This Week in Space 141: Holiday Special 2024

Summary

Summary of "This Week in Space 141: Holiday Special 2024" by TWiT

Release Date: December 20, 2024
Host/Author: TWiT
Episode: This Week in Space 141: Holiday Special 2024

In the 141st episode of "This Week in Space," host Rod Pyle and co-hosts Anthony Nielsen, the Amazing Aunt Pruitt, and little Tarek come together for a festive holiday special. The episode blends lighthearted discussions about celebrating the holidays in space with in-depth conversations on current space missions, nostalgic reminiscences of space toys, and debates on the value of space exploration. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the episode:

1. Festive Introduction and Space Jokes

The episode kicks off with a whimsical holiday-themed introduction featuring a playful poem about celebrating Christmas in space. Rod Pyle sets a jovial tone, inviting listeners to join in the holiday spirit aboard the podcast.

Notable Quote:

• Rod Pyle [00:01]: "Join me, producer Anthony, the Amazing Aunt Pruitt and little Tarek for a holiday romp next on this Week in Space."

Following the introduction, the hosts share a series of space-themed jokes to entertain their audience.

Notable Quotes:

• Rod Pyle [03:03]: "Astronomers recently discovered a giant object in space that resembles a turkey. They're calling it a gobble cluster."
• Rod Pyle [03:21]: "How did Santa beat China to the moon?"
  Tarek [03:27]: "He slayed the competition."

2. Listener Interaction: Michael Clary’s Space Math Challenge

Rod Pyle addresses a listener query from Michael Clary, who posed a mathematical challenge regarding the number of Apollo moonships that could be sent to the moon aboard SpaceX's Starship.

Rod meticulously breaks down the dimensions and payload capacities to estimate that Starship could potentially carry three fully fueled Apollo spacecraft stacks, capable of sending nine people to the moon and back.

Notable Quote:

• Rod Pyle [04:00]: "The Apollo 11 command module alone was 11ft tall without the escape tower, and that's gone by the time they reach orbit."

3. Headlines: Parker Solar Probe’s Holiday Flyby

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which is set to make its closest approach to the sun on Christmas Eve. Tarek Nielsen provides an insightful overview of the mission's objectives and the technological marvels enabling the probe to withstand extreme temperatures of up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Notable Quote:

• Tarek Nielsen [08:42]: "NASA's gonna fly by making its closest approach with the Parker Solar Probe. It's about understanding how the sun has been changing over time."

4. Impact of Potential Government Shutdown on NASA

The hosts discuss the looming possibility of a partial government shutdown and its potential ramifications on NASA’s operations. Tarek highlights the vulnerability of space missions and the astronauts in space, emphasizing the importance of stable funding for ongoing and future projects.

Notable Quote:

• Tarek Nielsen [19:22]: "If this happens, and you were hoping for unfettered great access from NASA for this flyby, just be aware that you won't hear anything from the public affairs team."

5. Holiday Celebrations in Space: Double Festivities

Rod and Tarek explore how astronauts celebrate the holidays aboard the International Space Station (ISS). With the unique circumstance of Christmas and Hanukkah falling on the same day for the first time, astronauts engage in both celebrations, fostering a sense of unity and festivity despite being away from Earth.

Notable Quote:

• Tarek Nielsen [15:08]: "Christmas has been celebrated in space for almost 60 years now. Astronauts deck out the space station with Santa hats and stockings."

6. Nostalgic Journey: Space Toys from Childhood

A heartwarming segment where Rod, Tarek, and Anthony reminisce about their favorite space-related toys from their youth. They delve into fond memories of Major Matt Mason action figures, model rockets, and Transformers, highlighting how these toys sparked their interest in space and exploration.

Notable Quotes:

• Rod Pyle [42:05]: "Major Matt Mason, Mattel's man in space, was one of the first action figures that truly captured the imagination of kids interested in space."
• Tarek Nielsen [49:28]: "My first big space toy was the Transformers Omega Supreme. It was a giant rocket from the planet Cybertron that transforms into a robot."

7. Adventures in Model Rocketry

The conversation transitions into their personal escapades with model rocketry. Rod shares tales of constructing and launching intricate rockets, while Tarek discusses the challenges of building high-powered models and the community of rocketry enthusiasts.

Notable Quotes:

• Rod Pyle [55:33]: "I built a five-foot Batman signal launch, and when it deployed, the entire rocket range stopped and started clapping."
• Tarek Nielsen [67:24]: "I spent a lot of high school building model rockets but rarely launched them due to broken launchers."

8. Debate: The Value of Space Exploration vs. Earthly Needs

A profound dialogue unfolds between Rod and Anthony, touching upon the ethical and practical considerations of investing billions into space exploration amidst pressing issues on Earth, such as healthcare and environmental concerns. They discuss the economic returns of space programs, the inspirational impact on education, and the balance between technological advancement and addressing immediate societal needs.

Notable Quotes:

• Anthony Nielsen [79:28]: "Millions of dollars spent on rockets could have been directed towards cancer research and other urgent issues we face on Earth."
• Rod Pyle [82:14]: "Space gives us the realm to inspire young people and drive technological innovation, which has far-reaching benefits."

9. Closing Remarks and Calls to Action

As the episode winds down, Rod and Tarek encourage listeners to support their endeavors through platforms like Patreon and remain engaged with TWiT's network. They wrap up the special with heartfelt holiday wishes, emphasizing the interconnectedness of humanity's pursuits both on Earth and in space.

Notable Quote:

• Rod Pyle [95:00]: "Be well and be merry, our beloved listeners as we spend our holiday beneath hearths that glisten. Happy holidays to all and to all a good night."

Conclusion

"This Week in Space 141: Holiday Special 2024" masterfully blends festive cheer with thoughtful discussions on space missions, personal anecdotes, and the broader implications of space exploration. The episode offers both entertainment and enlightenment, making it a delightful listen for space enthusiasts and casual listeners alike.

Key Takeaways:

• NASA’s Parker Solar Probe embarks on a critical mission with its closest sun flyby coinciding with the holiday season.
• The potential government shutdown poses significant challenges to ongoing space missions and astronaut support.
• Celebrations in space foster camaraderie among astronauts, highlighting the human aspect of space exploration.
• Nostalgic reflections on space toys reveal the profound influence of early interests on career paths.
• The debate on funding space exploration versus addressing Earthly issues underscores the need for balanced investment.

Listener Engagement: Listeners are encouraged to support the hosts through platforms like Patreon, join the community on social media, and stay tuned for future episodes that continue to explore the fascinating world of space.

Transcript

[Rod Pyle]

On this episode of this Week in Space. It's our holiday special. What's it like to celebrate Christmas in orbit? What was your favorite space toy? Will Tarek ever look older than 14? Join me, producer Anthony, the Amazing Aunt Pruitt and little Tarek for a holiday romp next on this Week in Space. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Triton. This is this Week in space, episode number 141, recorded on December 20, 2024. The Twiss Holiday Special. 2024. Tiny Taurax Christmas Turkey. Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the Warwick, not a creature was stirring, not even little Toric. He slept like an angel in a body so jolly as the fire was crackling like his space Tron plays folly. He had warm thoughts of twists episodes past, and he stirred in his slumbers. But even nightmares don't last. So join us, my friends, for a tale so whimsical that you won't want to leave, not even for a crimsicle. Twas the week before Christmas. Hello and happy holidays, everybody. And welcome to this Week in Space, the holiday special edition. Yay. Wait a minute.

[Tarek]

You said my. My YouTube channel is a folly. Rod. I heard that in there.

[Rod Pyle]

I'm Rod Pyle, editor chief, Van Astor magazine, and I'm joined, as always, by the jolly, tiny Tim Tarik, editor editor [e-mail].

[Tarek]

Oh, my.

[Rod Pyle]

Hello, my friend.

[Tarek]

You said body, so jolly is what you said, so. Oh, I'm crying.

[Rod Pyle]

It's all the writing. And we're joined today by the amazing Anthony Nielsen and our founding producer and blast from the past, the astonishing Aunt Pruitt. Hello, gentlemen. Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming in. I know that Anthony lives to be on camera, so we're very glad that we pulled him in here today. Yeah, look at him about. We've missed you.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Hey, I've missed you, too. But I've been listening to the show pretty regularly, so I can keep up with some of the stuff y'all had going on and continue to shake my head at all.

[Rod Pyle]

I was going to say stuff. If you're listening to the show, you must have an astonishing amount of time on your hands. Now, before I forget, please don't forget to do us a holiday solid. That didn't sound quite right. And make sure to, like, subscribe and all the other cool podcast things, because we need your love, and we. We live and die by your attention. So we're counting on you. And now, our gift to you, a space joke from Brian Tanner. Brian, are we ready?

[Tarek]

I'm ready. I'm ready.

[Rod Pyle]

Astronomers recently discovered a giant object in space that resembles a turkey. They're calling it a gobble. Your cluster.

[Tarek]

I love space clones.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay? So thank you, Brian. Here's mine. Hey, Tarik.

[Tarek]

Yes, Rod?

[Rod Pyle]

How did Santa beat China to the moon?

[Tarek]

I don't know. How did he beat China to the moon?

[Rod Pyle]

He slayed the competition spelling joke. All right, now, I hear that some people want to set fire the nearest Christmas tree when they hear our jokes, but you can help by sending your best work or most worst or most different space joke like mine, apparently to us@twistswit TV. All right, we need to go to some headlines, but before we do, I have a housekeeping moment here, because we got kind of an interesting inquiry from Michael Clary.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Michael, hello, Michael.

[Rod Pyle]

Who said, how many Apollo moonships could you send to the moon on a starship?

[Tarek]

Oh, yeah, you did a bunch of math for this one, didn't you?

[Rod Pyle]

Well, as much as I'm capable, we've had this conversation before, haven't we? Why. Why didn't Rod stay in Astronomy? All right, so here's. Here's a fairly easy challenge, and I'm sure that somebody out there, because we have a few rivet counters in the cosmos, will be able to tell me where I slipped up here. But the Apollo 11 command module alone was 11ft tall without the escape tower, and that's gone by the time they reach orbit. Although if it's in a starship, it wouldn't be. But let's just say they're not going to have an escape tower, because it would do them no good inside a starship cargo hold. So a starship's Cargo hold being 56ft tall, it would hold just over five command modules and a few bananas if they were stacked vertically. Now, that's just a single stack, though. If you. If you dump the bunch in there, I'm sure somebody who knew how to do calculus could tell me the total number, but heavens to Betsy, not me anymore. Okay.

[Tarek]

Volume.

