Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Hell the Tech are you. It's time for a
Speaker 1: tech Stuff classic episode. This one's a secret well. It
Speaker 1: published on April two thousand fifteen, and it is titled
Speaker 1: The Secret space Plane. Enjoy. So we're talking about a
Speaker 1: space plane, secret space plane, and uh, it's been reported
Speaker 1: on in the news several times. There's a at an
Speaker 1: upcoming launch that should be happening in May of um
Speaker 1: it is. As we record this, it's early April, so
Speaker 1: obviously that's still always out and depending on weather and stuff,
Speaker 1: it could end up being pushed back. But we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about what this plane is and we'd love
Speaker 1: to talk about what it's doing. But as you'll find out,
Speaker 1: that's a little complicated. There are some guesses, and as
Speaker 1: we continue through today's episode, we will arrive at some
Speaker 1: of that. But to be absolutely honest from the jump,
Speaker 1: the people who do know what it's doing are totally
Speaker 1: not allowed to talk about it. Yeah, this is like
Speaker 1: almost Area fifty one level secrecy right where people it's
Speaker 1: it's it's common knowledge that the thing exists, but not
Speaker 1: common knowledge of what's going on with It's very much
Speaker 1: like Area fifty one, what's for many years. So the
Speaker 1: setup I have on this is on Friday October, an
Speaker 1: unmanned plane landed autonomously, I should add, at Vandenburg Air
Speaker 1: Force Base in California, and it had spent six hundred
Speaker 1: seven in the four days, nearly two full years in
Speaker 1: lower thorbit in space. It flew for two years up
Speaker 1: in space. Yeah, um, so the landing marked the end
Speaker 1: of the I call it a test flight, but really
Speaker 1: you could just call it a mission of the X
Speaker 1: thirty seven B space plane, also known as the Orbital
Speaker 1: Test Vehicle or O t V. And there are two
Speaker 1: of those planes in existence and together they've logged more
Speaker 1: than one thousand, three hundred sixty seven days in orbit total.
Speaker 1: Uh and that's across three missions. So that's a lot
Speaker 1: of time at once. So you might want to know
Speaker 1: what's going on. And the thing is, like we mentioned,
Speaker 1: so need to know basis that you don't need to know,
Speaker 1: and neither do we. Well, I think eventually that we're
Speaker 1: going to know, we being the public, eventually we have
Speaker 1: to know. Um, But there's there's a story behind this.
Speaker 1: It's a culmination of stuff that began decades ago. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it started back in the nineteen nineties. Uh So turn
Speaker 1: your watch back, if you will, to the magical decade
Speaker 1: of the nineties. Grunge music is all the rage. You know,
Speaker 1: the Generation xers are making sardonic entertainment left and right,
Speaker 1: Empire records, that kind of thing. Um. So, NASA at
Speaker 1: that point was looking into the future of space exploration,
Speaker 1: particularly the type that doesn't need human beings on spacecraft. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Humans are such a hassle in space. You have to
Speaker 1: you have to spend so much time, technology and money
Speaker 1: just like make them not die. Yeah, get the little
Speaker 1: guys up there and back. Yeah. Yeah, keeping keeping humans
Speaker 1: alive in space is a tall order because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff in space that is really deadly. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not our neck of the woods, a vacuum of space.
Speaker 1: You've got radiation, You've got micro gravity, which over a
Speaker 1: long enough time period can cause some serious health problems.
Speaker 1: Objects at high speeds, yeah, space debris, all this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. And you know, clearly the space age we've
Speaker 1: had our share of tragedies and you know, we definitely
Speaker 1: aren't making light of that. That's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why so much effort and money has have been put
Speaker 1: forward into these unmanned missions. And can we find ways
Speaker 1: of getting stuff to space, let's say, like a like
Speaker 1: a refueling mission or a you know, uh, you're replenishing
Speaker 1: inventory aboard the International Space Station without the need for
Speaker 1: a manned space flight. And so there there's a real
Speaker 1: reason why NASA was interested in this, and um they were,
Speaker 1: you know. Apart from that, it also reduces cost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't have to have a life support system for
Speaker 1: a example, in an unmanned spacecraft. That alone will save
Speaker 1: you millions of bucks. Right. So in NASA announced that
Speaker 1: it was developing a pair of vehicles, one called the
Speaker 1: orbital Vehicle and one called the Approach and Landing Test
Speaker 1: Vehicle or a L t V UH. And the a
Speaker 1: l t V S purpose was to test the approach
Speaker 1: and landing systems of an unmanned plane, so this one
Speaker 1: was not designed to go into space. The a L
Speaker 1: t V and UH. NASA partnered with Boeing and the
Speaker 1: Air Force in order to get this program going. So
Speaker 1: the A L T V was just an unmantened I
Speaker 1: say just it was an unmanned plane, because it was
Speaker 1: amazing to me that you could build an autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: that could land a plane, yeah, on a landing strip. Well,
Speaker 1: in this case, it wasn't taking off because what they
Speaker 1: did with this was they would lift it up on
Speaker 1: another vehicle and then drop it, and then they would
Speaker 1: allow the unmanned vehicle to fly itself to the proper
Speaker 1: landing destiny action and land so the al V it
Speaker 1: could not take off on its own, it couldn't go
Speaker 1: into space. But it was designed mainly as a test
Speaker 1: platform for the autonomous guidance system and landing sort of
Speaker 1: a proof of concept, Yeah, because I mean, obviously, if
Speaker 1: you want to build upon this and create a vehicle,
Speaker 1: an unmanned vehicle that can go into space, first you
Speaker 1: want to make absolutely certain that you have taken steps
Speaker 1: to a show that it can land before you pour
Speaker 1: in all the money that is necessary for it to
Speaker 1: be able to survive the rigors of space travel. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's a little bit of a I guess a
Speaker 1: geopolitical calculation with this kind of stuff too, because if
Speaker 1: in orbit decays, right, if the thing gets into space
Speaker 1: and it crashes or it just doesn't land where it's
Speaker 1: supposed to. Then not only have you the launching party
Speaker 1: lost billions of dollars, right, but you've also given all
Speaker 1: of this research to another country, and maybe not a
Speaker 1: friendly one. Yeah exactly. I mean we've seen this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff throughout the history of the uh well really
Speaker 1: the Cold War is you know, like things like the
Speaker 1: you two's YouTube spy plane going down and the fact
Speaker 1: that that was a huge concern that that uh, the
Speaker 1: the adversaries to the United States had suddenly gained access
Speaker 1: to some of that technology. Uh well, you know that's
Speaker 1: clearly another concern for this sort of stuff. You want
Speaker 1: to make sure that everything is working properly before you
Speaker 1: ever put it towards any kind of sensitive use or
Speaker 1: even just a scientific experiment or whatever. Like maybe it's
Speaker 1: too you know, um deploy a satellite or something, or
Speaker 1: even even something more sophisticated, like to fix a satellite
Speaker 1: to repair solar panels. Yeah. Yeah, So this, like I said,
Speaker 1: Boeing was partnering with NASA to develop these uh it
Speaker 1: would ultimately under this part of the the program own
Speaker 1: it would only develop the altar V for NASA. That's
Speaker 1: as far as it got it. But it was designated
Speaker 1: as the X thirty seven A aircraft or spacecraft. Really yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so much easier to say that than uh, you know,
Speaker 1: alt V or whatever. So it was similar to an
Speaker 1: earlier unmanned aircraft that was again made by Boeing, but
Speaker 1: this one was operated by the Air Force. It was
Speaker 1: the X forty A H And again the X forty
Speaker 1: A was meant as a test platform for things that
Speaker 1: would ultimately go on an unmanned space plane type vehicle.
Speaker 1: Uh so another proof of concept, kind of like the
Speaker 1: idea that we want to make sure that we get,
Speaker 1: you know, take the right steps. We're not gonna we're
Speaker 1: not gonna leap and jump over like six steps of development.
Speaker 1: We're gonna use this as an incremental approach. So the
Speaker 1: X forty A could not actually go into space, but
Speaker 1: again was to test certain technologies. It also was too
Speaker 1: small for NASA, and could we yeah, it was too
Speaker 1: small for naty could we Before we go on, could
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about just, uh the dramatic
Speaker 1: waste in typical conventional launches. Oh? Sure, Like yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: like so generally speaking, the rule of thumb is that
Speaker 1: a launch with a government funded space launch is about
Speaker 1: ten tho dollars per pound. Per pound, every pound of
Speaker 1: payload that you want to put into space cost ten grand.
