B (3:55)
Going back to the freaking moon. Yeah, yeah. Now what is, you know, space exploration? What's it all for? And kind of what's the trajectory of things? Well, obviously scientific exploration, that is a thing that we've prioritized in this country. We like doing stuff and with that comes technological advancement and therefore technological demonstration. We got to show the world why we're so much better than them. And as a part of doing that, we acquire resources. One, the ability to produce this technology, but to whatever the technology gets us towards, meaning the moon in this particular circumstances and the resources that are on the moon that we could use for our good, which of course, if you're talking about resources and resource allocation based on who has them now you're talking geopolitical influence around the world. That is why all of this is super important. Yesterday, Artemis 2 became the first deep space launch since the Apollo launches. Nobody's landing on the moon this particular time, but that is the ultimate goal. The first crude lunar landing is now eyed for 2028. Either Artemis 4 or Artemis 5 using SpaceX's Starship as well as potentially some blue origin technology in there, which is a part of this new space race. If you haven't heard about this, you're not hip to the space race. I guess space race is space race between China. It is a massive deal in the long term. Just generally speaking, China is targeting a crude lunar landing before 2030. No firm like public date on that but unfortunately they are making pretty steady progress. The plans for this year, China in 2026 plans to fly uncrewed test flights. They have a bunch of infrastructure in the works at their launch site. They've got crewed missions going to their own space station. So there's the ISS and then there's the Tian Gong space station that they launched in 2021. They've got a crewed mission going there, they've had a bunch of lander tests, they've landed on the moon four different times with robotics to gather data and information and bring it back to China. And in those missions that the Chinese, and the Chinese government took to the moon, they came back with some really interesting findings. Some of those findings which matched the US Lunar Prospector spacecraft, which the main thing is it showed a increased lots of normal amounts of hydrogen within a crater. This is the Shackleton crater. Let me pull up graphic one to show that Shackleton Crater bunch of hydrogen, which could mean that there is the presence of ice water or sorry, water ice. I guess there's a, not like ice water that you get at a restaurant and it's a cooling, calming beverage on a nice hot day. No, no water ice which is just basically, hey, there's water here in the form of ice. Okay, so why does that matter? Why is China now in a race with the United States? Remember, they're eyeing, sometime between 2030, we're eyeing 2028 to land people on the moon entirely. It's, it's targeted with heavy, heavy influence towards the lunar south pole and that Shackleton crater like what you just saw. Why? Well, because according to US research and Chinese research, there could be water ice there in the permanently shadowed craters of the Shackleton crater. This could provide drinking water, could provide oxygen, could be rocket fuel. You know, if we can figure out how to make hydrogen into the rocket fuel. Basically it is a possibility that people could be on the moon towards the lunar south pole for the long term, meaning that people can just be there. Okay, so, well if people are going to be there, we want it to be us, we don't want it to be our geopolitical adversaries. It also that south pole, that lunar south pole has near constant sunlight, which could lead to solar power, which could perpetuate long term human stability in that area. And lastly militarily it provides a strategic high ground for long term bases, communication relays and potential resource extraction. Helium 3, which I don't know anything about that. It just other smarter people than me say that that's important. As well as rare minerals, rare materials, I'm used to saying rare earth minerals because that's what, you know, goes into our silicon chips and our phones and all that sort of stuff. But it's not rare earth. It's, it's rare moon because it's, because it's not Earth. Bottom line here is that China's International Lunar Research Station is partnered with Russia and a bunch of others and aim to put bases, and by bases you can probably extrapolate from that military bases on the moon by 2030. And that could also potentially include nuclear power, which of course then means if our adversary has a goal of being on the moon by 2030, before 2030, and then the goal with China and the other access of a whole adversaries of the United States want to put military bases there. All that means is we have to do it first, right? That's, that's the only outcome here. This is a long term race that needs to be won by the United States of America. Now what exactly we get to it, we're not really sure. But what we do know is that if there is any upside, that means that our adversary can't get to it first. Okay, so what does this race look like? Who has the advantage? What are some of the disadvantages? What are the hurdles that we have to overcome? According to again, a lot of people smarter than me, the United States advantages include decades of crude spaceflight experience, obviously from the Apollo missions all the way up to now. We have a strong commercial sector which other countries don't have. We have SpaceX Blue Origin, a bunch of the other commercial space aviation flights, and we've got a bunch of international partners. We buy our parts from first world countries that have the manufacturing capability that we, not, not that we don't have, it's just that we can outsource so that we can, you know, build relationships for the purpose of conquering the moon first. China's advantages unfortunately though include rapid and consistent execution. They keep launching things up. They've done four robotic moon landings like we talked about earlier. They have a high launch cadence which is effectively a repeat of this first bullet point that I wrote down. Not entirely sure why I did that, but they keep sending stuff up, they keep, they keep doing it and you know, love them or hate them, they're doing it. They also have a strong robot robotics program which has had far side of the moon landings and samples returns. Like we've talked about earlier, the