This Week in Space 149: SpaceX, Moon Missions, and Killer Asteroids?

Summary

Podcast Summary: This Week in Space 149: SpaceX, Moon Missions, and Killer Asteroids?

Podcast Information:

• Title: All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio)
• Host/Author: TWiT
• Episode: This Week in Space 149: SpaceX, Moon Missions, and Killer Asteroids?
• Release Date: February 21, 2025

Hosts:

• Rod Pyle: Editor-in-Chief of Ad Astra Magazine
• Tarek Malik: Editor-in-Chief of Space.com

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1. Asteroid 2024 yr: Potential Threat and Monitoring

The episode opens with an in-depth discussion about Asteroid 2024 yr, which is predicted to make a close pass by Earth in 2032. Initially, concerns were raised about its potential impact, but as observations continue, the odds of a collision have significantly decreased.

• Size and Power: The asteroid is estimated to be between 180 to 300 feet in diameter, much larger than the Chelyabinsk meteor that caused damage in 2013. Tarek notes, “It's a lot bigger than that for people that [Chelyabinsk was] the size of a SUV.”

• Impact Odds: Over the course of observations, the asteroid's likelihood of impacting Earth has decreased from an initial 1 in 32 (3.1%) to 1 in 67, and eventually to 1 in 360. Rod emphasizes, “David Rankin of the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey says this asteroid is nothing to lose sleep over.”

• Mitigation Strategies: Both hosts agree that current technology, such as the DART mission, has proven our capability to deflect such threats if necessary. Rod humorously adds, “I actually deflected it in a bar stove. My favorite city to Milan,” highlighting the absurdity of the situation before focusing on serious mitigation efforts.

• Scientific Monitoring: Tarek highlights NASA’s ongoing efforts, stating, “They have this, this mass of water and hydrogel... they're gonna… that campaign starts in March.” The use of advanced telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope is crucial, despite recent budget cuts, to ensure accurate monitoring and prediction of asteroid paths.

2. NASA’s Budget Cuts: Impact on Space Telescopes

A significant portion of the discussion centers around proposed 20% budget cuts to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Hubble, and Chandra Space Telescopes.

• Background: Tarek explains, “They have to keep it away from the grants because they award something on the order of 60 million in grants to fund research on the telescope itself.” These cuts are slated to take effect in October unless intervened.

• Consequences: Reduced funding means fewer operations and potential delays in scientific discoveries. Rod questions the rationale behind cutting funds for missions that are still highly productive: “But Tom Brown and some of the other scientists, they're saying this is a mission that hasn't even finished its primary phase yet.”

• Expert Opinions: Tarek voices concerns about the long-term impact, “These people that are getting laid off... they got to try to find them to hire them back because they didn't. Lay off too many people.”

• Current Status: While NASA assures compliance with budget directives, the implications for future research and technological advancements remain a topic of concern. The hosts agree that maintaining funding for these observatories is crucial for continued scientific breakthroughs.

3. Moon Missions: Firefly Aerospace vs. ispace

The race to the Moon is heating up with private companies Firefly Aerospace and ispace making significant strides.

• Firefly Aerospace: Rod reports, “Firefly, this relatively small company, really knocked one out of the park with this first CLPS mission,” referring to their Blue Ghost Moon lander currently in lunar orbit. Scheduled to land on March 2, Firefly aims to deploy 10 experiments in Mare Crisium.

• Japanese ispace: In contrast, the Japanese company ispace launched the Resilience lander on the same Falcon rocket as Firefly. Though successful in its lunar flyby, Resilience faces challenges in its landing attempts. Rod adds, “Resilience takes a lot longer to get to the moon than Blue Ghost,” highlighting the competitive nature of these missions.

• Technological Advancements: Both companies are leveraging advancements in rocket technology to enhance their landing capabilities. Tarek muses about the potential for point-to-point transportation systems, speculating on SpaceX’s long-term visions: “This is the beginnings of some kind of Falcon point to point transportation system?”

• Future Prospects: The hosts express optimism about the increasing number of private lunar missions, noting that these efforts pave the way for more ambitious projects, including sustained human presence on the Moon.

4. SpaceX’s Bahamas Endeavor: Launching and Landing Rights

A groundbreaking move by SpaceX involves securing launching and landing rights in the Bahamas.

• Strategic Location: Rod questions the choice of the Bahamas, pondering Elon Musk’s motivations: “But why the Bahamas? And why... when he could just be offshore. So is he really thinking of launching from there?”

• Operational Benefits: Tarek explains that landing rockets in the Bahamas allows SpaceX to access a wider variety of orbital inclinations, expanding their portfolio for diverse mission requirements: “They can burn a little bit longer, land basically kind of where they are over, and reach a wider variety of orbital inclinations.”

• Sustainability Concerns: However, questions arise about the logistics of retrieving and reusing rockets from the Bahamas. Tarek speculates on potential systems for rotation and return trips, considering SpaceX’s extensive fleet: “They could set up some kind of rotating delivery system… bringing them back over time like they kind of do now.”

• Vision for the Future: The hosts entertain the possibility of revolutionary transportation methods, envisioning a future where SpaceX’s advancements could redefine global travel: “Could this be the beginning so that I don't have to fly for two days to get to the other side of the world?”

5. Elon Musk and the International Space Station (ISS) Deorbit Plan

A controversial topic emerges around Elon Musk’s proposal to deorbit the ISS sooner than planned.

• Proposal: Rod states, “Elon Musk wants to deorbit the ISS and I quote, as soon as possible,” suggesting Musk’s ambition to expedite humanity’s journey to Mars by removing the ISS.

• Cost Implications: The ISS operation costs approximately $3 billion per year, and Musk argues that reallocating these funds could accelerate Mars missions: “Instead they have to keep that landing or it could be all she wrote.”

• NASA’s Existing Plans: Tarek counters by highlighting that NASA had already planned to deorbit the ISS by 2030, with SpaceX contracted to handle the task: “There is already a plan to deorbit the space station and it is to deorbit the space station by 2030.”

• Political Undertones: The discussion touches on potential political motivations behind Musk’s push, with Rod noting, “It feels like a smear campaign... beating on NASA for this just feels a little disingenuous.”

• Safety and Logistics: Concerns are raised about the operational readiness and safety implications of Musk’s approach versus NASA’s structured timeline: “We're not ready. We don't have bulletproof life support systems that can last for the entire trip out and back.”

• Conclusion: Both hosts agree that while Musk’s vision is ambitious, the existing plans prioritize safety, international partnerships, and sustainability, making any abrupt changes potentially disruptive.

6. Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and AI Integration

The search for alien civilizations continues to evolve with the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in processing vast astronomical data.

• Project Overview: Rod introduces a project with a lengthy acronym, “Cosmic Talk about tortured acronyms”, collaborating with the Very Large Array (VLA) to seek Highly Focused Radio Transmissions that could indicate alien civilizations.

• AI’s Role: Tarek highlights how AI streamlines data analysis, making the search more efficient: “But sorting through this data is very time-consuming. So a project called Cosmic… has been looking into this with AI.”

• Results: Currently, no signals of interest have emerged from the efforts, but the hosts remain hopeful: “No real results. Nothing like the wow signal of years gone by.”

• Educational Impact: Tarek emphasizes the dual benefit of SETI projects in training the next generation of radio astronomers, ensuring sustained expertise: “They are using it to teach a new generation of radio astronomers, high school students and whatnot, how to actually do the science.”

• Future Prospects: The hosts express optimism that continued advancements in AI will enhance the chances of detecting extraterrestrial signals, laying the groundwork for future discoveries.

7. Radiation Protection in Deep Space: Innovations in Hydrogels

Addressing one of the most significant challenges in deep space travel, the hosts delve into radiation protection advancements using 3D-printed hydrogels.

• Current Challenges: Rod explains the limitations of existing radiation shielding materials like aluminum, which can produce secondary radiation particles: “Aluminum is bad because when a higher energy particle hits it, it can spall and actually create more particles.”

• Hydrogel Solution: The episode highlights a breakthrough—3D-printed hydrogels that can line spacecraft pressure vessels and hold water in a 3D structure, providing effective radiation shielding while maintaining mass efficiency: “They can use these 3D structures that hold the distribution of water static. So you've got evenly distributed protection.”

• Advantages: This technology not only offers improved radiation protection but also serves as a versatile resource for astronauts, providing water for drinking and oxygen generation at destinations: “You have water you can use when you reach a destination, if you choose to, for drinking or creating oxygen.”