Speaker 1: So imagine that you have a vehicle that has all
Speaker 1: these different support systems on it for astronauts. That adds
Speaker 1: to the weight, plus then you have the payload of
Speaker 1: the spacecraft itself. So something like the Space Shuttle program,
Speaker 1: which was designed to take material into space, either as
Speaker 1: like a satellite to be deployed, or tools to repair
Speaker 1: things that already existed like the hubble Um, or even
Speaker 1: just a trip to the International Space Station to bring
Speaker 1: supplies up there. All of that weight is a factor
Speaker 1: in the cost of launch. If you do an unmanned
Speaker 1: spacecraft and you reduce the weight of the spacecraft, you've
Speaker 1: reduced the You know, even even though the X three
Speaker 1: seven A was larger than the X forty A, it's
Speaker 1: still significantly smaller than a space shuttle, and that means
Speaker 1: that it would cost less to put up. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to use less fuel, so it costs less
Speaker 1: to put it up into lower thorbit. And when I
Speaker 1: say less, it's still really expensive. By the way when
Speaker 1: I the reason why I stressed government funded space launch
Speaker 1: is there a lot of private companies that have been
Speaker 1: arguing that by privatizing they could bring down the price
Speaker 1: of launching payloads into space. So things like space x
Speaker 1: have really helped to to reduce that cost. So then
Speaker 1: getting into the differences between the X forty A and
Speaker 1: the X thirty seven A, despite the fact that it's
Speaker 1: a lower number of the X three seven A is
Speaker 1: a bigger spacecraft. It's a larger than the X forty A.
Speaker 1: And there are other differences as well. Once we get
Speaker 1: to the one that actually was designed to go into space, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one's got advanced thermal protection spacecraft systems, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So the seven A and the forty A
Speaker 1: were both designed just to be test platforms, so they
Speaker 1: didn't need all that all the extra stuff. So we're
Speaker 1: going through this incremental testing and starting to see if
Speaker 1: we can really make this this vision a reality, this autonomous,
Speaker 1: super secret spacecraft, which I just love the idea of it.
Speaker 1: H out at than how um, how do the bureaucratic changes.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this we're talking a lot about NASA right now,
Speaker 1: and you might be thinking, well, why is this space
Speaker 1: plane so secret. NASA is not about secrecy, and it's not.
Speaker 1: The thirty seven A wasn't meant to be secret at all.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's a lot of the information you can
Speaker 1: find about the spacecraft is right there on NASA as
Speaker 1: website because it's it's all publicly available. But some changes
Speaker 1: would end up making the let's say, the stewardship of
Speaker 1: the thirty seven X three seven program change hands. So first,
Speaker 1: in two thousand one, the Air Force withdrew its support
Speaker 1: for the project. It's financial support. It was one of
Speaker 1: three parties that was partner to fund this, the other
Speaker 1: two being NASA and Boeing. Air Force pulls out in
Speaker 1: two thousand one, NASA keeps going with the partnership with Boeing. Uh.
Speaker 1: They had to end up, um, you know, going to
Speaker 1: the government and saying, hey, we need grants and stuff
Speaker 1: in order for this to keep going, otherwise the project's
Speaker 1: gonna collapse from the inside. This continues until two thousand four,
Speaker 1: and that's when NASA ends up handing over the control
Speaker 1: of the X thirty seven program to the Defense Advanced
Speaker 1: Research Projects Agency also known as DARPA, which I've talked
Speaker 1: about multiple times this podcast. Yeah, we've talked about a
Speaker 1: couple of other shows to DARPA. I'm assuming that people
Speaker 1: have heard this name before, but the rumors are true.
Speaker 1: It is the closest thing the US has to a
Speaker 1: mad science department. Yeah, it's the Department of Defense is
Speaker 1: mad science department. And and it's not like DARPA is
Speaker 1: filled with a bunch of yeah in lab coats, like
Speaker 1: locked away forty forty levels underground. In fact, mostly what
Speaker 1: DARPA does is invite other entities to develop for specific purposes.
Speaker 1: So I did an episode not long ago talking about
Speaker 1: how DARPA was instrumental in the rapid development of autonomous
Speaker 1: car technology. Yeah. Um so in this it's very akin
Speaker 1: to that. This is an autonomous spacecraft technology. So you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're talking about the continuation of an idea and
Speaker 1: just expanding it, you know, expanding the parameters. Really uh So,
Speaker 1: in this case, DARPA takes over, and it meant that
Speaker 1: the X three seven fell under the control of the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense, which also meant that the X three
Speaker 1: seven suddenly became a classified project. It was no longer
Speaker 1: this this you know, very public facing project from NASA.
Speaker 1: Now it's a classified project under the Department of Defense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which you know, which is kind of a bummer, but
Speaker 1: also understandable given that the kind of technology that they
Speaker 1: would be working on is not something you want or
Speaker 1: or really can have open sourced, you know, because other
Speaker 1: countries will get involved, other countries will reverse engineer, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of um Again, this is this is
Speaker 1: where I think we start to see a political aspect
Speaker 1: to become even more apparent. But but the story is
Speaker 1: not done yet, right. So remember the Air Force had
Speaker 1: pulled sort of it's it's supporting two thousand one November
Speaker 1: two thousand six and announces it's going to develop a
Speaker 1: variation of the X thirty seven A. Remember the orbital
Speaker 1: vehicle that NASA had proposed. They never got to the
Speaker 1: point where that was actually built. They had built the
Speaker 1: one that was the approach and landing test vehicle, but
Speaker 1: not the orbital one. And the Air Force wanted to
Speaker 1: build an orbital vehicle. Uh. They called it the orbital
Speaker 1: test vehicle, so the O t V UH, and they
Speaker 1: designated it the X thirty seven B. So thirty seven
Speaker 1: A was the one that NASA used to test this
Speaker 1: approach and landing uh technology, and this one was meant
Speaker 1: to actually go into space. Uh. So the top secret
Speaker 1: program falls to the control of the Air Force. Now,
Speaker 1: the official word from the Air Force as to the
Speaker 1: purpose of the X thirty seven program is This is
Speaker 1: a direct quote from their website. The X thirty seven
Speaker 1: B Orbital Test Vehicle or O t V is an
Speaker 1: experimental test program to demonstrate technologies for a reliable, reusable,
Speaker 1: unmanned space ace test platform for the US Air Force.
Speaker 1: The primary objectives of the X thirty seven B are
Speaker 1: twofold reusable spacecraft technologies for America's future in space and
Speaker 1: operating experiments which can be returned to and examined on Earth. So, um,
Speaker 1: there's some important stuff in there that really does play
Speaker 1: into the purpose of this thing. The big one being
Speaker 1: that it is a reusable spacecraft, so it's not a
Speaker 1: one and done right uh. And this was the same
Speaker 1: purpose for the Space Shuttle program. It was the difference
Speaker 1: between that and previous programs where like a capsule would
Speaker 1: go up and come back down and then once it
Speaker 1: came down it had to be retired. You couldn't use
Speaker 1: it again. This is the difference between you know, those
Speaker 1: and and those previous UH spacecraft and things like the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle and the X thirty seven spacecraft. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: kind of locked into it at this point because we've
Speaker 1: put so much money in at the front, so we'll
Speaker 1: have to we'll have to make that money back. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm just tickled because what I love about these
Speaker 1: relatively obtuse kind of explanations is that there there's clearly, um,
Speaker 1: there's clearly a reliance on vague language. The word test
Speaker 1: is used three times in the first sentence, and the
Speaker 1: substantive You are right, they are seeing substantive things. The
Speaker 1: reusable spacecraft is probably the biggest part of it. Another
Speaker 1: part is the testing of the instruments, which, again, although
Speaker 1: you and I don't really know that, that seems like
Speaker 1: one of the best guesses. Yeah, and you know, you
Speaker 1: could argue that part of this, the existence of this
Speaker 1: is really just too incrementally build towards a future spacecraft
Speaker 1: that has not yet been designed for specific purposes that
Speaker 1: may go beyond this testing that we're talking about. Uh.
Speaker 1: And another one maybe that it's to test related technology
Speaker 1: that are not intended to make the spacecraft itself more effective,
Speaker 1: but rather just say Hey, we built this sensor. The
Speaker 1: sensor is meant to do this specific task when it's
Speaker 1: in space, but we don't know if the sensor can
Speaker 1: actually withstand being in space, like being exposed to radiation.
Speaker 1: But then you think, oh, I've got this unmanned vehicle.
Speaker 1: I can put it up into orbit for hundreds of
Speaker 1: days at a time and expose the sensor to the
Speaker 1: same kinds of radiation it will would experience if it
Speaker 1: were incorporated into some other type of spacecraft, and then
Speaker 1: we can test and see if in fact the thing
Speaker 1: we designed will still work, you know, once it's in space.
