1
00:00:00,200 --> 00:00:03,440
Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,800
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast Backwood

3
00:00:06,800 --> 00:00:10,119
Speaker 1: science journalist Robert Zimmerman. Robert, let's talk a little bit

4
00:00:10,160 --> 00:00:13,000
Speaker 1: more about COVID than move on to some space issues.

5
00:00:13,560 --> 00:00:19,160
Speaker 1: Of course, so your thoughts on COVID hysteria made up?

6
00:00:19,440 --> 00:00:22,840
Speaker 1: What's the intent is this? I have heard a lot

7
00:00:22,880 --> 00:00:25,360
Speaker 1: of stories about this. Well, I want to emphasize something

8
00:00:25,400 --> 00:00:27,600
Speaker 1: I was trying to save just when we cut. You

9
00:00:27,640 --> 00:00:29,840
Speaker 1: don't want to have lots and lots of people die

10
00:00:29,920 --> 00:00:32,559
Speaker 1: from this thing, so don't you past seriously, And the

11
00:00:32,600 --> 00:00:34,640
Speaker 1: one thing you do is you focus on where the

12
00:00:34,720 --> 00:00:38,080
Speaker 1: threat is worse. And that's what these people did not do.

13
00:00:38,159 --> 00:00:42,640
Speaker 1: They put Andrew Como mandated that sick people had to

14
00:00:42,680 --> 00:00:45,880
Speaker 1: be brought back to nursing homes where they were vulnerable people.

15
00:00:46,080 --> 00:00:48,520
Speaker 1: You do the opposite, You protect them so they don't

16
00:00:48,560 --> 00:00:50,839
Speaker 1: get hurt by it. And we didn't do that. So

17
00:00:50,920 --> 00:00:54,200
Speaker 1: what did we do? Instead? What these politicians have done

18
00:00:54,520 --> 00:00:58,160
Speaker 1: is take advantage of this panic which they helped instigate

19
00:00:58,440 --> 00:01:02,120
Speaker 1: to gain power, and they have now set the precedent

20
00:01:02,400 --> 00:01:06,240
Speaker 1: that they can We've been edict put everyone in the

21
00:01:06,280 --> 00:01:10,120
Speaker 1: United States unto house arrest governors mostly governors. They can

22
00:01:10,160 --> 00:01:12,640
Speaker 1: put everyone to house arrest. They can force you to

23
00:01:12,680 --> 00:01:15,120
Speaker 1: wear a mask, then I'll stand. It's for the masks.

24
00:01:15,240 --> 00:01:19,520
Speaker 1: I've researched. This is that probably unh the way most

25
00:01:19,560 --> 00:01:22,839
Speaker 1: people do, and this is despicable. It is a power grab.

26
00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:25,240
Speaker 1: That's the sum total of it. And you can tell

27
00:01:25,319 --> 00:01:27,160
Speaker 1: how much of its power much of a power grab

28
00:01:27,240 --> 00:01:31,319
Speaker 1: it is by the arbitrary nature of the closures in

29
00:01:31,440 --> 00:01:36,680
Speaker 1: New York States, religious organizations can't meet, Jews cannot worship

30
00:01:36,720 --> 00:01:39,959
Speaker 1: at their synagogues or teach their kids. But it's okay

31
00:01:40,280 --> 00:01:44,600
Speaker 1: for a Black Lives Matter protest of one hundred thousand

32
00:01:44,600 --> 00:01:48,080
Speaker 1: people to gather pact on a street. That just indicates

33
00:01:48,080 --> 00:01:50,000
Speaker 1: an arbitrary nature. It means it's a power game and

34
00:01:50,040 --> 00:01:52,880
Speaker 1: that's all it is, and that's where it's coming from.