• Practical Implications: Rod considers practical applications, such as using hydrogels in Starship missions to the Moon and Mars, potentially mining water on the Moon to sustain radiation protection: “You could launch a starship lined with this hydrogel to the moon, fly naked out to the moon in terms of radiation, and then on the moon, tank up with water to saturate the hydrogel if you're continuing on Mars.”

• Visual Appeal: Tarek shares his fascination with the aesthetic aspect of hydrogels, likening them to “squishy watery dinosaurs,” adding a lighthearted touch to the technical discussion.

8. NASA Workforce Reductions: Impact on Future Missions

The podcast also addresses the recent workforce reductions at NASA, which have sparked concern among the scientific community.

• Layoff Details: Rod informs listeners about the planned layoffs affecting probationary employees, with approximately 1,000 positions being terminated: “The first round was expected to be Release of all probationary employees, quote, unquote.”

• Exclusions and Implications: Notably, facilities like Goddard and the Marshall Space Flight Center were excluded from these cuts, raising questions about prioritization: “They were excluded, but there was no explanation as to why.”

• National Science Foundation Parallel: Similar cuts are happening at the National Science Foundation, where 168 people are being laid off, with a wider impact across agencies: “The National Science Foundation got a similar memo and they did lay off about 10% of its staff.”

• Long-Term Consequences: Tarek expresses concern over losing the new generation of scientists and engineers, which could hinder future advancements and leadership within NASA and associated institutions: “These are the probationary employees, these new people, this new generation that would become the future leaders at NASA… you kind of don’t want to lose those people.”

• International Competition: The timing of these cuts, amidst rising technological competition from countries like China, adds another layer of complexity: “In an era where we're concerned about Chinese technological ascendance and maybe losing the foot race back to the moon...”

• Host Reflections: Rod shares a personal anecdote about his own experience with workforce reductions at JPL, underscoring the widespread nature of these challenges within NASA.

9. Conclusion and Future Outlook

As the episode wraps up, Rod and Tarek reflect on the myriad of challenges and advancements shaping the future of space exploration.

• Hope for Technological Progress: Despite setbacks like budget cuts and workforce reductions, the hosts remain optimistic about the potential for technological innovations and private sector contributions to drive space exploration forward.

• Community Engagement: Tarek extends empathy to those affected by NASA’s workforce changes and encourages community members to reach out, fostering a supportive environment.

• Upcoming Missions and Events: Both hosts highlight the busy week ahead, with multiple SpaceX launches, NASA press conferences, and ongoing monitoring of space threats, ensuring listeners stay informed about the dynamic landscape of space exploration.

• Final Remarks: Rod and Tarek emphasize the importance of balanced perspectives, scientific integrity, and the collaborative spirit necessary to navigate the challenges ahead. They invite listeners to stay engaged, support space initiatives, and continue fostering a passion for discovery.

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Notable Quotes:

• Rod Pyle [02:11]: “But Tom Brown and some of the other scientists, they're saying this is a mission that hasn't even finished its primary phase yet.”

• Tarek Malik [12:19]: “You have land in the Bahamas or at least your family does.”

• Rod Pyle [35:01]: “We’re not ready. We don’t have bulletproof life support systems that can last for the entire trip out and back.”

• Tarek Malik [52:20]: “They have a really solid stable of these in, in hand.”

Conclusion: Episode 149 of This Week in Space offers a comprehensive overview of pressing space-related topics, from asteroid monitoring and lunar missions to the impacts of budget cuts and workforce reductions at NASA. Through engaging dialogue and insightful analysis, Rod Pyle and Tarek Malik provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of the current state and future prospects of space exploration.

Transcript

[Tarek Malik]

Coming up on this Week in Space. An asteroid is coming in 2032. Will it hit Earth? Maybe not, but we've got the latest odds. Plus, SpaceX lands in the Bahamas and everyone's going to the moon. But who's going to get there first? Tune in to find out more. Plus, a whole lot more headlines on this Week in Space.

[Rod Pyle]

Podcasts you love from people you Trust. This is TRT. This is this Week in Space, episode number 149, recorded on February 21, 2025. SpaceX moon missions and killer asteroids. Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Week in Space, the Space headlines edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor in chief of Ad Astra magazine, of course, and I'm joined by my roguish partner, Tarek Malik, editor [e-mail]. hello, partner.

[Tarek Malik]

Hello, Rod. Hello. Ahoy. Ahoy. Ahoy.

[Rod Pyle]

Rod, how was your. How was your week?

[Tarek Malik]

Not as. Not as busy it's going to be next week. I've actually been spending the bulk of the last couple of days just trying to understand what's happening next week. And I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about that. We'll definitely talk about it next week. So next.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay. All right.

[Tarek Malik]

But how's yours? How's your day going there in the. The fabulous Los Angeles Marina or wherever it is?

[Rod Pyle]

Could it be downtown Long Beach, Shoreline Marina? How bad could it be if you're.

[Tarek Malik]

Did you go to the Bahamas like SpaceX this week? Is that what that is?

[Rod Pyle]

No, we're going to talk about that.

[Tarek Malik]

That's right. That's right. Oh, no, no.

[Rod Pyle]

Before we do, we have to remind everybody to do us a solid. Make sure to like, subscribe and click any other happy podcast things that will make us look good. Because God knows we need your help to look good. But more importantly, we have a listener joke from Alec Crawford. Are you ready, my friend Alec?

[Tarek Malik]

I'm ready. Lay it on me, Alec, why can't.

[Rod Pyle]

You tell SpaceX dragon jokes on the podcast?

[Tarek Malik]

I don't, I don't know. Why? Why?

[Rod Pyle]

Because they're crude. C E C R E W E D. I get it. Formerly manned.

[Tarek Malik]

I get it.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, okay.

[Tarek Malik]

I get it. I saw, I saw. You know a funny thing, a funny thing that you mentioned that. Because I just saw, I think some write up about government agencies and they use the word manned in there. And I thought, what kind of agency is using that now in 20, what, 25 or whatever it is. But no, there it was, there it was, clear as day.

[Rod Pyle]

And it's not Part now, actually, it's interesting, I haven't checked the NASA style guide, which is for those who haven't seen it, their version of the Associated Press style guide or any other journalism style guide that tells us how we're supposed to capitalize things and how we're supposed to contextualize things and all that, and quote, manned unquote, went out of use, I don't know, what, 15 years ago, 20 years ago.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, about that. Leonard David, friend of the podcast, and wife Barb were big proponents, early adopters to get us to change our [e-mail] and then we did, and now it got wider, wider appeal for sure.

[Rod Pyle]

So, yeah, so that'll be one to watch. But, so, so what are you going to do now? I've heard that some people want to jam us into a crew dragon and set us a lawfulness joke time on this show, but you can help to keep that from happening. Send us your best, worst or most indifferent space jokes to us at twistswit tv and we'll even say your name. So since this episode is all headlines, let's just jump right in because that's, that's, that's how we roll.

[Tarek Malik]

We should call it the Space Week. That was. Is what we should call. That's, that's, that's a little bit more poetic, right?

[Rod Pyle]

Just call it what, what a week it was. Before we roll into that, though, I, I have something from the Mailpatch here. The Space Mail Pouch. Steve Sheridan emailed us about RocketLaunch Live, which lists the projected date to SpaceX and Starship launches, along with everything else around the world. And I mean everything like rockets and the whole deal. And that was in response to Brett Wesley's question from last week about where to best track these launches. And next week we celebrate our Drum roll, please. 150th episode. Yay. The non existent crowd goes wild.

[Tarek Malik]

Those are real people. Real people that we paid to be there waiting for that moment.

[Rod Pyle]

Everybody, of course they like the studio audience on what's that qtv, whatever it is, where you, where you sell toothbrushes and eyeliner and stuff, where they have that audience in there that smiles gleefully every time they announce a new kazoo or something. Anyway, next week we're going to do our first stump the Space Chumps episode. So if you're listening and you have a question or a comment or something you want us to talk about, send it to TwistWit TV, that's TwisWit TV. And we'll do our best to come up with an answer. It may not be accurate or even true, but Tarek and Anthony ride me pretty hard around here, so he'd probably get something close to correct.

[Tarek Malik]

We're very creative people. Probably. Well, about as creative as some officials are with the facts this week. But I guess.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, okay, let's see the. Oh, look, an email already. Um, so we have a big crazy space week coming up. Tell us everything.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, well, as you know, I didn't know if this was the best part to do this or if we wanted to save it to the end, but we could talk about it later then too. But I just wanted to let everyone know. Like, I might seem exasperated at the end of every week when we record the episode, but much of my exasperation this week is trying to understand what's happening next week. Because, you know, it's been a pretty steady month so far. But. But man, next week we're going to kick off with preps that NASA, NASA is going to have some press conferences about the Crew 10 mission. So they're having a press conference to announce that Crew 10 is the rescue mission to send a new crew to the space station.

