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- [00:00]
Host 1
Space, the second to last frontier.
- [00:04]
Host 2
Second to last.
- [00:05]
Host 1
Isn't it the final Disney World?
- [00:07]
Host 3
I haven't been.
- [00:09]
Host 2
I haven't been either. I've lived here.
- [00:11]
Host 3
Alaska.
- [00:11]
Host 1
I want to go to Alaska. It's the third to last frontier.
- [00:14]
Host 2
Hold on. Is it the third?
- [00:16]
Host 1
Like, it's a cool frontier.
- [00:17]
Host 2
You sound okay. You sound terrible. Doug sounds insane. We're falling apart.
- [00:24]
Host 3
America. I know. China trying to.
- [00:26]
Host 1
China does everything better. Their. Their illnesses. We're fucking chalked. We are still in rough shape, all three of us.
- [00:34]
Host 3
I think I got beat up on the basketball court. It's all. It's all jet lag.
- [00:38]
Host 1
Like, revitalized my cold. I was almost over it and then returned home to America and I'm just poor.
- [00:45]
Host 3
That's why we have to go to
- [00:46]
Host 1
space when actually that's why.
- [00:47]
Host 2
Space.
- [00:48]
Host 3
Space.
- [00:49]
Host 1
Final frontier. Ish. Second or third to last between Disney World.
- [00:55]
Host 2
Alaska.
- [00:55]
Host 3
You guys need to have gone. You live right next to it.
- [00:58]
Host 1
Live next to Alaska.
- [00:59]
Host 3
Yeah. Well, yeah. Either way, you live close enough to either one.
- [01:02]
Host 1
I think if you do the math, the moon is as far from Los Angeles as Alaska.
- [01:07]
Host 3
Have you seen that, Shaq? Where he said the moon must be closer than Atlanta because he can see the moon, but he can't see. That's a good point.
- [01:15]
Host 1
That's a great point.
- [01:17]
Host 2
The Shack clip where he's talking about, if you fill up your gas tank when it's 3/4 full, you're only paying. You're only paying like half as much or something. He's trying to explain that if you always fill up, it's. You pay less.
- [01:30]
Host 3
You pay less gas. Yeah.
- [01:32]
Host 2
Okay. Well, there's one big pressing story right now, and it's that Trump made a very threatening announcement on social media.
- [01:42]
Host 3
Pull this up, Perry. Look, I mean, we're going to talk about the Artemis 2 mission and what's going on with space. And I actually have a lot of questions for you because I. I don't know too much about it, because I am a simpleton on Earth. I'm a simple queen.
- [01:52]
Host 1
Unlike me, who's done a day of.
- [01:55]
Host 3
I want to learn more about it. But this tweet did just come out. This truth. I'm sorry, and it's. It's fucking deranged. A whole civilization will die tonight. Never be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. We will find out tonight one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world. God bless the great people of Iran. Which is a great thing, you can
- [02:14]
Host 1
say I thought this one was the. Those fucking better open the.
- [02:19]
Host 3
Open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards. You'd be living in hell. Just watch Praise be to a lot.
- [02:23]
Host 1
Do you think he's watching like Rambo? I don't understand.
- [02:27]
Host 3
I mean he's getting. Is beyond.
- [02:29]
Host 1
He's been like a spree. Like it's like sitting down with his mates to watch all of them in a row. And in between each movie he does a new tweet.
- [02:36]
Host 2
So I think it's, you know, it's fair to call the. The language and the threats here as absolutely insane. And the reason we aren't talking about this is like the main section of the episode right now is we're recording this a few hours before the supposed deadline of when Trump is threatening action at the moment. And so by the time you're listening to this, something will have potentially happened and we'd be guessing a lot in the discussion. We're going to talk a little bit about about the Iran war later in this episode, but we have an interview lined up with Senator Mark Kelly, former astronaut, and want to talk about the Artemis program and some of the things that have been going on with that. And then we'll do some Iran discussion at the end of this episode that by the time you listen to this, depending on what happens.
- [03:29]
Host 3
Yeah, we'll almost certainly be out of date. We either have back down, which is I'm praying for right God. God, we hope so based on what he's done, likely that the outcome is that he'll back down. But if he doesn't, then he's crossed a truly insane line and then whatever we say will be completely out of date. So we're sort of. We're keeping updated on it and we'll talk about it more next week. But it's our first.
- [03:50]
Host 1
We're gonna look like real goofs if we post this video tomorrow right as World War 3 has started.
- [03:56]
Host 3
Yeah, we're talking about. Yeah, yeah.
- [03:58]
Host 2
I mean officially started.
- [03:59]
Host 1
And we're just like the space episode.
- [04:02]
Host 3
It's like we're in World War 3. That is a real outcome. But we can't do the War 3 episode before it happens. So.
- [04:08]
Host 2
But I do want to talk about Artemis. So for the people that don't know
- [04:12]
Host 1
the current ongoing mission, bring this up while you're talking. This is. If you go to NASA.govTrack Artemis, you can see right now where the Orion capsule currently is in their mission around the moon. Go ahead, Aiden. It's cool. It's this interactive thing they made in Unity.
- [04:28]
Host 2
Yeah. So this is the first mission ever where we've sent humans around the dark side of the moon. We've.
- [04:36]
Host 3
Oh, shit.
- [04:36]
Host 2
Or anything around.
- [04:38]
Host 1
Not anything, technically. Technically, one of the Apollo missions we did go around the moon. They literally, like, the oxygen tanks were break or helium tanks were breaking, so they had to slingshot around the back of the moon. Okay, that's badass. But this is the first planned one.
- [04:52]
Host 2
Okay. Literally the first intended around the dark side of the moon. And one of the crazy things about this, other than I don't think we've sent humans even around the moon in a really. In decades, is the length of time that they went fully without communications to Earth. Like, as soon as they go around that other side of the moon, they're completely in the dark. And we don't know until they come back around whether or not they're. Okay. Able to communicate with them again. And you have been looking into this the most in preparation for this interview. Anything else that really stands out?
- [05:32]
Host 1
Okay. I want to give a brief outline of the NASA history and what led up to this. And I'm actually going to make an argument that I hope Senator Mark Kelly, who's like a badass astronaut, by the way, that we're going to get to talk to, hopefully doesn't watch this part of the episode. I don't think this missions that hype. It's the upcoming ones that are really hype.
- [05:52]
Host 3
Oh, there's more.
- [05:53]
Host 2
Yeah. So this is. It's the first stage of a big program that's being.
- [05:57]
Host 3
There's an Artemis Expanded Universe.
- [05:59]
Host 2
Yeah, yeah, the acu.
- [06:01]
Host 3
Okay.
- [06:02]
Senator Mark Kelly
All right.
- [06:02]
Host 2
And I'll tell you how it lines up with Marvel Civil War later.
- [06:05]
Host 3
Okay.
- [06:05]
Host 2
You're always excited for that part.
- [06:06]
Host 3
I'm excited for that.
- [06:07]
Host 1
But the crazy thing is there's like a new. It's the equivalent of the DC universe. China has been now kicking off their own. Okay, I see. Like, actually, it's getting kind of crazy. I think there's a lot of really exciting stories about this beyond this mission. Weirdly enough, even though this mission is pretty hype. Okay. Some key timelines in America's space exploration. 1961, our boy JFK says we're going to go to the moon. We're going to beat the Russians there. Right. So by 1967, we start running the Apollo missions, and they run through 1972. It's like five years.
- [06:36]
Host 2
And I think the framing for this at the time is in the greater space race. The USSR is kind of crushing the Us, like, they're beating us to every first space milestone of like, first person in space first. And there's, there's kind of a, there's a short list of like, first space accomplishments. And then we kind of shift the goalposts and say we will get to the moon first. And that will be kind of the American point of success. Yeah, grander space.
- [07:04]
Host 3
They had Sputnik, the first satellite, and
- [07:07]
Host 2
then first satellite for human.
- [07:08]
Host 3
And then people were freaking out. And then JFK said, no, we got this. He said, we'll go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing. And I don't, I never knew what the other thing was. Anyone know what that is? That's an iconic line. But he just said, we'll go to the moon and we'll do the other thing. And I, the other thing was bomber. What was the other thing? Trump is fulfilling JFK's legacy.
- [07:31]
Host 1
They didn't want us to know.
- [07:32]
Host 3
I see. That was a secret at the time.
- [07:33]
Host 1
That's, that's why the Trump ran. CIA killed him. So what's crazy Trump? Dude, I, I, I feel like most people, and by that I mean literally me, until yesterday, just kind of thought, we landed on the moon once, we did it six times, we faked it six times.
- [07:51]
Host 3
Which is, that's a dedication to faking it.
- [07:53]
Host 2
Why would you risk theorists talking about the other five times?
- [07:56]
Host 1
No, literally, it's like we talk, you hear. Faking the moon landing so much as a conspiracy. I think it literally warped my brain into thinking we went one time, we went six fucking times. People walked on the moon six times, including like a geologist for the last one.
- [08:09]
Host 3
Once you build an expensive soundstage in la, you have to use it more than once, otherwise you're not getting the money's worth.
- [08:16]
Host 2
Yeah, we owned it. We weren't renting it, so it was like, so we gotta keep using this,
- [08:20]
Host 3
otherwise you're breaking the lease.
- [08:21]
Host 1
Okay, so this is the Apollo era. Badass. In fact, Apollo is actually the brother of Artemis, which is why this most recent one is named Artemis the program. So this is like the revival of it. All right, so Apollo, this is like the big awesome one that we did super well. And this is like a five year period and there's a whole bunch of missions. There's 17 ends with Apollo 17. And so then we're kind of silent for a while and we shift to the space shuttle era. So, you know, if you've seen the 8ish, pull up a picture of a space shuttle, whatever you think Looks coolest.
- [08:49]
Host 3
Coolest one?
- [08:50]
Host 1
Yeah, the coolest looking one. Space shuttle is the one where it looks like, you know, I guess an airplane or something on the side of a rocket. And the whole idea is we're going to make it more reusable so it's cheaper, ahead of their time. So that's like a 30 year period. It's 1981 until 2011. So like when we were kids, the space shuttle program was still running. Not only that, Senator Mark Kelly did one of the last ones. He was commander on one of the last space shuttle missions. And I want to ask him about this maybe, unless he'll like be upset and he'll say no one talks to me about that and he'll end the call. He was scheduled to do the final one. He was scheduled to be the commander of the final space shuttle mission. And then Congress was like, now let's do one more like at the very end. So he doesn't get to have the honor. So like in the Wikipedia, it's like he was the last. I forget it's still dead.
- [09:37]
Host 3
And they just did one after.
- [09:38]
Host 1
They did one after. Yeah. So this is like, you know, one of the big success eras of the space shuttle. And so at this point, what's, what's critical to recognize here is this all becomes about low Earth orbit. We're not going into deep space anymore.
- [09:51]
Host 3
We're not going to the moon.
- [09:52]
Host 1
So like once Apollo ends in 1972, we are not going to the moon ever again.
- [09:56]
Host 3
That's the last time someone walked on the moon.
- [09:58]
Host 1
Yeah, not only last time someone walked on the moon, it's last time we've sent people near the moon or anything like this. So the space shuttle era, that 30 year period was just low Earth orbit and is basically about setting up the International Space Station. We did other things, got like the Hubble, you know, Hubble telescope and there's all these other things, but there's like 135 missions here. A couple hundred people went into space through this. So, you know, it's a, it's a big era for the United States and we have this iconic thing.
- [10:24]
Host 2
We.
- [10:24]
Host 1
But then it starts to just become so expensive. The reusability is not really working out. They're having to refurbish everything. It's a lot of money. And eventually we're like, this program doesn't really make sense anymore, so it gets shuttered. And so from 2011 to 2020, America did not have a way to send astronauts into space, which is kind of wild. We're the ones who got people to the moon. We did space shuttle for 30 years and we just didn't have a thing. And so for that nine year period, we paid Russia to put our astronauts on their rockets to send to the International Space Station. It was, I believe the number was 80 or 90 million per seat. Where we're like, hey, please send our guys into space to the space station together. And you had to go into like Kazakhstan and take one of their rockets. It's kind of wild.
- [11:07]
Host 2
So that's how we were getting people to the ISS during that period of time.
- [11:11]
Host 1
Yes. So for a nine year period, America was paying Russia.
- [11:13]
Host 3
They had to drive out to Kazakhstan with a briefcase full of $90 million
- [11:18]
Host 1
to hand it out. Dark shades. The president had to do it, the
- [11:21]
Host 3
President had to hand it.