35
00:01:52,920 --> 00:01:56,400
Speaker 1: And unfortunately Americans don't seem to care that their lift

36
00:01:56,440 --> 00:01:59,160
Speaker 1: freedoms are being destroyed right now, and they are being

37
00:01:59,240 --> 00:02:02,920
Speaker 1: destroyed this data because when you scare them, Robert, they

38
00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:06,040
Speaker 1: will follow you. Well. Remember the last line in the

39
00:02:06,080 --> 00:02:09,520
Speaker 1: Star Spangled ban Home of the Brave Land of the Free,

40
00:02:09,560 --> 00:02:12,760
Speaker 1: Will you cannot have freedom without courage if you are

41
00:02:12,880 --> 00:02:15,919
Speaker 1: not brave and you're willing to be scared and allow

42
00:02:16,120 --> 00:02:19,400
Speaker 1: fear to you know, we only seem to have to

43
00:02:19,480 --> 00:02:21,920
Speaker 1: Fear is fear itself. If you allow fear to dominate you,

44
00:02:22,080 --> 00:02:24,520
Speaker 1: then you cannot be a free person. And I am

45
00:02:24,560 --> 00:02:27,160
Speaker 1: not going to live in fear. I'm going to live

46
00:02:27,200 --> 00:02:30,799
Speaker 1: as a brave American free and I'm disgusted by the

47
00:02:30,880 --> 00:02:35,000
Speaker 1: fear that I see radying from everybody for something. Once again,

48
00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:39,000
Speaker 1: the stats, even in their worst scenario, makes it nothing

49
00:02:39,040 --> 00:02:42,880
Speaker 1: more than a slightly worse flu season. Well, the worst

50
00:02:42,880 --> 00:02:46,520
Speaker 1: flu season we've had maybe in fifty since the nineteen

51
00:02:46,600 --> 00:02:49,640
Speaker 1: sixty nine Hong Kong flu. I've heard some people say

52
00:02:49,680 --> 00:02:53,760
Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen will go away after November third, that's

53
00:02:53,840 --> 00:02:56,560
Speaker 1: the election. Like many other of these kinds of things. Yes,

54
00:02:56,600 --> 00:02:58,400
Speaker 1: a lot of this has to do with the hysteria

55
00:02:58,480 --> 00:03:00,880
Speaker 1: on the left about Trump. They don't like the fact

56
00:03:00,960 --> 00:03:02,960
Speaker 1: that the nine that he's in power, and they just

57
00:03:02,960 --> 00:03:05,680
Speaker 1: don't like it. And they've been going nuts for four

58
00:03:05,800 --> 00:03:08,359
Speaker 1: years about this, three years, and they keep piling on

59
00:03:08,400 --> 00:03:10,720
Speaker 1: with something new every time. And you know it's not

60
00:03:10,919 --> 00:03:14,080
Speaker 1: entirely partisan, because there are also Republicans playing this game

61
00:03:14,160 --> 00:03:18,359
Speaker 1: because they want the power. It's not totally anyway. Let's

62
00:03:18,400 --> 00:03:20,880
Speaker 1: let's talk about space, which is the positive thing that's

63
00:03:20,919 --> 00:03:24,120
Speaker 1: been going on in the last few months. Despite these areas.

64
00:03:24,639 --> 00:03:27,120
Speaker 1: What do you think of the privatization spell This is

65
00:03:27,160 --> 00:03:30,040
Speaker 1: something you might have been writing about for decades, and

66
00:03:30,160 --> 00:03:33,760
Speaker 1: they're basically I wrote a policy paper in twenty seventeen

67
00:03:33,840 --> 00:03:36,240
Speaker 1: called Capitals in Space, and it was a policy paper

68
00:03:36,280 --> 00:03:39,480
Speaker 1: for Washington think Tank that was basically distributed throughout the

69
00:03:39,560 --> 00:03:42,360
Speaker 1: DC area. And what has essentially been happening over the

70
00:03:42,480 --> 00:03:46,120
Speaker 1: last three years, especially within the Trump administration, is they

71
00:03:46,160 --> 00:03:49,440
Speaker 1: are embracing the basic ideas that I've suggested. And I'm

72
00:03:49,440 --> 00:03:51,120
Speaker 1: not the only one that's in suggesting it, so it's

73
00:03:51,160 --> 00:03:54,520
Speaker 1: not just me. But the basic idea is that NASA

74
00:03:54,680 --> 00:03:58,680
Speaker 1: doesn't build anything. NASA is a customer that has in need.

75
00:03:58,720 --> 00:04:00,480
Speaker 1: The United States is a need need to have a

76
00:04:00,520 --> 00:04:04,680
Speaker 1: presence in space. And so what the American dream and

77
00:04:04,760 --> 00:04:07,240
Speaker 1: the American way of doing things is if the government

78
00:04:07,320 --> 00:04:10,160
Speaker 1: is a customer, it is a servant to the people.

