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Speaker 1: It's time for Rod Pile. Rod's our space guy, and

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Speaker 1: I'm looking at this one sheet of Rod. Of your credentials.

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Speaker 1: Pilebooks dot com, pyl Ebooks dot com. Author, journalist, editor

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Speaker 1: in chief at Astro Magazine, author of Space two point zero,

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Speaker 1: Author Technology Highlights for NASA JPL, author Apollo Executive Education

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Speaker 1: Program for NASA, slash JSC recipient twenty twenty four Space

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Speaker 1: Pioneer Award, co host This Week in Space named top

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Speaker 1: one hundred men in the Aerospace and Aviation to follow

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Speaker 1: on LinkedIn. Good looking guy and well hung okay, why

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Speaker 1: thank you? Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome, your favorite. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I know you were there yesterday, right.

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Speaker 2: No, So actually I'm heading out there in about an hour.

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Speaker 2: I was here, but I had a live hookup with

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Speaker 2: an Apollo era flight director who was on the floor

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Speaker 2: of Michigan Control because I'm writing his biography. His name's

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Speaker 2: Jerry Griffin. He was the only guy from the Apollo

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Speaker 2: era that was there, and of course they treated him

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Speaker 2: like royalty. But he was just you know, these engineers

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Speaker 2: are pretty tightly wrapped, but he was just losing it.

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Speaker 2: He was so excited because everything worked the first.

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Speaker 1: Time yeah, and it was what was it the last

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Speaker 1: time there was a failure. I mean it just this

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Speaker 1: is the first go round. I mean, this never happens.

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Speaker 1: There's never much testing. If I'm not mistaken, Hey, the

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Speaker 1: first go ahead.

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Speaker 2: So they did test the Iran capsule in the Earth

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Speaker 2: orbit in twenty fourteen and it was okay, but they

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Speaker 2: had heat shield problems. Then they did the uncrewed test

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Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two flying a similar trajectory out towards

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Speaker 2: the Moon and back and still had some heat shield issues.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, this is the first time with a crew

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Speaker 2: in that spacecraft ever for sure.

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Speaker 1: Okay, the first question, of course everybody asks. Of course

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Speaker 1: we go to that bathroom issue. And the first the

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Speaker 1: toilet was not working, and it was working. So let

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Speaker 1: me give you a scenario toilet on the spacecraft. Obviously

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Speaker 1: they don't have rooms in there, so there has to

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Speaker 1: be some kind of a curtain that goes around while

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Speaker 1: the you do your toilet thing.

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Speaker 2: It's actually like like like a toilet on an airplane.

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Speaker 2: It's a little room with the door you can close.

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Speaker 2: Oh there is a room, okay, yeah, I was surprised.

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Speaker 2: It's in the floor actually, and in zero g. Of

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Speaker 2: course the capsule seems much bigger than it is, you know,

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Speaker 2: if you're standing in there in regular gravity. But yeah,

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Speaker 2: you can go in there, and that's good because about

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Speaker 2: half the astronauts that go into orbit and become weightless

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Speaker 2: get sick for a while. And if you're going to

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Speaker 2: be hurling, you really want a nice private place to

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Speaker 2: do it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. What about the sound effects when you're in no,

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Speaker 1: never mind, We spacecraft are kind of noisy, so probably

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Speaker 1: yeah they are. Well wait a second, they can't be

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Speaker 1: noisy while they're out in space because unless all kinds

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Speaker 1: of mechanisms are moving inside the spacecraft.

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Speaker 2: Well they got pumps and fans.

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Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, okay, I never talked about it. There is

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Speaker 1: there is always in there that makes sense.

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Speaker 2: All right, So it's yesterday.

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Speaker 1: I want to talk about the import of this because

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Speaker 1: I was watching this live and every expert that they

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Speaker 1: brought on, and they were all former astronauts, like virtually

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Speaker 1: everyone to comment on this. You had the Kelly brothers

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Speaker 1: who were there, you had people who were but on

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Speaker 1: the ISS people had flown before. The excitement level of

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Speaker 1: every one of them I've never seen. Why were they

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Speaker 1: so damn excited.

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Speaker 2: Well, because we're really stretching again. We haven't left low

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Speaker 2: Earth orbit with people since nineteen seventy two, and you know,

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Speaker 2: this is a big deal going out to the Moon

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Speaker 2: and back. I mean, we perfected this in the nineteen sixties,

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Speaker 2: early nineteen seventies, but all those people are gone, so

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Speaker 2: this is a whole new Michigan control. In fact, Jerry

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Speaker 2: Griffin told me when the flight directors that the current

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Speaker 2: flights came out to meet him in mis Control, they

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Speaker 2: introduced themselves by number, like, I'm flight director number eighty seven,

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Speaker 2: I'm plight director number one oh one meeting that's how

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Speaker 2: many NASA's had. He said, ha, I'm flight director number six.

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Speaker 2: So you know, this is a whole new crew and

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Speaker 2: it's just a huge command of control problem on top

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Speaker 2: of all this stuff that has to go right on

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Speaker 2: the spacecraft itself.

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Speaker 1: You know, I was reading that when people on the

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Speaker 1: ISS would meet the Apollo astronauts who had been on

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Speaker 1: the Moon, the reverence was unbelievable. I would say, Hey,

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Speaker 1: this guy's been on the Moon. He has walked on

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Speaker 1: the Moon, and it was almost like they were deities. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and are are we going to get back to that

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Speaker 1: same place with our newer astronauts are going to be moonwalkers.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully by twenty twenty eight. And you know, this

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Speaker 2: is one of the big drivers here, and you probably

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Speaker 2: heard this on the news yesterday. You know, this whole competition, which,

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Speaker 2: in my opinion, the United States only really does well

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Speaker 2: when it's a competition with somebody, Otherwise we get kind

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Speaker 2: of lackadaisical. So we're concerned that China's get to the

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Speaker 2: Moon before us, that they're going to start building stuff

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Speaker 2: up there. You can't claim territory, but you can occupy

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Speaker 2: it and declare an exclusion zone. And nobody at NASA

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Speaker 2: or elsewhere in the government wants that to happen. So

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Speaker 2: I think that's a big driver of the excitement here,

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Speaker 2: is just getting people back there as soon as possible.