[Rod Pyle]

You mean like, resetting here? Yeah, yeah, because I sort of envisioned him dumping him in like, a salt shaker instead of actually organizing them properly. If you had the command module and the service module, it's propulsive and power unit, you could barely fit two of them stacked atop each other inside. And since the command module service module stack had a diameter of about 12ft and Starship's cargo bay has a diameter of 26, I think.

[Tarek]

Ooh, that's a tight fit.

[Rod Pyle]

Three in there, maybe six. But if you add the lunar module, which is what it takes to transit and land on the moon. So Apollo 11 on Apollo 8 just had the command and service module. The lunar module is 18ft high and 14ft diameter. With its legs folded. You could stack the whole command module, service module, lunar module stack in there. Ants just shaking his head inside. And with some fiddling because we all know Elon could fudge things on Starship, maybe three of those. And since the command module, service module, lunar module stack would go to the moon all on its own and return, Starship would only need to carry them to low Earth orbit or thereabouts. And the weight of that stack, the mass wet fueled, is about 97,000 pounds. Starship's supposed payload capacity is between 220,000 to 330,000, depending on whether it's expendable or return learning. So it could potentially carry those three fully fueled spacecraft stacks that would get nine people to the moon and back. However, we still have to get them out of Earth orbit and send them to the moon, which is what the remaining fuel in the S4B stage used to be from the Saturn 5. Listen to me. So you could probably use either a little solid.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Oh, I'm listening.

[Rod Pyle]

Kick motor or. Well, well. So the S IVB had 220,000 pounds of thrust and burned for about five minutes to get them out of the Florida on the way to the moon. But because a single Raptor engine on Starship has about half a million pounds of thrust, you could probably burn that for a minute or two or burn three of them for just a little blip. So anyway, this is very inexact, but I was trying to give you the best answer I can, Michael. In any case, somebody, Michael, looking at you, should call NASA and tell them to dust off the remaining capsules and lunar modules and service modules, which are sitting in museums and as we've seen from a number of movies like Was that one Moon Moonfall. Moonfall, where you take a space shuttle out of the museum and just kind of dust it off and clean the window and the next thing you know, you're, you're launching. We could take all these things and send them off the moon and think of the money we'd save.

[Tarek]

Yeah, that's right, that's right. Of course, you did need to have the moon falling so that it changes gravity so that you can get off the ground with only two main engines or something like that.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, it has to be full of nano bumblebees, but whatever. What a horrible movie. Okay, so there we go. Let us get going on some headlines, because as long as we've got Ant in torture mode here, we might as well continue with it because he's sitting there thinking, headline news. I watch football during this.

[Anthony Nielsen]

I'm thinking, I'm so grateful for my beer. Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

But I had. All right, so, Tarik, why don't you give us your first one, then I'll roll. Yeah.

[Tarek]

Yeah. So it is the season, of course.

[Rod Pyle]

To cook your spacecraft well.

[Tarek]

That's right. Wherever you're having lots of holiday roasts. And NASA's going to do it with the Parker solar probe. And for the first time ever, we're about to get our closest get up close and personal with the sun on Christmas Eve. So just when everyone's sitting down for dinner, we usually have tamales at my house. Actually. NASA's gonna fly by making its closest approach with the Parker solar probe. Ars Technica has this really good story about how we're gonna fly, quote, unquote, inside the sun for the first time. And some backgrounder. The Parker Solar Probe is NASA's most ambitious and intrepid mission to the sun ever. It's been slowly getting closer and closer and closer to the sun with a series of flybys that have flew by Venus a couple times, I think, et ce, so that it can touch basically like the surface, that photosphere, kind of gaseous, those layers, you know, because it's not like a rock or whatever, the sun, so that we can understand like, what makes it tick. And on December 24th, I think it's like at six in the morning, it's really early Eastern time, it's going to fly within 6.1 million kilometers. So that's 3.8 million miles. Remember, we're like, what, 92, 93 million miles away from the sun on the Earth, so very, very close by. And it's going to withstand temperatures of up to like 2500 degrees, which is crazy. And the goal is to basically understand how this sun has been changing over time. You know, get this up close, like, how its weather is behaving, how everything in terms of like, the, the, the heat dynamics are all working so we can understand how these stars work and hopefully make sure they don't fry us all with solar storms. And, and it's just, it's just really amazing. It has this huge, thick plate on the front as like a heat shield to hopefully it will survive. In fact, as you and I are recording this, Rod and Anthony, they are like getting their last signal from Parker solar probe until it flips around the other side. So it's going to go dark for at least signal wise for the next like week so until December 27th really. And that's when they're going to find out one way or another if the spacecraft survived like this super close flyby of the sun. So very exciting stuff. Of course we're not going to know one way or another for another week until after Christmas. So maybe we'll have a nice belated Christmas present. I just dropped my mouse on the floor. Hope you didn't hear that.

[Anthony Nielsen]

I swear. The chair break or the mouse drop.

[Rod Pyle]

The chair remembered the chair.

[Tarek]

I bought extra parts and I put a new bottom on it and it doesn't even wibble wobble anymore. So.

[Rod Pyle]

And you wouldn't believe the amount of drama with. We're going back and forth. He's saying I don't know where to get the parts. And if I get him well what do I do? And how do I said just get the new air piston for it. They sell that? No, no, it's not that it's. And all that. I said okay. Bolt some wooden blocks to the foot struts. It'll be.

[Tarek]

Oh, we had that for a while. Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

I can't do that. All right, let's. Let's roll to a break before I.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Say something to embarrassing about this.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh yes.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Questions about this.

[Rod Pyle]

No.

[Tarek]

Yes. Yes.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay.

[Anthony Nielsen]

All right. She's. So you said it's going to flip around. Is that what's the point of it flipping around?

[Tarek]

Oh so I mean when it comes around the other side basically when it finishes the flyby it's, it's, it's going. It's so close to the sun and it's such a harsh environment that it's not going to be able to get the signals out because it's facing. It's like all hunkered down basically for this, this, this flyby it has like a small instrument package. About £110 of. Of instruments on board that it's going to be recording all of the information and stuff of the sun. But today I think that's a little insulting.

[Rod Pyle]

What Telly Parker that it has a small package. I just think that's great.

[Tarek]

It's a huge spacecraft multi billion dollars o get this, these bits there.

[Anthony Nielsen]

So I'm curious to see how they tested it. If it's rated to be able to withstand that much heat.

[Rod Pyle]

Great big blowtorch. Well and what's interesting is so the shield is. I know it's A combination of graphite and carbon composites, a bunch of other stuff. Right. Dark. But it's, you know, it can forestall heat from that direction. But if I recall, the photosphere itself is very hot. It's not just, you know, what's coming to the surface of the sun with illumination. It's actually the photosphere itself. So the whole thing has to be somewhat armored. Right. What temperature is it exposed to at its peak? Do you know?

[Tarek]

Well, they, they said 25 up to 2500 degrees is what they said. And that's hot. I, I mean, yeah, it's pretty hot. It's like, it's like re entry. They, they basically put it inside with like a jet engine thing, like a supercharged rocket engine.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Okay.

[Tarek]

And then just turned it on and said. All right. Did we cook it? No, no. All right. It's fine. All right, Good, good.

[Rod Pyle]

Roll that thing out with these little smoking tendrils coming off of it. Oh, let's go back. Okay.

[Tarek]

Fast though. It's going to be going like 1% the speed of light because of the acceleration, like 430,000 miles an hour. That's really, really fast. So 1/6 of 1%.

[Rod Pyle]

Can I go to a break now.

[Anthony Nielsen]

And pay some bills, please and thank you.

[Tarek]

Ant had questions. I just do my best, so.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, but, but we can't earn your big fat paycheck if we don't pay some bills. Oh, wait, you don't get one. Okay, we'll be right back. We'll be right back. Stand by. Got great ideas but no idea how.

[Tarek]

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[Rod Pyle]

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[Tarek]

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[Rod Pyle]

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[Tarek]

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[Rod Pyle]

Plus right now you can switch. Keep your phone and we'll pay it off up to $800. See how you can save on every plan versus Verizon and at and t@t mobile.com KeepAndSwitch up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service ported 90 plus days with device ineligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months. Christmas and Hanukkah and so forth in space.

[Tarek]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

You have a tale for us.

[Tarek]

I just wanted to remind everybody that the holidays are coming and I guess for the, for the first time it's going to be Christmas and Hanukkah on the same day, which is pretty exciting. Which means that the astronauts in space are going to be having a, a big nice holiday too. And I just, I just thought this was a nice time to remind everyone that Christmas has been celebrated, the holidays have been celebrated in space for like, like 50, almost 50 years now.

[Rod Pyle]

Right?

[Tarek]

With the.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Or more.

[Tarek]

No, almost 60 years. Yeah. Yeah. Since the, the Genesis reading from Apollo 8.

[Rod Pyle]

Really? Apollo, Apollo 8 is, was the first public demonstration.

[Tarek]

The first public one. Yeah, that's right.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, that's right.

[Tarek]

And, and, and since then you had astronauts build like Christ of food cans on it. And, and then you've, you've had.

[Rod Pyle]

Sounds like my childhood.

[Tarek]

Other astronauts celebrate Hanukkah in space too. And we've got like what, seven people on the International Space Station right now from Russia and the United States, among others. So I just want everyone to think about, you know, if you're celebrating the holidays or if you do celebrate at all, that you are not alone. There are people up in space doing the same exact thing. You could find all about it at NASA. Although it's really strange because even like last year's big holiday like overview that has all of these little bits and blurbs and photos of how they all have, you know, Santa hats on the space station and stockings and stuff like that. Like all of the NASA pages are 404ing, which is weird. So I had to go back to the Wayback Machine, which is what you see, Anthony, scrolling through if you're watching the video there. But astronauts who celebrate Christmas do get two Christmases in space because they celebrate, you know, Christmas on December 25th, and they celebrate Russian Orthodox Christmas with their Russian crewmates too. So they get, they get like a.

[Rod Pyle]

Double holiday there, but one involves alcohol potentially.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Well, I wonder what your communication is like for the families there in, in space, back, back to earth on the holidays. Is it, is there anything, dude, for.

[Rod Pyle]

The astronauts talking to their families?