- [11:21]
Host 1
Obama had to do.
- [11:22]
Host 3
Each one of these hands a handoff. And they just, like Russia would say,
- [11:25]
Host 1
we're not taking the money unless it comes from the top.
- [11:27]
Host 3
What if they took them to their own fake soundstage?
- [11:29]
Host 1
What if it was all, that's true, the Russia? Because Kazakhstan is famous for a lot of sound stages and Hollywood industry.
- [11:36]
Host 3
Okay. You know, I do think it's crazy though. I, I, I just, I think a lot of people think it's crazy, but it's crazy that we went to the moon. I didn't know six times, but. Six times.
- [11:44]
Host 1
Yeah.
- [11:44]
Host 3
And then in 72, we just stop.
- [11:46]
Senator Mark Kelly
We just stop.
- [11:47]
Host 3
And it's been 50 years and we're just like, no one, no one on no other country has been like, let's do that.
- [11:52]
Host 1
We should also go whatever else.
- [11:54]
Host 3
Yeah, that's so wild to me.
- [11:56]
Host 1
Yeah. It just became International Space Station. Okay. So here's where it starts to get cool. And I think there's fun dynamics with company stuff on top of the coolness of space. So 2000, early 2010s, we don't have a space program, so NASA decides to kind of pivot. And in 2014, they give private contracts to companies to build a crew vehicle to the iss. So the companies would own it and NASA would utilize them and pay them. So a big shift from how it was done in the past, where NASA designs everything, pays all these contractors and they run everything. So they paid Boeing $4.2 billion and SpaceX $2.6 billion. And both of them were like, both of you please go make a new spacecraft that you can launch our guys into the ISS. So you may have heard about this recently. So SpaceX proceeded to absolutely fucking crush it. They delivered it on time. Under budget and now have done dozens, I believe, of missions where they take people to the ISS. SpaceX currently is America's essentially only way of getting astronauts to space. And that's one of those things that, you know, you can be a certified Elon hater, but it's fucking incredible. Like because of them we have incredibly cheap, affordable access to space. Boeing on the other hand, which is a fun little side story, so they again start 2014, end up missing milestones and missing milestones and then they try to launch something and it like the tests aren't working their thing and then they send it to NASA and there's a big problem. Finally, you might have heard about this in 2024, this is four years after SpaceX has successfully gone. They launched their Starliner and they send it to the ISS and then parts break when they get to the International space station and two astronauts get off. And this is in 2024. And they realize it's not safe enough to bring it home. So they have to send Boeing ship back to Earth with no one in it. And the crew, instead of staying there for, I think it was like, you know, nine days or something, they're there for nine months until eventually Space X goes and saves them. So I just want, I don't trust
- [13:53]
Host 3
the Boeing Dreamliner to fly a plane on real. Whenever I have a Boeing plane, I'm always a little bit more nervous than usual.
- [14:01]
Host 1
Yes.
- [14:02]
Host 3
So it's like, yeah, of course this,
- [14:04]
Host 1
you know, all the corporate decline you hear about Boeing and their planes getting worse. This has been happening in the space program where they were one of like the key players in the early days where they were making huge parts of these rockets.
- [14:15]
Host 3
Their main industry is planes and they can't handle that. I don't trust them on their side business of doing NASA's contract job of making space like that.
- [14:23]
Host 2
Of course there was two Dreamlighter accidents within this time period where everyone on board died.
- [14:28]
Host 1
Yeah, everyone.
- [14:29]
Host 2
It was like it was hundreds of people.
- [14:32]
Host 1
So they are years and years and years over budget. Fortunately, NASA has been switching in a lot of projects, particularly these. This is like the commercial crew era, particularly when they go to private companies now and they say, you make a thing, we're going to use it. It's fixed price rather than cost plus. Cost plus means that if I pay you to make a thing, you charge me whatever it takes you to make it, plus 15% profit. Right. So cost plus is if you take three extra years to do it, that means you're making money. The Whole time. And not only do the costs keep going up, the bonus goes up and I have to pay all of it. Fixed price, by contrast, means you have $4 billion. Make the thing. If you go over, it's on you. So fortunately these projects were fixed price where Boeing has basically done such a horrific job that they've lost over $2 billion. They were given 4.2, they're 2 billion over. And NASA has said like, we don't know when we'll be using Starliner next, probably we'll do four more missions with you instead of six. So there's, it's o in the air whether they're even going to trust Boeing to do any more of these things after they've already spent $6 billion. So fortunately this is one where like taxpayers aren't on the hook for Boeing doing a terrible job.
- [15:49]
Host 3
Sure.
- [15:51]
Host 1
And so they've been an absolute disaster. And it's funny because they're also contributing to what's going on currently with Artemis. But this is like the commercial era. And all this, all this again was to basically rebuild the American system. So there's multiple companies that can get human beings to the iss and maybe
- [16:09]
Host 2
you can speak to this. My understanding is that this is seen as pretty successful because ultimately what they get is a comparatively cost effective option from SpaceX compared to the previous era where NASA was paying for like in house or proprietary design of these ships.
- [16:31]
Host 1
Yes. And what's really interesting about this Artemis program is that it's now a hybrid of those two models. It's really strange. So, so basically, yes, this commercial era has been very successful, to put it differently. The truth is SpaceX has been really successful. They have brought the price down. I mean you can do missions for like $100 million now compared to the billions it would take in the past and is taking for Artemis. Right. So SpaceX has succeeded at making crude launches and general space travel vastly cheaper than anyone else. So in that sense, massive win for NASA. And now we, America, there's a, there's a space program. So now we get to Artemis, which is this program everybody's talking about. So now this is straight up NASA again saying, hey, for decades now we've only focused on low Earth orbit. We focused on getting satellites into space and launching telescopes. And the International Space Station Artemis program is specifically to get a sustained presence on the moon. Our goal now by NASA explicitly is we are going to make a moon base. And so this is what this launch is. This is Artemis 2. This is one of the, what the, you Know the thing that we're talking about, this moon mission, this is the second of the five currently planned missions where we are progressively working towards getting a moon base.
- [17:44]
Host 3
So this one, this one's just a flyby though, right? As my understanding, they're not.
- [17:48]
Host 2
Yeah, yeah.
- [17:48]
Host 3
Just studying the moon.
- [17:49]
Host 1
Yeah. So there's, there's five currently like concrete missions with obviously there the intention there'll be more in the future. Artemis 1, I believe happened two years ago. That's an uncrewed test of the rocket system and Orion and all this stuff that they shoot into space. So two years ago it was like, let's just make sure this, it can get into, into deep space. This is Artemis 2. So this is round two of the whole program. And this is why we are sending humans to the moon by. But not onto the moon. Right. They're flying around the moon. And really the core mission here is test that all this stuff works, test that humans survive, tests that we can get in and out of deep space. All these things with actual humans. Right. So what I think is actually the really exciting One is Artemis 3 is meant to happen next year, 2027. And that's going to be a test to dock with the commercial moon lander, which we'll get into in a sec. And that'll take them to the moon and back. But basically they're going to do like a docking and undocking sort of romantic gesture in. And then Artemis 4.
- [18:48]
Host 3
So even on 3, they're not landing on the moon yet.
- [18:51]
Host 1
Correct. They're not even going to the moon.
- [18:52]
Host 3
They're gonna land.
- [18:53]
Host 1
They're in mid orbit.
- [18:54]
Host 3
They're really teasing this moon landing.
- [18:55]
Host 2
Don't be so impatient. This is a problem. You're always, you're always on your phone.
- [19:01]
Host 3
In the 70s, in the 60s.
- [19:03]
Host 1
I'm looking at my phone, I'm swiping up, why isn't it at the moon yet?
- [19:06]
Host 3
It was two, three, four. Okay, okay, which, which Artemis number do boots hit the ground?
- [19:14]
Host 1
4. So the plan is early 2028. We're going to the fucking moon. Human beings are landing on the moon on Artemis 4. We are on two right now. So again, one is just, hey, can our shit get into deep space? Let's double check that. Two is can our humans get into deep space? Let's send them around the moon. They're going to look at it. They're literally going to look at it. And it's going to be cool and it's going to be hype and we're going to show we're ready to do this. Artemis 3 is testing that. Basically the system that's going to get them to and from the moon. Artemis 4 is when they are on the moon. Artemis 5 would in theory be later that year or the following year, like late 2028, 2029. And that's like. They're not only going to the moon. We're starting to establish the base.
- [19:51]
Host 3
They're sending hammers and they're going to start.
- [19:52]
Host 1
Yeah, and just hammers. Because we use moon rocks hammers and flex seal.
- [19:56]
Host 3
You want to use the local delicacy.
- [19:59]
Host 2
It's such a. Feels like such a long timeline for something that is all done on sound stages.
- [20:05]
Host 3
It's just, you know, I got a question for you as a recent space expert because I watched Project Hail Mary in Hong Kong with. Oh yeah, are they. Are they scouting hot school teachers for solo missions for this? That is. The goal is to get a quippy,
- [20:20]
Host 2
quippy school teacher and he goes like, I don't know if I could be on the mission. I don't fucking. I'm sorry. I've got a lot of baggage about this movie. I got a lot of. Everybody loves it. I'm like the only person who doesn't like it. It's. I'm going insane.
- [20:31]
Host 3
To be clear, I do like it, but I don't think it's one of the top 50 movies of all time. According to IDB. It's a very redditor loved movie. But is that. Are we going.
- [20:39]
Host 1
I think we're going to have to ask Senator Mark Kelly. Incredibly decorated air pilot, space commander. Senator, we have to ask him. Hey, did they. Were you someone who was back on Earth disillusioned and then a British professor said, follow me and took you into a lab that was like hidden behind some bushes? She's German in the mov. Is she? Okay, I'm going off of interstellar.
- [21:02]
Host 3
By the way, Mark Kelly was kind of like a Ryan Gosling type.
- [21:06]
Host 2
Mark Kelly, do you think. Would you describe the new candidates for the moon missions to be redditor core? I have tons of important questions, man. Did.
- [21:17]
Host 1
When they asked you to command your first mission, were you sitting on the front porch of an old kind of cabin smoking a cigarette? And when they came up, you said, sergeant, it's been a long time. You know, I gave that all up because that's the only people they hire. It's ones who said they've given it all up.
- [21:34]
Host 3
A moon model mission out of duct tape and string to like showcase the NASA's plan and then everyone agree with it and made you the greatest. I'm sorry, let's.
- [21:43]
Host 1
There might be looking at like humanity
- [21:45]
Host 2
left line item budget and seeing like $150,000 for original Hans Zimmer soundtrack.
- [21:52]
Senator Mark Kelly
They play in the cabin.
- [21:53]
Host 2
That would actually be worth it if
- [21:55]
Host 3
we had original NASA Hans Zimmer soundtrack for each Artemis mission.
- [22:00]
Host 1
But fixed cost. I swear to God, if Hans Zimmer keeps driving up prices for two years,
- [22:05]
Host 2
Hans Zimmer always goes cost plus.
- [22:09]
Host 3
I will say the. Have you ever. The stream at all? Have you seen the stream?
- [22:12]
Host 1
Yeah, yeah. There was 150,000 on Twitch yesterday when they hit the. So they hit the record for the farthest we've ever been from Earth. Yeah, we hit that cool milestone and there was 600,000 people watching on YouTube.
- [22:23]
Host 3
Yeah, it was massive.
- [22:24]
Host 1
Massive. It's like a huge. I mean this is like. This is genuinely an incredible moment of people being excited about space and realizing this. And we like. I don't want to say the hard parts are done, but getting to hear to Artemis 2 is a lot harder than.
- [22:36]
Host 3
No, it was very. No program. You know, it was like a global chat. Everyone was pretty excited. And. And I heard this is the first one where they had the ability to stream 4K video while they were doing it. That was the idea. Didn't seem 4k to me, but I guess. I don't know. That's what I read.
- [22:49]
Host 1
Yeah.
- [22:49]
Host 3
And so it was. I was pretty cool.
- [22:52]
Host 2
Okay, I had a question. So there's this timeline that we have for this set of missions to land on the moon. Again, but isn't. China has their own set of missions. They're trying to get there in a faster period of time or a similar period of time.