Speaker 1: So those are I mean, that's a valid thing. But
Speaker 1: but because of the secrecy involved, the fact that these
Speaker 1: these details cannot legally be shared, has led to some
Speaker 1: really interesting hypotheses, some more grounded than others. I like
Speaker 1: to use the term grounded. Yes, space ground here all day.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised we got this far without another space fund.
Speaker 1: We've got a ton in the notes, and they were all,
Speaker 1: well unintentional, might be going a bit far, Like I
Speaker 1: would realize that while typing it out, I'm like, oh, well, okay,
Speaker 1: but we do know, we do know a lot about
Speaker 1: the X thirty seven. You can see pictures of it online.
Speaker 1: You can see some great footage of it that comes
Speaker 1: from I think ultimately from the Air Force themselves. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean the landing is impressive, right, the fact
Speaker 1: that this is landing autonomously, so it's unmanned. But it's
Speaker 1: not just unmanned. There's no one remote controlling this aircraft
Speaker 1: when it comes down and land, right, it's not a drone.
Speaker 1: That's very important. Yeah, it's it's it's fully under its
Speaker 1: own nat navigation power. Uh. So here's some of the
Speaker 1: facts that we know about it. And a lot of
Speaker 1: this is because, again, it started its life out as
Speaker 1: a NASA project, so there were some details that were
Speaker 1: already out there and the Air Force is like, well, heck,
Speaker 1: we don't care about this part. This isn't the important part.
Speaker 1: Just don't talk about the lasers, right, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the tickle device. Yeah, it's just there to tickle space.
Speaker 1: That's all it's meant to do. So here's what we
Speaker 1: do know. Uh. It is twenty nine ft three inches long,
Speaker 1: which is about eight point nine ms. When it's on
Speaker 1: its landing gear, it is nine ft six inches tall
Speaker 1: or about two point nine ms now at that space.
Speaker 1: Even if you had a pressurized cabin, you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to really have astronauts right in it. Uh. The
Speaker 1: X three seven B does not have a pressurized cabin,
Speaker 1: so it cannot carry up anything living, at least nothing
Speaker 1: that you expect to remain. So it's it could carry
Speaker 1: up non animate uh like cargo that could and not
Speaker 1: a whole lot of it at that's at that size
Speaker 1: from wing tip to wing tip, it is four ft
Speaker 1: eleven inches wide or four point five meters, and it
Speaker 1: weighs a slimming eleven thousand pounds or four thousand UH.
Speaker 1: It's power system it uses lithium ion batteries to to
Speaker 1: supply power to its um it's thrusters, but it is
Speaker 1: uh it's got gallium arsenide solar cells to recharge those.
Speaker 1: That's why it can stay in space so long. Because
Speaker 1: that's the question that a lot of people have at
Speaker 1: the beginning, is how does it manage to retain power
Speaker 1: for that long and returned to its original um you know,
Speaker 1: returned to its launch point on its own power. This
Speaker 1: is not necessarily a powerful vehicle on its own No,
Speaker 1: it cannot take off from Earth and it certainly cannot
Speaker 1: escape Earth's gravity on its own. It has to have
Speaker 1: a launch vehicle, also more commonly referred to by we
Speaker 1: mere mortals as rockets. So you guess, trap one of
Speaker 1: these suckers onto a rocket UM, typically an Atlas V
Speaker 1: Applas Atlas five. I guess I should say, let's say
Speaker 1: V call I X I I UM the Atlas five rocket.
Speaker 1: You have to strap it up to one of those
Speaker 1: suckers to get it out into space in the first place. So,
Speaker 1: and that actually has raised some folks um objections to
Speaker 1: this whole approach, but we'll get into that a little bit.
Speaker 1: So the way it would work is originally they were
Speaker 1: thinking about having this kind of piggyback onto a space shuttle,
Speaker 1: so if you were going to launch a space shutle,
Speaker 1: you could also launch a space plane. However, the Columbia
Speaker 1: disaster really caused NASA to reevaluate the space shuttle program
Speaker 1: for quite some time. In fact, it was it was
Speaker 1: put on the ground for a good long time after
Speaker 1: the Columbia disaster, as NASA was reevaluating the program and
Speaker 1: seeing how to make it so that that kind of
Speaker 1: tragedy would never happen again, so that meant that that
Speaker 1: would no longer be a viable means of getting the
Speaker 1: X thirty event into space. So at that point, the
Speaker 1: reevaluation for X thirty seven mint they looked at it
Speaker 1: as a payload for other launch vehicles, and they settled
Speaker 1: on the United Launch Alliance at last five. We'll be
Speaker 1: back with more about the secret space plane after these messages.
Speaker 1: So the launch vehicle delivers the X thirty seven to
Speaker 1: low Earth orbit. Low Earth orbit is the same orbit
Speaker 1: that you find the International Space Station. It's the same
Speaker 1: Earth orbit the Hubble spacecraft or Hubble space telescope is in.
Speaker 1: It's the same Earth orbit. Or it's the same orbit
Speaker 1: that all the Space Shuttle missions went to. So in
Speaker 1: other words, there have only been a couple of times
Speaker 1: that human beings have ever gone beyond beyond low Earth orbit.
Speaker 1: Those times would be when we sent people to the Moon. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: everything has been in low Earth orbit, which is relatively
Speaker 1: close to the Earth. From our perspective, it's way the
Speaker 1: heck out there. But if you were to look at
Speaker 1: Earth from a much like not even a bird's eye view, obviously,
Speaker 1: but much further out, you would say, oh, lower th
Speaker 1: orbit is still very much in the neighborhood. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: space bird. Well, I guess one of the great ways
Speaker 1: to imagine this is if you look at a picture
Speaker 1: with the distance between Earth's Moon and Earth and then
Speaker 1: you see the line your Earth orbit is very very close. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And it's also where a lot of space debris happens
Speaker 1: to be. There's other space because we do have satellites
Speaker 1: that are much further out right, We've got like the
Speaker 1: the geosynchronous satellites are much further out than lower th orbit.
Speaker 1: But those were delivered by unmanned spacecraft. They weren't They
Speaker 1: weren't put there by astronauts. Uh, So that that is,
Speaker 1: you know, we do have stuff that's further out, but
Speaker 1: it's not stuff from manned missions. And this unmanned mission
Speaker 1: would end up going and that's say, very low Earth orbit. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it could stay. Originally, I think they were planning
Speaker 1: on having it stayed between two entered in three days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be pretty much the limit that was originally,
Speaker 1: or at least that was kind of what the mission
Speaker 1: parameters were going to be. But as it turns out,
Speaker 1: it can stay up there much longer than that. So
Speaker 1: the very first mission for an X thirty seven launched
Speaker 1: on April and landed on December three. Landed without a hitch.
Speaker 1: Some of their tests landings that they did where they
Speaker 1: just dropped one of these X thirty seven's from another aircraft,
Speaker 1: some of them were successful, not all of them were. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had some issues where I think on the very
Speaker 1: I think the very first time they tried to land
Speaker 1: one um when the mission hadn't been scrapped for weather.
Speaker 1: It ended up landing on the landing strip, but it
Speaker 1: overshot a little bit and rolled off the end and
Speaker 1: sustained minor damage. No. No, And then remember they built
Speaker 1: two of these things. Originally they were just going to
Speaker 1: do one, but they ended up building two. So that
Speaker 1: first mission lasted two hundred twenty four days, and the
Speaker 1: X thirty seven traveled approximately ninety one million miles in
Speaker 1: those two four days, which is about a hundred forty
Speaker 1: six million kilometers. The second mission was launched on March
Speaker 1: five eleven. Now this was the second of the two
Speaker 1: X thirty seven, so it wasn't the same one that
Speaker 1: went up in important to remember because remember the whole
Speaker 1: purpose of these was so you have reusable the idea
Speaker 1: being you could turn it around fairly quickly and launch
Speaker 1: it for a new mission. But they didn't reuse the
Speaker 1: original one, not for this one. They decided, all right,
Speaker 1: we're going to stagger these. So the second one went
Speaker 1: up in on March two thousand eleven. Uh, this was
Speaker 1: supposed to only last only is a weird way of
Speaker 1: putting it. Only last two hundred seventy days as an
Speaker 1: incredibly long time to just be you know, just being
Speaker 1: a space craft. Remember it's not the International Space Station
Speaker 1: or anything like that. But on November twenty nine, two
Speaker 1: tho eleven, the Air Force announced it was going to
Speaker 1: extend the mission, you know, just let go for a
Speaker 1: while off. So it eventually landed on June twelve, which
Speaker 1: means it lasted four hundred sixty nine days. That is
Speaker 1: mind blowing. Yeah, so the spacecraft was just orbiting Earth
Speaker 1: for four six days. Sometimes, by the way, it's low
Speaker 1: enough that you can spot it. Amateur satellite investigators or
Speaker 1: observers can check it out. You can go online, uh
Speaker 1: and find the find the correct forums, which allow you
Speaker 1: to track pretty much anything that is in orbit. If
Speaker 1: it's close enough to be seen, it's it's the Great
Speaker 1: Achilles heel of secrecy in space. Yeah. Yeah, if you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: that's stars moving, the chances are it's not a star,
Speaker 1: and it's not. It's not the Death Star. Probably probably,
Speaker 1: it's more likely a space station or a spacecraft. Um.