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Speaker 2: And you know, from my perspective, I bowed the knee

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Speaker 2: to every astronaut I've ever met, But the moonwalkers are

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Speaker 2: special and there's only a couple left. All right.

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Speaker 1: Rod is our space expert and has been for many years.

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Speaker 1: Yesterday Artemis two took off. It seemed to have worked

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Speaker 1: just flawlessly, and big rocket wasn't as big as the

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Speaker 1: Atlas rocket. I know it had more power by two

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Speaker 1: million pounds of thrust, but was it as big.

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Speaker 2: Way, bigger way, bigger. Yeah, this is in the Saturn

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Speaker 2: five class, much and more powerful than the Saturn five,

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Speaker 2: at least on the first stage. The numbers are tricky

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Speaker 2: because the Saturn five had a more powerful upper stage

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Speaker 2: and blah blah blah. Basically, the SOLS is the most

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Speaker 2: powerful rocket we've used for NASA.

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Speaker 1: Okay, now let's talk about what this is going to do.

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Speaker 1: And as a result of this, the next step and

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Speaker 1: then the step after that, and the step after that,

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Speaker 1: and of course the end all be all of the

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Speaker 1: program right now is having an astronaut walk on Mars.

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Speaker 1: So take us through the steps that is going to happen.

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Speaker 2: Well, so, right now they're in what's called a high

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Speaker 2: elliptical orbit, about fourteen hundred miles high around Earth. It's

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Speaker 2: a big twenty four hour orbit. This takes them through

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Speaker 2: the Van Allen Belts and lets them check out all

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Speaker 2: hardware through certain amount of radiation dosing and make sure

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Speaker 2: life support's working and all that. Then they're going to

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Speaker 2: fire up their engine this afternoon. The onboard engine on

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Speaker 2: the Orion capsule that'll send them finally into their translunar trajectory.

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Speaker 2: They'll go loop behind the Moon about three days later.

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Speaker 2: They're not orbiting, they're just doing a single pass behind

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Speaker 2: it at about forty six hundred miles. Then they come

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Speaker 2: home and then they re enter, which is the critical part,

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Speaker 2: at twenty five thousand miles per hour, just like the

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Speaker 2: Apollo ships. Did a little bit of worry about that

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Speaker 2: heat shield, but they think they've got it figured out,

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Speaker 2: and they splash down just off the coast of San Diego. Actually,

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Speaker 2: then Artemis three, so recently Isaacman, Jared Isaacman, the new

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Speaker 2: NAS administrator, announced this big shake up of the program.

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Speaker 2: Artemis three was supposed to land in two years. Now

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Speaker 2: Artemist three is going to launch next year because they

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Speaker 2: want to keep the cadence up, keep people in practice.

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Speaker 2: It'll go into an orbital mission and we'll dock with

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Speaker 2: one or both of the lunar landers that Blue Origin

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Speaker 2: and SpaceX are building to test them. Then Artemis four,

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Speaker 2: hopefully in twenty twenty eight, actually makes the first crude

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Speaker 2: landing and takes a couple of astronauts down to the

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Speaker 2: lunar surface and you know, that's the big one for us,

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Speaker 2: because of course, China has really developed something very parallel

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Speaker 2: to the Apollo program. It's a little simpler. It's kind

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Speaker 2: of a dash and grab for the first mission. They've

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Speaker 2: said they're going to land Chinese astronauts there by twenty thirty,

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Speaker 2: but you can bet it's going to be twenty twenty

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Speaker 2: nine because that's the eightieth anniversary of the People's Republic

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Speaker 2: of China and they're not going to miss that. Then finally,

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Speaker 2: Artemis four at Artemis five go up in the succeeding

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Speaker 2: few years, and eventually we start building our moon base.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so that's what I'm going to ask you, the

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Speaker 1: moon base, because that's obviously going to be a big

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Speaker 1: deal prior to the attempt at Mars. When are we

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Speaker 1: looking at a moon base? It seems to me that

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Speaker 1: it's farther out than I thought what it was.

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Speaker 2: Hopefully we'll both live long enough. I think somewhere in

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Speaker 2: the twenty twenty four to twenty twenty six time window.

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Speaker 2: I mean, they may get some elements of it down earlier.

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Speaker 2: In fact, the Blue Origin Lander can support a crew

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Speaker 2: for thirty days just by itself. It's like a big

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Speaker 2: oversized lunar module in steroids. So between that and building

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Speaker 2: a couple of components that they can land to work

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Speaker 2: in conjunction with that, maybe even a starship of spaces

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Speaker 2: can work that out. It could happen a little sooner,

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Speaker 2: but as you know, these things move slower than we

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Speaker 2: plan on.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, the numbers you gave us was twenty twenty four,

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 2: That sorry, twenty thirty four thirty five.

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Speaker 1: Well we should be around by then, hopefully, you know,

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Speaker 1: I hope. So yeah, okay, Rod, thank you, and we'll

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Speaker 1: look you sir. Yeah, and once again, let me pitch

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Speaker 1: your stuff pilebooks dot com, which is a pretty terrific website.

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Speaker 1: And then you've got the This Week in Space podcast.

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Speaker 1: Take take care, we'll talk to you too, great Rod,

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Speaker 1: Pile kind of neat