- [23:06]
Host 1
Yeah, I didn't write down like all the exact timelines. Basically they have been sending landers that are going to the moon. They landed on the. I want to say far side of the moon or south pole, I forget which. But they did that before us. They like landed a robot did it first try. Their space program has matured insanely fast. They also now have their own international space Station. They've had for a few years. The US is like trying to set up these space accords so that we can all agree. Everybody will sign a pledge to say this is how we're going to deal with taking land on the moon and how we're going to deal with disputes and getting rid of how you're going to dispose of things in the space area if it falls to Earth or the Moon or whatnot. It's called the Artemis Accords and China won't sign it. And so there's genuinely a space race going on. Now China has explicitly said that their goal is to land someone on the moon before 2030. So there is a genuine race going on here. Our best timelines Right now for Artemis 4 is early 2028. We have someone on the moon. But what's crazy is in fact, let's get into this. The thing that that's really strange about Artemis, there's three components that are going to get us to the moon, okay? Versus the sls, the Space Launch System. This is essentially the rocket and all the things that you imagine that take our payload into orbit. This has been a NASA directed thing. It's with a whole bunch of traditional kind of aerospace contractors. It's been very expensive and very slow. But we have a thing that as of a couple of days ago, we successfully launched somebody into space, right. Then there's Orion, which is the capsule that the crew are in. So generally with space you have the giant rocket that gets the payload into space, then the payload goes off and does its own thing. So Orion is what the human beings right now in space are in. They're driving the thing around, they're going to come back. However, NASA's part of the whole role does not include getting Orion, which is where the people are in to and from the moon. So that piece, which is a pretty important part of going to the moon, we have getting them into space, we have them being in space and we need to get them to the moon and back. That part is going to private contractors. So they put out contracts for companies to pitch that they could get Orion the capsule to and from the moon. Guess who won the contract? It was SpaceX. So SpaceX, they wanted to give two different providers the option to like get Orion to and from the moon. In 2021 they gave the $3 billion contract to SpaceX and it was. They wanted to give it to multiple people, but they said they didn't have the funds. So Blue Origin, which is Jeffy Bezos, his company, Jeffy be very, very unproven company so far, although they're starting to do basic things right. We've talked about this a little bit in the past. They sued and they said that's not fair. You can't just give one contract. We weren't being seriously considered. And so in 2023, NASA gave them a $3 billion contract to develop a lander for Artemis 5.
- [26:04]
Host 3
I don't think we were considered.
- [26:05]
Host 2
I don't understand.
- [26:07]
Host 3
Stand was considered for making a lander and we should sue.
- [26:10]
Host 1
Fuck. I knew I forgot to do something yesterday.
- [26:12]
Host 2
This is only from the loose description that I've been giving. Been given. But this sounds like when X or Twitter said they were going to sue because advertisers were leaving the platform, they sued because they didn't get picked.
- [26:29]
Host 1
I don't know.
- [26:30]
Host 3
You know that the. I mean, this is weird because I knew about this from my dad growing up and like military contractors and stuff. But my understanding is that like, it's a pretty. It needs to be as transparent as possible because these contracts are so valuable and if someone gets picked really instantly, almost everybody will sue because they're like, hey, this needs to be like really above board.
- [26:50]
Host 1
You didn't give us a fair shake.
- [26:51]
Host 3
Yeah, everyone needs to have a fair shake. And yeah, I mean, it's like this happens for like down to like, who puts the waste baskets in a building?
- [26:56]
Host 2
I see everybody. Everybody needs to give it be given the appropriate amount of time to. To win the contract. Whether it be Blue Origin or a small company run by Jonah Hill and Miles Teller. Like it's. Right.
- [27:08]
Host 3
Yeah. Jonah Hill, Miles Teller. You and me.
- [27:10]
Host 1
And me.
- [27:11]
Host 3
Let's.
- [27:11]
Host 2
Let's all Our military contracting company.
- [27:13]
Host 3
Yeah. I think we could launch a rocket.
- [27:15]
Host 1
I don't know the. Are we referencing the movie?
- [27:18]
Host 2
There's a. It's.
- [27:19]
Host 1
This episode is going to rip. Okay, so Blue Origin, you know, and it kind of makes sense, right? Like SpaceX is the one who's delivered. The only other company you contracted with for this type of stuff, Boeing fucked it up insanely hard. So it's like, yeah, you'd probably go with SpaceX. But Blue Origin protested. They came back with a good contract. They were given an offer. And so now there are two competitors to again, the third, very, very and very, very, very important and very hard part of this whole thing, which is getting the capsule to and from the moon. It's not just you're getting it to and from the moon. Remember, you need to get a thing near the moon to then take it to and from the moon with lots of fuel. That's a hard fucking problem to deal with. And so both of them are now competing to try to develop the lunar lander that will get this thing to and from the moon. And that needs to happen by 2028, in two years. And so how is SpaceX doing? Well, they're doing fucking terribly. You know Starship, the giant ship that they've been talking about that Elon's been promoting. That's their pitch for how they're gonna get it to and from the moon. A variant of that called the hls, the Human Landing System. So I want to show you this image. If you pull this up, Perry, this is bonkers. This is the plan for how SpaceX is going to get, is going to get Orion to and from the moon. First off, SpaceX will launch a starship into orbit to serve as a propellant depot. To put that differently, they're going to launch a starship into space whose whole goal is just to store fuel. Then SpaceX will launch multiple additional starships as tankers, which will deliver fuel to the depot starship that they have in space. This is estimated to take 10 to 20 launches. They are gonna need to send of starship to go up to fuel the one that they have in space. Finally, the HLS starship, the one that will actually go to and from the moon, goes into orbit, will dock with the depot starship, receive all the fuel, and then go to the moon and start hanging out in the moon's orbit. At this point later on, NASA's own program will launch Orion into space. Orion will go to lunar orbit and they will connect in orbit around the moon, at which point starship will take it to the moon. They get out, they do whatever they want to do, Starship will boost back up and continue to hang out in lunar orbit. So it's not just that SpaceX is like launching a thing that's going to take them there. It's like at least 20 launches of Starship, one of which is a fuel depot, 18 or whatever of which are tankers, and then the third one is a specialized to take them to and from the moon. Now that all sounds awesome in paper, except they haven't launched a single starship. This plan takes like 20 launches of Starship, including two different variations.
- [30:04]
Host 2
But okay, so SpaceX is a company that has done a ton of successful launches. Yes, but it's just of different rockets or of different equipment than this specific model that they need to develop for this project.
- [30:16]
Host 1
Yeah, so the ones you see with SpaceX are Falcon, it's those big rockets, and there's Falcon, the Falcon Heavy, and that can take crew to and from the iss. It can take tons and has taken tons of satellites into low Earth orbit. That is different than one getting into deep space around the moon. And two, starship is meant to be way, way, way, way bigger. They just want to have a much larger payload in part for this mission. And in part because SpaceX sees that as an important part of their future.
- [30:45]
Host 3
I'm like, why? Why do we need this giant tanker in 20 launches for a moon lander? That's. You said they're only handling the part between the Artemis ship and the moon and back.
- [30:57]
Host 1
Yes.
- [30:58]
Host 3
And they need all this.
- [30:59]
Host 2
I want to scrutinize this. Like, that's my first reaction to it.
- [31:02]
Host 3
It sounds stupid, I'm sure, but in
- [31:03]
Host 2
reality, it's like, I don't work.
- [31:04]
Host 3
Yeah.
- [31:05]
Host 2
I know nothing about this. I want to say this is learned from it.
- [31:07]
Host 3
I sound very. That I, as a simpleton, can probably just, like, ask the right question.
- [31:12]
Host 1
It's like one piece. You just need to remember how much you love your friends.
- [31:15]
Host 3
Yeah, exactly.
- [31:15]
Host 1
And then you'll be able to get to and from the moon. I mean, I think the main thing
- [31:18]
Host 3
is crazy because they didn't have this for the moon lander in the 70s. So what is the.
- [31:24]
Host 1
I think it's twofold. And honestly, we could ask Mark Kelly a little bit, because it does seem crazy to me. I think the idea is that SpaceX is saying what would be like, the ideal version. And the ideal version is that you have this massive ship that can take a huge amount of payload to and from the moon. Back in the Apollo program, we were, like, getting. We were getting astronauts there with, like, a rover and they would explore and then they came back. But the plan of the Artemis mission is to establish a moon base.
- [31:49]
Senator Mark Kelly
Right.
- [31:49]
Host 1
It's a different beast. We're not just trying to get humans there to, like, say hello and plant a flag. The idea is we are going to ship an enormous amount of stuff there so an actual base can be established, ideally on the south side where there's frozen water, like, there's ice. And that's going to be really important to, like, maintaining a base and getting more fuel and all this stuff. I think, you know, this is. Obviously, I'm not an expert to be able to say this, but it's, it's revealing, like, how complex this stuff is getting. And this is SpaceX's proposal. And they're.
- [32:18]
Host 2
I never thought it was easy. I'll put that out there. I figured this was hard.
- [32:24]
Host 3
I mean, it's just the moon. You can see it from your freaking house.
- [32:26]
Host 1
And so you can go. I mean, you can go to, like, the Starship Hls Wikipedia page where this is, and there are some, like, cool graphs. Here's one where, from NASA's perspective, they're, like, sending Orion into space, and then they're going to and from the moon via the starship thing. But Elon and SpaceX are behind. And that's what's kind of crazy about this. They're now currently a year behind. A year ago they were supposed to do a test just to test this idea of these things refueling each other in space. That hasn't even been tested. Starship hasn't gotten up and back. So while you gotta give credit to SpaceX, they've been a phenomenally successful, like, just like incredibly influential and successful company with aerospace over the past, you know, two decades. Now they are behind on this and they're seemingly pretty far behind. And so what NASA is doing.
- [33:15]
Host 3
Do you think the secret to space refueling is somehow hidden in UK politics? Because that is what Elon has spent 90% of his time doing.
- [33:24]
Host 1
Yeah, it is, it is.
- [33:25]
Senator Mark Kelly
Certainly.
- [33:25]
Host 3
I'm wondering if maybe they're connected, like he's trying to find them.
- [33:27]
Host 1
It's funny reading about this and being like, the complexity of this company is going way, way, way up and then
- [33:32]
Host 3
he's way, way less about space.
- [33:35]
Host 1
But if Doge can cut out the inefficiencies of NASA, then this suddenly becomes an easy thing. Okay, get tying it back to Artemis just real quick. Right now, Artemis is going to the moon and back. This is entirely the NASA program.
- [33:46]
Senator Mark Kelly
Right?
- [33:47]
Host 1
But starting on Artemis 3 onwards, that's when the private companies are required because they are the pieces that are going to get you to and from the moon. Right. Right now SpaceX is behind. So even though while SpaceX won the original contract for Artemis 3, the one happening next year that is now open, instead of just being SpaceX, NASA has basically said, hey, we're open to whichever company gets there first. Same with Artemis 4, same with Artemis 5. Like, it's now kind of up in the air of if Blue Origin proves they can do it first, they might be the ones to get to the moon. Even though in concept SpaceX is supposed to have the next two locked down.
- [34:23]
Host 2
Have they proven what has Blue Origin proved up until this point? Like, they got Katy Perry into space.
- [34:30]
Host 3
Yeah, Katy Perry into space.
- [34:31]
Host 2
But besides that, what else? What's their track record in being able to compete?
- [34:37]
Host 3
Even space?
- [34:38]
Host 1
I believe they got to low Earth orbit. This is where I don't know enough to say confidently. I mean, they're way behind. I believe they have one successful low Earth orbit launch, but it's just, you know, it's nowhere near and prove it's nowhere near proven compared to SpaceX doing hundred of them. But so Tying this all back to China. And I want to ask Senator Kelly about this because he mentioned we have to beat China to the moon in like an interview he did about this. China again, they're planning for getting to the moon by 2030.
- [35:07]
Host 3
I have a quote here from a New York Times article.
- [35:10]
Host 1
So getting to the moon by 2030. Our plan is to be landing on the moon in 2028, but it depends. It requires either SpaceX or Blue Origin to have an extraordinarily difficult chunk of this process done. They're currently behind and they are going to potentially be the, you know, the barrier between us actually hitting that timeline or China getting there first.
- [35:32]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah.
- [35:32]
Host 3
They say Chinese astronauts are aiming for a first moon until 2030, as you said, in theory, many months after the U.S. but the Artemis program has been proceeding in fits and starts while Chinese space program has been driving forward with formidable focus. And even NASA acknowledges that it may lose this round. They may be early and recent history suggests we may be late. This is, is Isaac been the quote guy from NASA.
- [35:52]
Host 1
Yeah.
- [35:53]
Host 3
So it's clearly like it, like if timelines go like you say, according to plan, the US is ahead on this landing. Although I don't, I wonder what it matters if it's a few months difference here.