[Tarek]

That's a really good question. And you know, they, they have quote unquote Internet protocol phones, which is just like Skype as I understand it. Right. So they, they can actually call whenever they, they, they, they like if they have free time and are able to. And then sometimes they'll catch people. It's why you hear astronauts sometimes just call ham radio Operators for fun because they've got free time and they're able to do that. But there are also scheduled check ins with family that they have time where they know they can just call their family whenever they like. They've got their own computer in their sleeping quarters too that they can use to do email and all of that. And so they do a lot of events that way. And it hasn't always been that way. Obviously they haven't had these Internet protocol phones like videos and whatnot connections over the past and until, until like the, the constant like TDRS type communication didn't have direct contact all the time at all. Now it's just unbroken and it's taken for granted overtime. So they, they do need to make sure that they schedule that. And then they, they get cargo, like we just had a recent cargo mission there to the space station. They get presents and stuff in those.

[Rod Pyle]

Two special foods, like lightweight presence. Yeah. So I, I do remember back around 2006, I think I was working on an Apollo book and one in a similar way. All the, the NASA websites went dark, even historical ones, which is weird because it's not like there's a national security issue there. But apparently they had shut them down to deal with security issues, which I don't understand because the stuff had been public for 50 years. Specifically I was looking up stuff in the Saturn 5 moon rocket. So I poked around and the only place I could find it was on a Chinese server, which is perhaps why they were trying to shut it down and protect it. I mean cows kind of out of the barn 50, 60 years later. But yeah, it was interesting. All right, I think we could squeeze in one more.

[Tarek]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, this is so depressing.

[Tarek]

I know, I know.

[Rod Pyle]

Let's let NASA go out of business for a week because, because we want them to get to the moon first, but not if it costs any money.

[Tarek]

Now this is like just a heads up to like the avid space fan is that right now in the United States there's a whole big political like debacle going on about should we fund the government or not. And there is a government shutdown looming as we're recording this, which means that if the, if the Congress doesn't set a budget or agree on a bill, then the government is going to go into either a full or a partial shutdown, most likely a partial one over the weekend. And the reason I bring it up is because NASA obviously is part of the government and NASA oversees all the space things. And of course the FAA oversees a lot of the Commercial space things. And so if, if you were hoping, if this, if this happens, and you were hoping for unfettered great access from NASA for this flyby, for example, that we were talking about earlier with Parker Solar, just be aware that you won't hear anything from like the public affairs team at all from NASA. You won't see anything from, you know, from official space station sources, et cetera, because they're not allowed to work during that period. Usually there's like a little blurb or a message. We've got some, a link to the NASA shutdown page. And I just wanted to let our readers or listeners know because maybe you can call your congressperson and say, hey, you know, it's the holidays, you know, learn to work together or something so that we can all breathe a little easier. If they go into a shutdown, it means the folks at NASA don't get paid until, until it gets, it gets done. You know, the astronauts in space, the people that, that make these missions work, the people that make everything else, you.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Know, get paid, those decision makers are going to still make their money.

[Tarek]

Yeah, there is, there is that they give them credit and the people that, that are designed, that do work and on, on like mission critical things. The International Space Station for example, mission critical life lives at stake. That means that those people have to go to work and they just won't get paid. But they are expected to go to work, you know, that kind of a thing.

[Rod Pyle]

So can I just weigh in here as a freelancer and I don't know how you feel about this because I know you're freelancing as well. But you know, when I hear people. So some of the people I knew at JPL were making well into six figures like 300 grand a year. And I'd hear the talk about oh my God, I'm going to have to go a week without pay. And you know, I get it, you have a job, you should get paid, all that kind of stuff. But just from my perspective, subjectively going from assignment to assignment, there's no contribution matching for Social Security. I mean freelancing basically sucks, except that it gives you a time wise, it gives you a better lifestyle in some ways. But when you're on it, you're on it 247 and it's a beast. So I guess I don't know how. Another way to put it, I have a certain lack of sympathy for people that will not do that one extra shift at work because they might get paid a week later. I mean, when I was working for Disney, which I did for years. I was lucky if I got an invoice paid in three months. And they say, yeah, boy, we're hustling on it. It's like, guys, it's been a really long time. Give me a break here. So, anyway, this is all kind of a non sequitur, and I apologize if it seems off.

[Tarek]

I'm just saying it's the government. They're supposed to work, Rod, they work for us. Right?

[Anthony Nielsen]

And, yeah, we see how that's working for us. I don't have much. Anything nice to say about our government, so I'm just going to recuse.

[Rod Pyle]

Anthony, you're cruising. Give us an opinion here. No, I'm spinning plates, man. You know, I gotta. I'm not gonna touch this one. He works for the private sector, so he's got a whole different. Yeah, I mean, the other thing I found weird about jpl, and just to be fair, JPL is the money goes to Caltech, and then they manage jpl. So you're not a civil servant, you're just an employee. You know, but if. What was it? I was working on one of those books that I did. There was something about. There was a deadline. They had a shutdown on Monday or something. And, you know, I said, well, that's okay. I'll keep going. They're like, no, no, no. It's against the law for you to work if we're not paying you that day. It's like, try to stop me, you know, because I was in it for the mission. I wasn't.

[Tarek]

Oh, he's a maverick. He's a maverick. He's like Cannon, Rod Pile.

[Rod Pyle]

I was doing that for the same reason you're here, Tarek. Because we believe in the mission. Right.

[Tarek]

I do.

[Rod Pyle]

Because he wanted to come make fun of us. Yeah.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Someone that used to work in the payroll industry. I totally respect. I totally respect the labor laws of all of the various states here in the US But I also respect the people that have, what my grandparents would say, gumption and want to. So every now and then, if it meant going beyond the 40 hours. Yes, because they were passionate about it. I. I couldn't. I wouldn't stop them. You know, I didn't force anybody to do that. But if they. If they chose to, just as you said, hey, that's. That's great character that this country was supposedly built on.

[Tarek]

Well, I feel like we got, like, really away from.

[Rod Pyle]

I was finding less of it.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Sorry, you got me pissed off right now.

[Rod Pyle]

Finding less of it in the current young Generation. But that's just my experience.

[Tarek]

I was going to say let's go.

[Rod Pyle]

To an ad break.

[Tarek]

That's just to put a pin in it. Government shut down bad there.

[Rod Pyle]

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[Tarek]

I thought this was supposed to be a show, right?

[Rod Pyle]

A certain young person whose name I will not mention going, I have to show up to work at before 11 every day. It's like, yeah, hey, college.

[Tarek]

You know in college classes that started before noon. I thought that was amazing.

[Rod Pyle]

So I would work at Griffith Observatory until about midnight, get back to UCLA dorms about 1. And I had either Russian or calculus at 7am in the morning. That's my walking upstairs both ways walking.

[Anthony Nielsen]

I respect that.

[Rod Pyle]

Up the hill both ways in the morning. But worse was when you started in television production. And I don't think it's changed much. You know, the expectation is you're the production assistant, you're the new guy, you know, and we want you here at 4:30 in the morning with the coffee and the snacks and all that other bs, the film and the camera load and so forth. And by the way, you get to open the stage and unload it all yourself before the union guys show up at 6 and start eating donuts and unfolding their director's chairs to sit down and take an early break before they have to actually lift a finger at 11 in the morning. I mean, literally, sometimes the Teamsters, no offense, Teamsters gotta have them. The country runs on Teamsters. But in this context, the truck would show up, they drop the tailgate, and he'd set up a director's chair and take a nap until 6:00 or 8:00. When we packed it up and he left, he didn't lift a finger to unload or anything. And I thought, you know, to a lot of my, my cohort it was like, wow, that guy's lucky. I want that job. And I thought, that's the most boring thing I've ever seen. Okay, I'm sorry, we're.

[Tarek]

Isn't this podcast about space?

[Rod Pyle]

Yes, and I have a space question for everybody. We're starting with you. All right, all right, Aunt, you be kind or the spankings will begin. What's everybody's first space memory?

[Tarek]

Yeah, I saw, I saw this on the rundown earlier and, and that was.

[Rod Pyle]

How exciting for you. Well, that must have been a big moment.

[Tarek]

Ron Pyle coming in hot. Everybody coming in real hot. All right. Real salty. No, I was thinking about it because I was trying to figure out, like, what it was because I remember when I got into, like, Star Trek. I remember, like, a lot of that stuff. We've talked about that in the past. But I think that it was when I might have been in, like, third grade. This is how the earliest I can remember, because my mom was a teacher. I'm not sure if I told everyone that she's a teacher. She's a child psychologist now. But. But she was. No, she used to pay me $5 for every test I would take when she was studying to get that, by the way, it was. I was raking it in.

[Rod Pyle]

So wait, you were taking her test for her?

[Tarek]

No, like, like to test, like when they, when they diagnose kids, they gotta, like, test them or whatever. So to practice, like, she would do.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, boy, I bet she had a field day with you.

[Tarek]

Oh, you know, What? She never told us what we scored, so I guess hopefully it was good. No, but I remember that she came home and she said that we were going to make rockets. And, and, and then we had a friend who had a farm story, and we went, we went out and launched them from our farms. These were like Estes rockets, but they weren't. They weren't like kits, right? Like, we. We got paper towel tubes and built them out of, like, ourselves, like from, from, like, I guess, like schematics or something. And that's what I remember as like the first. We're going to do something that's about space, but we're going to do it ourselves. And then we went out to the farm, because there's farms all around Stockton growing up. And we launched them and we were able to go chase them like you do, because that's what you do with an Estes rocket, is you chase it and, and capture them. And of course, we couldn't fly them again because these were. They weren't coated in anything. You know how, like, the Estes ones have, like a coating on them. And so our motors burned straight through the sides of the paper towel tubes. But it was still a lot of fun. And I think at least one of them fell on a roof because you can't have a launch without something getting lost. And that's like, one. I remember having a really great time on that whole thing. And after that, we were launching rockets like they were going out of style. So. And then we're here 50 years or 40 years later, you know, so.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, you're not that old yet. And how about you? Was it. Was it our first episode?

[Anthony Nielsen]

No, not quite. It's actually two things, and I want y'all to just consider the context of me being in the black community in small town South Carolina back in the 80s and 90s. Okay. So just consider that. So my first experience with space that I can remember was 1981. 82, somewhere in that area. And it was Empire Strikes Back with Star Wars. And what. What is space? What. That's a space spaceship, you know, and that stuff blew my mind. Okay.

[Tarek]

I am your father.

[Anthony Nielsen]

You know, just this. I had no, no recollection of anything beyond the blue sky. I just didn't. And then the next thing that hit a little bit closer to home was the, the Challenger. I think that was. I think it might have been about 10 or so at the time, because January of 86.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Because McNair. McNair had Carolina ties.

[Tarek]

Oh, Ron McNair on the floor.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Right. And I can remember when that happened. See, again, consider the context of where I was from. We were watching Challenger. Okay. And when that event happened, I remember initially not really feeling a thing because all I had to refer to was Star Wars. Stuff blows up in Star wars and people just sort of moves on, you know, I didn't quite understand the gravity of how big and tragic that was at that time.