[Rod Pyle]

Rescue to rescue the stranded crew.

[Tarek Malik]

Stranded. Yeah, I know we're talking about that later on, but we're going to kick off, we're going to meet the crew, the folks that are launching on Crew 10 on March 12, how that's going to help the crew. Nine astronauts, including Sunny and Butcher on the ISS, come back to Earth in maybe late March or early April. And, and then it just gets crazier from there because there are, you know, after that, that big day the next day on, on Tuesday, there's, there's big prep stuff for both IM two intuitive machines. Second Moonlander, because they are also going to launch next week as well as the Sphere X Punch mission that NASA is going to launch, which is the next day on the 27th. So those are launching on 26th and the 27th. Right now, both of them are SpaceX launches. So it's going to be a big couple days for SpaceX. Also on Tuesday, Blue Origin is going to launch their NS30 flight. Why do you care? I don't know. Do you like it when billionaires pay? Who knows how much to fly to the edge of space and back? Well, we're going to see that happen again. And I think that includes more repeat customers, so I guess they're doing better maybe than Virgin Galactic because they're getting a lot more repeat flights, but who knows. And then we have a bunch of press conferences next week about the intuitive machines mission. So that's going to be really, really busy. The House Subcommittee on Science is going to talk about NASA's plan to go to the moon also also on the 26th to say, you know, I guess maybe we'll find out if SLS is going to survive or at least the first signs of it. Then of course maybe the cherry on top or whatnot is SpaceX's Starship Flight 8. You know there's, they're tracking we hear for a February 26th potential launch window opening. We'll see if they stick to it. But, but that'll be like a new, a new thing to watch. See how high they get. Are they going to go for orbit? Are they going to try to do some kind of landing? We don't know. But it's all kind of happening all at the same time when Russia is going to launch a progress mission on that same day to the, or later on the 27th to the space station. A lot of this stuff and you know, if you thought that was done on the weekend on Sunday, you know, we don't have a Super bowl but we will have a Blue Ghost Firefly aerospace moon landing at 2:30 in the morning to get ready for. So a lot of moving parts for sure to try to try to juggle. But it just, it should mean that next week we'll have a lot to talk about even if no one decides to chime in to test us and put our space know how to the to the mat there. So we'll have a lot of goss to talk about, a lot of tea to spill about space Next week should.

[Rod Pyle]

Be that you'll have bags under your eyes that look like mine next week by the time I'm done with you. Good lord, it's going to be big. So we're going to go to a break but before we do I have to tease the next story. Asteroid 2024 yr could smack the moon maybe. Or it could be dangerous maybe. Or maybe it's real dangerous. Or last we heard, nah, not so dangero. But it's still a good story. So stay with us. We'll be right back with that after this break.

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[Rod Pyle]

All right, so asteroid 2024 yr. It's scary. It's very.

[Tarek Malik]

It's not so yr 4. You'll forget that it's yr 4 yr 4.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, sorry. My bad. So this thing is maybe 180ft, maybe 200, maybe 300. You know, we're still pinning down the size. The thing is, it's amazing once you get all the instrumentation and the brain power available arrayed to actually check this thing out, things change every couple of hours, right?

[Tarek Malik]

Oh my gosh. Yeah. They even changed after you grab the story too. We'll talk about that.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. So we know it's big. We know it's a lot bigger than Chelyabinsk, which was like a small nuclear.

[Tarek Malik]

Weapon, was the size of a suv, by the way. So it's a lot larger than that for people that.

[Rod Pyle]

I thought Chelyabinsk was 60ft than a bus.

[Tarek Malik]

I guess. Maybe, maybe the range, the range that the ranges from SUV size to.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, it was a London. London double bus, but, but this one is been called consecutively City killer class, county killer class. I don't think it made State killer, but it's, it's a big Mama. But only about a third the size of Dimorphos, which was the target of the DART double asteroid redirect mission test. So, you know, I think we should all remember that this is something we've already proved we can deflect if necessary. So as creepy as this might be, we could launch something tomorrow that would get there in however many months and deflect it. But you don't want to do that until you know really where it's headed so you don't end up kind of oops. I actually deflected it in a bar stove. My favorite city to Milan.

[Tarek Malik]

I just want to point out that one of our, one of our listeners, Carl Br, says that to wake him when it's a mile across. So I was like, all right, that's what you worry about, right?

[Rod Pyle]

Wow. How come our, our listeners are more clever than we are? Well, that shouldn't be a surprise. So if it's the size they estimate, as I understand it, these are all from optical observations so far. And it's pretty darn small. And it's very dark, so it's hard to see. It could be up to 500 times the power of the Hiroshima atom bomb. So that's about 8 megatons. Hiroshima is 15 kilotons. And the Webb Space Telescope, whose budget has just been cut by 20%. But we'll talk about that later.

[Tarek Malik]

Was yet, but maybe not yet.

[Rod Pyle]

To track it. Okay. To track it during this current near pass which won't last very much longer. David Rankin of the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey says this asteroid is nothing to lose sleep over. So I think you can't be much more concise than that last revision of the odds I saw. You'll probably update. This was the impact has gone to 1 in 360 chances, which is better than 1 in 43. And then later it was 1 in 67. I think the highest was 1 in 32 or 3.1%. And it just continues to drop and will probably continue to drop.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, we actually debated this a lot on the space in the, what is it, what do we call it? The bullpen in the space.com digital bullpen. Because we span a bunch of countries about how to cover this one. Because initially it was like, oh my gosh, it's got a 1 in 80 chance of hitting us. And then it was a 1 in 90% chance. And there are all those news sites out there that were, you know, hitting every little thing at the tick of the needle. And our experts were saying, hey, it's going to go up, but then it's going to go way, way, way down. So, you know, cool, cool your jets. And so we, we were, we ran with that. Of course I'm always knee jerk. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, let's do everything. But I got smarter people than I am who [e-mail] and they're like, no, no, we should wait for the science. And we did. And it was really interesting. It was a big roller coaster ride over the last week since our last episode, watching this, this story unfold. Because not only did the risk do, you know, did do increase, do increase. Not only did the risk actually increase like we expected it to, but it hit a 3.1% milestone on the Torino scale, which is the scale of percentage you know, the risk of the asteroids, it was the highest percentage that we'd ever seen an asteroid on, on the threat list reach. So it was historic. And of course it took a nosedive right after as they got some more observations, which we expected. But just the fact that it reached that level was, was very interesting now like it's way, way, way down. Like it's, you know, 99.72 chance it's going to miss us entirely. And, and I think it's just a very interesting on the process scale of how, how they, they judge this because they, you know, the, the odds are what they are until, you know, more. And as they learn more, odds kept getting, you know, moved around. And there is a very interesting graphic at the NASA Sino site. I don't think I grabbed the link for here, but the, the, the, the center for the Near Earth Observation Program that they have that shows here's the Earth and here's the Moon and here's this massive line that's like the size of the orbit of the moon or whatever about where the asteroid could hit at any given point. And you realize that, you know, surprise, surprise, space is mostly empty space. And so, so the odds were really small. But I had never seen it so visualized in that one. But I think that it was a big, a big distraction that people were, I guess, excited to be able to think about that rather than anything else.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, then there was a moment where some of the folks, I think this is before the last data dump came out where they said, well, it might actually hit the moon. That would be show.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. And the odds of it in the moon were lower than the odds of it hitting the Earth because of course.

[Rod Pyle]

The moon is smaller.

[Tarek Malik]

Smaller. Right. So. But that would be awesome to see. I mean, I guess it would be scary too, but man, I think that'd be pretty exciting to see like a big asteroid hit the moon. As long as they break it up and reveal like the artificial structure inside that we all know is hiding in there. Right.

[Rod Pyle]

Moonfall. Because it's filled with angry robotic bumblebees, just like Moonfall. All right, speaking of web, which came in very Handy for this, 11 billion is well spent.

[Tarek Malik]

Those web observations of the asteroids start next week, actually. Next. So I don't know how long it'll take, but they're gonna. That campaign starts in March.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, but as oppressive as that might be, let's cut the budget. It's four years old now. Why not chop the budget 20%? Now we spent a lot of money getting this thing up there, somebody quoted at about the same cost as a modern super, super aircraft carrier.