- [36:03]
Host 1
Yeah, I mean I would like there's the symbolism of it. There's, there's potentially it's like whoever gets there first, like gets the prime territory. Yeah. I don't know, I don't, I don't know how it works. Yeah.
- [36:14]
Host 3
Each country wants to build a base near the southern pole where it can extract resources like frozen water, hydrogen and helium. Each wants to build nuclear power, nuclear reactors on the moon to power its lunar bases. And each wants to launch missions from the moon to go into deeper space.
- [36:29]
Host 1
Yeah.
- [36:29]
Host 3
So there's, I mean this is the
- [36:30]
Host 1
explicit goal of this by NASA is that we build a moon base which helps serve as the launching point to go to Mars. So there's the long term focus here. I just hope those crazy bastards close the moon.
- [36:40]
Host 3
It's like first of all, true. Second of all, if I want to go to Mars, I never book a flight with a layover. I want non stop and I do not want to be stopping at the moon. It's a pain in the moon's airport.
- [36:52]
Host 1
Fucking.
- [36:52]
Host 3
The moon's airport is under development.
- [36:54]
Host 1
You know how expensive McDonald's is in that saying?
- [36:56]
Host 3
It's not good. And so maybe you could have a fucking moonstop. But I'm going direct. I fly direct.
- [37:01]
Host 2
Right. You're a bit of a direct guy.
- [37:03]
Host 3
Yeah.
- [37:04]
Host 2
It's like I don't know if I'm picky like
- [37:08]
Host 3
in the moon dsa and I'm going to be on Mars. Okay. And it'll be nice. Whoever is first to establish a lunar base will be most likely to have a greater say over what others can do on the moon. Humanity still operates by first come, first served rules.
- [37:22]
Host 1
Well, yes, it's moon rules. Moon rules. You think there's rules on the moon?
- [37:26]
Host 3
I mean, I guess. What do you like if someone makes a base in a spot you want, what do you can't do anything about it. You'd pick something else.
- [37:31]
Host 1
Oh, you could fight them with moon rocks or worse.
- [37:35]
Host 3
I guess.
- [37:36]
Host 1
I guess with Trump.
- [37:37]
Host 3
I never know. You might declare a fucking war.
- [37:40]
Host 1
I came up with a new business idea. Who's the PresidentRightNow.com?
- [37:45]
Host 2
how is this business?
- [37:45]
Host 1
Where am I going to be selling?
- [37:47]
Host 2
Doug? How is this a business?
- [37:48]
Host 3
How is this a business?
- [37:49]
Host 2
What are you selling?
- [37:50]
Host 1
Shirts? It either says, it says the current president's name and it says below, this is the current president.
- [37:57]
Senator Mark Kelly
Right.
- [37:57]
Host 3
Don't you think that can be misconstrued as a political support and not like a.
- [38:03]
Host 1
No, it's a fact. It's like a fact machine.
- [38:05]
Host 3
Well.
- [38:05]
Host 1
Cause what we're gonna do, we're launching new products. It's what's the longest river and that way anything you want to you at
- [38:10]
Host 2
home might have a business idea that's worth doing and I and if unlike
- [38:15]
Host 3
Doug, you might have one that's add
- [38:17]
Host 1
something to the world.
- [38:19]
Host 2
Sell things to customers from all around the world. Shopify could be your your little gateway to being able to do that.
- [38:26]
Host 3
That's what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com lemonade go to shopify.com/lemonade. That's Shopify. Say it again.
- [38:39]
Host 2
That's shopify.com lemonade.
- [38:42]
Host 1
This is worth knowing. TikTok shop helps you discover good value products and surprise deals fast. No endless searching, just Smart finds. Download TikTok now.
- [38:58]
Host 3
Hi, I'm Brene Brown.
- [39:00]
Senator Mark Kelly
And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to
- [39:02]
Host 3
the Curiosity Shop, a podcast that's a
- [39:04]
Host 1
place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling and questioning. It's going to be fun.
- [39:09]
Host 3
We rarely agree, but we almost never disagree. And we're always learning.
- [39:15]
Senator Mark Kelly
That's true.
- [39:15]
Host 2
You can subscribe to the Curiosity shop
- [39:17]
Senator Mark Kelly
on YouTube or follow in your favorite
- [39:19]
Host 3
podcast app to automatically receive new episodes Every Thursday.
- [39:24]
Host 2
We have laid the groundwork, I think. But we have Senator Mark Kelly joining us who will undoubtedly know more about this than we do.
- [39:33]
Host 3
Well, speak for yourself. Okay, I watched Hail Mary.
- [39:39]
Host 2
Tell them, tell them about the layovers.
- [39:42]
Host 3
I might ask him. You might not be ready for that conversation.
- [39:44]
Host 1
All right, let's get into it. Senator Mark Kelly, thank you so much for joining the program. We've been gassing you up about your incredible history and we are really excited to talk with you about the Artemis program, about NASA, about your experience with all of this.
- [39:58]
Host 3
Yeah, we already learned in our little pre show chat here that the actual moon landing is Artemis 5, not Artemis 4. So good we brought on a real expert. Is there or did I get that wrong?
- [40:10]
Host 1
There's no way of knowing. We'll ask Senator Mark Kelly, I guess, can you start and maybe just, you know, the quick kind of overview of what this current mission happening is, why it's important in your eyes, all the good stuff from an actual expert on this.
- [40:21]
Senator Mark Kelly
Well, let me start with Artemis 1, which was a few years ago where we flew the Orion capsule with nobody in it. I think they may have had a mannequin sitting in one of the seats, no humans on board, and basically did this mission right, go around the moon with Orion, which was a spacecraft, which is the capsule launched on a rocket called SLS, which is a rather big and powerful 8.8 million pounds of thrust, you know, rocket to get this thing all the way to the moon and back. And that launched a few years ago now I think maybe, I don't know, three or four years ago. And this is the second mission. So this is the same mission done with all the life support systems you need on board, the extra redundancy in the spacecraft that you want for crew members. So four crew members to go around the moon on a, what's called a free return trajectory, which is when they do their trans lunar injection bird. That's also their deorbit burn, which normally like on the space shuttle you do in orbit around the Earth. But this thing comes back from the moon at 25,000 miles an hour, hits the atmosphere. Not much you can do about it. And you know, hopefully on Friday they'll get home safely. Artemis 3 and 4 are going to be missions in low Earth orbit testing out the landers provided by probably Blue Origin and SpaceX. And then the fifth mission will be down to the surface of the moon with astronauts. So that's the summary. And then missions after that should also be down to the surface of the Moon and where we can build what I would say is kind of a more of a permanent presence there, like we did in low Earth orbit with the space station, which was always my destination when I went into space.
- [42:16]
Host 2
So what would you say is the importance of us doing that and maybe also the speed at which we do it? I know we were talking earlier, before we had you on about China also racing to establish a presence on the moon as well. So if you could speak to both of those things.
- [42:33]
Senator Mark Kelly
Well, I mean, it's always good to be first, right? And I know we, obviously we were first to the moon in the 1960s, regardless of what all those nuts out there say that we never went to
- [42:43]
Host 2
the
- [42:46]
Host 1
faked it six times.
- [42:47]
Host 3
That's what I heard.
- [42:50]
Senator Mark Kelly
I mean, the Soviets congratulated us, the people we were in the competition with.
- [42:55]
Host 1
That was also staged.
- [42:57]
Host 2
They were also in on it. I think
- [43:02]
Senator Mark Kelly
it's always sad to see that, you know, people don't believe, like reality anyway. It's it. I do not want to see Chinese astronauts walking around on the moon before we get back there again here. So does that really matter? I think it does. Some people might say, well, big deal. We as the United States of America, we have been always on the leading edge of technology, doing hard things, exploration. Hey, we're the only people that like, successfully land stuff on Mars, right? The Russians have tried a lot of times and they always crash. And we're good at this stuff. The Chinese are sort of competition with us now on a lot of different levels. A lot of technology, a lot of innovation in some military technology. They've gotten a little bit ahead of us. My goal here on the Armed Services Committee in the United States Senate is get us to catch up. So why is this important? So if we're going to be explorers, which is just in our DNA, it's in our nature to do that. As humans, we always want to see what's across the ocean, what's over the next hill, what's on the next planet. We're going to go out there and explore. And if we're going to explore Mars someday and the rest of this solar system, we got to make a more permanent step off of this planet. So it's important we do that and we get something out of it. You know, people sometimes say to me, why do we spend all this money in space? Well, first of all, NASA's budget is pretty small. It's less than 1% of the federal budget. But the money isn't spent in space. It's spent here. On the ground, good paying jobs people can raise a family on, but also, also jobs that produce advancements in technology. And NASA doesn't just create stuff, it creates industries. So that's why we need to do this. Ultimately, I don't think we have a choice and I think America needs to continue to lead in this kind of endeavor.
- [45:17]
Host 1
What do you think of the big hurdles between us landing on the moon in the next couple of years? We talked about how the Artemis program will have SLS launch Orion and then that will dock with one of the landers that is either from SpaceX or Blue Origin. It seems to a non expert like myself that there's an enormous amount still to be done and tested. And I'm curious from your perspective, do you feel like we're 10% of the way there? 90%? What are the giant bottlenecks? How does you know the average person?
- [45:46]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah, well, I think you got to figure it out. There's, there's some, we got a lot of stuff we got to do before we're able to get there and put people down to the surface. We've got to build these landers and test them in low Earth orbit. One of the other challenges is that when we designed Artemis as a mission, you know, missions to the moon, multiple ones, we decided that we want to make this system like kind of reusable. And to do that, it's not like Apollo and Apollo, the lander and the service module and the capsule all went in one unit, you know, on a, you know, a Saturn 5 rocket, a pretty big, you know, biggest rocket ever built at the time. This is separating the crew, putting the crew on a human rated SLS to get the crew to the moon in an Orion capsule, join up with the lander and then get this, you know, this system, you know, back and to get that lander there is on, on a, on a star, you know, starship or new Glenn rocket by SpaceX and, and Blue Origin. You have to refuel it multiple times in low Earth orbit to get enough propellant on board to get that big of a mass there. That's a challenge we haven't done in flight refueling and I am really concerned about whether, I know we can eventually do it. But what's the timeline going to be? What's going to be the cost? So I've got, I've got technical concerns. Both these companies say they can figure this out, but I'm paying close attention.
- [47:32]
Host 3
Can I ask about that? So NASA used to be entirely done in house and now there's A ton of it done by private contractors through Blue Origin, SpaceX, Boeing. What are the pros and cons of that? What are your thoughts on the transition to that? Is there a good thing?
- [47:48]
Senator Mark Kelly
Well, let me clarify something there. We did this commercialization thing during the Obama administration where instead of having, and you say NASA used to do these things in house, that's not exactly accurate. We had contractors, but we also had a lot of oversight over the contractors. The change happened during the Obama administration where President Obama said, hey, we have all these innovative companies out there. Why don't we just kind of throw, throw the money over the fence to them? Let them do this, let's leave them alone, let them do the innovation without this vast organization that's going to monitor everything they do. So think of it this way. We had a company, let's say it was Boeing or Lockheed Martin or Rockwell for the space shuttle others. And for every one of those company employees, there was like a government employee kind of watching what they're doing. So we got away from that. We let them not only build the rocket as a, like a true contractor, we sort of let them own it like it was their thing and we're buying a service. So that's the model we went to. And with the landers, certainly we're kind of in this same model, but we've always had contractors. The big question is how, how much does NASA leave them alone to do their, their job? And so far with the space station, with the commercial cargo and then commercial crew programs, it has worked really, really well. There were delays along the way, but I got to say, I think SpaceX in particular has done a really good job meeting the moment and really bringing down the cost of what it takes to get not only cargo to low Earth orbit, but getting people there as well.
- [49:43]
Host 2
Are there, besides the cost savings, have there been any other notable benefits or improvements? Or is that really, I mean, that being the main benefit from this all?
- [49:53]
Senator Mark Kelly
I'd say it's probably the main benefit. You know, the thing about like, risk assessment and how safe something is usually don't know until you start having like, failures. But the Dragon capsule which launches on a Falcon 9 rocket that goes to the space station with people has been very safe so far and very successful. But also they've driven, because of the reusability of the first stage, they have driven down the cost. And also because they're able to turn it around and fly it without like a huge army of people, they've got the cost down of getting stuff into low Earth orbit to, you know, down by an order of magnitude, you know, 10 times I think compared to the space shuttle. Certainly every space shuttle mission cost about $900 million to fly. SLS is rather expensive as well because we just build so few rockets. But SpaceX builds a lot of rockets and launches a lot of things into space. So they've got the cost down and that's been, I'd say the biggest benefit does not have the capability of the space shuttle. Right, the space shuttle, by far the best spacecraft ever in terms of the ability to do things. You could take seven people into space. You had a cargo bay the size of an 18 wheeler truck basically. Yeah, it was about 30ft long, so maybe not that quite long, but you could carry 35,000 pounds into orbit in that payload day. Had a robot arm where you could do stuff, you could put people on it, you could move modules around and it had an airlock where people could go outside. So best spaceship ever built in my opinion. Decent rocket ship. Horrible airplane.