79
00:04:10,360 --> 00:04:13,040
Speaker 1: When it needs something done, it doesn't build it itself,

80
00:04:13,560 --> 00:04:17,160
Speaker 1: It hires Americans to do it for them. You hire

81
00:04:17,200 --> 00:04:20,280
Speaker 1: private companies which will then own what they build and

82
00:04:20,520 --> 00:04:22,400
Speaker 1: be able to sell it to others as a custom

83
00:04:22,440 --> 00:04:24,760
Speaker 1: as a product. And so the Trump administration has been

84
00:04:24,800 --> 00:04:27,960
Speaker 1: steadily transitioning to that model. It is a transition that

85
00:04:28,040 --> 00:04:31,640
Speaker 1: began with the Obama administrations. Is not partisan. Bomban administration

86
00:04:31,760 --> 00:04:35,520
Speaker 1: pushed hard for it's eight years to commercialize space, to

87
00:04:35,560 --> 00:04:38,600
Speaker 1: take it out of NASA's hands, the construction of spacecraft,

88
00:04:38,640 --> 00:04:41,479
Speaker 1: and that's why it was the Trump administration could accelerate

89
00:04:41,520 --> 00:04:43,960
Speaker 1: it so well. And that's why just a month, a

90
00:04:44,160 --> 00:04:48,480
Speaker 1: month or so ago, a private company launched a private

91
00:04:48,560 --> 00:04:53,480
Speaker 1: americanly built capsule on an American rocket from American soil

92
00:04:53,720 --> 00:04:56,240
Speaker 1: to put two an astronauts into space successfully and they're

93
00:04:56,240 --> 00:04:58,760
Speaker 1: still up there a month later. The capsule is doing great.

94
00:04:58,920 --> 00:05:01,680
Speaker 1: And they built that. So the Dragon capsule from SpaceX,

95
00:05:01,720 --> 00:05:04,080
Speaker 1: they built it for a tenith of what NASA has

96
00:05:04,160 --> 00:05:06,839
Speaker 1: cost over the years, and in no time at all

97
00:05:06,839 --> 00:05:09,320
Speaker 1: compared to what And they probably used some of the

98
00:05:09,560 --> 00:05:13,200
Speaker 1: X NASA employees to build up no, absolutely not very little,

99
00:05:13,320 --> 00:05:15,920
Speaker 1: very few people. Well where'd they get the brainpower? People

100
00:05:15,960 --> 00:05:18,640
Speaker 1: at SpaceX come out of NASA? And the reason is

101
00:05:18,640 --> 00:05:22,400
Speaker 1: because NASA teaches bad lessons. If you worked at NASA,

102
00:05:22,600 --> 00:05:24,719
Speaker 1: you don't think the way you need to think to

103
00:05:24,760 --> 00:05:28,320
Speaker 1: work for a private company. You work slow, you work careful,

104
00:05:28,560 --> 00:05:31,040
Speaker 1: you make a lot of models, you don't cut metal.

105
00:05:31,360 --> 00:05:34,760
Speaker 1: You're conservative in terms of how you design things the

106
00:05:34,800 --> 00:05:37,640
Speaker 1: way SpaceX works. And one of the astronauts on the mission,

107
00:05:37,680 --> 00:05:41,400
Speaker 1: I think it was Benicky, Bob Benicky said, the thing

108
00:05:41,400 --> 00:05:44,200
Speaker 1: that makes this struck him about SpaceX is its agility.

109
00:05:44,520 --> 00:05:48,920
Speaker 1: They change, they rethink, they don't get married to any idea,

110
00:05:49,120 --> 00:05:51,880
Speaker 1: and they can change it on a dime. They accept error,

111
00:05:52,040 --> 00:05:55,800
Speaker 1: they accept failure, They blow things up to learn how

112
00:05:55,839 --> 00:05:58,200
Speaker 1: to build it right. That's something NASA does not do.

113
00:05:58,320 --> 00:06:02,240
Speaker 1: And so very few engineers at SpaceX came out of

114
00:06:02,279 --> 00:06:05,280
Speaker 1: the NASA. Where'd they get the brain power so quickly? Well,

115
00:06:05,320 --> 00:06:07,599
Speaker 1: there are plenty of smart people in the United States.

