mission manager and convert that into a coursework or a curriculum or something to try to teach students how to become a mission manager. As I told you, I studied chemical engineering so I knew nothing about space. Learned everything on the job, learned everything from, from Jeff Manber essentially. So really want to like doing this? I learned like figuring out a way of how can we turn this into a curriculum or something.

Tariq Malik [00:56:17]:
Wow, that's great. Oh, go ahead, go ahead.

Rod Pyle [00:56:20]:
Have we spent any time trying to figure out what a space pearl might be worth if you brought it back home?

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:56:26]:
I'm telling you there's money to be made here.

Tariq Malik [00:56:28]:
Well, see that was my next thing because I could see like if you have a self contained and fully like automated system, then you could launch it. You know, let's say there isn't like a moon based support for a little while. I could see you making like a little bit of a factory on a cubesat or whatever. Right. Because oysters.

Rod Pyle [00:56:47]:
I was thinking of Varda, you know.

Tariq Malik [00:56:48]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:56:49]:
Does this have to be human tended or can it be?

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:56:51]:
No, no, it certainly doesn't. I mean, and I think to the hypothesis really, ideally, if we can keep it closed and automated as much as possible, that would be the goal.

Tariq Malik [00:57:00]:
So you can make space oysters and space pearls and bring them back to Earth and then fund the rest of your research for the next things, you know, because there are collectors, right, that, that will buy that space food and they will save it forever.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:57:14]:
And I have some theories on the oyster pearls in space too. I don't know, maybe they'll be bigger because there's no gravity and they're not constrained. I don't know.

Tariq Malik [00:57:24]:
You have to have sand, right? They, they get like sand and then they make, they make the pearl around the sand. So you could put like some lunar regolith in there.

Rod Pyle [00:57:37]:
I wonder if they'd be rounded.

Tariq Malik [00:57:39]:
You can send all royalty checks to Tariq Malik.

Rod Pyle [00:57:45]:
This is all beginning to sound a bit like a shell game. I think you need to stop.

Tariq Malik [00:57:49]:
Oh.

Rod Pyle [00:57:50]:
So it was noted, not any real detail, but in the release I read, it was noted that this might have applications on Earth as well. Can you just talk about those for a moment?

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:58:01]:
Yeah, I think I talked about the Chesapeake Bay and part of this initially started this research was, okay, can we study something about oysters that benefit how we farm them or how we do the renovation or restoration projects on Earth today? So right now, whenever they, you know, I think oyster restoration oysters have a super high mortality rate. It's like 80% or something like that. Very high number. I mean, the good news is they produce, you know, billions of, of larvae or however many. So 80 is, or 20, still a decent amount, I think. But I think the idea was in the same way that the veggie works again, you know, is there something we can learn about how they grow in space or how they behave? That is by removing this gravity element. There's something we could learn about doing it better here. You know, 80% mortality.

Jacob Scoccimerra [00:58:54]:
If we learn something about their settling behavior, even, even 1% difference would, would be pretty huge, I think. And for, for example, the one thing we really wanted to look at was there's a lot of anecdotal evidence, I guess. And again, I'm not an oyster expert. So let me star all this so that if any oyster experts are listening and they come at me that I'm spewing mostly what I've learned in the last year. But they have a. They prefer to settle and grow on other oyster shells, on past oyster shells And I think a question is like, is that because is it just a survivorship bias? Are we just seeing the ones that survived and those are better environment, Are they actively seeking that out? If it's being sought out, is there like an enzyme in the water or something that they're tracking and following? So I think all those questions are if you remove the gravity element and you can just observe how they navigate the water column without some of these like current and things, maybe that could tell us something about this from a research perspective that could help. So that, that was kind of the start of it of like, can this benefit life on Earth? I have another, you know, if we can set up one of these oyster tanks, it's like the Keurig of oysters. I think you could just have counter.

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:00:09]:
So there's more of a commercial application there, I think.

Rod Pyle [01:00:11]:
But.

Tariq Malik [01:00:14]:
So oyster bars in space, you heard it here, right? Right. Eat your heart out in New York, right?

Rod Pyle [01:00:20]:
Not as entertaining as sea monkeys, but we'll do what we can do.

Tariq Malik [01:00:24]:
Yeah, Mine all died. My sea monkeys. I was so sad. So I sent three whole dollars to that comic book ad, right. How could they have failed me?

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:00:33]:
I never had sea monkeys. Unfortunately.

Rod Pyle [01:00:36]:
They're, they're brine shrimp in cloudy water. The illustration on the COVID of the box has all these little Dr. Seuss style crustaceans or whatever they, yeah, they're shrimp anyway, whatever they are and Ferris wheels and walking their kids shoulders and stuff. And then you get it, you see these brine shrimp kind of settling to the bottom as they die. And you think that wasn't quite. We had in mind. I'm sorry, Tarek, you had another question?

Tariq Malik [01:01:02]:
No, no, I mean I think that was, that was about, about it for me. You know, I guess the, the, the final question is, you know, we, we found out that SpaceX wants to send the first starship to Mars. You know, they want to build the city on Mars. And, and it seems like, and you were talking about like a moon settlement. That's a huge deal that NASA is looking at right now too. And I mean, I suppose the big question is what other types of things you're looking at oysters like right now. But what other types of bioregenerative systems do you think can be pursued or evolved, you know, depending on like the, the performance that you see in those, in those next steps, in those zero G tests, in those, those orbital tests, you know, like what are other types of systems that can be. Or are oysters like the similar, like the, the simplest creature to Work with there?