[Tarek Malik]

Hey, I wrote this story.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, well, then somebody was you. Regardless of how much it costs, it was a lot. And the thing works, which was kind of a miracle in itself. So gosh, partner, why are we cutting the budget 20%?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, so this is a story that I wrote yesterday also. I think Jeff Faust at SpaceNews wrote his A bit faster than I did, but it came from the American Astronomical Society meeting last, last month that I attended for Space.com and at each of these meetings they have these town hall events where they talk about the state of something. So the, there's a NASA town hall where they tell you what, what's going on. There's this James Webb Space Space Telescope town hall that tells you what's going on with the telescope and et cetera, et cetera. So in this, this town hall, the people at Space Telescope Science Institute, that's the age, the group that runs the great observatories for NASA, Hubble, James Webb, said that they have been asked to prepare a plan for 20% across the board budget cuts. Now, to put this into perspective, for 2025, the fiscal year budget request from NASA was something like $371 million for all three of the great observatories. Webb, Chandra, Hubble, altogether. That's like the budget. But of course, Webb was pretty expensive to develop something between eight and $10 billion is very, very pricey telescope. But it is the biggest, the most powerful, the greatest observatory that NASA has ever launched, along with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. That all being said, they were still asked last like in December or so to prepare for these cuts. And the cuts would take effect in October if they in fact end up going through. And this is kind of across the board where NASA didn't get as much money as they really were hoping to be able to request in 2025. They're facing all of these challenges, all of these delays. And of course we see what's going on right now in the government in terms of like fiscal cutting. Now that, that all happened after this request came. So this request came before the current administration took charge. I want to make that really clear.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, really?

[Tarek Malik]

Still? Yeah, it came like it came at the end of 2024. They said, look, the budget's, the budget's tight. You have to find ways to cut 20%. If we need to ask there have a plan ready. And I talked to Tom Brown, who is like the program manager over At STCI a bit. And he said that there's nothing that it's not going to touch. 20%, 20% of, of that means operations time, the time it takes to review the, the applications for time. They're going to try to keep it away from the grants because they award something on the order of 60 million. I think I got that right, in grants to fund research on the telescope itself. And they're trying to keep the cuts away from that, but it's possible that they could. But no matter how you slice it, it's less money for operations, and less money for operations means less science, less discoveries, fewer discoveries and less. According to. And this is at a time where the space telescope, which a lot of people didn't know was going to succeed, has been far outstripping all expectations. What it's been able to do, pushing back to like, within 300,000, 600,000 years of the start of the universe, that kind of thing, Exoplanet discoveries, our own solar system. They get their last round of observations, you know, for one year. That's the one year that they have to schedule. They got nine years worth of applications, Rod. Nine years worth of time for one year. Right. And, and, and they're not even halfway through their primary mission. You know, they're about four years old. I guess this summer they'll be four years old because it launched onto Christmas in, in 2021. So, you know, the, the scientists that were in the crowd were just kind of beside themselves when they were discussing these budget issues. And it was, you know, just one of, a lot of things they were talking about. But you see these cuts because the Hubble Space Telescope, according to Space News and Jeff Fast, is facing the same request plan for 20% cuts. The Hubble Space Telescope turns 35 years old this year. Right.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, and that would argue for wanting to, in my feeble mind, wanting to allot more money to that, because it's just about used up. Right.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. Well, well, well, what I'm trying to say here is I understand saying, hey, we're going to, we're going to cut back your budget because you're, you're well past your prime. You finished your primary mission. The Chandra Space Telescope is even, you know, is just about, almost as. I think it's about nine years younger than Hubble. But it's facing the potential drawdown, you know, by the end of the decade, where they're just going to cancel it altogether. Even though it's still working, it's just not doing as well as it Was. I understand at least what the rationale might be for those kinds of things. But. But Tom Brown and some of the other scientists, they're saying this is a mission that hasn't even finished its primary phase yet. And you're talking about cutting it. Not only is it not finished it, but there's nothing wrong with it. It's doing. It's wildly successful. And. And so it is something that we're going to have to. To track because we are seeing, you know, since that ask to stsci.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

Now we have doge. Now we have this whole cost cutting thing going on. These people that are getting laid off and then they got to try to find them to hire them back because they didn't. They laid off too many people, you know, that kind of thing.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, you mean like the ones that manage the nuclear stockpile of weapons? Yeah, yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

And the CDC too, you know, like all of that stuff. So that, that can have an effect. And now they haven't gotten to that point yet. We haven't heard any of that yet. But. But it just, it has me thinking about what are those ripple effects going to be and how will it affect not just the science of it, because it's not just about science. It's about the leadership. It's about the, the expertise that, that the country has in this, this, this field and, and using what we paid for. I don't buy a. I mean, I don't, I don't have a Porsche, but I wouldn't just buy a Porsche and leave it on the, Leave it in the driveway, you know, because, you know, it's. Gas is too much. I'm not going to, I'm not going to drive it.

[Rod Pyle]

Right.

[Tarek Malik]

I'd want to drive it around and, and get the most out of it. I just bought a Porsche.

[Rod Pyle]

We'd have words because I would, I would. You're a Jaguar man.

[Tarek Malik]

No, no, no. You know what I would really like is a orange and white. What is that? It's not like a travel wall. It's a. Oh, my gosh. It's like an old 50s car that'd be nice to have. So. I can't remember it now.

[Rod Pyle]

You think?

[Tarek Malik]

I was so. I was so. I was so into it way back when.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, the Chevy Nomad station wagon, just for you. I, I do want to make a quick adjustment here. It's actually as far as the oldest stars we've seen or how far back we've seen with the, with the web. It's 300 million years, not 300,000 is.

[Tarek Malik]

That what I said? I said 300 million. 300 million.

[Rod Pyle]

Which is still amazing though when you're talking about, you know, 10 plus billion years. That's pretty close.

[Tarek Malik]

What's an order of magnitude between friends, Rod? I mean, come on, really, you know.

[Rod Pyle]

So I'll remind you of that next time I'm looking for a paycheck. Okay, Stand by. We'll be right back with with more of our own observations.

[C]

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[Tarek Malik]

Lenovo.

[Rod Pyle]

Tell me about. Well, actually, I'll tell you first about Firefly Aerospace. Blue Ghost Moon lander.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Launched just weeks ago, is now in lunar orbit, which is cool because we keep waiting for one of these private missions to have success.

[Tarek Malik]

Should more than one moon lander. I guess we're going to talk.

[Rod Pyle]

I know, but we're talking about this one now. Give me a break. So it's scheduled to land on or about March 2. Barring any complications, we're hoping praying works this time. Please. And it has 10 experiments on board. And it's headed for Mare Mare. Did you hear that? Mare Chrisium. Which is the sea of crises. So is that really how you say it?

[Tarek Malik]

Mare. Mare.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

Mare.

[Rod Pyle]

Mare is horses. Mare is big stony pits.

[Tarek Malik]

No, this is exciting. This is exciting. You know, we've been getting a steady, steady images from the spacecraft since they launched, I guess was it. It was last month now or earlier? Yeah. And. And, and on. On the 13th. So just, just about a week ago they arrived in an elliptical lunar. Or we got video of it for folks on video watching it right now. And there it is. I mean, so far things seem to be going really swimmingly. So I really hope that they've got all the eyes dotted, all the T's crossed for this one to see how it goes. Of course, the, the landing is entirely different. I mean you can drive 99% of the way there, you run out of gas before you get there. You know, you're still not on the moon. But they have to stick that landing or it could be all she wrote. So we'll have to see how it goes. But it's really a bit of a heartwarming success story to see Firefly, this relatively small company, really knock one out of the park with this first CLPS mission. Clps, of course, is the commercial Lunar Payload Services program that some of the NASA payloads are part of on, on this mission. And so far things are going really well. Now you might have heard me feel a little snarky earlier. There is another moon lander that people should be thinking about. Japan actually launched. The Japanese company ispace launched their own moon lander. And I think it's called Resilience along with Blue Ghost on the same SpaceX Falcon rocket. And it just passed its own milestone with a lunar flyby as it's getting ready for its own landing. But Resilience takes a lot longer to get to the moon than, than Blue Ghost and so it's going to take a little bit, a little bit longer to get there. So not, not, not so much a race. But I Space is trying to come back from a failure. You know, you mentioned that if, if Blue Ghost succeeds with Firefly, if everything goes well like 100%, they will be like the first to, to actually nail it 100% across the board. I am one. I think it kind of landed and then fell over. They got some science back from him. In fact. American Astronomical Society. I think one of the, the radio telescope was facing up for a little bit. They were able to get some science but then, then it just, just got to too messy. But they worth of data and they were, they were like salivating over it. What can we learn about the universe with just this? And so they're really hoping to, to be first, but then I am too waiting in the wings too. So we've got a moon landing this week, another one on the way, and then another one that's getting ready to get off the ground with intuitive machines number two that we talked about earlier.