116
00:06:07,600 --> 00:06:10,159
Speaker 1: Remember Elon Musk, who founded the company, came out of

117
00:06:10,160 --> 00:06:11,880
Speaker 1: pay pallets. How he made it, I mean he put

118
00:06:11,880 --> 00:06:15,320
Speaker 1: a rocket company together in how many years? Very few years? Yeah,

119
00:06:15,360 --> 00:06:17,080
Speaker 1: sor to this idea, and in in about oh four he

120
00:06:17,120 --> 00:06:20,440
Speaker 1: was launching his first Falcon nine rocket and capsule in

121
00:06:20,560 --> 00:06:23,880
Speaker 1: ten In only a decade, the Falcon nine rocket has

122
00:06:23,920 --> 00:06:28,560
Speaker 1: gone from nothing to now the most used operational American

123
00:06:28,680 --> 00:06:32,359
Speaker 1: rocket has bypassed the Atlas five is just the most launch.

124
00:06:32,560 --> 00:06:35,560
Speaker 1: And so what he did was he went and looked

125
00:06:35,560 --> 00:06:39,880
Speaker 1: for young, smart people who wanted to do this work.

126
00:06:40,200 --> 00:06:44,359
Speaker 1: But we're not bocked down with the old bad ideas. Remember,

127
00:06:44,440 --> 00:06:48,640
Speaker 1: for fifty years I was told by NASA engineers, NASA management,

128
00:06:49,080 --> 00:06:52,080
Speaker 1: big management at the big companies like Boating Locke, the

129
00:06:52,160 --> 00:06:56,320
Speaker 1: launch companies, it was impossible to reuse the first stage.

130
00:06:56,360 --> 00:06:59,280
Speaker 1: You couldn't land it vertically. It wasn't possible. If you did,

131
00:06:59,360 --> 00:07:01,240
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have an fuel to get your capsule into

132
00:07:01,400 --> 00:07:04,159
Speaker 1: your payload into orbit. And even if it could, when

133
00:07:04,160 --> 00:07:06,200
Speaker 1: it landed, it would not be usable to use again.

134
00:07:06,240 --> 00:07:09,000
Speaker 1: They said it was impossible. They didn't even try. Well,

135
00:07:09,040 --> 00:07:12,440
Speaker 1: they're lying, or they would just simply not capable of

136
00:07:12,560 --> 00:07:16,040
Speaker 1: thinking outside the box to innovative. And so this is

137
00:07:16,040 --> 00:07:18,440
Speaker 1: why SpaceX has succeeded. He went with young people and

138
00:07:18,800 --> 00:07:22,080
Speaker 1: open minded and innovative, and that's why they're sucessful. BANICKI

139
00:07:22,200 --> 00:07:24,360
Speaker 1: was one of those who did the spacewalk today. Yes,

140
00:07:24,400 --> 00:07:28,360
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. I mean they are they are changing

141
00:07:28,360 --> 00:07:33,280
Speaker 1: batteries on iss Andy. This emission was originally supposed to

142
00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:35,520
Speaker 1: be a week long. Initially, it was only supposed to

143
00:07:35,560 --> 00:07:37,560
Speaker 1: be a demo. They go up, they show it can work,

144
00:07:37,800 --> 00:07:39,760
Speaker 1: they stay for a week, and the astronauts come down.

145
00:07:39,800 --> 00:07:43,760
Speaker 1: But over in the last six months, NASA decided, you

146
00:07:43,760 --> 00:07:45,320
Speaker 1: know what, maybe we can make it a little longer.

147
00:07:45,480 --> 00:07:46,880
Speaker 1: And when they launched, they said it was going to

148
00:07:46,920 --> 00:07:49,800
Speaker 1: be anywhere from one to three months, and now it's

149
00:07:49,800 --> 00:07:52,960
Speaker 1: going to be an almost three month long mission. Basically,

150
00:07:53,040 --> 00:07:56,080
Speaker 1: it's not a demo, it's basically an operational mission because

151
00:07:56,120 --> 00:07:59,400
Speaker 1: they realized, you know what, private enterprise does it better

152
00:07:59,440 --> 00:08:05,640
Speaker 1: than the then big space governmentally funded operations. The SpaceX

153
00:08:05,680 --> 00:08:08,240
Speaker 1: has high standards. It wants to meet those standards, and

154
00:08:08,320 --> 00:08:11,240
Speaker 1: it does it repeatedly because what's doing is trying to