Speaker 1: So the third mission launched onto Samarrella at h and
Speaker 1: this one was the same spacecraft that did the launched
Speaker 1: So this was the first one, the first X thirty
Speaker 1: seven b Um. Now this particular one, uh, lasted for
Speaker 1: six hundred seventy four days. This is the one we
Speaker 1: talked about where it was just shy of two years. Um,
Speaker 1: pretty amazing that it could stay up that long. It
Speaker 1: landed on October seventeen, So this is the one I
Speaker 1: was referring to at the top of the show. And uh,
Speaker 1: the fourth mission is scheduled to launch on May six,
Speaker 1: but again we're in early April as we record this,
Speaker 1: so that's still in our future, right. But what happens
Speaker 1: on these missions, that's a great question. Then Remember how
Speaker 1: I said it was classified in top secret? Do you
Speaker 1: think I have that clearance? Where are we going? I
Speaker 1: thought this was I thought you were doing a bit.
Speaker 1: You're the guy who who knows the stuff. They don't
Speaker 1: want you to know if anything, I should be asking
Speaker 1: you this question. Well, uh yeah, well here's the thing,
Speaker 1: and and and thank you for the shout out. But
Speaker 1: rumors proliferate in the in the absence of Transparency's actually
Speaker 1: absolutely like if you you know, you obviously can't deny
Speaker 1: the existence of this thing, because we all know it exists,
Speaker 1: but if you cannot also explain the reason for it,
Speaker 1: or what its purposes or what it is doing, then
Speaker 1: in the absence that vacuum of information, nature of whorrors
Speaker 1: a vacuum. So we'll fill it with conjecture. Don't worry
Speaker 1: about not telling us what it does. We will take
Speaker 1: care of that for you by suggesting every kind of
Speaker 1: hypothesis you can imagine. Okay, But with all that being said,
Speaker 1: now we get to do one of the most enjoyable,
Speaker 1: fascinating and sometimes slippery slopish kind of things, which is
Speaker 1: we begin to assemble some of the facts we definitely
Speaker 1: know and see if that builds out toward a larger picture.
Speaker 1: Right all right, Yeah, So here's here's what we know.
Speaker 1: DARPA took control of it. It's part of the Department
Speaker 1: of Defense. The Air Force is running it, so it's
Speaker 1: a military operation. With it being a military operation, you
Speaker 1: can therefore assume that it's going to be doing some
Speaker 1: things that would in the long term support military operations. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not gonna be a cable television satellite
Speaker 1: deployment device. That's not gonna help you know, the air forces.
Speaker 1: Like we're strapped for cash. Let's see if Comcast wants
Speaker 1: us to put something up in the sky, that's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. So therefore we narrow that the down the
Speaker 1: possible uses for this to military things that would benefit
Speaker 1: the military in some form or fashion. Yeah, that makes sense,
Speaker 1: So that gives us some some direction. Uh So. One
Speaker 1: of the popular hypotheses is that the X three seven
Speaker 1: is acting like a spy settle light which maybe to
Speaker 1: spy upon land targets or even other spacecraft other targets
Speaker 1: in space, so it could be a satellite. Um. In fact,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people saying, hey, this you know,
Speaker 1: most recent test had the spacecraft, the X thirty seven,
Speaker 1: on the same general orbit as a Chinese satellite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Tongue Young one or some and yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: a that's a space lab has been up for a while.
Speaker 1: It has its own refueling, So of course people people
Speaker 1: would guess that this is a satellite either spine on
Speaker 1: other satellites or giving imagery from the ground mapping. In
Speaker 1: other words, in the orbitable path of the X thirty
Speaker 1: seven B takes it over on Southeast Asia, Latin America,
Speaker 1: parts the Middle East, notably I Rock. So it's not
Speaker 1: an unreasonable guess. Yeah, you can understand why people would
Speaker 1: would suggest this. And we don't know all the equipment
Speaker 1: that's aboard the X thirty seven years. I have noticed
Speaker 1: that we didn't give you a rundown on like it
Speaker 1: has this kind of camera system on it or because
Speaker 1: we don't know, but we'd love to do that. But
Speaker 1: the stuff we do know is sort of vague. We
Speaker 1: know it has the solar array, right, we know that.
Speaker 1: We know that's what allows it to stay up for
Speaker 1: so long. Uh, you know, I can't say that would
Speaker 1: be able to stay up indefinitely, but it certainly is
Speaker 1: staying up there an incredibly long amount of time for
Speaker 1: something designed to fly up and fly back down. You
Speaker 1: know it's not again, it's not space station. Um. So
Speaker 1: here's the thing about the idea of it spying on
Speaker 1: the space Lab. That's not really physically possible, right, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: because you can you can check out some of the
Speaker 1: words from the analysts. This idea of it following a
Speaker 1: satellite came about from that speculation. But there's a guy
Speaker 1: named Jim Oberg who is who is a space analyst,
Speaker 1: which is a great job to have. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: love to have that job. Looks pretty empty to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe that's a star. No, it's moving, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: We'd be very good at that. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: think we got a new podcast, so so um, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and and uh, we'll we'll finish quoting Jim
Speaker 1: and invite him to the show later on our on
Speaker 1: our space anitles stuff. Uh. He points out that these
Speaker 1: two objects, the Chinese Space Lab and the X thirty
Speaker 1: seven B, there in orbits that crossed the equator about
Speaker 1: ninety degrees apart. So when they do criss cross each
Speaker 1: other's paths, they're going thousands of meters per second. So
Speaker 1: how how can you make an observation You're you're going
Speaker 1: by so quickly that there's no there's no way to
Speaker 1: get any meaningful information. Um, it would be kind of like,
Speaker 1: let's let's imagine that Ben for a moment, that that
Speaker 1: you're writing with Scott. Okay, yeah, Scott, Scott from car stuff,
Speaker 1: because you guys do car stuff. To Scott, he's got
Speaker 1: a lead foot man. He likes he likes to drive fast.
Speaker 1: So let's say that he's driving by uh, you're you're
Speaker 1: in the passenger seat. He's he's flying down the road.
Speaker 1: He's in one of his his amazingly souped up muscle cars.