[Rod Pyle]

How old were you then?

[Anthony Nielsen]

I'm thinking I was like, 10. Yeah. Something like that. But I remember watching it in class in school because we. Everybody turned on the television and, you know, we pulled it up. And I remember when it happened, the classroom just went quiet. And I was confused, you know, because everybody was so quiet. But I didn't get the gravity of it, you know, until a little bit later and talking to my teacher afterwards about it and going home and speaking with my mother and my grandmother, and it's like, oh, okay. These people, you know, they gave their life right there, you know. Yeah, that's my two.

[Rod Pyle]

Was that the one that was supposed to have Big Bird originally?

[Tarek]

It had. Well, it was gonna have. It had. It had the teacher on it. It had a.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yes, it had a teacher.

[Rod Pyle]

It had a teacher. But, like, I thought I heard something that originally they were thinking about having, like, big part of the educational content.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

I don't know. Maybe I missed.

[Anthony Nielsen]

What was the lady's name? I remember McNair, but I can't remember the teacher.

[Rod Pyle]

Krista McAuliffe.

[Tarek]

McAuliffe, that's it.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. You know, as awful as that was when the footage came out shortly thereafter of the camera cutting over to the parents of Krista McAuliffe, who's a civilian. Right. She's not a test pilot. You know, she signed the waivers, but it's not really the same thing.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Right.

[Rod Pyle]

And her parents are staring at the sky and the mother has tears streaming down her eyes because I think she's getting it. The dad's just got this kind of dead look on his face. And it's like, what a horrible moment to go there for this triumphal, joyous thing to see your daughter, the teacher, go into space and do. And, you know, if. If anybody's ever seen the IMAX film, the Dream Is Alive, that was done a couple of years before Challenger happened. You know, we were living in this kind of fantasy zone of, oh, the space shuttle, it's a routine system. It's our space truck up to orbit it. And that film, and NASA's Public Relations in general, made it, was trying to make it Seem very normal and routine. They were planning at one point of flying 54 times a year. Haha.

[Tarek]

They, I think average three, once every two weeks, they said, yeah, they were.

[Rod Pyle]

Just going to hose it off, fuel it up and go like. Like starship. But it was a little ahead of its time. It was really complex. And have you ever actually seen a shuttle in person?

[Anthony Nielsen]

Have not, sir.

[Rod Pyle]

So if you get a chance, they have one in la, and it used to be flat, so you'd walk on its landing gear, you'd walk underneath it, and there's just acres of heat tiles over your head and you really finally get the idea of how incredibly massive these things are. They're now moving it into a vertical configuration, which will still give a sense of its size, but it's huge, it's complicated. It's covered in these little silica foam tiles that if you flick them with your fingernail hard enough, they crack. So the fact that the thing worked at all is a real testament to fine engineering. But, yeah, it was incredibly dangerous. And that was a sad day. All right, I'm depressed.

[Tarek]

Real weighty, Real weighty.

[Rod Pyle]

Thanks, everybody. End of episode. Anthony, do we have time to hear from you before we go to break? Yeah, yeah. So, like, probably Star wars on TV also. So my dad's Danish or. Yeah, on my father's side, they're from Denmark. And my aunt used to send Lego sets and definitely had one of those, like, early space kits.

[Tarek]

The blue ones, the blue and the white ones or the blacktron ones.

[Rod Pyle]

I had all of them. I think a little bit of both. I was looking at a page over here.

[Tarek]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

That kind of looks familiar, but definitely, I think I have this kind of look.

[Tarek]

This black trunk is familiar.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Tarek]

So I had one of those sets. The one right above it, Anthony, this one right here, I got. I got, like, deathly ill with, like, some sort of, like, severe flu. And I was out a week and my parents got me this to, like, help me get through it. And my best friend came over after I had spent like three days building it and said, does it fly? And threw it off the top of the TV and it shattered. And I never. Because I had thrown away. I had thrown away the directions, because that's what you did back then. And I could never build it again. So that's good stuff. That's good stuff.

[Anthony Nielsen]

I think I had the one above there.

[Rod Pyle]

Like the first one.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

So when I was a young man, they had Lego, but all we had were white and red bricks, gray Plates and wheels. That was it. They didn't even have kits. They just had like a box of Lego. It's like, okay, use your imagination. Make something. Oh, what do I do?

[Anthony Nielsen]

Well, my first memory with the chisel.

[Tarek]

Yeah. What's yours, Rod?

[Rod Pyle]

Ow.

[Tarek]

First memory.

[Rod Pyle]

My first memory is. And I don't know which Gemini mission it was, but I remember standing in the orchestra lounge at the Music center in la because my father was a French horn player in the Philharmonic.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Nice.

[Rod Pyle]

So I used to go to work with him, and I didn't, you know, really give a hang about the music so much. That came later. I just stay in the lounge and play with my Legos or whatever. And all the musicians, you know, they're different crowd then than it is now. They're still nice people, but back then they were mostly guys. Mostly war veterans, mostly. Hey, kid, come over here. Here's a cigarette. What do you think? And they were very nice to me, but I was hearing on the PA system this crackly noise, and I said, dad, what's that? He said, it's the Gemini space capsule. Actually, dad didn't talk about Walter Cronkite. That was just me. But it was, I think, Gemini. It must have been Gemini 10 or somewhere around there. And I thought, oh, that's kind of cool. So I went home. It would have jumped on the Internet had we had one. But instead I went to the school library and got the. I was looking for any space book I could find in our elementary school library, which at that point was funded pretty well. And all they had was like, the big golden book of rockets. And everything looked like a silver banana from the Von Braun Beaver dream of how we're. You know, it was just awful to. Finally, an issue of Weekly Reader, which is long since gone, I think, had an article about the Gemini astronauts. And so that's when I got interested. But my first really kind of white hot memory was Apollo 8. So we had all been. It was like today with Artemis, counting down the months. How many more months delay? How many more months delay? Oh, Apollo 1, fire. Oh, that's a tragedy. But come on, I want you to hurry up, because I want to see it happen. Very selfish as a young man. So Apollo 8 goes out to loop the moon. And I knew enough to know that it was a big risk they were taking and much more than they were telling the public, because I was what, 12 at that point? 11. I was 11 at that point. And I thought, you know, they got no lunar module. They got one engine with two igniters on the back of that thing. And if they get into lunar orbit and can't get it restarted, they're staying there forever. And that's not good. There's no possibility of a rescue. There wasn't a single rocket stacked or anything. A separate rocket stack. So that mission I followed in excruciating detail. And the reading of Genesis from lunar orbit. I'm not a religious person, nor was I particularly then, but there was something really magical about the reading of that kind of prose from lunar orbit at a time when nobody had even gotten. Had left Earth orbit before. So that was. That was breathtaking. And from that point on, I was hooked. And much to ants dismay, hopelessly enamored of the space program.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Bless your heart.

[Rod Pyle]

And then of course, Apollo 11, you know, I mean, knowing that was happening. And from there on out, I announced to my parents I was not going to school on moonwalk days. And because I was basically raved, raised like a wolf cub, they were like, like, yeah, okay, whatever. They go off to work. Said, you go to school today? No. Okay. There's a longer story there of non attendance at school. It became a habit. Let's go to a break before.

[Tarek]

Explains the math thing.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, it explains a lot. If you'd be better. We'll be right back. Time's almost up. On holiday shopping and so are amazing deals at Amazon. You'll save so much on holiday gifts for the kitchen, like appliances and cookware.

[Anthony Nielsen]

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[Rod Pyle]

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[Anthony Nielsen]

Carve up the turkey with surgical precision.

[Rod Pyle]

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[Tarek]

Awesome.

[Rod Pyle]

All right, what we've all been waiting for. Space toys. My bells fel off. I guess that's better than if it was spelled differently. Let's talk about space toys. So I'LL start this time over there. If you're watching the video stream, there's a little green robot. Not, not the silver space girl, but the green robot. That's Big Lou, the moon robot by The Marx Toy Company. $9.95 in 1965. He is made a very cheap price. Was that like 100 bucks in today's? Yeah, probably.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Thanks, dad. Well, thanks, Dad. I think you're up there. Yeah, it was a fair amount of money. Came in a five foot high box. It was a remarkable thing for a kid just because of his scale. So he had blinking lights in his eyes, a whistle in his forehead. I never understood that. A gun sight in his forehead where a man's breasts would be. He had two little dart guns which I found. Very Austin Powers of him. Of course, there was no Austin Powers then he had a. If you can see, if you watch the video, his arm is up on the astronaut shoulder. That's a grabbing claw. Has a little wire and a spring. He had a bell with a Morse code table above it in a hole in his back. He had a hole through his midsection with a squirt gun and two rubber dart launchers, missile launchers on his feet. There was no motor. Oh, and a small crank at the back of his head with a tiny phonograph record. I kid you not that you would crank. It would go, my name is Big Lou. I am yours to command. That was it. So I played with that thing to death. And of course, being styrene, you know, stuff, stuff broke within the first couple of months. That's broke, dad, fix it. But it was a cool space toy. And probably up there with what was the other one. I had a space, a moon truck. Now, mind you, when I was a little boy, they were just kind of inventing plastic. We had just come out of the Bakelite days, which was this baked plastic light thing that was so brittle, if you looked at it crooked, it snapped in half. So early plastic toys were not particularly ambitious. And if they had something electrical in them, it was pretty astonishing. And of course, being a kid, it's like, change the batteries. What? So every toy you had within a year was ruined because it had battery leakage in it. And you'd pick it up and ah, Mommy, my eyes burn because you got battery acid on your face. But those were my two memories. And then I got into rockets and all that stuff later. Tarik, I'm sure you have a stirring memory for space toys, huh? Were those those pictures you sent? Oh, no, I'm Sorry, I forgot. Yes, but the big one. Boy, talk about getting swept up in the show. But the big one is Major Matt Mason, Mattel's man in space. So this is a little. One of the first action figures ever actually made out of rubber. And it's an astronaut that was probably about 5 inches tall, had bendy joints, the arms and legs were just wire, so of course they broke within six months. Had a little plastic helmet with a visor that flipped up and down. Then all these accessories. So here's.

[Tarek]

Look at this.