155
00:08:11,240 --> 00:08:13,680
Speaker 1: win customers. The only way you win customers is you

156
00:08:13,720 --> 00:08:17,040
Speaker 1: produce a good product that's reliable and that's inexpensive, and

157
00:08:17,440 --> 00:08:20,160
Speaker 1: that's exactly what they've done. They have reduced the cost

158
00:08:20,240 --> 00:08:23,200
Speaker 1: to launch from what was routinely one to two hundred

159
00:08:23,200 --> 00:08:26,640
Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars per launch to now less than

160
00:08:26,680 --> 00:08:30,280
Speaker 1: fifty million. They probably actually are much cheaper than that,

161
00:08:30,400 --> 00:08:32,559
Speaker 1: but they don't have to be cheaper because nobody else

162
00:08:32,559 --> 00:08:35,200
Speaker 1: can even meet the match at that price. How far

163
00:08:35,280 --> 00:08:40,080
Speaker 1: advanced is SpaceX from Jeff Bezos company? For so far

164
00:08:40,120 --> 00:08:42,840
Speaker 1: as dance, Bezos has been very disappointing me for the

165
00:08:42,880 --> 00:08:45,640
Speaker 1: last two years. They he's proposed to do some of

166
00:08:45,640 --> 00:08:48,360
Speaker 1: the same things, but he decided to weigh his company

167
00:08:48,400 --> 00:08:51,440
Speaker 1: to the government in the military, and so he's building

168
00:08:51,440 --> 00:08:55,320
Speaker 1: his rocket to their specifications, which immediately slowed down production

169
00:08:55,400 --> 00:08:58,760
Speaker 1: by a year, and he has not produced. You know,

170
00:08:58,960 --> 00:09:02,400
Speaker 1: he was flying the new Shepherd suborbital craft for the

171
00:09:02,440 --> 00:09:05,320
Speaker 1: first time three years ago and they said they were

172
00:09:05,320 --> 00:09:08,400
Speaker 1: going to be starting to launch people on it within months,

173
00:09:08,520 --> 00:09:11,200
Speaker 1: and that's three years ago and they haven't done it yet,

174
00:09:11,640 --> 00:09:14,720
Speaker 1: And so I've been very disappointed the Jeff Bezos SpaceX

175
00:09:14,800 --> 00:09:17,439
Speaker 1: is doing something right now that he's been more revolutionary,

176
00:09:17,480 --> 00:09:18,880
Speaker 1: I'm sure. I don't know if you've talked about it

177
00:09:18,920 --> 00:09:21,600
Speaker 1: on your show, but they have something called Starship and

178
00:09:21,800 --> 00:09:24,840
Speaker 1: starship is the second stage but can also be used

179
00:09:24,840 --> 00:09:27,640
Speaker 1: from the ground, and super heaving will be the first stage.

180
00:09:27,760 --> 00:09:30,040
Speaker 1: And basically what it is going to be is an

181
00:09:30,280 --> 00:09:34,360
Speaker 1: entirely reusable rocket. But not only that, it's going to

182
00:09:34,400 --> 00:09:39,400
Speaker 1: have the capabilities of superior to a Saturn five rocket.

183
00:09:39,880 --> 00:09:41,560
Speaker 1: So not only will they be able to put up

184
00:09:41,559 --> 00:09:44,640
Speaker 1: payloads comparable to the Saturn five, but the rocket will

185
00:09:44,679 --> 00:09:48,320
Speaker 1: come back down and be completely reusable. And they've been

186
00:09:48,360 --> 00:09:52,920
Speaker 1: doing tests of Starship in Bokacheeka, Texas near Brownsville, the

187
00:09:52,920 --> 00:09:55,720
Speaker 1: tip of Texas for the last six for the last year,

188
00:09:56,160 --> 00:09:59,600
Speaker 1: and in that time they built seven prototypes. They've blown

189
00:09:59,720 --> 00:10:02,680
Speaker 1: up four of them. They did one of their early

190
00:10:02,800 --> 00:10:05,280
Speaker 1: prototypes saw hop that they actually did a five hundred

191
00:10:06,120 --> 00:10:10,640
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred foot vertical up and down. But they're blowing

192
00:10:10,800 --> 00:10:14,280
Speaker 1: up their prototypes because they're trying to test the failure

193
00:10:14,320 --> 00:10:17,000
Speaker 1: to figure out how to build it Betta. And they've

194
00:10:17,000 --> 00:10:21,120
Speaker 1: got the fifth prototype right now on a test stand.