- [51:48]
Host 1
Okay, I want to.
- [51:49]
Senator Mark Kelly
Airplane you've ever flown.
- [51:50]
Host 1
I really want to ask because I've don't. It's not every day, probably maybe twice a week only do I get to talk to an astronaut. So I want to. You, you were on four missions, you commanded of them. In my heart you commanded the last one. I don't believe in mission 135. You're the final commander of the shuttle. So kind of open end. It's a little trite, but what's it like being in space? And I'm curious also if you could relate that to the current mission of, you know, Artemis 2. We're going around the moon, we're testing this capability to be able to land people there. And you know, when I go to the NASA website, they list 40 different scientific experiments that are really valuable. And I get that conceptually, but like what are you, what are you actually doing? Like if you're an astronaut in space, like are you, is it, is it like chemistry class in high school? Is it crazy? What is the experience like actually being in space? You were there for like 50 days, right? Something like that.
- [52:41]
Senator Mark Kelly
54 days. All my flights went to the space station. My first flight, we brought up a lot of cargo and people. So a lot of my time there was spent transferring that cargo. But first, before you transferred the cargo, you had to take the module out of the payload bay with the robotic arm, which I did. I was one of the robotic arm operators. And you had to connect that module to the space station. So you got to do that, and then you got to open the hatch and there's all kinds of work. And then you got to transfer thousands and thousands of pounds of cargo, put it all in the right place. Then you got to put that module back into the space shuttle payload bay. On my second mission, it was the return to flight mission after the Columbia accident was the second one. So we had to test all this new capability. We also had a logistics module, my third and fourth. I brought up the Japanese laboratory and how to get that installed and outfitted. And then on my fourth was the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. And during all those missions, we were doing spacewalks. Not me, because I was always the pilot or commander of the space shuttle. And they don't let us go outside for obvious reasons. We got other people that can do that. And do you want to.
- [53:58]
Host 3
Is that a bummer?
- [54:00]
Senator Mark Kelly
No. I would have loved to.
- [54:01]
Host 3
Yeah.
- [54:01]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah, it's kind of a bummer.
- [54:02]
Host 1
Were you, like, peering through the glass,
- [54:07]
Host 2
watching my friends have fun outside,
- [54:12]
Senator Mark Kelly
You know, so, you know, what I'm watching for is just like, what's the bad thing that's going to kill these people, you know, at any moment?
- [54:19]
Host 3
Right.
- [54:20]
Senator Mark Kelly
You know, so it's a very tense eight hours plus.
- [54:24]
Host 1
Oh, my God.
- [54:25]
Senator Mark Kelly
When you have people outside that you're, you know, it's remarkable that we've made it this far and done all these spacewalks. I think well in excess of 100 now. And we haven't, you know, had somebody seriously injured or killed. So you're really, really busy during these space missions. And shuttle crew members aren't doing a ton of science. It's the space station people that are, you know, that live up there. For the case of my twin brother, I mean, do you think I have a lot of time in space? 54 days. My brother has 520 days in space.
- [54:57]
Host 2
Oh, my God.
- [54:58]
Host 3
Over a year, a year and a half.
- [55:00]
Host 1
That's insane. Oh, my God.
- [55:02]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah, it's a lot.
- [55:04]
Host 2
I did want to ask you, just because of the shuttle era that you were flying in, is there sort of a, like, mental preparation or a nervousness that you had to deal with? Because in the wake of things like Columbia or Challenger, I'm just wondering, like, the nerves that must go into operating a mission like that.
- [55:30]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah. I mean, you realize the risk, right? I mean, when you consider the number of people that flew on the space shuttle, 14 of them, and I don't know what the total number is, but, you know, it's, you know, probably a few, couple Few hundred, you know, 14 of them are dead. You know, out of 135 missions, we lost, you know, two orbiters. So it is a, you know, risky thing to do. You get it. You understand that there is a lot of personal risk for you. The way I think about this is like, you know, what's the reward? Not to me personally, but to our country in our ability to do this and do exploration and push the boundaries of technology forward. There's a tremendous amount of progress that we can make. So it's worth it. Even though there's risk for me personally, but especially like on my second flight on the heels of the Columbia accident. Yeah, I remember especially during reentry when Columbia started to break up, you know, we knew, you know, after entry interface and at what mach number, the vehicle started coming apart. I remember, you know, you know, saying to one of my, my commander Steve Lindsay, I remember, you know, us recognizing that this is the time that, that they lost communication with the ground, you know, because the Columbia started to disintegrate at that point. And those were our friends. Three of my classmates died on Columbia, my astronaut classmates. You know, I'm also the person that happened to, you know, recover their bodies in East Texas. So, yeah, you think a lot about it, but you also, you have to do your job. And the space shuttle is a very, it is a very crew intensive, you know, vehicle. So you got a lot to do.
- [57:30]
Host 2
Yeah, so it kind of demands, I mean, demands attention and focus, I imagine. Not a lot. You can't be thinking about a lot else.
- [57:36]
Senator Mark Kelly
No, no, you can for brief periods of time, but usually you're pretty hard at work.
- [57:41]
Host 2
So, I mean, you've spoken a couple times about the kind of the. I would. The patriotic or like, romantic value of the space missions. Like the more the nature of human exploration and the value of it from that perspective. Outside of that, with something like the Artemis missions and us landing on the moon or establishing a more permanent presence on the moon, could you name some of the more maybe like, tangible potential benefits of us having something like that? Like access to a specific resource that wouldn't be accessed otherwise. Development of a specific technology that wouldn't be developed otherwise. Like, what are the more like, yeah, tangible benefits of this type of mission, would you say?
- [58:31]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah, like going down to the surface of the moon and establishing a presence there. Hey, you know, some people will make the argument that we can pull like, you know, tritium off the, out of the lunar regolith, which is, you know, helium 3, isotope of helium that you would be used in fusion power plants. If we get to fusion power.
- [58:52]
Host 1
Right, yeah, I've been saying that,
- [58:56]
Host 3
Doug.
- [58:58]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah, I mean, I guess that could be a thing in the future. You know, I think, you know, it's more about like establishing a presence, developing technology that'll allow us to go to Mars someday. We'll learn more about the moon by being there. You can learn some of this with robotics and it certainly is, is cheaper. But I think there is a, you know, fundamental thing about all this, about this, you know, sending people that there is, there is value in doing that.
- [59:31]
Host 3
What's your timeline, your personal timeline on when you think we will ever put a human on Mars? Will it, will it happen? Is that something realistic to hope for?
- [59:42]
Senator Mark Kelly
Hey, you know, it depends on how we do it. Right? You know, and certainly we. I'm going to, I'm going to make a, make a kind of an offhand comment here in a second. It's kind of, I'm just joking, but you know, I think doing a real mission and getting people back, I think there's a chance, you know, I could see it in my lifetime. I would like to. But the other option is you do the flight of the Lone Eagle.
- [60:07]
Host 3
Oh, the, the return flight?
- [60:08]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah, one person, one way.
- [60:12]
Host 2
You get somebody there and they don't come back.
- [60:15]
Host 1
Somebody's got to be down for it, right?
- [60:17]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah, I am sure we would find the volunteer. I'm not sure we want that kind of a person on a mission, but you know, in the astronaut office we used to like joke about that a little bit. You can always do the flight of the Lone Eagle. One man, one way.
- [60:35]
Host 2
Well, it seems reasonable. It seems like that is something we could do. You're kind of implying that's something we could do now, like we could get somebody there.
- [60:42]
Senator Mark Kelly
That's right. That's my point. If we really wanted to get somebody there, we could do it. We don't want to do that. We're not going to do that. We're going to get people there. We're going to bring them back. You know, even Elon talks about, you know, sending people there like on a one way trip and building this entire, you know, civilization on Mars. And you know, there's a lot I agree with Elon on, like, you know, how he's built his space company and it's been very effective and brought down the cost. I don't think we should ever really entertain that. I mean, Mars is a shit planet. I mean, it's really a shitty place to live. I mean, Good, good, good place to visit. You know, it's been a. Yeah, yeah.
- [61:31]
Host 3
Tourist spots.
- [61:32]
Host 1
It's kind of boring really. I would love to, to expand on that because the narrative is, you know, the, the real value of Mars long term is that it could be a genuine civilization that is self sustaining. Right. And that, that's certainly what Elon has talked about. Like, do you, do you feel that that is like an unrealistic goal or maybe not the point? Or how does that long term, first
- [61:52]
Senator Mark Kelly
of all, as a goal, I think it's really, really hard. I don't even think it needs to be a goal because, you know, and I called Mars a ship planet. Right. You think we got problems here on Earth like carbon dioxide?
- [62:11]
Host 3
You should see Mars, Trump,
- [62:15]
Senator Mark Kelly
no matter how bad it gets on Earth, it's always going to be easier to live on Earth. I mean, even if the big rock hits or we have this super volcano, it will always be easier to survive here for some people than it will be for anybody to survive on Mars long term. I mean, you know, Mars is, you know, the atmosphere is 90, you know, I don't know, 97, 98. Carbon dioxide.
- [62:40]
Host 2
I'm thinking you want Mars off all to yourself.
- [62:42]
Host 3
I live in Los Angeles. It's 95% carbon dioxide. Small. And I'm fine. I'm living great. So it can't be that hard.
- [62:50]
Senator Mark Kelly
No, it's less than 1%.
- [62:53]
Host 3
Damn it. I did the math.
- [62:54]
Senator Mark Kelly
Even in LA, you know, we've got, you remember that whole thing about like 80% knockback, you know, 80% nitrogen, about 20% oxygen.
- [63:02]
Host 2
Yeah.
- [63:02]
Senator Mark Kelly
That adds up to about 100% the carbon dioxide, despite going up a lot. Right. Trillions of tons of carbon. And that is, regardless of what non scientific people say about this, that's causing our planet to heat up. The Martian atmosphere is almost all carbon dioxide. So it would be really, really hard to live there for an extended period of time. I don't think that should be the goal.
- [63:31]
Host 1
But you think there's a lot of value in just going to Mars that still has immense value in your eyes. Okay, yeah, yeah.
- [63:38]
Senator Mark Kelly
We'll have to solve some really hard problems and we would have the impetus to try to solve those problems in trying to send people there. And they would have to stay, you know, if they want to stay for more than like a couple days, they're going to have to stay there for like over a year because of the orbital mechanics and the position of Mars complete compared to the Earth and where the sun is. So you got to stay A long time. And it's going to be challenging.
- [64:01]
Host 1
Relate to the terminal. It's the most embarrassing. You go to, you go to only rebook.
- [64:07]
Host 3
Next year, you go to the United
- [64:09]
Host 1
terminal and you're like, surely you have another flight today.
- [64:12]
Host 3
We have no directs back from Mars.
- [64:15]
Host 2
I was wondering, like, because going to Mars was kind of the, the big space dream for or like, narrative for me growing up as somebody who is really interested in space. And I do like, I am interested in that being the connection or the potential benefit of going to the moon now that it's like this easier launchpad for getting to Mars down, down the line. Outside of these things, though, for exploring other parts of the solar system, other parts of the universe, are there any notable things that, you know, NASA is looking to do as far as, like, like probes going to other places, other other areas of discovery? I'm curious what else might be getting worked on outside of these things?
- [65:05]
Senator Mark Kelly
Well, I mean, long term, I mean, a lot of people hear about, like, Elon's, you know, desire to do this and, you know, he's kind of singularly focused on getting a person on Mars. I like that part of his plan, by the way. We talked about the, you know, staying there for forever and building a civilization. When you talk to Jeff Bezos about why he built Blue Origin, I don't think he talks about this, you know, much publicly. And what he, the reason he's doing this is, is, you know, also very ambitious. But, you know, he, he's doing this, he built that company and is trying to compete for these, whether they're national security satellites being launched or landing people on the moon because of resources. You know, we do have, you know, you know, limited resources on Earth. You know, things will, over decades and decades, it'll be harder to, you know, find certain elements, you know, that we need for our civilization. And in some cases, those elements and materials are readily available in space on asteroids. Could you bring back those to Earth? Could you get them in low Earth orbit? Maybe you change the trajectory of something and get it into a LEO orbit and then mine those asteroids and bring that stuff to, back to Earth? Yeah, we're not doing that in a decade or maybe 10, but maybe in 40 or 50 years we could do that. So that's his motivation to get out there into the solar system. And I think it's got. But, you know, I think there's a good argument to try to develop the technology to one day be able to do that.