[Rod Pyle]

Here's the four astronauts. Matt Mason's on the left, Jeff Long is on the right. He was. This is Mattel creating an African American astronaut in 1968, which they were ahead of NASA. Yeah, like, way ahead of NASA. And here's Callisto. When they weren't selling enough of the astronaut dolls by themselves, they got into aliens and it got stupid. And there's another alien there, if you can switch. Anthony. Captain Laser. So this is interesting. Completely out of scale with the others. Hard plastic, where they were soft plastic. Turns out I later found it was some Japanese toy line that went out of business that Mattel bought and said, hey, cynically, hey, we can just sell this. Those little idiots with our Matt Mason stuff. Stuff. But for the first couple of years, Matt Mason was kind of following the NASA moon prescription. Here he is on his moon sled. Wow. So, you know, if you were into the hard NASA stuff, it's like, yeah, this is pretty close. They had a space station, which you're looking at now. That's a moon crawler.

[Anthony Nielsen]

That's neat.

[Tarek]

But then it got in Barbie Dreamhouse. But like on. In space.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Then it got into aliens and tentacles and all that kind of stuff, and it kind of lost its way. So that doll right there, if you were to find it, it today, in very good condition, would cost you about 600 bucks.

[Tarek]

Wow.

[Rod Pyle]

Should I look at the commercial? Yes. So let's. Anthony, thank you for reminding me of the cues I gave you. Here's a commercial from my childhood. Meet Major Matt Mason, Mattel's man in space. Bravest astronaut yet. He lives on the moon we may all be there soon. And he gets around with a jet until some sergeant Storm in his red uniform Major Matt worked all alone now together they face the dangers of space and seek to learn the unknown. The machines that they drive seem almost alive as they transport the adventurous pair the new Astro Track whips through the black and Firebolt even goes where they meet Captain Laser. His space gear ablaze with Energy stored from the stars. He's out of focus, it's true. But a friendly one who spent his boyhood on.

[Tarek]

My gosh, he's so huge.

[Rod Pyle]

Exciting place. The world of space. As all the astronauts know, this world is swell. It's made by Mattel. With it, how far can you go?

[Tarek]

My little Rod would like that.

[Rod Pyle]

So in, in that era, many commercials are shot in 16 millimeter. They look like it. That was all handheld, as you can see. The ads were horrible. And the reason you see the kid is because I think only just a couple years before the FTC had passed a law saying, look, you can't show these toys doing stuff that they can't really do. Because before that toy ads, you know, they were taking off and flying through the air and all this stuff. And the ftc, Federal Trade Commission said, yeah, they don't do that. You gotta show the kid holding it with a string. So suddenly ads got very lame. But to compare the production value of that to today, it's like Ant's kid could do that without waking up from his slumbers.

[Anthony Nielsen]

You know, the first thing I thought, pretty good commercial. And even when I saw commercials back then, you know, it wasn't in 60s, but just in the 80s seeing similar style commercials. I look at it and I'm like, ooh, that kid's rich. Did you see the set? And it's like, this is their room. And like, dang, that kid loaded.

[Tarek]

Someone on the discord mentioned that in the background you see the silhouettes of all the parents having a party in the background.

[Rod Pyle]

Thank God those little suckers aren't in this room. All right, who wants to go next? Thank you, Anthony, for reminding me of the very cues I gave you and forgot about.

[Tarek]

You reminded me of my first big space toy that I had for like a hot minute when I was a little kid because my parents for Christmas bought me, or Santa bought me. I think it was my parents. I think you want to keep the big one from you, not from Santa.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Can I tell you something there, Mr. Tari?

[Tarek]

Oh, sorry, yes.

[Anthony Nielsen]

From Santa. From parents. That's usually the same.

[Tarek]

No, no, Santa's real. Santa's real. What are you talking about? Don't, don't ruin it. Don't ruin it. Vanilla. No. Santa's little.

[Rod Pyle]

That wasn't Santa, Tarek. That was your weird Uncle Harry.

[Tarek]

No, I don't. And Anthony, I forgot to put this in the, in the rundown. But it was, it was the Transformers Omega supreme. And, and for the 80s kids out there, that you might. Someone said that. W says that you destroyed his childhood aunt with that Santa comic. But the Omega supreme is a space base. He is a rocket, a giant rocket from the planet Cybertron that ends up transporting all of the Autobots back to Earth. He's like their big space rocket. And there's a train that would drive around Omega supreme and. And then the. The main robot would be in the center. And then if you wanted to convert him from the giant rocket set into a robot, you would transform them all, and it would be amazing. Right? And I was so excited because all I wanted was Omega Supreme. First of all, his name. There you got a picture of him. His name.

[Rod Pyle]

He looks like a roadkill bumblebee.

[Tarek]

Oh, my gosh. He's amazing. Look how awesome that is.

[Rod Pyle]

A cartoon character.

[Tarek]

You just missed my whole thing about how he was a transformer from the planet Cybertron.

[Rod Pyle]

I was taking a small nap, so, you know, when Tarek gets excited, I just hear this.

[Tarek]

There it is. Look, look. Look at this. This picture.

[Rod Pyle]

Wow.

[Tarek]

Look at it. Right? Isn't that spectacular? This is. It's this giant rocket with its own mission control base. And then this track around the rocket that a little kind of tank drives around. And it was motorized. And when we bought it, when I opened it up, like, it wouldn't go like the. The track. The little car was broken.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay. Excuse me. How. How tall is that thing?

[Tarek]

Oh, I don't know. Like, it's not. It's. It's. It looks huge here, but it's like maybe two. Two feet tall, something like that.

[Rod Pyle]

So I just want to point out, my toy is bigger than yours. Okay.

[Tarek]

We can't get through an episode, you know, But I just. I thought that this was like the most sci fi thing I had ever seen with the tracks on the back, like wings, and he has, like a claw in one hand, which is the crane from the. The actual rocket base and this big blaster arm on the other. And. And it was just awesome. And he had a little figure that would go in the little tank that drove around.

[Rod Pyle]

So it transforms into the base.

[Tarek]

It transforms into the base? Yeah, it's the base. And then it transforms into the giant. The giant robot. So, I mean, it's absolutely. Yeah, it was. It was. It was great. And. And I. And because the tank didn't go, we took it back to exchange it for another one. And unfortunately, they didn't have any. They didn't have anything at all to be able. And they weren't gonna get more. So we ended up Bringing home the GI Joe headquarters base. And then I played with that like almost every day for like the next 10 years, so until I got into high school. So this was, this was my big space toy that got away, I should say, for me. You know what? I'm a grown up person now, Rod. I could.

[Rod Pyle]

And I could buy you a grown up person now. But you're still shedding crocodile tears over this aunt. I'm suspecting your first like toy of greatness was like a leather football or something, right? Probably not a space toy.

[Anthony Nielsen]

No, not even close. Not even close.

[Rod Pyle]

Lump of coal.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Actually, I believe it was just. Just a bicycle. A BMX bicycle that I had wanted.

[Rod Pyle]

Whoa. Yeah, that's a pretty good gift.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah, that was because I went outside.

[Rod Pyle]

Excuse me.

[Tarek]

It hurts right here.

[Rod Pyle]

We got, we got. Back in my day, we got basically locked out of the house at 8 in the morning. It's like, don't come back till dark. Okay. I'm just saying, this pasty complexion spent a lot of time out in the sun. Earnings get skin cancer, honestly. Okay, sorry, go ahead. So you spent time outside chasing around bags of air because that's what you do.

[Anthony Nielsen]

No, no, no, no, no, no. I think that the only space related thing that I can remember getting like early was Transformers Skywarp.

[Rod Pyle]

It was a toy Skyborg. Skywarp Warp.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Sky warp.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, of course.

[Anthony Nielsen]

The southern draw coming out there. But the one thing I do remember things I didn't know what the heck a Transformers was and. But I was glad to have it. And turning it into a robot from a, like a. I think it was like a Tomcat jet. Was it a jet?

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah. It turned into a Tomcat jet. And then going out and playing with it with the other kids in the apartment complex and whatnot and found out another kid had one and his was called Thundercracker. And I was jealous. That's like the, the memory that I have around that I was like, oh, Thundercracker sounds way cooler. It was the exact same thing, just a different color and a whole much cooler name.

[Rod Pyle]

We can call you anything you want.

[Tarek]

Those were like, those are the, the Skywarp Thundercracker. And, and those were, those were like the, the, the, the main Decepticon planes.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay, Try and keep your inner geek under wraps.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Wait a minute, cuz.

[Tarek]

Yeah, he's talking about.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, it's not called this Week in space. Okay, Anthony, you're up, man. So I did have like those S's model rocket kits that we launched a few times. Smelled like eggs, right?

[Tarek]

Uhhuh. Speaking of that.

[Rod Pyle]

That in the morning. Yeah. But also there was a video game that I was playing on the imac as a kid called Escape Velocity. And it was, it was like an open ended. I don't know how to describe it, but it's basically like you could either, you know, do space combat or like merchant stuff. Like you could buy, you know, resources on one planet and, you know, take it to another planet and you.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Han Solo.

[Rod Pyle]

These graphics look like they're from 1984. How old are you?

[Tarek]

Anthony, when he was a kid on imac.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Remember when imac was like, like the.

[Tarek]

Most amazing comparison thing?

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. What color was your imac? Well, we had the. The original blue Bondi blue. The Bondi blue, yeah. Yeah. So like this must have been like mid-90s. And you could also, like, if. If you're really, you know, nerdy, you could like modify your own sprites and.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Like, you know, modify the game stuff.

[Rod Pyle]

But like, see, you could like, it was really cool. You could buy upgrades for your ship, you know, like some torpedo launchers and whatnot. You could see it was definitely inspired by Star Trek.

[Tarek]

It looks very Privateer, like, like that game Privateer where you can do all that stuff too. So. Yeah, that's awesome.

[Rod Pyle]

It was a lot of fun. So I had forgotten until somebody mentioned Estes, that I also got an Estes model rocket when I was about 8, the alpha, which was I think the only one they sold at the time.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

And it was before they had the plastic fins all. It so basically gave you a cardboard tube, a sheet of balsa wood, and a wooden nose cone. And you had to go out and buy paint and glue. And I spent probably a month sanding the fins to a perfect bezel bevel, and sanding the nose cone and painting it, priming it and painting it again and all this junk. And I went, dad, can we go fly the rocket? They don't do that around here. It's like, well, then why did you buy it for me? So it sat on the shelf for the next 15 years. And then finally, when I was an adult, more or less working in production, we started going down to Miles Square park because had dad bothered to check. No offense, dad. No offense, dad, but you could go down Orange county and fly anything you wanted. And the weird thing was Miles Square park, which, hey, guess what, It's a mile on each axis is filled with weeds. So we go down there in the middle of the summer and you're looking at this thing that spits fire out of its back end to get in the sky. And you're looking at these acres of dry weeds and I'm thinking, this is not a good mix. And sure enough, second or third launch. And at this point, I graduated to just buying massive boxes of rocket parts and just throwing stuff together. We flew salad colanders, we flew turkey drumsticks, we flew Skyrocket Barbie strapped to a rocket. Because following instructions isn't particularly fun. But making stuff up is. Especially if you don't know whether it's going to fly horizontally or vertically or what. But of course, the third or fourth launch, a fire started, so we had to go out and try stamp it out with our feet. But very fond memories of my delayed emergence as a rocketeer.