Speaker 1: By the way, tostally making this up. But let's let's
Speaker 1: say that he's or sports vehicle. Let's say it's either
Speaker 1: faster than a muscle car. It's a sports car that's
Speaker 1: designed to go fast. It's it's one of those that
Speaker 1: was converted from an old race car. And you zoom
Speaker 1: past a person that neither of you know, and he
Speaker 1: asks you what colored their eyes were. It's like that,
Speaker 1: except multiply it by way faster speeds. So it's just
Speaker 1: it's it's impossible to get any kind of meaningful information
Speaker 1: from that. So what's another hypothesis. How about it's not
Speaker 1: actually doing any spying of its own, it's just testing
Speaker 1: spy technology. Okay, like, what why would they be doing that. Well,
Speaker 1: let's say that again, kind of like that idea of
Speaker 1: these sensors that you might want in order to uh
Speaker 1: to monitor something like uh nuclear deployment in another country,
Speaker 1: or any other kind of sensor you can imagine that
Speaker 1: would be useful for military purposes. And they've built these
Speaker 1: on Earth. See here's the downfall that we have about
Speaker 1: our our technologies for space. We have to build them
Speaker 1: for the most part here on Earth. Sore. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: where we keep all our stuff, right, That's the way
Speaker 1: the tick would say, not the Earth. That's where I
Speaker 1: keep all my stuff. So because we have all that
Speaker 1: stuff here and we're developing everything here, we're building it here,
Speaker 1: we can never be fully certain that the thing we
Speaker 1: designed here on Earth is going to work the way
Speaker 1: we had intended once it's in space. So it may
Speaker 1: be that this is acting as a platform to test
Speaker 1: these technologies, see if they are in fact viable in
Speaker 1: a space environment, and return to Earth, so that we
Speaker 1: can be certain that the stuff we developed is in
Speaker 1: fact doing what it was intended to do, or at
Speaker 1: least figure out how it broke. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: it's not working, then we try and figure out why
Speaker 1: is it not working? What caused that? What was the
Speaker 1: thing was? Did it encounter a like some cosmic radiation
Speaker 1: and it ended up messing everything up? If so, is
Speaker 1: there some way we can shield it from that that
Speaker 1: kind of thing? I think actually that this is probably
Speaker 1: the the most likely out of all the different hypotheses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, because pretty much what the Air Force has said,
Speaker 1: and and it's it has precedent behind it because they've
Speaker 1: continually built these platforms, as you said earlier, So it
Speaker 1: makes sense. And you also want to check because especially
Speaker 1: if this is new, uh new technology of any sort,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a little bit delicate and you know,
Speaker 1: sensors are well sensitive. Yeah yeah, And and you could
Speaker 1: even argue that maybe it doesn't even go that far.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just the Air Force wanting to test this
Speaker 1: autonomous uh nature and to make sure that they can
Speaker 1: rely upon it even if the mission extends much further
Speaker 1: out than what was originally anticipated. That's valuable information to know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not doing anything remotely you know, secret right now,
Speaker 1: other than just making sure it works, which that's important
Speaker 1: to know, and we can't know without the tests. So
Speaker 1: then there's another hypothesis where um, the X thirty seven
Speaker 1: is a delivery mechanism for space weapons space weapon. How
Speaker 1: do we define space weapons? That's an excellent question. It's
Speaker 1: one that cannot be answered right now, because it's a
Speaker 1: question that comes up over and over in treaty discussions
Speaker 1: and uh arms control discussions. People disagree over and by
Speaker 1: people I mean states like country. These disagree over the
Speaker 1: definition of space weapons. So for example, perhaps you have
Speaker 1: a missile detection system, like a satellite system that's deployed.
Speaker 1: Some would argue that as a space weapon. Now it
Speaker 1: might be up space weapon in the form of defense,
Speaker 1: but they would still argue that counts under certain definitions.
Speaker 1: And other states, presumably the states that actually have missile
Speaker 1: detection systems in place, would say this totally doesn't count
Speaker 1: as a space weapon. And we'll talk more about why
Speaker 1: they would say that a little bit later. But the Pentagon,
Speaker 1: just for the record, denies that in fact, the X
Speaker 1: thirty seven has anything to do with space weapon deployment.
Speaker 1: Explicitly denies it. And also, you know this concern about
Speaker 1: space weapons and militarization. I know, we'll talk about it
Speaker 1: a little bit later, but there is also precedent in
Speaker 1: unclassified public record Pentagon statements, especially under Rumsfelds heading of
Speaker 1: the administration, Donald Rumsfeld, there is an active desire on
Speaker 1: the part of not just the US but other countries
Speaker 1: to to explore the possibilities of defensive capability in space.
Speaker 1: It just makes sense. It's not a secret. I mean,
Speaker 1: anyone who lived through the eighties remembers the star Wars program,
Speaker 1: the so called star Wars program, which was a proposed
Speaker 1: and ultimately abandoned plan to put an anti missile system
Speaker 1: into space to protect against the potential first strike situation
Speaker 1: or even you know, not even a first strike, but
Speaker 1: maybe even a counter strike if you're being super cynical
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, a system meant to to uh
Speaker 1: disarm or disable incoming missiles that could target the United States. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: it didn't go into place. Um and I want to
Speaker 1: say I've done an episode about that, but if I haven't,
Speaker 1: I absolutely need to. Yeah, I feel we talked about this,
Speaker 1: maybe we talked about off air, but that would be
Speaker 1: that would be a fantastic episode. Uh, It's it's such
Speaker 1: an it's such an interesting thing. We could also talk
Speaker 1: about dead hands systems, but that's a story for another day,
Speaker 1: A strange love stuff. Yeah, I'm almost certain that Chris
Speaker 1: and I did one episode on it at some point,
Speaker 1: but I'll have to do as search because once you
Speaker 1: do around seven hundred episodes, you really can't remember what kinds. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and for me, honestly, after I did about ten episodes,
Speaker 1: I was But so anyway, there are other hypotheses as
Speaker 1: well or other other um statements that have come out
Speaker 1: from various experts about the potential use of the X
Speaker 1: thirty seven. Uh. Laura Grego of the Global Security Program
Speaker 1: at the Union of Concerned Scientists says that the design
Speaker 1: of the X thirty seven really limits what it could
Speaker 1: be able to do, and she says that really can't
Speaker 1: maneuver easily in orbit, so it would be very limited
Speaker 1: in its use as either spy technology or a space weapon.
Speaker 1: Like we were saying earlier, you can sometimes see this
Speaker 1: thing from Earth, so maneuvering it is it's really hard
Speaker 1: to make that a secret, right, right. Let's say, like
Speaker 1: if if everyone notices that the X thirty seven happens
Speaker 1: to be in a particular quadrant that's near say a
Speaker 1: Russian spy satellite, and that spy satellite suddenly goes offline.
Speaker 1: It does not take a lot of imagination to connect
Speaker 1: those two things together. Yeah, so probably not going to
Speaker 1: be used for clandestine purposes in that case. Um. She
Speaker 1: also says it's not large enough to be a satellite launcher.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have the cargo capacity to hold most satellites.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're talking about like the small cluster
Speaker 1: satellites that some people have referred to. Maybe, but it's
Speaker 1: not designed to carry anything of substantial size, so that's
Speaker 1: probably not what it's being used. What it can do,
Speaker 1: she says, is carry cargo up into space and that's
Speaker 1: about it. Then you have another expert, Mark Gubrand or Gubrid,
Speaker 1: who is an adjunct assistant professor of physics and Astronomy
Speaker 1: at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, who says
Speaker 1: that space planes like the X thirty seven are not
Speaker 1: more effective than traditional launches of satellites or space weapons,
Speaker 1: even potential space weapons. So in other words, putting them
Speaker 1: into other types of spacecraft to go up into space
Speaker 1: that that aren't designed to come back down, so there's
Speaker 1: no real advantage, Like, yeah, you've got the reusable factor,
Speaker 1: which presumably would cut down on the cost somewhat of
Speaker 1: space launches, but that it's such a complicated endeavor and
Speaker 1: it's really designed to stay up there for a really
Speaker 1: long time, that it doesn't make sense to use it
Speaker 1: as a delivery mechanism. There's no reason why your delivery
Speaker 1: mechanism would need to remain up in low Earth orbit
Speaker 1: for hundreds of days. You just get out there, you
Speaker 1: deliver it, you're done. So his argument is that, well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really make sense. In fact, he would argue
Speaker 1: that the only reason at the program still exists because
Speaker 1: it has so much momentum, that there was so much
Speaker 1: money and effort put into developing it, that it would
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of taken a life of its own.
Speaker 1: It's a soak cost at this point. Yeah, saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't make sense compared to the alternatives. However,
Speaker 1: it's we already got the ball rolling and now it's
Speaker 1: going to continue to roll right wherever it ends up rolling.
Speaker 1: And then there's another interesting thing that you have proposed.
Speaker 1: You said, what what if it's what if there's a
Speaker 1: psychological aspect? Yeah, there there's some who have suggested that
Speaker 1: perhaps at least part of the reason why this project.