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:02:04]:
That's a good question. I think, you know, I would love to see more work and in low Earth orbit, you know, that's why I want to really build this aquarium that is species agnostic, that we can study all these things because I would love to see further how, how do fin, how do you. I was just on a podcast a couple weeks ago after this project about moe. They're like one of the largest salmon farmers in the world. And so I think there are some questions about could salmon, you know, have some benefit here. And so I think fin fish like algae, brine shrimp have been to the iss. They've done tons of studies on there because, because they're easy I think to grow and they're very small. So can other shrimp be involved? I think shrimp are one of the like aquaculture on Earth today.

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:02:49]:
Shrimp are supposedly one of the like, not easiest but most cost effective ones and you can grow them on land very easily too, I think in large tanks. So I know, I think to your question though, like I would love to see studies in all, in any of these, in anything related to aquaculture. I'd love to see some more thought go there because there's, like I said, there's been a ton of work done in crops and plants and I think we're missing this kind of element here that we could also start studying which is these aquatic organisms. I don't think we're going to see pigs or cows or chickens in space in the near future.

Tariq Malik [01:03:23]:
We've had bees though. So you can get honey. That's true.

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:03:27]:
Yeah, that's a good point.

Tariq Malik [01:03:27]:
Get honey. You can get fish now. Oysters. Yeah, I mean you're, you're putting together a menu. Jacob.

Rod Pyle [01:03:35]:
It'll be interesting when, when cultured meat starts making its way to this.

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:03:38]:
And there, there's groups that have done some experiments on the ISS on that regard too. There's a organization starting to kick up right now, the Deep Space Food Consortium. And they kind of are how I got into this too because at Interstellar we won the Deep Space Food Challenge that was hosted by NASA and this group is kind of beyond part of that. And they're looking at these exact same things but on a much more larger scope of like what are all these different elements? And then okay, if we have all these ingredients, we're going to need chefs to make sure these are actually palatable and like really looking at all the elements of food and regenerative life support.

Tariq Malik [01:04:10]:
So was that the way was that challenge? The, the 3D print a pizza challenge. Was that the deep space food challenge? Because I remember they had one like that. But there was a.

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:04:23]:
There was a group that did a pizza like project that I think they won second prize or something in this. What was like two years ago, what

Tariq Malik [01:04:31]:
was your group that won the first prize?

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:04:32]:
So Interstellar built a. A large life support system that was. It had plants, insects and fungi in it.

Tariq Malik [01:04:40]:
Oh, wow. Everything.

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:04:41]:
Likely recirculating process.

Tariq Malik [01:04:45]:
We didn't even talk about space mushrooms. We totally could. So that's great. And crickets. Oh man, that's great.

Rod Pyle [01:04:54]:
Well, I want to thank everybody for joining us today for episode number 211 of this Week in Space that we call Oysters in Space. I know we enjoyed it, but we have to stop now because I'm knackered. Okay.

Tariq Malik [01:05:07]:
I don't get it.

Rod Pyle [01:05:08]:
Knacker is what grows on a pearl, but. Oh, okay, you're a barbarian, so. Oh, fine. Jacob, where can we follow your efforts as you move on through this amazing

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:05:20]:
career of yours right now? So we have on LinkedIn. You can follow me. And then Monolith has a page on LinkedIn. Should just be monolith space at LinkedIn or however you do that. And then monolithspace.com is our website. It's in a early stage, but that's another place.

Rod Pyle [01:05:37]:
Well, it animates nice when you move your.

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:05:40]:
Oh, you've been awesome. Great.

Rod Pyle [01:05:41]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tarek, where can we find you mollusking these days?

Tariq Malik [01:05:46]:
Oh, I love it. I love it. So I almost forgot, by the way, if you do make those oysters and then bring them back to sell them, you can call them Oyster nuts, right? Or Oysters Wow. But patent pending. So I expect again, I expect credit world. All right, moving on. No, you can find me. You can find me as always@space.com and tonight as we're recording this back at the back at the helm watching over SpaceX's Starship Flight 12 launch.

Tariq Malik [01:06:16]:
Please come to space.com and watch it. And this weekend we'll be at the the New Jersey Renaissance Fair. That'll be really exciting. And on YouTube for all things space, video games @spacetronplays.

Rod Pyle [01:06:29]:
And of course you can always find me by valvingat pylebooks.org and that made no sense whatsoever. Please remember you could drop us a line at twis@twit.tv. We welcome your comments, suggestions, ideas and space jokes. New episodes. This podcast publish every Friday in your favorite podcatcher. So make sure to subscribe, tell your friends and give us reviews. We'll take whatever you really think, but we like 5 of whatever it is you're you're reviewing us with if you can do it. We also ask you to follow the Twit Tech podcast network at Twit on Twitter and on Facebook at twit.tv and Instagram.

Rod Pyle [01:07:05]:
Jacob, thank you. It's been a pleasure having you. Congratulations. You know, you kept saying I'm not an expert. Not an expert. But you're sitting in a room with two guys that aren't experts in anything. Which is why we took the career path we did. Although Tarek's becoming an expert in Taekwondo.

Rod Pyle [01:07:21]:
But for me, I can honestly say I'm the ultimate generalist. So hats off to you for having accomplished what you have. It's important and meaningful work.

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:07:30]:
Oh, thank you. I always call myself a Jake of all trades. That's my little.

Rod Pyle [01:07:34]:
Nice.

Tariq Malik [01:07:35]:
I love it.

Rod Pyle [01:07:36]:
Nice pearls of wisdom. All right, thank you, everybody. We will see you next week. Take care.

Jacob Scoccimerra [01:07:41]:
Thank you, guys. Thank you very much.