[Tarek]

Can I do a show and tell or do we have to break? I have a quick, quick thing to show everybody.

[Rod Pyle]

What's it rated?

[Tarek]

No, it's like. What do you mean rated? Rated E for everyone. Like the rest of the show.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay, just checking. Anthony, do we have another ad or are we clear? Oh yeah, we do. You said that we do have another ad, but we. Let's get out of the way before Tarek's big reveal because I want to be ready for this, actually. Pay attention.

[Tarek]

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[Rod Pyle]

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[Tarek]

All right, all right, all right. I want to show off because I got this. You. So we were talking about Estes rockets. And you can see. I don't know if you can see behind me, but I have my, my, here's my, my SLS rocket right here. My old. This is not Estes, but this is like the first SpaceX version of the model rocket that they put out. And then way off in the corner, you're gonna see the big mess. I think that everyone, everyone probably knows about it already, but way off in the corner is. Can I, can I do it? Oh, let's see if I can do it. Right there, that big, that big black box is, is the, the new SpaceX rocket. I haven't launched it yet because I'm afraid I might break it. But, but in this box, you can see it says it's from Estes. I opened it from the bottom, and I've actually not looked at it yet. But I'm really excited about this one, too, because, like Rod was saying, there used to be a space shuttle.

[Rod Pyle]

Here comes the unboxing.

[Tarek]

Yeah, here it is. There used to be a space shuttle where you could launch a NASA space shuttle. And here it is. Here it does. You see all the. Oh, there it is right there.

[Rod Pyle]

Wow. Okay. All right. Okay, now wait a minute. This is cheating. That's already built.

[Tarek]

I know, I know. That's the thing, is that now they come already, which it kind of takes some of it. But what they do, Rod, is that they release this version here for, like, us that want to just grab it, launch it, and then the shuttle will come off and fly back. It's made out of foam, it looks like. So it'll glide back to Earth and then the nose cone pops off from the, the, the external tank right there, and that's where the parachute is going to come out. And this is for what? This is for 183 meters. 600ft. Feet is what it says that it'll. It'll fly. And it's got a little nice diagram on the back. Now, they also make use. They also make a. They also make like, like buildable ones. It says C5 to C.6 engines, Rod.

[Rod Pyle]

So wow, 600ft off of that. That's.

[Tarek]

Yeah, yeah. And so, so like the, the, the, the, the reason that I, I had this, I was saving it because I haven't launched it. We usually try to wait until the baseball season is over to go to the, the, the school diamonds to launch from, but I haven't, I haven't had.

[Rod Pyle]

Have a little league story.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Is that what it is?

[Tarek]

Say it again, Ant, because you didn't.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Want all the baseball fans laughing at you.

[Tarek]

Oh, no, no. Well, so the last time that we went, I took my Blue Origin rocket, which also comes. They make two versions of that too. They make the, the hard plastic one and they, they make like a build it your own set. And I had the, the, the pre, the pre built one and I was using underpowered engines for it. B motors instead of the C motors and it didn't go high enough, so it augered back in where all the kids were playing soccer. And when I realized that the parachute wasn't going to come out, I just started shouting, get out of the way, get out of the way. And then pow, right in the field. And then of course it pops back. But it survived. It's a really hardy rocket. That version is really good.

[Anthony Nielsen]

You mentioned. The one that you just showed was pre built. But have they done some market research to say, you know what, there's no sense in us having it all just, just pieces where the person has to put it together themselves or. Well, what's the reason behind that?

[Tarek]

Seems like they build them for, for two different audiences. And so, so for, for, for, for Blue Origin in particular, they, they released two different versions. So there's like a build it yourself version that's a little bit more expensive and then there's like the, the, the kit one itself and they're, and so they, they, they build it so that people that maybe don't have the patients or if they have like kids who just want to go out and launch ready, they make it so that they can just grab and go. The SLS is like that too. The one drawback from the SLS rocket that I have, because it's a very beautiful model, is that you don't build anything yourself. It's all pre made. You put some stickers on. I think that's about it.

[Rod Pyle]

So that's kind of interesting. I wonder what, what Ant brought up if there was some market research and not just with model rockets, but across, across the toy industry that says, yeah, hey, kids don't like to do mechanical hand eye stuff anymore. They want to play games.

[Tarek]

But like for, for the Saturn 5 for example, I think you can buy two different ones because I also have a pre built Saturn.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, but you know who's building, who's building those Saturn fives? We see it online all the time in places like space hipsters. They're guys my age, they're not kids. No, they weren't. And they're sure not it.

[Tarek]

My close friends.

[Rod Pyle]

Wait, Anthony's got something. I was just saying like there wasn't a whole lot of building so like might as well get it ready. It's like you're just like kind of gluing the top on and the fins.

[Anthony Nielsen]

It's like oh, okay, so it's 10 pieces.

[Rod Pyle]

There's not, there's not a whole lot to them, right?

[Tarek]

Yeah, well for the, for the ones that you build, it really depends because they have different skill levels.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, if you build, you can, you can get into stuff that's like level 10 where you've got. I mean I built a glider once that I just designed in my own head, which is never a good place to spend time. It was probably five feet tall with about a four foot wingspan. And I bought like a foam model of a 747, just cut the dickens out of it and a big shipping tube for the rocket. And I had. The wings were on wooden dowel hinges with enormous rubber bands going up to the front and a rubber band holding them together below. So when the parachute charge fired, it burned through that rubber band. The wings were supposed to flip forward and it would glide back. And it kind of did for a second before it went vertical and augered in auger. But you know, that's the thing. I don't expect these suckers to fly more than once. And I did, I did have one that was a masterful design, if I do say so myself, called the Batrock. So it was about five feet tall, about three and a half inches diameter. So it had a main tube about a foot tall which held the engines that used 3D engines I think. Then two wooden struts going up to another tube section at the top with a very large nose cone. And I had a five foot diameter parachute that I had taken marking pens. I'm giving up on this thing.

[Tarek]

The holidays don't believe in you, Rod. We still do. I believe.

[Rod Pyle]

So I made a five foot Batman signal like the searchlight thing. And I have to say when that thing went up and deployed, it worked perfectly and the whole rocket range stopped Everybody went whoa. And they started clapping. It was my finest moment other than being with you guys. Now, have we heard about Anthony and his toys? Space toys? Yeah. Well, I mentioned legos earlier than I did the video game. Okay, so that's it. Okay, that's good. That works. Tarik, you were about telling her the story and I stopped.

[Tarek]

No, I was just going to say that because I actually spent a lot of high school building model rockets and not launching them because I didn't have anyone to go launch them with. And also my launcher broke, so I would just build them and like some of them, like they and Anthony, some of them were really difficult. Like there's like a Starfighter one where all the pieces are super intricate. And then what we didn't talk about is these pre made ones in the, in the back end of them, they have like a slot where you just put the motor in and you screw like a holder to hold it in place. And on those ones that are really detailed, you actually have to build that holder yourself and hope that you assembled it correctly so that the motor will stay inside that and the glue will hold it in the, in the, in the tube enough that it will take the whole rocket off and not just like launch straight out. Because that has happened to me before where I forgot to glue it in and then it just takes off. You know, I had a friend of mine who bought the scaled Mercury, which I also have in the basement. I haven't built it yet, but the Mercury capsule and it's quite large and it's very intricate. And not only do you have to build it, like I'm just saying, to all the specifications, make sure that the fins are mounted not just straight, but also in the right configuration so it doesn't spin or twirl. But then you have to paint it so that it looks accurate because it's all like unpainted and unfinished so you want it to look pretty. And I just found out today from Zyla Foxland, the YouTuber creator Rocketeer. She does high altitude rockets. She's the one that basically launched a Christmas tree on a suborbital rocket. She's launched like a giant pumpkin, people and whatnot. And she just has created what is in effect an Estes kit for high altitude rocketry. So you can buy a kit for 250 and design and build your own high powered rocket and then try to go get certified for that. I'm very excited about that. So.

[Rod Pyle]

So I just want to point out Tarek is constantly grinding on me about Time and so forth. But when he gets talking. I'm sorry, at 65 minutes, I'm sor. I'm going to close the toy chapter by just saying one thing we did. And we were adults, so we probably weren't supposed to be playing with toys at this point. But that's never stopped me friend Gary Hutzel, who was. I had met when I was in TV and I worked for him over at Star Trek. So he was a very clever visual effects guy. When we were launching these rockets, I built this physical launch platform that had flame deflectors and launch towers and all kinds of, you know, blinky lights and stuff just for fun. He used his Radio Shack, I think it was a Trash 80 computer, and designed a launch sequencer so it would automatically launch the rocket. So it had a digital countdown thing. And then. Sorry about that. And then it would close the relay off the rocket would go. So he had like three different voices and all this other stuff that we thought was very clever. But then he added a randomizer, which is, of course, what we always use. You'd press the button to go, 10, nine, three, five, four, seven, fire. And off it would go. And that was just too much fun. And the dads around us didn't seem to approve too much. You guys are irresponsible. Oh, we did fly one time out at Hanson Dam, which is another legitimate rocket range. We were flying out of there and probably an eighth of a mile away from us are these guys flying their RC airplanes. And I don't know if you've ever been around them, but they get very serious. So they're wearing jumpsuits with patches and they've got ranks and they have a commander and a lieutenant commander and all this. These are grown men, you know.

[Tarek]

Don't yuck on, young man.

[Rod Pyle]

Come on. If you're selling insurance and you want to get it. Sorry, I don't mean to offend anybody, but these guys are ridiculous. So one of the trim ramrod straight guys comes striding over like a robot and he says this. Hey, hey. I said, what? He said, are you the rocket guys? And I said, yeah, you're endangering our aircraft. I said, what are you talking about? We're launching over this way. Well, you know, we have free range to fly where we want. And your rockets are like missiles. And of course, the second he says that, me being me, I'm like, oh, that's a good idea. So after that, we started aiming for them. Yeah.

[Tarek]

Oh, no.