195
00:10:21,240 --> 00:10:23,840
Speaker 1: They're doing more engine tests with it. If everything goes well,

196
00:10:23,880 --> 00:10:26,400
Speaker 1: and I expect this time it will because the tests

197
00:10:26,400 --> 00:10:28,640
Speaker 1: are so far worked out. Right, they're going to do

198
00:10:28,800 --> 00:10:31,280
Speaker 1: a five hundred meter which is about eighteen hundred foot

199
00:10:31,360 --> 00:10:34,240
Speaker 1: hop with that, and if that works, they're gonna then

200
00:10:34,320 --> 00:10:37,719
Speaker 1: moved to a twelve mile hop and if that works,

201
00:10:37,760 --> 00:10:40,560
Speaker 1: they hope within a year to be orbital. Now that

202
00:10:40,600 --> 00:10:42,480
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that will be orbital in any year. These

203
00:10:42,480 --> 00:10:45,160
Speaker 1: are tests. This is a development process. It might take longer,

204
00:10:45,360 --> 00:10:47,440
Speaker 1: but considering the fact that they've only been started a

205
00:10:47,520 --> 00:10:50,640
Speaker 1: year ago and actually cutting metal, they are going to

206
00:10:50,679 --> 00:10:54,040
Speaker 1: be They will be flying this thing probably within four

207
00:10:54,160 --> 00:10:56,679
Speaker 1: or five years, and that, you know, compare that to

208
00:10:56,840 --> 00:11:00,680
Speaker 1: NASA's Space Launch System, which they started in four and

209
00:11:00,760 --> 00:11:03,480
Speaker 1: it will not have its first manned mission until twenty

210
00:11:03,840 --> 00:11:06,679
Speaker 1: twenty four. That means twenty is to do a single mission,

211
00:11:06,800 --> 00:11:10,160
Speaker 1: and it'll cost them almost sixty billion dollars. It's going

212
00:11:10,200 --> 00:11:13,080
Speaker 1: to cost SpaceX about two billion dollars to develop Starship.

213
00:11:13,240 --> 00:11:15,920
Speaker 1: Several months ago, I got a call during open lines Robert.

214
00:11:16,240 --> 00:11:20,120
Speaker 1: Someone said, I saw a whole string of UFOs in

215
00:11:20,160 --> 00:11:22,800
Speaker 1: the sky, and I'm going, what the heck was that? Well,

216
00:11:22,840 --> 00:11:26,840
Speaker 1: I found out it's Elon Musk's link of all those satellites.

217
00:11:26,840 --> 00:11:30,360
Speaker 1: He sends up. He's launching something called Stalllink, and it's

218
00:11:30,400 --> 00:11:33,520
Speaker 1: going to be a constellation of satellites that could be

219
00:11:33,559 --> 00:11:37,120
Speaker 1: in the over like eight thousand satellites, but they hope

220
00:11:37,160 --> 00:11:40,000
Speaker 1: to have enough launched, something like a thousand by the

221
00:11:40,120 --> 00:11:42,840
Speaker 1: end of this year, and it will be offering worldwide

222
00:11:42,880 --> 00:11:46,200
Speaker 1: Internet capabilities to the world, and they are using the

223
00:11:46,280 --> 00:11:50,040
Speaker 1: Falcon nine rocket and it's reused first stages to launch it,

224
00:11:50,200 --> 00:11:53,520
Speaker 1: which means it costs them practically nothing to get these

225
00:11:53,600 --> 00:11:57,959
Speaker 1: rockets up, these these satellites up. And so he is

226
00:11:58,000 --> 00:12:01,160
Speaker 1: going to be in a position to offer everybody internet service,

227
00:12:01,400 --> 00:12:04,959
Speaker 1: probably at a cheaper rate than your Comcast or your

228
00:12:05,080 --> 00:12:08,959
Speaker 1: Verizon Central Link is offering. And it will be something

229
00:12:10,280 --> 00:12:13,280
Speaker 1: that will work anywhere you go. And so that's not again,

230
00:12:13,280 --> 00:12:15,960
Speaker 1: he's just doing smart business. He's offering a product that

231
00:12:16,000 --> 00:12:19,840
Speaker 1: will be superior to others for less cost, and you know,