[Rod Pyle]

And just a quick side note, there are two ispaces. There's I Capital S Space which is the Japanese company, and there's ismall S Space which is the Chinese company. So that can get confusing for us not looking at it. And you'll have to pardon me, there's somebody hammering in the background here. Next up, ballistic at the Bahamas. SpaceX is talking to the Bahamian government about launching and landing. I thought it was just landing, but launching and landing rights. And hey, if you've got any contacts over there, brother. I have land. I have two lots in the Bahamas that my parents bought in 1965 with a coupon for the back Reader's Digest. I find it. Nobody's ever seen it in the family. I've been to the Bahamas, but I haven't been to the property. But I'm pretty sure looking at a map, one of them is a mangrove swamp and the other one doesn't have any road access, but hey, perfect for rockets. But there's more story than that.

[Tarek Malik]

You have land in the Bahamas or at least your family does.

[Rod Pyle]

Yes, sir. Yes.

[Tarek Malik]

So we could go there with like tents or whatever and just camp out.

[Rod Pyle]

And sit there with the sand fleas and the crabs? You bet, because mangrove. Have you ever been to a mangrove swamp?

[Tarek Malik]

I have. I have only seen them. I've seen them in Singapore.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, so you're looking at a beach and the tide's in. You see these trees kind of popping out of the water. It's like, well, that's kind of cool. You know, it's a little force and then this tide goes out and their root balls are like paradise for flies. Oh my God, these swarms of black flies come out. So you're sitting on the beach swatting and snapping and thinking, why in God's name did I ever come here? But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking, talking about SpaceX.

[Tarek Malik]

So I like how you got a Caribbean life to contribute a story here.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, it's all I saw it in. But why the Bahamas? And why. You know, he can, at least as far as landing goes, he can come down on a barge. International waters offshore. Yeah, it just doesn't seem Elon style. Not that I'm an Elon basher, although it's tempting, but it doesn't seem his style to say, hey, can I get a license for this? When he could just be offshore. So is he really thinking of launching from there?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, you know, the launching thing I'm, I'm unclear on because like, like you, I had, I had inferred from SpaceX's announcement and it's not just that they wanted to do it, they actually did land the rocket off the coast of The Bahamas. This, this, you know, the week that we're recording this, this video is the first time that, that they'd ever, they'd have done it as we're recording is about three days ago. And the, the whole idea is that being able to do that to land the rocket there, rather than bring it back either to the launch site in Florida or off offshores in the Atlantic, is that they can, they can, as I understand it, they can burn a little bit longer, land basically kind of where they are over, and reach a wider variety of orbital inclinations, of orbit destinations now. And that gives them a more varied portfolio to offer their customers about which orbits they can launch into. Now. It does like, and this is part that I'm not very clear on about what you're going to do with the rockets after that because you would have to bring them back, you know, and ship them back or do they just have enough of these Falcon 9 boosters that it doesn't matter anymore? In fact, they just flew one for the 26th time. It's another, another record, I think, if memory serves. Yeah, and so, so they've got a really solid stable of these in, in hand. And you could see that they might set up some kind of rotating delivery system where they're just kind of launching them and then bringing them back over time like they kind of do now, but on a longer scale or, and this is what I was thinking about when you mentioned bringing up this story. Is this the beginnings of some kind of Falcon point to point transportation system? Because wouldn't that be interesting? SpaceX has been shooting for that kind of a thing with starship and in fact I believe the US military has been asking for, for at least for uncrewed ones for cargo right now ideas for similar types of technologies. The point to point delivery system via space and their illustrations of it look a lot like Starship itself. So that's what's got my juices flowing about that one. Could this be the beginning so that I don't have to fly for two days to get to the other side of the world? We could just hop into, hop in a rocket, hopefully for you know, steerage or whatever the equivalent will be and get there. But we'll have to see if that's what's going to happen.

[Rod Pyle]

Singapore in two hours, my friend.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, I tell you, wouldn't that be nice?

[Rod Pyle]

I mean you might be standing up and hanging, but at least you'll get there.

[Tarek Malik]

But they'll charge you for, for the luggage weight. They'll charge you for everything, you'd have to ship your luggage, I think, so you don't have to take it on the rocket for you.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay, so big sigh here. We're going to talk about when are we going to bring the ISS back or down. Yeah, I shouldn't say back, but before we do, let's, let's get this break out of the way because this one's going to be a bit of a scene chewer. So stand by, we'll be right back.

[C]

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[Rod Pyle]

Lenovo Lenovo okay, so Elon Musk wants to deorbit the ISS and I quote, as soon as possible, he wants to bring down a still, still functional national laboratory. And of course he does have a stake in this decision because the contract promised to SpaceX to nudge it out of orbit and his stated goal is to head directly to Mars with human crews quickly as possible. Also, and more specifically, he suggests a two year window for deorbit of the iss. Now it is worth remembering that the space station costs about $3 billion a year for NASA to operate. And that cost goes up over time because it's getting older and they need to replace things and repair things. And of course part of what Butch and Sonny have been doing up there, when they were abandoned on the space.

[Tarek Malik]

Station, left there, they left them in space. They left them there and they weren't ever going to bring them back. At least that's what we heard.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay, take it easy partner, take it easy. But they did, you know, among other things, they helped in research, of course, but they also helped on maintenance. And you know, you and I discussed this a little bit earlier off the air, but they need as many hands as possible. To keep that thing going. It's not easy, it takes a lot of work. But here's the rub. The smaller successor space stations under a NASA contract for private industry to go up and take the place of the issuance to some extent in terms of continued orbital habitation and research facilities and so forth, aren't going to be ready that soon. Now, now, vast with haven, one will have a prototype up there maybe in 2026, but that's, you know, four, eight people max. And the other companies that are looking at this aren't going to be up till a couple years later, maybe as late as 2030.

[Tarek Malik]

I like how you said four or eight people max and there's only seven people on the space station right now.

[Rod Pyle]

I'm hurt.

[Tarek Malik]

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

[Rod Pyle]

True. No, I think it's four. I think it's a crew of four. I wasn't sure, but I'm pretty sure Dragon.

[Tarek Malik]

Dragon is the, is the vehicle it.

[Rod Pyle]

Can only carry, okay, but it's really small and it's very streamlined and in comparison to iss, it's tiny and pretty scaled down. But in any event, we're not. So we'd have a gap in orbital habitation. Does that matter? Well, here we go with geopolitics again. China has a modular space station up there. They'd be in orbit. We wouldn't. Does that matter? That's a longer conversation. But the bottom line is we might not have a replacement up there until a real replacement, operating, functioning, Serviceable replacement until 2029 or 2030, maybe 28. Last part of this complicated calculus is that the various partners for the iss, which include Japan and Europe.

[Tarek Malik]

Canada.

[Rod Pyle]

My things are missing in Canada, thank you. Are fine with the 2030 date, which is what we all agreed on, but Russia wanted out in 2028, they said.

[Tarek Malik]

I think you hit the nail on the head. There is already a plan to deorbit the space station and it is to deorbit the space station by 2030. Not only is there already a plan to do it, but SpaceX has the contract to do it. They have to build a new space tug. They agreed to do it. And Elon Musk should know this, right? That there is already a plan.

[Rod Pyle]

I'm sure he does. And one wonders if maybe he just wants that contract to pay out sooner.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. And so, so this, this is probably the first of two stories involving Elon Musk that we're going to talk about this week because at least, yeah, it was a bit of a much. So it was Just a bit of a surprise to see, to see that, that call because Elon says we want to go to Mars, we should just get out of orbital, you know, out of the, the thing right now that it's, it's a big, a big a bug money. So he is right. It costs so much. 3 billion a year. You just said, you know, it, it is, it is nothing to, to sneeze at. But there is, there is a, there is a plan already for it and expediting it and changing that plan will be more expensive and a little bit more complicated. And then you lose a resource a lot earlier, not to mention affecting international partnerships, as you already mentioned. Now, one thing that I can see is that he said within two years and within two years is 2027. And that is within the current Trump administration. So that, so there's a very visible milestone to say we were going to do this and now it's done and it will not be outside of the administration, which 2030 would be beyond the current administration type of a thing. So.

[Rod Pyle]

Excuse me, are you saying this could be politically motivated?