- [66:49]
Host 3
Can I ask you a business question? Because we talk about Blue Origin, they're getting involved in this, about SpaceX getting involved in this. What the hell happened to Boeing? Why has Boeing been such a fall off in terms of their ability to contribute? Maybe I'm wrong. You can tell me that's the actual stuff from the outside.
- [67:08]
Senator Mark Kelly
I'll tell you what happened to Boeing. Boeing was competing for getting crew members to, to the space station and they built, you know, this Starliner, you know, spacecraft that couldn't bring Butch and Sonny home because it was kind of janky, right? That kind of had some problems and that wasn't their first problem. They had software problems before that and then they had reaction control system, you know, problems when it got on orbit. And there were some serious concerns with it. So it had to come home without its crew. They just have not been able to deliver. So I would say they performed rather poorly. I think they're trying to rebuild their space business at this point. We're going to see what the administrator decides to do. You know, with Boeing Starliner that, you know, hasn't had a successful flight yet,
- [68:07]
Host 2
with what you were talking about with Blue Origin earlier, with this potential long, long term goal of building the technology that allows you to extract and bring back resources from things like asteroids. Is there any thought that you have as, as a senator, like with someone, you know, a private company that's this big, or a person like Jeff Bezos as a private citizen being the vehicle for something like that, like what's the balance between government stepping in to, I guess have, have control over that type of technology or that type of resource acquisition versus this private company being the vehicle that that technology exists at all. Do you have any thoughts about the kind of balance between those two things?
- [69:04]
Senator Mark Kelly
Well, I mean, it's typical of the US Government to invest in technologies that get a return outside of what a private company would normally expect. Right. So businesses usually want a return on their investment in like five years or less. Sometimes you see companies push that out a little bit and it's often when you get to like basic science, typical discovery and scientific research, it's, it's the U.S. government that invests in those projects where the return might not be for 10 or 20 or 30 years. It is interesting that in Blue Origin with, with, with Jeff Bezos that, you know, he is thinking out, you know, multiple decades. I think that's kind of unusual, you know, for a company. But he's also, you know, a guy who's worth hundreds of billions of dollars. So, you know, he, you know, he can Write checks there and, you know, invest in. In his company with. With a goal that might not even be achieved in his lifetime.
- [70:10]
Host 1
I think we have time for, like, a few more questions.
- [70:12]
Host 3
Yeah. Okay, so if I ask you some questions about, you know, first of all, very simple question. What job do you think is harder? Being an astronaut or being a senator? Because you're a senator now and ask.
- [70:20]
Host 1
Or a podcaster. Which of those three?
- [70:22]
Host 3
Those three. Or a podcaster.
- [70:25]
Senator Mark Kelly
Podcast. No, I don't know what it's like to be a podcast. In a lot of ways, they're very different. Right. Being an astronaut is a highly technical job where you're learning how to operate one of the most complex systems ever built by humans. Right. The space shuttle, also the space station. Very, very complex. And you're working together generally in a small team, you know, as the commander of the mission. You're also especially working a lot with mission control and the engineering team. With being a senator, it is. It's almost like everything is part of your job. Like every issue that our country faces, every problem, every. Every way that citizens interact with their government, and everything we do as a government is part of the purview of being. Being in the Senate. So in a lot of ways it is. It's very, very different. You also, you know, gotta, you know, you gotta work to find consensus. I served 25 years in the military, you know, very orderly. There's a person in charge now. When I was generally in charge of things, I always want people to, like, push back on me and, you know, question, you know, the, the approach. But, you know, being in the Senate is a. The way I take on this job, it's like a 24. 7 job. Don't get a lot of time off because these issues our country is currently facing, especially are so significant. We have really significant challenges. I think we can solve these challenges, but it is a all hands on deck moment.
- [72:20]
Host 3
You know, you said there's two different to compare, but from the way you described it, it made Senator sound way harder. The way you described it there, it sounded. It sounded more difficult. Yeah.
- [72:30]
Host 1
Extremely different.
- [72:31]
Host 3
I will say I think you're at the forefront of one of these challenges, which is the. This First Amendment battle. So I wanted to ask you about that. So. So you walked, you appeared in a video, and then Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War, called it sedition, and then your Navy pension and rank were on the line. Can you walk me through what happened and what was going through your mind in that situation? My understanding is there was a Court. Okay. Sorry.
- [72:54]
Senator Mark Kelly
Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll walk you through it. So myself and four other or five other, you know, one senator, some House members, so Alyssa Slotkin and four other individuals, we reminded members of the military that they are not to follow illegal orders. So when orders and the law are in conflict, you comply with the law. A basic thing in the US Military. Everybody's taught it. We put out a video. President didn't like it. He immediately goes to. They should be hanged, executed, prosecuted. I mean, the guy couldn't even get the order right.
- [73:30]
Host 1
I was going to say. Feels wasteful, if anything. Yeah, yeah.
- [73:36]
Senator Mark Kelly
So then he tried to indict us. And the grand jury returned a unanimous basically take a hike decision. You're not indicting these people. I mean, unanimous. That, like, never happens. Now Hegseth is trying to reduce me in rank and take away some of my pension. I retired as a Navy captain in 06 after 25 years. He's trying to bust me down in rank. So I sued him and. But here's the thing. You know, this isn't just. This isn't really about me. This is about the other 2 million retired service members out there that this administration, this president wants to take away their rights to speak out against the government. And, you know, that's wrong. And I think it's unconstitutional. And they're in violation of my First Amendment rights. And just by extension, every other retired service member I've heard from, service members, retired admirals and generals that they have now said change what they have are saying and doing because of this administration going after me.
- [74:40]
Host 3
So chilling effect.
- [74:42]
Senator Mark Kelly
So I'm not. Not on me.
- [74:46]
Host 3
Right.
- [74:46]
Senator Mark Kelly
But I think it. I know it does on others, as they've told me. And it's probably a lot of people out there just, you know, they're clamming up because if you say something this administration doesn't like, they're going to come after you. You know, they're five. They fired. Hegseth fired over 20, I think Admirals and generals, you know, either because of the color of their skin, because of their gender, or because he doesn't think they're sufficiently loyal to him. In this, this administration, the oath is to the Constitution. The oath is not to a person that we all take when we. When we get sworn into the military.
- [75:23]
Host 1
I think we're near in time. We want to respect your time. I'm curious. Yeah, Just kind of like what. As we talk every week and you just mentioned world seems a little scary right now. It does feel like an all hands on deck moment. And I think for a lot of people, particularly at our age, feels like you can't do much, you know. And I'm kind of curious what kind of message you would send to folks. And this could be about the NASA side and what's going on in science or generally what's going on with the country. And I'm curious. Yeah. What you would recommend to people in this moment and how to handle it.
- [75:55]
Senator Mark Kelly
Well, the first thing they should do is they should vote. You know, young people vote at a kind of an abysmally low rate. Tell you a quick story. When my wife, Gabby Giffords, was first running for Congress, I would come out here and campaign with her on the weekends and we'd go to, we went after going to like the third nursing home, like third weekend in a row. I'm like, gabby, why do we go to all these nursing homes? And she says, well, that's where the voters live because retired people vote. Young people don't vote. So the first thing is like vote, I mean, and vote in accordance with your best interest in mind. You know, most people are like just generally hardworking middle class people. And we've had policies in this country for decades that really leans in the direction of helping the wealthy, millionaires and billionaires at the expense of, you know, the rest of us. A very small percentage of our country, I don't know what it is exactly, but, you know, very small percentage at the top now owns as much wealth as the middle class. And it wasn't always that way. It's getting harder and harder for people to buy a home. People used to buy their first house when they were in their 20s. Now they're 40.
- [77:18]
Host 3
Yeah.
- [77:20]
Senator Mark Kelly
And that is because of choices that this government that people voted for made. They voted to put these people in office and they made choices that helped millionaires and billionaires at the expense of everybody else. So I would say vote and find it, figure, figure out who's going to do the better job that's going to help you and your family and people like you. And then if you can, if you got extra time, get involved in issues and try to contribute some way to public service. It doesn't have to be running for office or serving in the military, but just figure out some way that you can, you can help.
- [78:06]
Host 2
Appreciate your time very much. It was very nice having you come on the show.
- [78:09]
Host 1
Thanks so much, Senator Kelly, it was fantastic.
- [78:11]
Senator Mark Kelly
Thank you. Yeah, thank you for having me on so much.
- [78:15]
Host 1
Thank you.
- [78:15]
Host 3
Have a good one.
- [78:16]
Host 2
Yeah.
- [78:16]
Host 3
There was a Possible need for a
- [78:18]
Host 1
correction at the end of the interview.
- [78:19]
Senator Mark Kelly
But the senators set the record straight. Now, Jack, Jack is on my phone here, but Jack, are Artemis. My understanding. Did Jared change this like here in the last couple of days?
- [78:34]
Host 3
Well, from what I'm seeing is three was the original plan landing.
- [78:39]
Senator Mark Kelly
That's right.
- [78:42]
Host 3
Back to that.
- [78:43]
Host 1
Four and five are landings.
- [78:44]
Host 3
But you said five was the first.
- [78:47]
Senator Mark Kelly
That's, that's my current understanding is that 3 and 4 are going to be. Well, maybe, you know, maybe they're. They're just thinking about doing. I thought they were going to do. When I talked to Jared last time, he was talking about doing 3 and 4 as a LEO test. And 5 would be the lunar landing. Maybe it just hasn't been announced yet. So I don't know, maybe I'm making news for you guys here at the Lemonade Lemonade podcast. Well, let me just say that there's still discussions whether Artemis 3 or 4 will both be low Earth orbit tests of the Blue Origin and SpaceX Lander. You got to do those separately. And maybe five would be the first one to the surface of the moon. Or maybe you could go down to the surface of the moon on the fourth one if you get a successful test in LEO of one of the landers.
- [79:41]
Host 1
You know better. I saw actually different descriptions as well when I was researching this yesterday. And I know that it's like you said three was supposed to be landing. That got moved to. So I imagine that's changing and probably you have the more up to date version than what the Internet currently has, but. Cool, that's great as a backup.
- [79:57]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah, I might have the inside scoop. I might be, you know, sharing stuff that NASA won't like me to be share. But you know what? I don't work there anymore.
- [80:08]
Host 1
What are they gonna do?
- [80:10]
Senator Mark Kelly
They can't fire me now, you know, and when I sent the gorilla suit to space, they couldn't fire me then either because I had already left.
- [80:20]
Host 1
You send a gorilla? Is that real?
- [80:22]
Host 3
Wait, you said the gorilla suit in space. I didn't know about this.
- [80:24]
Host 1
Or is that.
- [80:24]
Senator Mark Kelly
Oh, you gotta Google the gorilla. Gorilla in space. You watch the video of my brother, you know, racing around the space station and the gorilla.
- [80:31]
Host 1
That's you.
- [80:32]
Host 3
That was you. I've seen this.
- [80:33]
Senator Mark Kelly
Wow.
- [80:34]
Host 2
What?
- [80:34]
Senator Mark Kelly
Wait, yeah.
- [80:35]
Host 1
Is that you? And my gorilla suit?
- [80:37]
Senator Mark Kelly
That's my brother in the suit. You sent him a gorilla suit?
- [80:41]
Host 3
This is.
- [80:42]
Senator Mark Kelly
Well, I. The first one I sent blew up on a Falcon 9 rocket.
- [80:47]
Host 2
So I had a.
- [80:50]
Senator Mark Kelly
I had a. I had a Pivot and get a new one off of Amazon and it sent it up on a Soyuz.
- [80:56]
Host 1
Wait, did you. Would you consider, instead of setting up on the rocket, just put the delivery address as International Space Station on Amazon Prime?
- [81:03]
Host 3
Right.
- [81:04]
Host 1
They have to do.
- [81:05]
Host 3
They have to do it.
- [81:05]
Senator Mark Kelly
They have.
- [81:06]
Host 3
It's required.