232
00:12:19,920 --> 00:12:22,040
Speaker 1: it's all smart business. And he hopes to use the

233
00:12:22,040 --> 00:12:26,240
Speaker 1: profits from Stallink to help fund a starship, which he

234
00:12:26,679 --> 00:12:29,360
Speaker 1: is offering to NASA as a product to get people

235
00:12:29,360 --> 00:12:32,319
Speaker 1: to the Moon. He's also using it to maybe get

236
00:12:32,400 --> 00:12:35,120
Speaker 1: himself to Mars to build his own mass colony. How

237
00:12:35,120 --> 00:12:38,560
Speaker 1: far advanced is he from most countries who are trying

238
00:12:38,559 --> 00:12:42,840
Speaker 1: to develop a space program right now? There is nobody,

239
00:12:42,920 --> 00:12:47,439
Speaker 1: no company, no private company, no nation that he's even

240
00:12:47,559 --> 00:12:50,440
Speaker 1: close to what SpaceX is doing. I would say the

241
00:12:50,559 --> 00:12:54,200
Speaker 1: closest country to what SpaceX is doing right now would

242
00:12:54,240 --> 00:12:59,000
Speaker 1: be China, because China, first of all, China steals the

243
00:12:59,120 --> 00:13:02,560
Speaker 1: ideas from us and then upgrades them right, and they've

244
00:13:02,559 --> 00:13:05,840
Speaker 1: been very aggressive about doing that, stealing it, but then

245
00:13:05,880 --> 00:13:09,360
Speaker 1: they do upgrade it. And so when they saw first

246
00:13:09,360 --> 00:13:12,480
Speaker 1: stages being landed the reverse engineering, don't think you're the

247
00:13:12,520 --> 00:13:14,560
Speaker 1: grid fins, And they've been trying to control landings and

248
00:13:14,600 --> 00:13:16,640
Speaker 1: they kind of think about trying to get first stages

249
00:13:16,679 --> 00:13:18,480
Speaker 1: to land vertically. And I'm sure some of it's been

250
00:13:18,520 --> 00:13:21,120
Speaker 1: stolen in SpaceX So China is the closest in terms

251
00:13:21,160 --> 00:13:24,000
Speaker 1: of the United States private companies. There's all the private

252
00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:26,640
Speaker 1: companies are not being that very competitive. They're not innovative enough.

253
00:13:26,679 --> 00:13:30,120
Speaker 1: They've been slow. What's been competitive has been the newer

254
00:13:30,120 --> 00:13:32,880
Speaker 1: companies that are coming along, something like rocket Lab, which

255
00:13:32,960 --> 00:13:35,600
Speaker 1: is which is a smaller company, smaller rockets, but they're

256
00:13:35,640 --> 00:13:37,920
Speaker 1: already gonna they're very close to already being able to

257
00:13:37,920 --> 00:13:41,400
Speaker 1: reuse their first stages very quickly. They adapted and thinking

258
00:13:41,440 --> 00:13:43,960
Speaker 1: about how to do it. And I had heard that

259
00:13:44,080 --> 00:13:48,839
Speaker 1: Tesla Motors, which Elon Musk owns a lot of has

260
00:13:48,840 --> 00:13:53,719
Speaker 1: surpassed Toyota in terms of size. Can you believe that? Yeah,

261
00:13:52,960 --> 00:13:57,520
Speaker 1: I'm not as enthusiastic about Tesla as I am about SpaceX.

262
00:13:57,559 --> 00:14:00,439
Speaker 1: There are certain issues there that are complicated. He seems

263
00:14:00,480 --> 00:14:04,600
Speaker 1: to succeed at everything he touched. There was a great

264
00:14:04,679 --> 00:14:07,440
Speaker 1: video I put on my website Behind the Black, which

265
00:14:07,480 --> 00:14:09,680
Speaker 1: by the way, is salibrating its tenth anniverse. Oh happy

266
00:14:09,679 --> 00:14:12,520
Speaker 1: anniversary run. That's right. I'm having a fundraiser in fact

267
00:14:12,600 --> 00:14:15,680
Speaker 1: this month to from asking donations to keep me going.