[Tarek Malik]

Political reasons, Rod. Political reasons.

[Rod Pyle]

I'll take that.

[Tarek Malik]

I just don't, I don't, I don't, I don't get it. You know, I think that, I think I get the frustration, though. You and I are frustrated that we're not on Mars yet. We are, right.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, we are. But I have to say, from what I know about it, and it's been a few years since I wrote the book, but when I was writing, God, I can't remember which book it was, it's a very deep dive into radiation mediation. And I hate to keep saying it because it sounds like loser talk, but we're not ready. We don't have bulletproof life support systems that can last for the entire trip out and back. We have not solved the radiation mediation problem. And okay, you can send guys my age, so you figure you only got 20 years left to live. What's five years off of that for cancer because you got saturated radiation on the way to Mars. The radiation shielding is very heavy, although we do have a story coming up that may address that. So, you know, I don't want to say we're not ready, but we're not ready.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, and Elon, Starship doesn't work yet. I was going to say Elon and SpaceX has been saying that they, well, Elon has said that they want to launch SpaceX or Starship to Mars next year. Uncrewed. Pardon me. I think that the plan would be to launch two to Mars during that time frame to see, to maximize whatever they can get to and then launch people on the next window, which would be 2028 again within that four year stretch. So, so we'll have to see. We'll have to see. I, I'm just, there's a lot happening from that particular source in the NASA sphere this year, this week. And that was just one that I just like, I don't, I don't get it. I don't get why I think part of it like making these decisions now when there is no actual NASA administrator like in charge.

[Rod Pyle]

Right.

[Tarek Malik]

There's an acting administrator, Nancy Petro.

[Rod Pyle]

Well sometimes that's when you want.

[Tarek Malik]

Or Janet Petro. Janet, huh?

[Rod Pyle]

Janet.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, yeah. I did a whole Google search trying to find out why I couldn't find the acting NASA administrator yesterday going, I know, we even wrote a story about who is Nancy Petro. And then I found it and I was like, oh no, it's Janet. Wow, it's been a week and a half. Oh wait, we're not recording, right? I didn't, we weren't live for that part.

[Rod Pyle]

Not only are we alive, but I just caught talk about breaking the fourth wall. I got a look at Anthony when he took off his glasses and started cleaning them. He was staring at us like what are you guys probably on about now? It's like we got caught by dad.

[Tarek Malik]

So it's so, so it just seems like hey, let's get someone steering the ship first before we're throwing the deck chairs overboard or, or, or you know, running it into the Earth's atmosphere at that point in time.

[Rod Pyle]

Well that's true but you know, if you're determined to make a big major course correction and you've got an acting administrator in charge, depending on who they are, it's probably easier to do before you have formally appointed your permanent administrator. So who knows?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, and Janet, Petra did say, she, she, she did say at the commercial Space Conference earlier this month that Mars is the goal that we should be trying to, to really get there. We should use the moon to test technologies, which is what the whole plan is anyway. But that is clearly on the agenda in terms of things that are coming to switch around. So.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay, well this is a hard one. As the time come stranded astronauts so trumpet Musk and you know, I don't like getting terribly political on the show, but Trump and Musk have been.

[Tarek Malik]

Neither do our listeners.

[Rod Pyle]

This narrative about these two Boeing Starliner astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore being stranded on the space station, which I kind of, you know, I swallowed hard at that. But I thought, okay, you know, if you want to contextualize it that way, I'm not going to push back too hard. But then they went further to claim that it was a political ploy by the Biden administration. Horns. No evidence was offered, of course, beyond Elon's claim that he offered the Biden administration to get them down sooner. And he claims they said no. So that was immediately interpreted as a political move. Could have also been a money saving move, by the way, but the current schedule for return was set months ago. You know, crew rotations are a very complicated thing. Delivery payloads, a complicated thing. And oh, by the way, the very person that's making a big deal out of this, Mr. Musk, is the one that's late on delivering the new crew Dragon capsule, which was supposed to be part of that rotation. So there's a bunch of moving parts going on here. And it does feel disingenuous, especially when you see Trump and Musk and Fox. And I don't have a particular thing against Fox, but using words like stranded or my favorite, abandoned, which both Trump and Sean Hannity said they were never abandoned. If you abandon astronauts in space, you shove them out the airlock without a helmet or life support and you say, bye, see you on the next orbit. And that's not what happened. So, you know, this, this really sticks in both our craws. And they've got a capsule up there. If they have to come home in an emergency, they're covered.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

What's going on?

[Tarek Malik]

I don't know. I wish I could explain it to you, Rod. I don't, I don't understand a lot of it. Aside from there was very clear just kind of rewriting of what, what happened last year. You know, we. Is, is it an optimal situation that NASA was in last summer when the Boeing Starliner astronauts couldn't get back down because they weren't sure about the spacecraft? No. You know what? It would have been better if Boeing had a spacecraft that worked with significant NASA confidence that they could put their astronauts on on the way back? Yes. So, but all this other stuff about decisions and assigning political machinations, when there were a lot more complicated discussions about when could astronauts be ready to fly, when could they get spacesuits up there, when can the space station be ready to receive vehicles, when could, you know, when can they have crew transfers? A lot of that stuff has to be taken into account. And this was the plan that NASA came Up with. Now if Elon says, and he said this on, on Twitter, on X, pardon me, afterward that he went up and said yeah, yeah, well we'll, we can do it for you. We'll go get it. Go, we'll go get the crew. And he said, because you mentioned saving, saving money, you know, like, like, like a cost issue. He said that they would work within the available annual budget that I guess would go to Space X's missions. But we don't know what the trade offs were to work within the budget is the trade off that, you know, you, you replace one of the crewed missions, the crew transfers for that and therefore don't have any American astronauts on the space station, that's possible. It's not optimal. Right, but, but it's unclear what all of this means but. And we did watch the Fox, the Fox interview with, with Hannity. It was really full of a lot of that kind of rhetoric that was really just reshaping what had happened to fit in an agenda. The facts are NASA said hey, we can't bring them back. What's the next rotation that we can bring them back on? We'll move the crews around so that we could do that. The astronauts are okay with it. That's the decision that they made. They were going to bring them back earlier. They were going to come back in February. SpaceX's Dragon in December, before the administration start took charge, said that that spacecraft, which is a new version of the Dragon crewed vehicle was not ready. They weren't ready. SpaceX wasn't finished with it. They needed to do more testing or it wasn't working or whatever it is that they have to do. The spacecraft wasn't ready and that created more delays. And of course those delays now because SpaceX already has the plan to bring them back, the delays are on SpaceX because they were going to bring them back in February. Now they have to bring them back in March because their spacecraft isn't ready. So the President said bring them back earlier or asap. So NASA said go ahead and swap to a different Dragon spacecraft, one that was going to launch the AX4 crew. A private mission to the space station that has flown before. I think it's called, Is it called, is it also called Resilience? No, I don't. It's, it's got a name. Yeah, yeah. So they decided to do that so they don't have to fly on the one that's, that's, that's delayed. They can fly in one that's ready or closer to being ready and they're able to, to I guess move the, the return up a bit earlier at least. And there's other things that are involved. If they wait for the thing to be ready, then the crew has to. If they wait for the, the one that's not ready to be ready, that means more time for Butch and Sunny on the space station. The station has its own like red lines that they have to adhere to, I think.

[Rod Pyle]

Right.

[Tarek Malik]

Eric Berger has a really great story at Arsenica all about these red lines for supplies, for food, for water, for air, you know, that kind of a thing that they, they don't want to encroach or get into. So the longer you have them up there, the closer you get to those lines. It's just a, it's a big mess. And I think, I think assigning shenanigans and calling shenanigans on something that was already really complicated and that NASA was dealing with, with their partners, it doesn't seem like it's a worthwhile thing, you know, should they have. Well, you know, they just, they don't have. I'm sorry to cut you off, but they don't have a rescue ship just standing by. Maybe they should now for, for these things because the SpaceX has enough of them. They could just have one in the barn on standby and that would have solved all these problems. They did that with Hubble, remember? But they had the shuttle.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, but, but, but partially because of this, and certainly before this, there were contingency plans in place to make sure everybody could get home.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

There's sufficient spacecraft and sufficient spaces, even if it means wadding up a bunch of dirty laundry and lying on the floor under them seats, you'll get home.

[Tarek Malik]

At one time, at one time there was a period in the summer where there were not enough boats. There were not enough ships, you know, at the station to handle them back.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, there weren't enough seats.