Speaker 1: Let's say that the project ultimately people say, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no practical reason to continue it because we
Speaker 1: can accomplish a lot of the same goals using alternative
Speaker 1: means that don't require this autonomous vehicle. UM. Some have said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's just a kind of freak out potential adversaries
Speaker 1: like the Chinese. I like, okay, first off, that sounds
Speaker 1: so ridiculous on the offset. It sounds like a billion
Speaker 1: dollar prank, you know, I agree, like, like, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm concerned about what's happening over in China,
Speaker 1: and obviously we can't declare war or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but how do we scare them? Now? You could say that, however,
Speaker 1: SPOT think was kind of that, you know, that's not
Speaker 1: a bad that's not a bad comparison, and we we
Speaker 1: do know that right now, there's there's this very um
Speaker 1: sensitive is a good word, A sensitive and ongoing uh
Speaker 1: elbow knocking between nations in space. UM. One thing that
Speaker 1: working on this episode made me think about was the
Speaker 1: incident in two thousand seven where the Chinese government shot
Speaker 1: a satellite down from space and it was it was
Speaker 1: pitched to the public as like whom it was bad
Speaker 1: and we wanted to make sure that nothing terrible happened
Speaker 1: to it, so we took care of it. But it
Speaker 1: was also there was a sigh logical aspect between the
Speaker 1: countries right too. Here's what we can do, ye look
Speaker 1: at our capability. We can bring down a satellite from
Speaker 1: the surface, like we can launch an attack from the
Speaker 1: surface of the Earth and bring down a satellite. Also,
Speaker 1: the rest of the world said, guys, don't don't clutter
Speaker 1: up space more than it already. You are literally making
Speaker 1: it more dangerous for everything else that's out in low
Speaker 1: earth orbit. I mean, maybe that's the reason there hasn't
Speaker 1: been any extraterrestrial contact. Maybe we're the equivalent of people
Speaker 1: who have refrigerators and stuff in their yard, or or
Speaker 1: or the equivalent of like, well, you know, I really
Speaker 1: want to check out that beautiful waterfall, but there's all
Speaker 1: this abandoned barbed wire and broken glass here. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of scared that if I try and walk through there,
Speaker 1: I'm going to cut myself up. Like that's that's because
Speaker 1: I mean, space debris a serious problem, not just for
Speaker 1: manned missions, but unmanned spacecraft as well. Like you know,
Speaker 1: we could have communications satellites that would get taken down
Speaker 1: if they encountered space debris. We're talking about things that
Speaker 1: could be really tiny, I mean just like a couple
Speaker 1: of centimeters per side, but traveling at those amazing speeds,
Speaker 1: they could do massive amounts of damage if they collide
Speaker 1: with something. Now, on the positive side, space is really big,
Speaker 1: right on the On the the less positive side, first
Speaker 1: of all, there all all of these things are largely
Speaker 1: in the same general orbit, you know, lower thorbit. Secondly,
Speaker 1: the more debris you have, the more the greater the
Speaker 1: odds increase of some sort of unintended collision. We've got
Speaker 1: a bit more about this secret space plane to talk about,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. So making more
Speaker 1: garbage up there is not great. And then there's also,
Speaker 1: um a quote that you found from the London Times. Ah, yes, uh,
Speaker 1: well back and unnamed Air force official yeah or woman
Speaker 1: or that person, yes, a recurring character. An unnamed Air
Speaker 1: Force official did note that the ultimate goal of the
Speaker 1: X thirty seven B is to aid terrestrial war fighters,
Speaker 1: which is still pretty vague. It's super vague, but it
Speaker 1: does confirm that there is a military aspect by the
Speaker 1: Air Force who knew. Yeah, right, I think again, you know,
Speaker 1: we see people chasing explanations or speculation about what this is.
Speaker 1: But there's clearly something about UM an informational edge that
Speaker 1: I think he's in there. And you know, to be
Speaker 1: fair that that phrasing, it could mean anything, right, it
Speaker 1: could anything. It could It could mean reconnaissance. It could
Speaker 1: mean support in the sense of uh sending up a
Speaker 1: new satellite, small satellite, I guess, or or some other
Speaker 1: kind of payload. Or it could mean some kind of weaponization.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so vaguely find that it could mean
Speaker 1: any of those things. So again, and more often than not,
Speaker 1: it fuels the speculation as opposed to oh now I
Speaker 1: understand exactly. Yeah, it's there's there's something a little platitude
Speaker 1: and this about it. But but this brings us to
Speaker 1: a bigger issue, which you and I have been fascinated by. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the concept of weaponization of space, like putting weapons into
Speaker 1: space for the purposes of warfare. So we're talking like
Speaker 1: everything from those missile defense systems to something that's more
Speaker 1: of an attack based form of warfare, something like a
Speaker 1: system that could either launch missiles or other types of
Speaker 1: weaponry from space or support some other coordinated warfare efforts. Uh.
Speaker 1: And obviously this is one of those things that is
Speaker 1: a very delicate subject, particularly when you look at the
Speaker 1: Earth and you say how many nations are actually space
Speaker 1: faring nations? Right, not as many as you think there there. Um,
Speaker 1: there are some big strides being made that will change
Speaker 1: the game, but right now the a lot of other
Speaker 1: nations are still catching up to what the US and
Speaker 1: Russia did in the eighties. Yeah, so you've got things
Speaker 1: like you've got coalitions like the European Space Agency, and
Speaker 1: you've got countries like India or China or Japan that
Speaker 1: all have to some extent worked on this sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: some of them using the resources of other nations in
Speaker 1: order to actually launch things. But it is one of
Speaker 1: those deals where you know you have the the potential
Speaker 1: to affect a huge number of people, some of whom
Speaker 1: are living in nations that have absolutely no capability of
Speaker 1: going into space at the moment. So it ends up
Speaker 1: raising some concerns, and in fact, the space race itself
Speaker 1: raised a lot of concerns. You get to a point
Speaker 1: where h the then Soviet Union can launch a satellite
Speaker 1: into space. In this case, Sputnik Spotney could not do much.
Speaker 1: It essentially beat Essentially, all it really did was send
Speaker 1: a message that said I'm still here until until it
Speaker 1: stopped UM. But that was enough to terrify people in
Speaker 1: the United States because the other implication was that if
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union could send a rocket all the way
Speaker 1: out into space, it could also send a rocket all
Speaker 1: the way over to the United States. So it raised
Speaker 1: a lot of of concerns, not just about intercontinental ballistic missiles,
Speaker 1: but also are we one day going to have war
Speaker 1: breakout where the weapons are in space? Because that is terrifying,
Speaker 1: just a nuclear weapon dropping from near Earth orbit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen sixty seven, several countries came together and
Speaker 1: there was an open signing in nineteen sixty seven that
Speaker 1: took place in UM the so Union and the United
Speaker 1: Kingdom and the United States for a treaty that is
Speaker 1: called here's the full name, the Treaty on Principles Governing
Speaker 1: the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of
Speaker 1: Outer Space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies. I
Speaker 1: guess they didn't have a lot of time to work
Speaker 1: on the title, were working on the actual agreement. It
Speaker 1: wasn't so zippy with the title. It is informally referred
Speaker 1: to as the Outer Space Treaty, which, oh, that makes
Speaker 1: a lot more sangiesier. So set up a lot of
Speaker 1: ground rules about about space because obviously at that point
Speaker 1: only really two nations were in the space game, but
Speaker 1: they were two nations that were philosophically opposed to one another.
Speaker 1: They were in the middle of a Cold war. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so you have all these other countries saying, you
Speaker 1: guys are getting like, first of all, you're really angry
Speaker 1: at each other. Secondly, you've both amassed a huge number
Speaker 1: of weapons. Third you've demonstrated that you are very much
Speaker 1: interested in going in the outer space, and we would
Speaker 1: like to have to have us all kind of calm down,
Speaker 1: set some ground rules and just chill out a little bit.
Speaker 1: But these are these are actually some fantastic rules, to
Speaker 1: the point where I wish more nations were on board
Speaker 1: with this plan. But what are all right? So, first,
Speaker 1: space exploration as discoveries belong to all humans, not just
Speaker 1: one nation, so you can't hoard all the info. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's saying, look, there's the potential for what we
Speaker 1: learn out in space to benefit all of humanity. We
Speaker 1: cannot silo that information so that one nation benefits at
Speaker 1: the expense of everybody else. So there was an agreement
Speaker 1: that anything we learned that can become a benefit needs
Speaker 1: to be shared with everyone. Anyone who with a technological
Speaker 1: capacity can explore space, so it can't be off limits
Speaker 1: to anyone. So in other words, if the United States
Speaker 1: has to developed this space faring technology and then some
Speaker 1: other country that the US is maybe not so friendly with, does,
Speaker 1: the US can't move to block them, right like Iran.
Speaker 1: You will hear stuff about the Iranian Space Agency, and
Speaker 1: you know, for some people it might seem strange that, uh,
Speaker 1: it might seem strange that there's such controversy over nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons but relatively little controversy over um any space exploration.
Speaker 1: Because this, yeah, exactly saying that, you know, philosophical disagreements
Speaker 1: or ideological disagreements or or political arguments aside. All nations,
Speaker 1: all states have a right to space exploration if they
Speaker 1: have the technological capacity to do so. Uh, you can't
Speaker 1: claim space property. Yeah, you can't. Can't go out there
Speaker 1: and say this part of space belongs to the US
Speaker 1: or to the Russia or to whatever. Uh, So you
Speaker 1: can't land on the Moon plan a flag and say
Speaker 1: that it belongs to you. Now, So, Eddie, Iszard's whole
Speaker 1: routine about how you can conquer just as long as
Speaker 1: you have a flag does not apply to outer space.