US hurdles, some of the problems that we've been having are technical delays Heat shield land or development. Obviously there's the cost convincing the American people, which is kind of what I'm trying to do here, why this is necessary and why it's important and why. Yes, it's not a war. It still is some sort of military race against, like I've mentioned a number of times, our biggest adversary. And scheduling slips, which I'm not really too concerned about that. Guys like Elon Musk, although not at NASA, love to set very, very optimistic deadlines. Sometimes you get those, sometimes you don't. But the bottom line is we have our own hurdles that we have to deal with. And China has their own hurdles. They have obviously have less public transparency. They're still building deep crude, deep space, crewed space flight, which they haven't really quite done yet. But everybody involved in this space race has harsh lunar environments to deal with. They've got radiation, life support and obviously the high costs. So what is at stake? I mean, basically we mentioned all of the military advantages, the resources advantages, if they are there, that need to be won over China. It's not just a who lands first, it is who gets there and is able to set the rules for lunar operations and resources use. The winner obviously gains a huge technological advantage. If there are resources there that we can bring back to Earth, they gain economic advantage. And if you gain economic advance and via resources, you obviously gain global influence advantage, global space leadership overall. One of the problems though, with all of that, and you know, there are big issues, there are big advantages the United States has, like we've mentioned, we've got the free market. One of the issues that we run into that China does not have is, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, unfortunately, racism. And by racism, I mean the crazy wackadoo people who consider race in everything that they do. I know this might sound kind of non sequitur, not exactly related, but trust me, it is. Yesterday, during the Artemis launch, Sky News from Australia had some crazy person on talking about the racial makeup of the crew. This is that clip and this is why. I'll explain why. I think this is unfortunately very important when it comes to beating China. This is cut 13. Yeah. And they are going for all humanity this time. You know, Apollo was all white men and this time it's not. And I think that really speaks volumes for the journey that NASA has been on. And this is a much more representative crew. Okay, so, yes, because there are some black people and women, I think I don't even know. I mean, okay, I do know, but it, it doesn't matter to me and it shouldn't matter to anybody. It shouldn't matter that Apollo was a bunch of white guys. They represented the United States of America. And we won in the space rates against Russia effectively, to get to the moon first. We won. Doesn't matter what you look like, doesn't matter what you came from, what it doesn't matter your height, none of that stuff matters. But if there are going to be hindrances to NASA in the race against China, our biggest adversary, it is stuff like that which is going to hinder us the most, unfortunately. What is this effectively? This is effectively a test of systems, as it was against the Soviets. Free market versus Communism. It's still a similar vibe going on here. The United States being a free market society that attracts brilliance, it attracts a meritocracy versus communism, which I don't know, advocates incentives through fear. That's what this ultimately is, or at least that is going to be what decides who wins this space race. Unfortunately, just a side effect of our freedom comes with sometimes the difficulty of organizing priorities. While it should be abundantly clear that we need to beat China to the moon and we need to build bases on the moon before China does, which side? Note what a good idea the Space Force was. Remember when Trump got made fun of for developing the Space Force and launching that and everyone was like, this is stupid and unnecessary. Oh, yeah, look, hey, China's trying to build military installations on the moon. Maybe we should do it before them. Wow. Very ahead of his time. President Trump was at the time, she's, where was I? At the end of the day, we have to have the best and brightest and cannot be hindered by. Well, is the first biracial, lesbian amputee blind person gonna be on the team that builds the military base on the moon? No. Who cares? The bottom line is we have to freaking win. Okay, I recognize there are a lot of things that may sound super important, and they are, they're not. Not important. But in the grand scheme of things, in the long term, over the next decade or two or three, this matters a lot. And with the launch of Artemis yesterday, regardless of what you think about the makeup of the crew or anything like that, it matters that we did it and it continues to matter that we continue doing it. Artemis 4, 5, whatever it ends up being, mission wise, hopefully in 28, putting people on the moon again. And not just people, Americans, because it matters who wins this, this new space race. It matters for America, but also Western civilization as a whole. Will the free market Society that prioritizes meritocracy and brilliance win, hopefully. But we're going up against the communists and ultimately that's what this is going to end up being. Who controls the moon will control the direction and the trajectory of, of the globe, to be honest, and frankly, I'd rather be Western and more specifically American. Tpt if you have any thoughts on this. Like I mentioned, a bunch of news stories go just a ton. This is one of those days where the most difficult part about the show today was picking what to talk about because there's so many things to talk about. And we'll get to some of that. We'll get to President Trump's address yesterday, as well as Pam Bondi out as Attorney general, or at least moving on to the private sector is what President Trump issued any. That's not probably not untrue. She's probably going to make a lot of money in the private sector, which is a different discussion. But anyways, all those things and more coming up after the break. Tptpsa.com, we'll be right back. Don't go away. With verbo care. Help is always ready before, during, and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twists, so support is always available because a great trip starts with peace of mind.