[Rod Pyle]

They didn't have guidance systems, but you could still kind of sort of lean them over that direction. If you were fortunate, you might have a midair collision. And, you know, their. Their little toy planes cost like up to $5,000 because they're fan jets and all this kind of stuff. So I get that they were a little irked at my $3 scratch built death missile, but, you know, move, move. Your setup don't make.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah, that I would. Aimed at them too, because, well, they're just.

[Rod Pyle]

They're being a little anal. You know, it's like, come on, these.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Are space and all these are our ho.

[Tarek]

Then how. How old were you, Rod? How old are you when this was going on?

[Rod Pyle]

28.

[Tarek]

28.

[Rod Pyle]

All right, well, you expect me to be grown up even now, just saying. Give me a break. What was the Snap? Snap Tight Space shuttle.

[Tarek]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, we didn't talk about that. I had a whole list of things. The Snap Tight was. Was one of the first models I ever built, but I wasn't allowed. I think I've told you all this before. I was not allowed to use models that required glass glue.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. What was with your mother? And she just knew you were gonna coat your nostrils with the glue.

[Tarek]

One of my favorite models I ever had. We were at Pick and save, and it was $20 in like the 80s, early 80s.

[Rod Pyle]

Because when I'm thinking quality toys, I gotta pick and save.

[Tarek]

Well, hey, all right, all right. I don't judge anyone. I mean, that's what we did, okay? We went to pick and save to shop, and they had one. One paper tab and slot, space shuttle and shuttle carrier aircraft. And it was like four feet long. It was huge, this thing. And I loved it. I wanted to glue it together so that I could hang it up above. And my mom said no, I wasn't allowed to use the glue. So I. I could use.

[Rod Pyle]

So you just keep licking all the pieces.

[Tarek]

I used. I used cellophane tape and I taped it together and then I hung it up and it hung up on the ceiling feeling for years until we moved. And then, you know, here's one of.

[Rod Pyle]

Those stories of heartbreak.

[Tarek]

No.

[Rod Pyle]

My parents threw out my cardboard toy. It was awful.

[Tarek]

I will. It's a good lesson that if you're going to move house, move the stuff you like yourself is all I'm gonna say. Because when I started asking about them and thought later on it was just like, I don't know where that stuff went. Obviously it got thrown out, you know, so. So now. Now I know.

[Rod Pyle]

I guess they expected you to outgrow it.

[Tarek]

But no, the snap types, the snap tights shuttle was, like, in the same vein. I had a little table.

[Rod Pyle]

So the great thing about making models. And again, as I pointed out, my parents kind of had a general idea that I was alive and existed somewhere, but it kind of ended there. So, of course, we had testers, airplane glue. And of course, it was the incredible, incredibly toxic stuff. And you work in a little closed room, and it's three inches from your face, it's thinking, oh, this model looks pretty good. And you've got one wing in the side because you're seeing green elephants, you know. Well, I will tell you, like, why did nobody think that was a bad idea to be inhaling cryonosulfates or whatever they were?

[Tarek]

I will tell you that I got. I got a. A, A model of the Star Trek 6 NCC1701, a space shuttle, which is the best one that they've ever built, or Star Trek 5. For me, it's the best one they've ever made. But the Galileo, that's what they ever made. It's a revel model of the Starship Enterprise.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay, because I thought you were gonna. You're gonna try and bend me to. Is the best Enterprise of the best movie.

[Tarek]

And it was definitely. This was great. But, but, but I. And by then I had just decided, you know, I was allowed to use contact cement. And I got it half built. Half built. And then the nacelle that goes, the little arm, it snapped because I wasn't careful. And now I can never put it down together. And all those parts are still half built in the closet at my parents.

[Rod Pyle]

My mother's house, because enough glue will fix anything.

[Tarek]

You'd think that it would. And yet I was so careful painting the. The saucer, too. I was so bummed. So bummed.

[Rod Pyle]

You know, people that follow instructions just drive me bad. So sorry. I mean, for ikea, I get it. Because they're always one screw short, so you better follow directions up to that point. But when it comes to that kind of stuff, stuff, it's like, why would you want to follow directions when you can just start finding parts in the kitchen drawer and add things to make it?

[Tarek]

I'll tell you what I'll do. Ant. Ant and Anthony. There you go. That's the one. That's the one. Anthony. I will find that model, if it's still in the house, and I'll get some new glue, you know, because I'm sure there have been wonders in the last 40 years of glue technology. And we'll see if we can put it back together again. So.

[Rod Pyle]

All right, that's fair. Hey, we could do that as an episode. We'll sit and work with you to put it back together together, and then Ant can just rumble over and over in your ear. Well, Micah does a crafting corner.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Stream every month. You could join them and just like, wow, what an idea. I got a lot of Legos with pity in his eyes because we got.

[Tarek]

A lot of space Legos.

[Rod Pyle]

Ant, did you ever do the model airplane thing?

[Anthony Nielsen]

I did not do model model airplanes, but I did do a couple model cars. And you guys talking about this stuff right now. This is making me think back and I'm like, yeah, I should go to Walmart or somewhere right now and go grab a model. Because it was so freaking soothing.

[Rod Pyle]

It's therapeutic, huh?

[Anthony Nielsen]

Just to sit there with the light and try to put everything together and then getting down to painting and all of that. I. I really did enjoy that back in the days.

[Rod Pyle]

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[Anthony Nielsen]

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[Rod Pyle]

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[Anthony Nielsen]

No, you don't want to do that, bro.

[Rod Pyle]

Yes, I do.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Look here. When we started developing this show, I remember having meetings with said leadership and was like, yeah, I help out, but I don't give a crap about. I was straight up. And you know, I enjoy working with you all, but the stuff that I had heard about space never really made any sense to me, never interest me Me, and I'm glad to have met you all because you at least make it somewhat interesting. But in the larger scheme of things I just don't care. I hear about all of these millions of dollars these couple of private companies are spending to launch this way out away from the planet. And all I think about is that money could have been dumped into cancer research, stuff like that.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, this old thing again, you know.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Or that money could have been gone. It could have gone because I'm not seeing what we're getting here on our green grass or brown grass or wherever we are on this planet. I'm not seeing how it's benefiting us right now. Yes, we can have different technologies developed and whatnot that we, you know, could use down the road. But when I walk through dagum San Francisco or here in Santa Rosa and see all the issues that all they need is some money to at least try to resolve said issues and then turn on some newscast of this rocket was launched into space just as a test and it costed a gazillion dollars. That stuff bugs me, you know.

[Rod Pyle]

So this is a classic conversation which we. It deserves an episode of its own. Yeah, but the return. So just going back to Apollo follow which but this is, this holds true pretty much moving forward. The return for each dollar invested just in raw cash terms to the national economy was between 16 and $25. So 1:24 ratio. Then when you start looking at the specific spin offs cancer research and wound healing and different pharmaceuticals and stuff, it's a really compelling conversation. Yeah, but in the bigger, bigger conversation there was a time in the 60s when NASA was funding more education in the country than the Department of Education was and the as a driver. Yeah. So it's at this point they're working with 1/2 of 1% of the federal budget. And yet as a driver of technology and research and education and so forth, the numbers are really compelling and especially when you go overseas. So when I went down to Ecuador, when I went to about a year ago, Norway, other places, people there think we're crazy. They think NASA's the greatest thing that's ever happened and they can't wait to come work for that agency. So where I'm going with that is the amount of inspiration it gives young people. Except you. ANT is really, it's kind of astonishing to me because I knew I was into it because I'm a space geek, but just in general, so it's a longer conversation. I don't mean to bury your point because it is a valid Point. But honestly, if I was going to point at something, you know, it's very. There's an incredible value of the inspiration it gives a country to achieve something like a lunar landing. I was going to pair something back.

[Anthony Nielsen]

On the moon.

[Rod Pyle]

I would shoot down the F35 in a heartbeat. Not needed. Overblown. Entering an era where almost everything's going to be flown by drones. Okay, let the combat pilots ride in and say, well, that's not going to happen. But this thing's coming up on a trillion dollars. We'd be living on condos on the rings of Saturn by now if we had that kind of money for space. So I can't completely disagree with what you're saying. I do think there's a misallocation and mismanagement of funds like most people do.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

But holy Christ, you know, how much do we have to spend on defense? Because China is going to find a way to get those designs and build their own anyway. So maybe we just shouldn't build it in the first place and give them the chance.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Okay, I'm sorry again. I see. When SpaceX sends one of their rockets up into the air and that thing literally comes back down by itself and lands that, that's amazing. And, and it blows my mind every time I see it because I may know two people that actually know how to parallel park their car, but we're able to do something like that, that is just outstanding. You know, but at the same time, how can we apply that technology to these people that don't know how to parallel park their car?

[Rod Pyle]

Well, but if you look at that exact rocket, you're talking about the Falcon 9 and realized that it's launching batches of 20 Starlink satellites at a time. And as Steve Jurvetson, who we've had on the show, who's an investor, heavy investor in space, this is a good thing.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Starlink's a good thing.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, and his point was how many Einstein's and Gandhi's and Mother Teresa's are out there that we're going to be able to reach with global high speed Internet bring into the educational system that we're not talking to today? And he gave me a bunch of numbers that I've forgotten about, about how many people don't have comms access even today and so forth. I thought that's a really interesting point. I'd never thought of it that way. So there's, you know, you talk about spin off benefits. I mean, besides making our full president, destroying the ozone layer as they burn up because they only have like a five year orbit life, right? Yeah, but at the rate he's replacing them, it doesn't matter. And let's remember those are controlled reengines. They don't just come back.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Back.

[Tarek]

No, but there's like, it's pollution too.

[Rod Pyle]

The pollution part. Yeah. Like if we, if we are like breaking the ozone again. Well, yeah, okay. I mean, again this is a longer conversation, but go.

[Anthony Nielsen]

I need to be back on the show again.

[Tarek]

That's right, we talk about it.

[Rod Pyle]

Go, go to a, a, a manufacturing complex in Pittsburgh or Detroit.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Right.

[Rod Pyle]

And watch that cranking out 24 hours a day, these plumes of crap. And then compare that to a rock rocket that goes, I mean maybe the.

[Tarek]

The blue origin suspended sounds a bit defensive.

[Rod Pyle]

Their orbit life is supposed to be longer, right? Like, yeah. And honestly, I mean space debris reenters every, every, every minute of every day. You know, it's, these are bigger than most, but they're parts of, of old blown up rockets, chunks of frozen fuel. There's crap coming back all the time. It's just part of the background noise. I mean compare the, that just to the methane thaw that's happening in the permafrost up in the Arctic where these enormous clasts of icy methane are now thawing in the atmosphere. And you know, it's like the farting of a billion cows all at once or something. To me that's much more of a concern.