Speaker 1: He's going to be so upset nobody telling you guys,
Speaker 1: right well, this also means that the US can't lay
Speaker 1: claim to the Moon because we have an American flag
Speaker 1: up there. Um, obviously the American flag is really in
Speaker 1: this sound studio someplace, the whole hoax deal. And because
Speaker 1: somebody already sold off most of the property on the Moon.
Speaker 1: I have a couple of acres myself. Yeah, you love those.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure those businesses are all on the
Speaker 1: open up right. Yeah. Whenever you hear something like a
Speaker 1: a company offering up space real estate, this treaty says
Speaker 1: that's not legal, at least not for states to do. So.
Speaker 1: Governments can't do it. If you say, well, I'm a
Speaker 1: private individual, therefore I can claim it. I'm sure you're
Speaker 1: going to have that. That's gonna be very difficult to
Speaker 1: defend that. Not that not that there's any reason to
Speaker 1: defend it. Right now, it's totally not practical, but anyway. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: no one is allowed to create weapons of mass destruction
Speaker 1: and place them in space. This is a big one.
Speaker 1: And yeah, now it's talking about weapons of mass destruction,
Speaker 1: so it's a very specific definition of the type of weaponry. Right.
Speaker 1: We're talking about a weapon capable of killing or otherwise
Speaker 1: injuring a huge number of folks at one go. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a catastrophic effect every time the weapons used. So any
Speaker 1: weapon that does not fall under that category is not
Speaker 1: you know, it's not prohibited under these terms, and that
Speaker 1: has led to discussions of other treaties that would end
Speaker 1: up filling in some of those gaps. We will get
Speaker 1: to that in a second. Other rules include the fact
Speaker 1: that celestial bodies can only be used for peaceful purposes.
Speaker 1: That one's so interesting to me because you know what
Speaker 1: what that also encompasses, right. That means not weaponizing an asteroid,
Speaker 1: for instance, or altering the path of something else in
Speaker 1: space so that it collides with the planet. You can't
Speaker 1: use an asteroid as a projectile weapon and aim it
Speaker 1: on at like you know, Russia, um, which you wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to do anyway. I mean, like you don't want
Speaker 1: to cause a planet wide extinction level event, which is
Speaker 1: you know, like I mean, this is the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that that has killed off entire you know, populations,
Speaker 1: entire you know, species, collections of species, your past. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you cannot use celestial bodies for any you know, uh,
Speaker 1: for any non peaceful purpose. Governments are responsible for space activities,
Speaker 1: even if the activities themselves are carried out by private organizations,
Speaker 1: which is very forward thinking since only state run operations
Speaker 1: had existed at that point. So in other words, if
Speaker 1: space X does something really dumb mountain space, the United
Speaker 1: States government would be held accountable for that, because that's uh,
Speaker 1: the presumably if they launched from the United States. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is a US centered organization, So even though it's
Speaker 1: not run by the government, the US would still be
Speaker 1: held responsible because they would essentially be allowing for it
Speaker 1: to happen. Be aware of space billionaires, because there you
Speaker 1: could get a lot of trouble with your home country. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: your home country would get into a lot of trouble
Speaker 1: and stuff trickles down, right, So we should say host country.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean, that's true, that's true. That's probably
Speaker 1: the best way of putting it. Uh So if your stuff,
Speaker 1: meaning a state's property, falls out of the sky and
Speaker 1: damages someone, you are at faults. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: if the US puts up a satellite and the satellites
Speaker 1: orbit decays, and the decaying orbit means the satellite starts
Speaker 1: to fall into the Earth and does not burn up entirely,
Speaker 1: and it ends up colliding with like a public library
Speaker 1: over in Eastern Europe leaking dangerous chemicals, that US the
Speaker 1: US is at fault. There's because they were the ones
Speaker 1: who put it up there, and they did not find
Speaker 1: a way to um to bring it down safely. Usually
Speaker 1: things like that are done in a controlled way, where
Speaker 1: it's purposefully brought down so that anything that would make
Speaker 1: it through the atmosphere. The rare instance that that actually
Speaker 1: does happen with land in an ocean, for example. UM,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's always possible that you could have
Speaker 1: a situation where you know, the the spacecraft is not
Speaker 1: responding to your commands to have it, you know, de
Speaker 1: orbit in a in a controlled way. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of what this is covering. Also, states are not supposed
Speaker 1: to contaminate celestial bodies, no littering I'm talking to But look,
Speaker 1: take on any photographs, leave only footprints, right, and maybe
Speaker 1: a flag and maybe a couple of lunar landers. I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, the moon is pretty big. That's not really littering, right.
Speaker 1: Uh So, over time, obviously this has been kind of updated.
Speaker 1: But there have been other post treaties that would end
Speaker 1: up beefing up these rules and defining them further, but
Speaker 1: they have had limited success in adoption. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons for that. So a proposed treaty
Speaker 1: in fourteen would have placed more limitations on weapons and space,
Speaker 1: at least in theory. The draft treaty is formally called
Speaker 1: the Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons
Speaker 1: in Outer Space and of the Threat or Use of
Speaker 1: Force against Outer Space Objects. So it's supposed to limit
Speaker 1: states abilities to do things like launch missile attacks on
Speaker 1: satellites or or put weaponization into space, even if it's
Speaker 1: not mass destruction. And there were two countries that submitted
Speaker 1: this treaty to the United Nations, and it was Russia
Speaker 1: and China. Now, the United States opposed the treaty and
Speaker 1: said it would not sign such a treaty. And you
Speaker 1: might think well, why would the US say, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to sign an treaty that doesn't allow us
Speaker 1: to weaponize space. Does that mean the US is very
Speaker 1: much interested in sending up tons of weapons into space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that part is hard to answer, But I can
Speaker 1: tell you what the official answers have been, which is
Speaker 1: that China and this is there. I am paraphrasing, but
Speaker 1: this is their perspective, not necessarily my own. China and
Speaker 1: Russia don't play fair. That's that's what they're That's what
Speaker 1: essentially the message has been, is that that this treaty
Speaker 1: is something that if the United States signed it, because
Speaker 1: the US are the good guys. Remember this is a narrative.
Speaker 1: They're saying that the US are the good guys. The
Speaker 1: US would abide by this treaty, but Russia and China
Speaker 1: their tricks, ee, my precious, and they would totally ignore
Speaker 1: the treaty and say, look at the dumb Americans. They're
Speaker 1: totally abiding by these rules we've set, whereas we're actually
Speaker 1: going to send up as many weapons into space as
Speaker 1: we can, and we're going to end up getting dominance.
Speaker 1: It will be an arms race in space that we
Speaker 1: will have a leg up on because we're not paying
Speaker 1: attention to the treaty. It's difficult because there it goes
Speaker 1: back to this idea of verification, right, and that is
Speaker 1: such a tricky, nearly impossible thing when you're talking about
Speaker 1: state secrets like this. How do you how do you
Speaker 1: verify that no one is up to anything shady? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That was in fact that that was actually the way
Speaker 1: the us UH representatives worded it. They said, well, and
Speaker 1: other people have essentially said more or less what I said,
Speaker 1: just a nicer language, but the the specific line was
Speaker 1: that this treaty as it stands is impossible to verify,
Speaker 1: meaning that you cannot there's no there's no regulatory agency
Speaker 1: that could monitor states and make certain that no one
Speaker 1: was actually doing what the treaty said. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: they said that you can't enforce the treaty because you
Speaker 1: cannot be certain that people are abide by it, and
Speaker 1: so it ends up being a meaningless treaty. In the
Speaker 1: first place. It doesn't work because there's no means to
Speaker 1: monitor and therefore enforce it. So if there's no way
Speaker 1: to do that, then the treaty might as well not
Speaker 1: even exist, because what you are doing is creating a
Speaker 1: pressure on countries that want to follow it in good faith,
Speaker 1: while other countries may not share that and they'll just
Speaker 1: they'll violate it anyway, and there's no way to tell
Speaker 1: that they're violating it, because again there's no way to
Speaker 1: monitor it and verify it. So, um, I I totally
Speaker 1: get their point, Like, I don't disagree with that, And
Speaker 1: some might say, well, there's also ulterior motives that could
Speaker 1: be in play. Let's say that the United States wants
Speaker 1: to be able to have the option to send weapons,
Speaker 1: even if they're not weapons of mass destruction up into space.