- [81:09]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah, I don't. Yeah, no, I wouldn't have got there then. I had a. And it wasn't. You know, people think I smuggled that thing on board. I didn't smuggle it on board. I sent it right through all the legitimate NASA channels. And then when I got the video of the gorilla in space, I immediately sent it to NBC News. And then NASA was like. NASA was like, why did you do that? Why did you send this? I'm like, why the hell. Why did you think I sent a gorilla suit to space to get the video.
- [81:39]
Host 1
That's awesome. Just so I'm understanding, you delivered the cargo and then your brother is in the suit. Is that the order?
- [81:46]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah, my brother. I sent the gorilla suit on a Russian rocket to the space station while my brother was there for a year. Okay.
- [81:55]
Host 1
And then that gets delivered while he's there. Wow, that's awesome.
- [81:58]
Host 3
Yeah.
- [81:59]
Senator Mark Kelly
You know, most people, most people will send up to their family members like, I don't know, some fucking dried out bananas or something, or pistachios, fancy nuts. But I've actually been to the space station four times. I knew what the space station was
- [82:18]
Host 3
missing with the one thing everyone up there craves, a gorilla.
- [82:24]
Host 1
Oh, my God.
- [82:25]
Senator Mark Kelly
Everybody needs every. Every place on Earth needs a good gorilla suit.
- [82:30]
Host 3
True, true.
- [82:32]
Host 1
Awesome. Thank you so much, Senator. Really, really genuinely sincerely appreciate it. Thanks so much for chatting with us.
- [82:37]
Senator Mark Kelly
All right, we'll see you guys.
- [82:40]
Host 1
For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man.
- [82:46]
Senator Mark Kelly
And as a political journalist who came
- [82:48]
Host 1
of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat.
- [82:53]
Host 3
I am officially running for President of the United States.
- [82:58]
Senator Mark Kelly
It's going to be only America First.
- [83:02]
Host 3
America First.
- [83:05]
Host 2
Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. capitol building.
- [83:10]
Host 1
But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm gonna ask in
- [83:17]
Senator Mark Kelly
our new show from vox.
- [83:18]
Host 1
The idea of like a post Trump or not exactly Trump focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items.
- [83:24]
Senator Mark Kelly
It really does feel like so reactive.
- [83:25]
Host 1
You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the gop. So far it doesn't among like people who Say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump, but like for the first
- [83:34]
Senator Mark Kelly
time you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war. I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America.
- [83:42]
Host 2
Actually, all the way back in the year 2000, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had this big idea that maybe the future wasn't typing, it was talking to your computer with your voice. Jeff Bezos didn't invent this idea, but he did push his team to invent what would become Alexa and the Amazon Echo, two things that brought voice computing into millions of homes around the world. This week on Version History, our chat show about the best and worst and most interesting products in tech history. We're telling the whole story of the Echo and how Amazon managed to get it right and still kind of miss the future. That's version history on YouTube and wherever you get podcasts.
- [84:23]
Host 1
That was awesome.
- [84:24]
Host 3
That was really cool.
- [84:25]
Host 1
Yeah, I super, like, I. That's the type of guy, unironically, it's the type of politician, I would let him cut me up and put me in a briefcase.
- [84:32]
Host 3
So I hope he doesn't want to use that power for that.
- [84:35]
Host 2
Sorry, it's kind of. I was kind of zoned out. I'm not going to lie. I kind of came back in on that.
- [84:39]
Host 3
Yeah. Mark Kelly is Jamal Khashoggi, Doug.
- [84:41]
Host 2
Okay. That's the Jamal Mark Kelly would do. What to show
- [84:48]
Host 1
breaking news.
- [84:49]
Host 3
You were saying he's kind of a boy because he was. He was shooting the shit on football before it started.
- [84:54]
Host 1
Yeah, before we started.
- [84:55]
Host 3
He was pretty, like not pr, you know, ified when he was talking. And I had the thought we were talking about this. I mean, you guys don't know. He was Obama's choice to replace Joe Biden when Joe Biden was clearly after the debate and then step down. And that was my thought in the interview was like, I think he would have done a better job. I think. I think we might have a better shot of not having Trump right now. Had Mark Kelly. Ren is there.
- [85:17]
Host 1
His resume is just bad ass.
- [85:19]
Host 3
Yeah. I mean, it's bad into Marine.
- [85:23]
Host 1
Yeah. Flip. But he like, he like flew in combat. It was like, it's badass stuff.
- [85:27]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah.
- [85:27]
Host 1
And then now Senator. Cool dude. Really cool dude.
- [85:30]
Host 2
You know what would be even cooler is if we made gigantic conjectures about the Iran war hours before the deadline.
- [85:38]
Host 3
Not even hours. We are 24 minutes away from the supposed deadline, at which point the Iranian civilization will no longer exist.
- [85:46]
Host 1
And you might be wondering, why don't you guys wait 30 minutes to see what happens. You have a hard out, I believe you have a dinner, so it's okay.
- [85:55]
Host 2
It's not a dinner, it's the yard podcast.
- [85:58]
Host 1
Oh, you guys are gonna talk about it there?
- [86:00]
Host 3
Yeah, we're doing the live coverage. Live coverage of what's happening in Iran will be on the yard and we're going to give you the pre show.
- [86:08]
Host 2
Well, aside from the short intro that we did at the beginning and the deadline of this incredible threat of the entire country, the entire people of Iran, Pakistan is apparently asking the US to delay its decision for another two weeks. Like saying, saying, requesting a two week ceasefire and Pakistan has tried to be the intermediary between Iran and the U.S.
- [86:37]
Senator Mark Kelly
i'm not.
- [86:38]
Host 3
Wait, actually update. Yeah, I was live. Trump has agreed to the two week cease fire with Iran delaying threat of large scale. So this is exactly what almost anyone would have predicted, that based on his actions, where he constantly does a massive threat, then backs off. I think what's worth mentioning here is that not only did Iran not really respond to this threat, so they're not taking it seriously either. There's almost a point where there is at a point where this kind of language is too far anyway. The United States, it's like it sets a standard for what you're representing as a country to the world and having the president, whether or not he's part of a 5D chess negotiating strategy of like just threatening to destroy other civilizations, to bomb power plants, to bomb bridges, to hit civilian targets, like that's, it's bad on that front, regardless. Even if we all collectively know that he backs out on these situations, like, I just think, personally I'm, I find it to be like reprehensible. I think it's, I think it's whack. I think it's.
- [87:38]
Host 2
Yeah, I mean, I almost find. Sounds ridiculous because of the weight of the threat and like what he's saying, but I almost feel out of gas even remarking about it because it feels like I'm saying that about this guy all the time. It's like I expect him to expect, expect the kind of worst possible reflection of our country through this dude. So I almost, you know, in a weird way, I almost rather not talk about it because it feels like I have to talk about it every week. I don't know if that's.
- [88:10]
Host 3
No, that's, I don't know if that's. I think that's fair.
- [88:12]
Host 2
But it's like, yeah, it's like, oh, wow, he said the unfathomably insane thing about, like, wiping a civilization off the planet. It's like, oh, even if you were in the camp of like, this is Iran's, the Iranian people's chance of getting out under the thumb of their repressive regime, it's like, okay, well, it's Kayla,
- [88:32]
Host 3
that's a perfect example.
- [88:33]
Host 1
All of the bridges, how in the fuck does that liberate people? That's an insane. It's just war crimes.
- [88:41]
Host 2
You've also lost their support.
- [88:42]
Host 3
That's what I'm saying. Because I have a guy in Iran who's been talking to me and giving me updates and he, you know, I've been against this war since it happened, and I've been saying that and we had a disagreement. We've disagree. And it's like, hard for me to disagree with a guy who lives there. But I'm like, I just don't think this is what America should be doing. And he has been telling me, I don't care about Trump's, what his goals are. I need whatever chance we can do to get rid of the regime. And I think that's a fair stance to take. I just don't think we should using our lives on it. But even he is now starting to be like this. There's no plan. Like, this is. This is because I think when it's becoming obvious that Trump's goals are not that. Where he might say a few things like, people of Iran, this is for like, stand back and stand by. We're coming to help you out. I said at the beginning now that that stuff is so obviously not even close to what their goals are. It. The actions he's taking are directly hurting that, that effort. Like, if he does actually strike power plants or bridges or the, the civilian lifestyle in Iran will plummet to horrible conditions. And it's already bad, but I mean, it would get horrible. And so, and you know, if they strike oil targets, Iran has threatened to strike oil targets throughout the Middle east. And that, I mean, the damage, catastrophe globally from that interaction would be horrendous. And it keeps escalating, largely because of his escalations. Again, everything he's asking for is to open the straight of hormone, which was already open before we started. So I don't know, man. I, I think once that guy pivoted, the guy I've been talking to in Iran, I realized that there's no one, there is no one seeing an upside here, because that was, that guy was like the last defender.
- [90:17]
Host 2
And now, okay, so something that I've been Trying to follow a little bit is kind of the longer term economic consequences of what's happening right now. Right. Because I think there's this loot, there might be this loose idea that in the past month that if you look, you know, it doesn't. Higher gas prices at the pump maybe, but an otherwise seemingly functioning society. And I was watching a video breakdown about this and to kind of capture why some of the economic consequences haven't been really realized by regular people yet. 1 the in reaction to this, a lot of countries around the world are releasing these stockpiles of oil that they have in order to keep prices like as regulated as possible. Right. So as a country you often keep a security like a reserve of oil in order to deal with turmoil in the market or to get through periods like winter months where energy demand is higher and people need to heat their homes and you might release some of that stockpile then that you've saved up in order to keep prices somewhat normal for people in order to navigate those times. But in reaction to this supply shock, now most countries around the world are selling off massive chunks of their reserve oil supply in order to keep prices normal. But people are already running out of that supply. And we've now are hitting the time in April where the ships that were providing oil through the strait across the country, because these ships move so slow, these ships are now not arriving in countries around the world. And the ramifications of not having that oil are starting to hit this month. So the first, the first wave of reactions of climbing oil prices is, has been more like speculative. But now the actual reality of people running out of oil because of this, because of the constraint around the strait are starting to hit in the month of April with no exact sign of when this is actually going.
- [92:38]
Host 3
Yeah, I mean look, gas prices are already up like 51% globally. It's less in America. Fertilizer prices are up 77%. Like this is, this is all while we're still in the early phases of like people figuring it out and like using reserves and draining reserves. The entire coalition of countries that came together in this emergency to release SPR reserves all at once, it was like 400 million barrels combined, which again is like four days of use. It's like, it's not a lot. They're, they're putting it out along with other sources. But all of this is combining to, to be not enough if this keeps going on. But what's weird is some countries are getting through. There was a guy, there's that guy, Citrini Research. He sent somebody out just on a boat with a cigar and a pack of beer to go and watch the straight. And he was like filming footage of it. Their tankers are going through, but they're going through through this Iranian toll booth they set up where they're just paying in yuan and getting through.
- [93:38]
Host 2
Yeah. There's certain countries that are considered friendly and are allowed passage or have been allowed to negotiate. Like Pakistan, being one of the friendly nations, has been able to send like more tank, I think like 20 or something.
- [93:50]
Host 3
Yeah.
- [93:50]
Host 2
Whereas like Japan has recently negotiated and they've been able to send two tankers through. France sent one through. And then other countries like, are not sending anything through. But even in the, even in the place of like this limited, these limited amounts of tankers from specific countries that are allowed to get through, that's nowhere near the total oil capacity that there was of the Strait.
- [94:16]
Host 3
Yeah, of course, yeah.
- [94:17]
Host 1
Do you guys know what, like, is there a point at which Iran can't threaten the Strait, man? You know, loose understanding. Right. You can do it with so little, with drones, whatever. Right. But presumably at some point if you bomb enough things, they can no longer threaten the Strait. I would like a world where we're not obliterating the fucking country, obviously.
- [94:38]
Host 2
But I guess there's this weird trade off that I don't fully understand of in your. In the length of time that it takes you to damage enough military targets in Iran, they are also able to fight back in damage facilities around the Gulf in retaliation. So whether or not those are like, you know, related to energy production or like loading ships or desalination plants, like every bit of retaliation that happens in the Gulf has lasting consequences outside of this. Like say we everybody set down their arms and went back to normal. Right now the capacity of energy coming out of the Strait has already been greatly reduced because of the amount of damage that has been done to facilities already.
- [95:29]
Host 1
Is it like guerrilla drone operators? Like, how are they threatening the Strait given how much military, you know, everything has been bombed by the US I'll
- [95:39]
Host 3
answer your question directly. And that is there's a 0% chance no matter how much they bomb, they can stop it as long as the regime is the same. And so unless you somehow get regime change because they're there, they can do it with a $10,000 drone, which is nothing as long as they have any income, which they still do.