[Tarek Malik]

Seats.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, but they could have done it. That's what they were working out. I have to say in summary and you know, just for full transparency, I was a NASA contractor for a few years, but that doesn't really change my output. There are creaky timbers in the agency. We know that there have been for a long time. They're probably be some streamlining, there could be some reorganizing, may lose that or something. But this does feel a bit like a smear campaign. Bringing the Biden administration into it confuses the heck out of me because it's pretty clear he's not going to run again. So you don't have to keep pushing back, pushing back, pushing back. That administration's over. It's in history, it's staying. But beating on NASA for this just feels a little disingenuous. But you know what? Most importantly, we have one more break. So let's do that.

[Tarek Malik]

I need it now.

[Rod Pyle]

We'll come back with a happy story. I have a happy.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, I hope so. I hope so.

[C]

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[Rod Pyle]

All right, I'm going to rescue this show.

[Tarek Malik]

Okay. Yes, yes. From all the, from all the, all the. All the people we just offended, you know?

[Rod Pyle]

Well, you know, let's just say we don't mean to offend anybody. We're trying to call them as we see them. And I really like you. I know. Because you run space.com, for gosh sake. I want to keep as balanced perspective as possible, but when people start saying things like these people were abandoned. If you know anything about NASA, crew safety is paramount. Sometimes there are people that think crew safety is too much of a consideration and that we should take more risks like we did in the 1960s. Not a big fan of that, but I understand their point of view. So we're trying to keep balanced, everybody.

[Tarek Malik]

That's what came up during the whole Boeing thing. I mean, the ship came back down fine, you know, so.

[Rod Pyle]

But it could have been spinning and the heat shield could have been aiming the wrong way, which would have been bad. Okay. But let's move on to happier things. So as I mentioned earlier, radiation protection in deep space is tough. So deadly radiation is better. When you're in low Earth orbit, you're beneath the shielding that the natural shielding The Earth has. And not much of that radiation reaches you more than on the surface, but it's diminished enough that you're safe for fairly extended periods of time. Then you get above the Van Allen belts and the magnetosphere and all that, and it gets ugly. Now, during the Apollo program, which is the last time we went out into deep space to the moon and back, those guys were. It wasn't mentioned much at the time, but they were flying through dangerous territory. We had had a major coronal mass ejection at that time. They could have been radiation saturated. Sorry, that was the Queen Mary blowing its horn. And they would have, you know, could have been in very poor condition when they got home. And at this point, radiation shielding is primarily aluminum hulls and whatever is between that and the interior of the pressure vessel. And aluminum is bad because when a higher energy particle hits it, it can spall and actually create more particles, the original one coming in to the pressure vessel. So there's a lot of problems with it. Many things have been explored. They've talked about polyethylene. That was Wernher von Braun's favorite solution. Big sheets of plastic, but they're heavy. They've talked about water jacketing, which is very effective, but even more heavy, and various other materials. There was a project at JPL when I was writing for them, that had, oh, these big, very low mass. They were like Styrofoam blocks. They weren't Styrofoam, but these big blocks of material that could be folded and reconfigured. But they were rigid and really bulky and hard to work with. So now we have a story, thanks to unlivescience, about 3D printed hydrogels. Yeah, hydrogel is the kind of stuff, if you remember, I had them as a kid. You had them as a kid, you know, a little plastic dinosaur that you stuck in water, and it blew up and became a big, foamy, gushy plastic dinosaur. That's because this polymer accepts water very well and holds its shape. So when you think about that, in extension, you can use these, if you 3D print them on a spacecraft to line the pressure vessel and then saturate it with water. And the good thing it does, instead of having water slosh around, which it would normally do, of course, in microgravity, you now have a 3D structure that holds it in place as almost as a foam, kind of like a big sponge, but actually holds the distribution of water static. So you've got evenly distributed protection. So that's very handy. Also, by extension, and this was not in the story. But you. Well, actually this, this one part was in the story. You, you then have water you can use when you reach a destination, if you choose to, for drinking or creating oxygen or whatever. Something that also occurred to me is, you know, say this was something the size of a starship. Water's heavy. You know, it's. It's eight pounds to the gallon. It's heavy stuff. So you could say, launch a starship lined with this hydrogel to the moon, fly naked out to the moon in terms of radiation, and then on the moon, tank up with water to saturate the hydrogel if you're continuing on Mars.

[Tarek Malik]

Water.

[Rod Pyle]

It's a lot, right? What you would mine from the moon or get from the moon. And it's a lot cheaper and easier to get that water from the well, maybe not easier. It's a lot cheaper and mass effective to get that water from the moon to carry it out of the Earth's gravity well. So there's a whole bunch of advantages to this. And who doesn't want to travel in a spaceship surrounded by little inflated watery dinosaurs? How cool would that be?

[Tarek Malik]

By the way, that gif that. The little video clip that the scientists released with the announcement. I just, I told this to my team. I was like, Julian Dossett wrote the story for Space.com and I was like, I could just watch this. This is the most calming thing I've seen all week is this, is this hydrogel just expanding to fill up like the whole space. And it's just, it's just kind of like serenity now. It's gold. To people who aren't watching the video, it's like squishy. It's like Jello. And it makes me think of summer and, and you know, like going on vacation and a nice.

[Rod Pyle]

Listen to you. I think you're leading a too compressed a life. If it had been purple or pink or something like those dinosaurs, I would have liked it better. All I saw was was gold goo that got a little larger in the frame. But you do.

[Tarek Malik]

It makes me, it makes me hungry for Jello. You know, my mom makes this like Jello dessert that, that looks like this, but it's, it is pink. It's like a pink Jello. And it looks like. What's that meat product that byproduct the pink slime? It looks like pink slime. Right, but. And it's real. It's real like squishy. And it looks like it would taste awful. It looks like, like baking soda mushed up with pink toothpaste. But it is the most delicious dessert ever.

[Rod Pyle]

Excuse me. I'm gonna go lose my lunch right now.

[Tarek Malik]

It's good. It is good.

[Rod Pyle]

Do you want to know about something that tasted bad? When I was a kid, Jell O actually experimented with celery flavor.

[Tarek Malik]

Celery, wow.

[Rod Pyle]

It was supposed to be the next big thing for Thanksgiving. Celery flavored jello. I don't even like celery when it's made by nature. What were they thinking? It's like next it'll be kid liver flavored jello or something.

[Tarek Malik]

Anyway, all right, so when we go to space.

[Rod Pyle]

So hydrogel.

[Tarek Malik]

Ixnay on the Ellery Jello. LOJ Wait. Wow. I just. Okay, let's move on. I fell out of orbit on that one, so let's move on.

[Rod Pyle]

Where, oh, where are the aliens? Astronomy Astronomers working on SETI related projects have been diving into AI and more traditional processing methods to seek out signals from the vast amounts of data they get from things like the vla, the Very Large Array, that might indicate alien civilizations. And you know, we're looking for radio signals in certain bands. Be nice if they were focused towards Earth because then that shows intention, although the odds are pretty low. But sorting through this data is very time consuming. So a project called Cosmic. Talk about tortured acronyms. Listen to this commensal open source multimode interferonic interferometric cluster which worked with the setup with a Very Large Array telescope to seek out highly focused radio transmissions of frequencies that might be generated by alien civilizations. And specifically one of the things they were looking for were Doppler ships. In that signal that would indicate it was coming from a planet because it's going around its star, moving away from us and towards us. It also filters out terrestrial radio signals, but once again, no real results. Nothing like the wow signal of years gone by. And no signals of interest survive scrutiny. So the search continues, but with AI we have more hope.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, well, you know, I don't know what to tell you. I want to know where the aliens are and I'm glad that they have this. And I'm still trying to figure out what the word commensal means because I.

[Rod Pyle]

Think it's working with the array.

[Tarek Malik]

I know what all those other words mean, but not that one. I know this is interesting because, you know, one of our experts, Paul Sutter, astrophysicist, has a piece out that is, that is very similar to this. You know, about, about how all of these, these searches keep coming up empty, handy and I guess it's good that we're crossing things out, right, so that we know where the signals are. I guess that'll help us winnow down. But it does feel like spinning in the wind trying to find these signals. And you kind of wish that they would just send us a sign from on high or land in what, Fenway park or something.