Speaker 1: Send signing such a treaty would say that they would
Speaker 1: not do that, and maybe they want the option to
Speaker 1: remain open. It may be that they're even specific plans
Speaker 1: in place that we're not privy to and obviously would
Speaker 1: not be privy to. I'd like to think that that's
Speaker 1: not the case. But at the same time, I'd also
Speaker 1: like to think the government's not looking at all my emails,
Speaker 1: and that unfortunately has proven to be false. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always weird when an intern at the n s
Speaker 1: a response to when your emails, Yeah, yeah, like you
Speaker 1: send any Like I'm emailing you and the n s
Speaker 1: A interns, like, oh, Ben's that lunch right now, He's
Speaker 1: not going to respond until like four, Gary, I appreciate it,
Speaker 1: but school that stops kind of creepy, like say hi
Speaker 1: to your dad for me. Uh yeah, that that would
Speaker 1: be weird, but also just just annoying here. Also, we
Speaker 1: know that the ability to interfere with another state satellites,
Speaker 1: it could be so crucial and so pivotal that it's
Speaker 1: going to happen. Somebody's going to try to do that.
Speaker 1: As as you've said before, you said in our notes here,
Speaker 1: this space war stuff is not some distant sci fi thing.
Speaker 1: It's real, and it's kind of we're kind of in
Speaker 1: the middle of the story. Yeah, the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: China bringing down a satellite by firing a missile at
Speaker 1: it purely because that was the most effective means of
Speaker 1: taking down the satellite does not ring true, right. It
Speaker 1: definitely seems more like a demonstration of here's what we
Speaker 1: are capable of doing. So if we ever enter an
Speaker 1: actual like conflict, whether it's an official war or not,
Speaker 1: we have the capability of bringing down your satellites. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean we're talking about satellites that could
Speaker 1: provide communication, GPS data, all this kind of stuff. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: the further out the satellite is, the harder it is
Speaker 1: for you to create a system that's going to be
Speaker 1: capable of bringing it down. You're gonna be able to
Speaker 1: hit the ones that are more in lower thorbit than
Speaker 1: the ones that are further out. I mean, you're talking
Speaker 1: about a target that's further out is and it's moving
Speaker 1: at an incredible speed like that. I'm not saying it's impossible.
Speaker 1: It certainly isn't. It's just a lot harder, But at
Speaker 1: any rate, the capability has been demonstrated. And uh, that
Speaker 1: is a very vulnerable and valid target if you are
Speaker 1: if you're very serious about warfare, right, yeah, absolutely, And
Speaker 1: this this brings us all back around to the subject
Speaker 1: we looked at today, which is the X thirty seven.
Speaker 1: And I gotta tell you, man, I've been holding onto
Speaker 1: this reference to the whole show, so okay, I've just
Speaker 1: gotta let it go. There's something about an unmanned vehicle
Speaker 1: in the darkness of space, just sort of orbiting in
Speaker 1: the silence that is so very event horizon to me.
Speaker 1: What's gonna come back the next time at Lands John
Speaker 1: a little hitchhiker. Yeah, I found your thing. Man, I
Speaker 1: don't know what happened to the drive out. He was
Speaker 1: gone when I got on. I promise you thanks. I've
Speaker 1: been working on that character for a while. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because you know, this is not necessarily
Speaker 1: the end of the the space plane discussion. There's been
Speaker 1: some other talks about what the space plane my do,
Speaker 1: even in in light of the counter argument saying that
Speaker 1: perhaps it's not the most um efficient or useful means
Speaker 1: of getting things into space. The Air Force itself had
Speaker 1: announced back in twenty eleven that it would develop a
Speaker 1: new spacecraft based on the same design that would be
Speaker 1: even larger than the X three seven be Remember the
Speaker 1: thirty seven is larger than the X forty. This one
Speaker 1: would be bigger than the X thirty seven, and the
Speaker 1: numbers ranged between like a hundred sixty and so bigger
Speaker 1: by almost a factor of two when you get to
Speaker 1: the higher ends. And uh, this one would potentially have
Speaker 1: a pressurized compartment, which means that could carry stuff what lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and the it has been suggested, could carry a
Speaker 1: group of astronauts up to six into space. They don't
Speaker 1: have to pilot the thing because it could still have
Speaker 1: autonomous control, although they said it would also have manual control,
Speaker 1: so uh, astronauts could presumably I assume astronauts. Maybe they
Speaker 1: mean manual control from the ground, which is also a possibility,
Speaker 1: but that, um, the astronauts would not necessarily have to
Speaker 1: pilot this thing. It would be the X thirty seven C. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no idea if that project is still happening or not,
Speaker 1: like it was announced inn But again, when you're talking
Speaker 1: about secret space planes, right, you don't get a lot
Speaker 1: of updates until they launch one and then it lands
Speaker 1: and then people are like, oh, so I guess that's
Speaker 1: still a thing. So we don't know. I mean we
Speaker 1: I don't know. People know. It's not me, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not privy to such information. But it could
Speaker 1: be that we see a development and who knows, maybe
Speaker 1: there will be demonstrable uses for space plane technology that
Speaker 1: uh end up being uh, you know, the best option,
Speaker 1: and that the objection saying that, hey, you have other
Speaker 1: means of getting stuff into space that end up being
Speaker 1: less complicated than this methodology. Maybe that will end up
Speaker 1: being mood. It's kind of hard to say right now,
Speaker 1: because obviously if you were to an astronauts up you're
Speaker 1: probably not doing one of those crazy the body. It
Speaker 1: would be very very tough on the on the human body.
Speaker 1: And I can't imagine you could carry enough oxygen, water, food, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: all the stuff, all the stuff that's necessary to keep
Speaker 1: people alive. I don't think you could carry all of
Speaker 1: that aboard a space plane that's designed to be up
Speaker 1: there for six hundred days. That's just not going to happen.
Speaker 1: So even if you were to say, well, we want
Speaker 1: to find out what happens to best not when they're
Speaker 1: in a spacecraft for two years, and uh, whether or
Speaker 1: not they come back as the Fantastic Four. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's worth a shot. But but but one
Speaker 1: thing we have learned about space radiation is it does
Speaker 1: not work the way that Marvel Comics may have feeled
Speaker 1: you as a child. No, it can. It can really
Speaker 1: mess you up big time. And uh, you know, you're
Speaker 1: talking about particles that move with a ton of energy
Speaker 1: that have the capacity to do really like cellular level
Speaker 1: damage that can end up causing huge issues. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: irreparable damage. But let's let's go big, because despite these
Speaker 1: problems right despite the secrecy, and I know it's a
Speaker 1: wellyon and spooky and stuff. I'm so excited because this
Speaker 1: gets us one one tiny step closer to one of
Speaker 1: the one of the big dreams I've had, uh since
Speaker 1: we started working together, which is the podcast on the Moon.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they can just get us to the moon, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: we could do the rest might be uh might be
Speaker 1: a little quiet up there. I don't know how we're
Speaker 1: going to talk into the microphones. The way of the
Speaker 1: set up. We'll just go it's a sound studio. Come on,
Speaker 1: We'll just so just move the whole studio to the
Speaker 1: that makes more sense. I was just thinking of the
Speaker 1: table on the mics, also about how long the cords
Speaker 1: would have to be, and that anything we asked nol
Speaker 1: we'd have to wait. Yeah, there'll be there'll be a Yeah,
Speaker 1: there'd be a noticeable delay. Um. But I'm still in
Speaker 1: favor of it personally because I think I think that
Speaker 1: could really position us in a way that other podcasts
Speaker 1: just haven't thought right to take advantage of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of amazing to me that hasn't avenue. Honestly,
Speaker 1: don't ideas all right. So anyway, this has been a
Speaker 1: lot of fun to talk about the you know, even
Speaker 1: though obviously what we don't know as members of the
Speaker 1: general public far outweighs what we do know. But it's
Speaker 1: also fun just to kind of explore the psychology of
Speaker 1: not just like conspiracy theories in the sense of well,
Speaker 1: and since we don't have information, we have to fill
Speaker 1: that vacuum, but also just the idea of what what
Speaker 1: could be the motives for pursuing this. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: we're talking about something that costs a huge amount of money.
Speaker 1: Maybe ultimately it's just a test of autonomous technology and
Speaker 1: a new uh a new form like a new new
Speaker 1: a new environment, and that that ultimately could become really important,
Speaker 1: but in a totally different implementation. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: that classic episode of tech Stuff from twenty fifteen. I'll
Speaker 1: have to do an update on this one, obviously, but
Speaker 1: if you have suggestions for other topics that I should tackle,
Speaker 1: whether it's a company, technology, a trend in tech, anything
Speaker 1: like that, reach out to me on Twitter to handle
Speaker 1: for the show is tech Stuff h s W I
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Y. Text Stuff is
Speaker 1: an I Heart radio production For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.