- [95:55]
Host 1
So they have just set up a network that is like dispersed.
- [95:58]
Host 3
I've seen it. They can set it up with like sheet metal, one of these drone launchers and then you can send it out and all it has to do is threaten one ship one time and then the rest of the ships are too afraid. They can't get insured. Nobody will insure a ship to go to the strait if there's a chance of it blows up because the loss is so catastrophic. Billions of dollars loss.
- [96:14]
Host 2
I think there's an also unconfirmed reports of the strait being mined.
- [96:20]
Host 3
Yeah, my understanding is that that's not
- [96:22]
Host 2
actually, I don't think that's actually like confirmed, but it's a fear.
- [96:25]
Host 1
Gotcha. Gotcha. I mean that's, it's impressive that they're still able to threaten this like, stretch of water despite how much bombing has happened to them. Like, it's wild. Yeah.
- [96:35]
Host 3
But I think that's just a miscalculation on the part of getting into the war. Like I think they have. They don't have a navy, they don't have like it doesn't matter. Like the fact is that there's 90 million people here and they have a regime that has enough money coming in to always threaten that strait forever. Like it's just, it's a fact of their geographic location. And so it's just weird that it wasn't. You know, there was a New York Times article that came out that was deep diving into the lead up to this war and all the different people in the cabinet that were talking and you know, one of the things they said was Hegseth Rubio and obviously Netanyahu and then the Israel government that came in basically made the pitch that this would be easier than they thought it. Like they would be, they would, they would achieve so much militarily. They wouldn't be able to threaten the Straits. And that has clearly been untrue and it feels like a big miscalculation.
- [97:25]
Host 2
Yeah, I think it was. I was reading this earlier was in the. So NETanyahu is in D.C. and they have the head of Mossad on like a call as well. And Israel is pitching like the, the goals of, of doing this and the second set of the two additional goals that they had tacked on to like reducing Iran's nuclear threat were regime change in Iran like, and replacement of the government with a new secular leader like, and fueling a popular uprising in Iran for that to happen. And it was the CIA director John Ratcliffe and Rubio both said that this is basically ridiculous. Rubio literally said it's bullshit. Like that these goals are completely unlikely to be accomplished if we attack our. Yeah, Rubio said, Rubio said that these goals, like, Israel is basically trying to convince the US to do this, or, like, why it's good. Right? And they're saying one, two of the things of the four things that they said were there. We can fuel a popular uprising in Iran and we can replace the leader of Iran with a new secular leader and a new secular government in. Rubio in, like, in the room said, it's bullshit.
- [98:45]
Host 3
Yeah, there was a. There was a quote I pulled out, which was from the president, turned to General Kaine, which is one of his generals, for this. Said, general, what do you think? General Kane replied, sir, in my experience, this is standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They're going to oversell it, and their plans are not always well developed. They need us for this, and that's why they're hard selling. But then Mr. Trump weighed the assessment and said regime change would be their problem. It was unclear whether he was referring to the Israelis or the Iranian people or the Americans. But the bottom line was that his decision was go to war would not hinge on whether parts three and four of Netanyahu's presentation were achievable. He didn't. Like, he didn't care if that would. But it turns out it's his problem. It turns out it's all of our problem. Like, there is no evidence that it's happening. And without it, they could bomb the Strait forever. Like, there's just no way to stop it. The way the drones have changed warfare means you can't. You can threaten more with no money than you ever could before. Conventionally, it's what's changed everything in Russia, Ukraine. It's what's changing everything here. And so, yeah, I think it's. I don't know, it's pretty disastrous. I wonder what's going to happen. But I guess. I guess we can all, at least now that we've recorded through the 5pm period, be happy that he did not fucking.
- [99:58]
Host 1
Unless he got the time difference wrong, right? He's like, oh, shit, I'm at Pacific Time and we get to do it all over again. This is one of those things where, like, I've never obviously been good at talking about politics, but, like, this is one where it's so beyond stupid. I'm awful. I don't even. Like, what do I fucking say?
- [100:17]
Host 3
I agree with you in that I actually like talking about politics and I make videos about politics and I've been uploading less lately because the biggest story in the world is this Iran thing and the Main thing I have to say is that it's bad.
- [100:26]
Senator Mark Kelly
Yeah.
- [100:26]
Host 3
I don't know what else. Like, it's. It's very frustrating. It's actually frustrating. You know, an interesting angle on it that we can take if we have a few minutes left, is that I think a lot of people are feeling this way. And there's been a push in the past day, ever since that tweet, to talk about invoking the 25th Amendment. And I want to give a little tiny presentation on that because I looked into it, because the idea is like, hey, this has been one year. The guy is one year in. We have three years left. He is getting clearly worse. I mean, you watch this Trump speech from 2016 versus now. He just looks and sounds worse. And I thought he was great in 2016, but he just is a clear difference then I think these tweets that he's making. I know you said that like, he always does crazy stuff, but they're crazier. To me, this is crazier. Talking about the things he's saying, I think this is even worse than it was before. And so the direction is bad. So a lot of people, not just Democrats, there's Democrat senators, but also Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson. A lot of people have come out in the past 48 hours and said 25th amendment is ass. That's the direct quote from one of them. And 25th amendment is it was created after JFK was shot. And it's like, covers succession of the President.
- [101:39]
Host 1
And because it was like, we. We wanted a living one, right?
- [101:42]
Host 3
Yeah. It was like, hey, well, he's not really as useful when he's not.
- [101:45]
Host 2
When they did, nobody liked when we did Weekend at Bernie's with JFK, JFK's
- [101:52]
Host 3
corpse in the Oval Office and realized nothing was getting done.
- [101:55]
Host 2
So they added this. So they passed. They ratified the 27 founding fathers.
- [101:58]
Host 1
Just didn't think about this.
- [101:59]
Host 3
Never thought if someone would die. And so the first three articles of it are basically like, what if he's shot? What if he's sick? Whatever. But the fourth one is like, hey, what if he's unfit for office? What do we do? How do we get rid of him? And the bad news I have for everybody watching is that it requires one man to be all in. J.D. vance, Vice President is required. There is no other way around it. Even if you had all of Congress agreeing, the Vice President must invoke Article 25 or 25th Amendment in order to do it. And then he must be agreed by. By all the heads of the different cabinets. And if they do that, then they can get him out.
- [102:38]
Host 1
J.D. vance I know would never change his values in order to gain power.
- [102:45]
Host 3
You know what, that's a decent point. Maybe he fucking will.
- [102:47]
Host 1
We fucking, we fucking read his book on book club and in his book he seems like a pretty nice stand up guy with like good values. That's crazy. And we talked about how upsetting it is to watch somebody who seems like a person who came out of his hard background become this kind of chameleon in office.
- [103:04]
Host 3
Yeah. I mean a guy who said compared Trump to Hitler is now his largest defender, but they asked him about it today and he went all in defending that specific truth social, the one about civilizational wipeout. So I don't know, I don't, I don't get a lot of sense that he's our, the best guy for the job. So I'm very, you know, rallying behind what Mark Kelly said. Man, I just think people got to vote. I think, you know, I don't think this is a partisan show, but I'm just so fed up with this guy one year in. And I really hope that there's a, the Senate changes. That's the thing. That was impossible. And now 54% chance, which is above 50 on all the betting markets for Democrats to take the Senate. And if they do that, you know, maybe in a world where J.D. vance pivots again, it's possible.
- [103:49]
Host 2
I think the one thing I have been thinking about is, I mean I naturally I am concerned about things like he had just made some executive order about mail in ballots.
- [104:03]
Senator Mark Kelly
Right.
- [104:03]
Host 2
Trying to restrict mail in ballots nationwide.
- [104:05]
Host 3
Yeah.
- [104:06]
Host 2
And I would say other news around him trying to avoid losing in the midterms or potentially running a third time, like these seeds of those things happening. Not necessarily it explicitly happening yet.
- [104:22]
Host 3
Yeah.
- [104:23]
Host 2
But with this idea of my vote being under threat or like our collective ability to vote being under threat, I, my fear was enforced by so many people around him being so lock in step with him.
- [104:40]
Host 3
Yeah.
- [104:41]
Host 2
But it's interesting to see as more and more people actually challenge him or fall away even within his own party. It's actually giving me a little bit of more faith than I used to have of like the institutions holding up. Like if, if these people that are Republicans are starting to fall away from supporting him at least vocally, especially in the media. People like Tucker who have someone like
- [105:08]
Host 3
Tucker Carlson who was die hard for getting Trump into power.
- [105:13]
Host 1
If you want like cathartic someone who used to support Trump is now Hate him is Tucker's most recent video on YouTube. Tucker on Trump's desecration of Easter. And I watched like seven minutes of it this morning and he's like, he does this, you know, Trump did this tweet and it's the one where he says, open the Straits, you crazy bastards. Praise be to Allah. And he like fucking the. He does the Adolf Hitler like shaking as he puts, puts glasses on and then, and then reads it word by word and said this was on Easter. Praise be to Allah. Using the F word on Easter. And his whole thing is like, it's about how it's immoral, but entirely because it's very anti Christian, which is a funny angle.
- [105:56]
Host 3
He is fucking never would have taken a year ago. Yeah, it is extremely anti Trump directly.
- [106:03]
Host 1
It's kind of wild to watch.
- [106:04]
Host 2
I think that's the thing. It's like, I'm not here to be a Tucker guy and be like, yes, finally, Tucker, speak out. Tucker be the next guy up. I think I'm not aligned with Tucker on Tucker on things.
- [106:14]
Host 3
I mean, you're like pretty much we call you Minnie Tucker off camera.
- [106:18]
Host 2
Well, catch me after 9pm I'm speaking the good word Lemonade Stand here on
- [106:23]
Host 1
one side, your mother.
- [106:24]
Host 2
My point is, my point is if these like figures in right wing media take public like word or step against Trump, people get more comfortable with falling, like taking their support of Trump away.
- [106:39]
Host 1
And I think they're doing.
- [106:40]
Host 2
And I think that's the part that makes me, I don't know if hopeful is the right word, but maybe a little more confident that my vote is not as, at as much of a risk as I thought it was maybe like two or three months ago.
- [106:55]
Host 3
For him to radically subvert the democratic process requires him to have some measure of popularity, which is eroding so fast.
- [107:01]
Host 2
Exactly.
- [107:02]
Host 3
And so, yeah, I also am, you know, I'm more, I don't even vote for him again. It's like at this point he's really testing my limits. Like, you've had my three votes before, Mr. Donald, but after this Tucker video,
- [107:22]
Host 1
I don't know, I might be out.
- [107:25]
Host 2
But I think that's it for Lemonade Stand this week. We'll be back. You know, I'm with this specific topic. Things are changing quickly, even in the amount of time that we've been recording. They agreed to the two week ceasefire and I'm sure things could change pretty radically a week from now. So, yeah, thank you also for supporting our trip to China. We just got back. I mean, I'M fucking tired.
- [107:47]
Senator Mark Kelly
I'm going to.
- [107:47]
Host 2
I've been going to bed at like
- [107:48]
Host 3
8pm yeah, all the shit.
- [107:51]
Host 2
But our, our trip to China was really, really awesome and we got to do it because of your guys support and funding and if you guys want to check out our extra episode every week on the Patreon, you can go to patreon.com lemonade stand.
- [108:04]
Host 3
But as well as a ton of. Yeah. If you check, if you join the Patreon, there's a ton of China stuff that we recorded there. Walking around different parts of the cities and talking about it and so check that out.
- [108:12]
Host 1
Space is sick.
- [108:14]
Host 3
Yeah. You know, you kind of won me over on this episode on Space. Like I, I think I, I want to read more about it and I am, I. Your passion was infectious because I do think it's very exciting and there's like
- [108:24]
Host 1
weird drama between the companies. We didn't even talk about it and I didn't, I kind of, of didn't want to bring it up. You mentioned it. Boeing has sucked a large one with this project. Their portion of the whole thing of.
- [108:39]
Senator Mark Kelly
He didn't, he didn't want to throw
- [108:40]
Host 3
him under the bus.
- [108:41]
Host 1
I know, I know. We gave him the bone for Boeing. Yeah.
- [108:43]
Host 3
I was like, hey, Boeing sucks. And he was like, well, dude, it's wild.
- [108:47]
Host 1
It's wild. But like they're like too big to fail right now because nobody else can make the. It's anyway crazy. Space. Space is wild.
- [108:54]
Host 2
Thanks for joining us.
- [108:55]
Host 1
Thanks, everybody.
- [108:56]
Host 3
Bye, guys.