[Rod Pyle]

A note in a bottle at least.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, but still, it's a big space. The universe is a big place. It is nice that SETI is able to do this and keep that, that search off. Actually at aas I met a lot of scientists that are working at the SETI Allen Array for like listening for techno signatures. And wasn't so much that they weren't finding any, but it's. It was that they had taken this search which has a very public facing and public friendly aspect to it, it and using it to teach a new generation of radio astronomers, high school students and whatnot, how to actually do the science. Yes, they're looking for something really, really fun, but, but at the same time they're learning how to do the science. And I think what we need now more than ever is that kind of expertise getting into the upper sciences and then continuing going forward so that they could figure out another kind of cosmic array to send a message to ET and maybe some of that that doesn't turn up empty handed. I think that'd be really, really great to see. So I think even though they're not finding anything, I think that they're laying the groundwork so that when we do find something, we'll be ready to deal with it.

[Rod Pyle]

I think we should just send out a very powerful radio message that says, hey, humans taste like pork. Come on down.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, they don't know what pork is. How about a discount? Some kind of mathematical formula that says that the Moon is on sale, right? Hey, you know what? You know what? Sell them Pluto.

[Rod Pyle]

I know. Hey, hey, hey.

[Tarek Malik]

We've got nine planets, but you can get, you can get the small one for a discount, right? They don't know that we call it a dwarf planet, that we got rid of it. They don't know we'll just tell them we had nine and they can have.

[Rod Pyle]

Brown would jump on and tell them, let's send them a message that they left one of theirs behind and Elon is here waiting to be picked up.

[Tarek Malik]

It's okay.

[Rod Pyle]

Last, last one. NASA jobs are safe for now. There was a recent announcement of a major reduction in workforce by NASA that has not happened. The first round was expected to be Release of all probationary employees, quote, unquote, which are people who are, you know, in their first years, they're still under scrutiny before being permanently hired or people that have moved into new positions or changed agencies. And it wasn't, you know, this is not going to be catastrophic in my opinion. Maybe you feel differently. It was about a thousand people, but.

[Tarek Malik]

I think those people would feel differently.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, yeah, but I mean, we've already had that at JPL and it was more than a thousand. So, you know, when you're talking about across all the remaining field centers. But yeah, there's important work being bunned by these people. And this is the next generation of NASA people. So those probably aren't the ones you want to, you know, I cut. Now there have been, what would you call them, voluntary early retirements. Maybe forced retirements is a better word at some of the field centers. What was weird about this was that Goddard and the Marshall Space Flight center were to be excluded, but there was no explanation as to why. Now, Marshall, I get it. Because they're building sls and that hasn't been canceled yet. Goddard was a little more of a puzzle. Unfortunately, National Science foundation got a similar memo and they did lay off about 10% of its staff, which was 168 people, which was laudably protested by representatives from both side of the aisle in Congress. And to date they think about maybe 750 NASA employees have taken deferred resignation, that is early retirement, which means they can walk out next week and collect money until September. But personal opinion here, but in an era where we're concerned about Chinese technological ascendance and maybe losing the foot race back to the moon and all that, it's a weird time to be cutting staff.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Unless you've really researched it to death and they haven't had time to do that. So what's your take on this?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, I'm at a bit of a loss because as I understood it, a lot of the deferred layoffs were deferred until as we're recording it, today is the 21st of February, as we're recording this episode, were deferred until today and today is not over. And so. So I was wondering if there was going to be like a 6pm news cycle drop of layoff. Yeah. And I'm wondering if that's what was going to be the case because I had been hearing from sources that they were still very much on the table even if they had gotten through a reprieve. CNN has a story that seems to have a different statement than the one that I received from NASA yesterday, which was saying that, you know, NASA's complying with all the, the, the, the, you know, the ongoing work that the White House is directing. And they are looking at, they are looking at the workforce and at exceptions where it is warranted. You know, that had come down from, from the headquarters. The CNN has one that, that seemed like they were really getting a bit of a reprieve across the board, that it was a little bit more definitive. So I am interested to see like what happens. But you do raise a really good point that at a time when there is a lot of, of discussion about competition from China and not wanting to lose and you are kind of chipping at the, the foundation of that science infrastructure with, with these kind of layoffs and the, the people that have been targeted for the most part, both at the National Science foundation as well as at other, all the other agencies that are facing the similar cutbacks are these probationary employees, these new people, this new generation that would become the future leaders at NASA, the future leaders at the Science foundation, etc. Across the board. And you kind of don't want to lose those people because once they're gone, they're probably not going to come back, especially if they get really soured on, on government work when it used to be a bit of a lock, you know, maybe in a previous generation. So, you know, again, I am, I am waiting to see how it develops because, you know, you mentioned it earlier, is there room for more efficient improvement about how we do things? I think yes. So that you don't end up with a Viper moon Rover and then no way to launch it. So they just throw it all out. We've talked about that ad nauseam. That is not an efficient use of anyone's time. And how that that happened, I don't know. Well, but.

[Rod Pyle]

And Mars sample return.

[Tarek Malik]

Mars sample return. Another one.

[Rod Pyle]

Right, but let's not go down that road yet.

[Tarek Malik]

Okay? Yeah, yeah, but, but we don't. The, the, the point there is I want to see what happens. And again, it just seems very strange to me that a lot of this infrastructure decisions we talked about, the Space Station 1 as well, are being made without a firm leadership captain of the agency to say this is actually what we need to fulfill what mission. So I know that this is all coming out of the Doge stuff that Elon Musk is leading. And it is very much how he led the Twitter transition too, and the ownership there, where he cut everything and then slowly added things back but on a government scale that it can be harder to get the things back. In fact, we mentioned some of that earlier. They can't find some people I think in one of the other departments because they didn't really want to lay them off when they but they found out a little too late and now it's hard to find them. And we don't want that to happen with all of our talented people. So we'll have to see we know what what goes on.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, speaking of, of the less talented people, I just want to say as a personal aside that when my assignment at JPL got cut and that was not under the current administration or doge, so it was in a previous cost cutting round, I was probably the least expensive person on that on that at that facility. And I think my yearly take on my contract might have been less than their sweet and low budget for coffee. But that's just a. Well, I want to thank everybody for.

[Tarek Malik]

Joining us really quickly. Just before I did want to say if anyone is out there who is affected by all this, first of all, I am sorry about it all but if you do want to talk about it, my DMs are open and I've got signal and all of that, just let me know. I'm very easy to find on the Internet so we just want to make sure that we're getting the whole story of what's going on.

[Rod Pyle]

Easy to find. Okay.

[Tarek Malik]

Easy to find. Not easy.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. I was going to send you a Test email in 10 minutes to see how long it takes you to get back to me. I want to thank everybody for joining us for episode 149. I think we got almost up to 150. We actually got through all the headlines today. This is a first and this was the all headlines all the time edition. Tarek, where can we find you covering cool space news these days?

[Tarek Malik]

Well you can find [e-mail] as always trying to wrap my head around the week that's coming and how we're going to all survive it because it's going to be an amazing one for sure. What does SpaceX always say? Excitement guaranteed I think is what they say for that. Let's hope Starship gets off the ground and does something new and amazing next week. That'd be kind of fun to see. You can find me on the Twitter Tarekj Malik, also on LinkedIn and a few others. And tonight you will find me playing Fortnite because it is a new season and I want to find out if there's any space in it. There is a guy who looks like a pickle, but I'm not sure if he's from space. We're going to find out and I will let you know next episode.

[Rod Pyle]

So your life must be a very strange place. And of course you can find me at pilebooks.com [e-mail] and you could find the National Space Society. My primary [e-mail] Membership includes a full subscription to the print and digital editions of Ad Astra the Best, because it's almost the last space magazine on the rack. Always remember, you could drop us a line at TwistedTwit TV. And of course, if you're going to send suggestions for next week or questions or comments or insults or whatever, or space jokes, it's twiswit tv. We answer all our emails and I do keep all the jokes online for future use. New Episodes this podcast podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcatcher and on your less favorite podcatchers. Most of them. So make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, give us reviews. We'll take whatever you got. And don't forget, we're counting on you to join club twit in 2025. Besides supporting Twitter, you help keep us on the air, which we think is a good thing. And bringing you great guests, good commentary and horrid space jokes. Where else can you get that in one place? And you get all the great programming with video streams on the Twit Network ad free through Club Twit. $7 a month. I ask you, brother, what can you get for $7 a month?

[Tarek Malik]

That comes close, you know? So let me say what. What can cost seven?

[Rod Pyle]

Okay? So we appreciate it. And it keeps nothing. Keep the electrons flowing your way.

[Tarek Malik]

I got my line wrong. I'm sorry, everybody.

[Rod Pyle]

All right. And you can follow the Twitter tech podcast network at TWiT on Twitter and on Facebook and Twitter TV on Instagram. Thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you for those who joined us live. It's great to be here and we couldn't do it without you. See you next week.

[E]

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