[Tarek]

Well, you, you say that, but Starship is a methane rocket and so, so New Glenn is a methane rocket.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, but that's. Cows don't burn their farts, those rockets or like we lay fiber down once versus like shipping up, like sending up how many satellites every year to replenish them?

[Anthony Nielsen]

I don't know.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, the difference here is the reach. So when I was up in the Arctic for that month a couple of years ago, we used Iridium satellite phone and I could get, in fact I was using it to call into the show.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah, I remember.

[Rod Pyle]

And I could get like 90 something seconds and then it was start to and it was gone. Last year they went up and they finally have Starlink and they're up at 80 degrees, so they're pretty far north and it was perfect. So you know, is that important? Well, for that project it is. What I'm getting at is when you start looking at the populations that are living north and south of what are these traditionally convenient places or profitable places more importantly. So, you know, South, South America, there are places there that have trouble getting A signal certainly. Africa. Africa. There's a whole bunch of areas that aren't wired in. So you know, how many of them could afford the Starlink terminal and whatever monthly fees there are? I don't know. I would hope at some point, and I know they Talked about it, SpaceX talked about it, that they would end up, you know, gifting to certain parts of the world access to this for a certain amount of time so that people can get it done.

[Tarek]

But I mean like, to, to Anthony's point, point, you know, they, the, the reason that you get the. I know that we're kind of really long, we probably need to wrap up soon, but like the, Hey, I got all day guys. The counter, the counterpoint, the counterpoint is, is that, you know, to Anthony's point is that yes, there's this great spinoff, people get a lot of connectivity, but these start, these satellites are flying in an intentionally low orbit to give you that connectivity, which means they die faster, which means that they have to be launched and replaced a lot faster. And this is 44,000 satellites. It's not 15, it's not 30 over time that.

[Rod Pyle]

Wait, it's not 44,000 satellites. That's nowhere close to that.

[Tarek]

Now that's, that's the final, that's the final.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, that's what he says.

[Tarek]

That's what they're targeting. They have clearance to fly that many. And so, and so, so, so, you know, you, you right now they're at like 5,000, 6,000, something like that. Something crazy. It's still crazy. And, and you can't shake a fist. You can shake, shake, shake.

[Rod Pyle]

Can't swing a dead cat without hitting satellite.

[Tarek]

What I'm trying to say is, is like there were models for stratolites that are much more sustainable that you could, you could field for longer ports of time.

[Rod Pyle]

You're talking about within the atmosphere.

[Tarek]

Within the atmosphere. And, and, and there's other options. What W in our Discord chat is saying that it is short sighted to look at Starlink and other mega constellations as the only solution. He's right.

[Rod Pyle]

No, they're right.

[Tarek]

Yeah, they're right. There's lots of other things. I'm like, but space. I think that space gives us the realm and to discuss those kinds of things.

[Rod Pyle]

And well, but if we wouldn't be.

[Tarek]

Discussing them if we didn't have, if.

[Rod Pyle]

You put up stratolites, you know, all those drones around New Jersey are going to go up and attack them because they're clearly. I got a whole lecture yesterday from.

[Tarek]

Somebody, the drones in New Jersey, from.

[Rod Pyle]

Somebody in their 20s about how those have to be extraterrestrials.

[Tarek]

And I said, excuse me, drones in New Jersey.

[Rod Pyle]

Why would extraterrestrials put navigation marker lights on their drones? Or if it's for an actor, you know, you put it in stealth mode. But instead you got blinking red and green lights.

[Tarek]

You hide in plain sight, man. You hide in plain sight.

[Rod Pyle]

This is really a holiday special because, you know.

[Tarek]

Right, yeah, well.

[Rod Pyle]

But red and green, red and green blinking lights, that's a holiday. I'm just saying, you know how like it's always like, all right, let's not talk politics at the, at the Christmas table.

[Tarek]

I'm just saying that Ron is the ones throwing a ball.

[Rod Pyle]

Drones aren't politics. I'm just saying. Aliens. Aliens.

[Anthony Nielsen]

I'll say this regarding space. My real sort of, I guess, lack of interest and just sort of slight hate or annoyance with it came more so when we started talking about trying to live on Mars. And, and I'm like, that's, that's so far away, distance wise.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, well, you're talking about Uncle Elon's fever cream, right?

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah. In, in. Unfortunately. Unfortunately.

[Tarek]

Oh, my God. Oh, please.

[Anthony Nielsen]

People listen to that dude. A lot of people listen to that dude. And so what's the trickle down effect of that? And I'm thinking, you know, this is almost nothing, not a good idea when we have so many bigger problems in our own damn backyard, you know, so, yeah, that, that's, that's why I have a beef with space. Well, but take like that.

[Rod Pyle]

So two things. One, Elon ain't private. I know he may soon become part of NASA, but he's not yet.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

But two, you know what he says is what he says, when you look at what NASA's been saying and other, other organizations that study this stuff, it's like, look, we want to do sorties to Mars. We want to do expeditions, we want to get boots on the ground, explore the planet. Planet. See if there's life there and all that. And then the general design is then we'll come home. You know, we may have a small base there someday, probably in the 2050s, blah, blah, blah. Then Elon comes along and says, yeah, I'm going to build a city there in a week. You will notice that his, the amount of money he's putting into this stuff is slowing down and the amount of government money is cranking up, of course. But that's because of Starlink and starship and going to the moon and all that. Yeah, government's not really caring about the whole Mars thing. That, that's his dream. Now. We'll see if that changes under the next administration, but at this point. But you're right, you know, he has a big voice and people pay attention to. It's like, oh, maybe we should build a city on Mars.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

And you know, if you have this conversation again, separate episode, it's a lot harder than he makes it sound. And when I interviewed Gwynne Shotwell over.

[Anthony Nielsen]

There, I realized that right now, squat about space.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, and I asked, you know, the president of SpaceX, I said, Space, so where does your commitment end? And she said, look, we're the railroad. Somebody else has to come build the town. Well, gosh, being a railroad's tough. But building the town is where you have to have enclosures that protect people from radiation. You have to have triple backup for life support systems so people don't suffocate because the air conditioning stops working. You have to figure out how to grow food. You have to figure out how to keep disease from going through there. I mean, that's the hard part. And SpaceX is saying, well, somebody else will do that. We'll just get them there. So I wouldn't worry about it too much. I think it's still a fever dream, Anthony. Why does it matter? Anthony's thinking, what matters is finishing this episode.

[Tarek]

That's what I'm thinking. It's like almost four in the afternoon here now.

[Rod Pyle]

Don't whine, Anthony.

[Tarek]

Okay.

[Rod Pyle]

That ends well. My friends, we're so glad you made it to the end. Little Tariq's Christmas is sure to be good. We'll send him a rocket made from rotten wood. So be well and be merry, our beloved listeners as we spend our holiday beneath hearths that glisteners. We'll see you in the new year with more tales to amaze and clear out your cobwebs from the holiday haze. Happy holidays to all and to all a good night. And as you leave your media Warren, please turn out the light. I want to thank everybody for joining us for episode 141, the Twiss Holiday Special. Ant, where's the. Where's the best place we should go to keep up with your efforts, I assume? Patreon? Yeah.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Yes, please and thank you. Go to antfruit.com patreon or patreon.com Antpruit I have a community there of, of folks that I love talking to every day. You can join the Patreon for free, you know, so yeah, check us out. Patreon.com antpruit but for those of us.

[Rod Pyle]

Who aren't at we could say we'd rather you not join it for free. So after you join Club Twit, you should go send money ants way so he can keep up the good works that he's doing. Anthony, do you have a webpage that we should be looking at? No, I've never asked. Fast. No, come on, don't lie. Really?

[Anthony Nielsen]

What? I'm surprised. The man's got a freaking Emmy.

[Rod Pyle]

He should social media presence.

[Anthony Nielsen]

Patreon's. Yes.

[Rod Pyle]

A Nielsen on X ant Nielsen on blue sky and Emmy.

[Anthony Nielsen]

You gotta tell.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. Oh, let's hear it. Yeah. No, I worked at forbes, I don't know, 12 years ago and we did like a local. It's a local Emmy. It's not. Not a national.

[Tarek]

It's still an Emmy, dude.

[Rod Pyle]

Hard to get. I realized you were working at Forbes and you were nine years old. That's pretty amazing. Tarik, where can we follow your your misspent time?

[Tarek]

Well, you can find [e-mail] as always this holiday season, watching the Parker solar space probe, hopefully not burn burn up in its close flyby of the sun. If you like Fortnite, if you like video games, you can find me on YouTube @spacetronplays. It's Winterfest today has landed on the Fortnite island. And so it'll be really exciting to see it because all I want for Christmas is, you know, peace on earth. And all of you. Right.

[Rod Pyle]

And Fortnite. And of course, for more dignified pursuits, you can find me at pylebooks.com [e-mail] and remember, you could always drop us a line at TwistWit TV. That's twice twit TV. We love hearing from you and we answer all our emails. As you well know, new episodes of this podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcatcher. This one will be up in a few hours, so make sure to like, subscribe and give us reviews. Good reviews. You could do whatever you want, but I'm imploring you, good reviews tell people, tell the world how great we are. So we keep doing this. Finally. Don't forget, we're counting on you to join Club Twit this holiday season. Besides supporting the network, you'll help keep us on the air and bringing you the great guests like all of us today and my horrid jokes. And you can get all the great programming with video streams on the Twit Network ad free on Club Twit as well as some extras that you can only get there for just $7 a month. That's nothing. Cost me that much to wake up in the morning morning. For a limited time you can refer new subscribers to get free time for your own club subscription, so that's a nice inducement. And you can follow the Twittech Podcast network at Twit on Twitter and on Facebook, at Twitter, TV on Instagram. Everybody, thank you for not just joining us today, but for staying with us for this very long episode. Everybody, big wave. Goodbye. Happy Holidays. See you soon. Take care. Always on the go, but still itching to play, Chumba Casino has your back. It's totally free to play, no strings attached. Dive into hundreds of thrilling casino style games like bingo, slots and Solitaire anytime and anywhere you like. With fresh new game releases dropping every week and exciting free daily login bonuses, there's always something new and fun to play. Ready to take your shot and see what you can score? Become the MVP of your own game with Chumba Casino today. No purchase necessary VGW Group Void board prohibited by law 18 TNT supply after.

[Tarek]

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[Rod Pyle]

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