268
00:14:16,200 --> 00:14:17,880
Speaker 1: But it is the tenth Anniverse. I've been doing this

269
00:14:17,920 --> 00:14:20,320
Speaker 1: to ten years. How to believe I've had almost a

270
00:14:20,440 --> 00:14:23,880
Speaker 1: thousand essays twenty two thousand posts. But anyway, I posted

271
00:14:23,880 --> 00:14:26,920
Speaker 1: this video where he was almost was interviewed, and what

272
00:14:26,960 --> 00:14:30,280
Speaker 1: he said was that this is a quote you if

273
00:14:30,280 --> 00:14:33,160
Speaker 1: someone came to tell you that what you've designed is

274
00:14:33,160 --> 00:14:36,040
Speaker 1: a bad design and I have a better idea, you

275
00:14:36,120 --> 00:14:40,000
Speaker 1: would be insane not to listen, exactly. And that's what

276
00:14:40,160 --> 00:14:43,440
Speaker 1: makes him good. He's a good manager. Will listen, that's right.

277
00:14:43,480 --> 00:14:46,320
Speaker 1: He will listen, and he will and he changes his designs.

278
00:14:46,320 --> 00:14:48,480
Speaker 1: Get One of the reasons of doing these tests with

279
00:14:48,600 --> 00:14:50,800
Speaker 1: Starship is because they want to find out what works

280
00:14:50,920 --> 00:14:54,280
Speaker 1: and the change his design as they go aggressively so

281
00:14:54,320 --> 00:14:56,560
Speaker 1: they can get to be the best they can possibly be.

282
00:14:56,760 --> 00:15:00,240
Speaker 1: And that's what he succeeds. Good point. Since you been

283
00:15:00,240 --> 00:15:02,120
Speaker 1: doing this, and like you say, you've been doing at

284
00:15:02,200 --> 00:15:06,400
Speaker 1: least ten years. Oh well, I've been a writer most

285
00:15:06,480 --> 00:15:09,400
Speaker 1: thirty years of spaces story. You know, I've got lots

286
00:15:09,440 --> 00:15:12,200
Speaker 1: of books that are available on the history of space,

287
00:15:12,280 --> 00:15:15,040
Speaker 1: and I have written the book on the Apollo eight mission,

288
00:15:15,080 --> 00:15:17,240
Speaker 1: I've written the book on the history of the Hubble

289
00:15:17,280 --> 00:15:22,280
Speaker 1: space telescope, and I've written the book on the history

290
00:15:22,400 --> 00:15:26,480
Speaker 1: of space manned space post Apollo, and those are all

291
00:15:26,520 --> 00:15:28,520
Speaker 1: on my website. And but you know, ten years ago

292
00:15:28,520 --> 00:15:30,960
Speaker 1: it sent I need a website where no one could

293
00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:34,800
Speaker 1: stop me. I could write whatever I wanted at freely,

294
00:15:35,280 --> 00:15:38,840
Speaker 1: because I've been very frustrated over many years how editorial

295
00:15:38,880 --> 00:15:43,840
Speaker 1: departments in magazines and among publishers repeatedly tried to make

296
00:15:43,960 --> 00:15:47,280
Speaker 1: their opinions my opinions and they would not allow me

297
00:15:47,320 --> 00:15:49,640
Speaker 1: to speak my mind. And so I made my web page,

298
00:15:49,640 --> 00:15:51,560
Speaker 1: and so Behind the Black's been here for ten years,

299
00:15:51,640 --> 00:15:54,080
Speaker 1: and I get to say what I want. If I

300
00:15:54,120 --> 00:15:57,240
Speaker 1: want to write an essay today, I write it and

301
00:15:57,520 --> 00:16:01,440
Speaker 1: it's published today. I have to go through an editorial process.

302
00:16:01,440 --> 00:16:02,880
Speaker 1: It would be nice to have copy editors, but I

303
00:16:02,920 --> 00:16:04,960
Speaker 1: don't have the money yet to afford that, because I

304
00:16:05,040 --> 00:16:07,920
Speaker 1: make typos all the time, and my readers, of my

305
00:16:08,000 --> 00:16:10,480
Speaker 1: copy editors, they tell me about typos and I fix them.

306
00:16:10,680 --> 00:16:13,080
Speaker 1: But I get to write what I want, and so

307
00:16:13,120 --> 00:16:15,320
Speaker 1: for that reason, for the last decade, I've been doing this,

308
00:16:15,360 --> 00:16:19,080
Speaker 1: and the website's growing exponentially, it really is, and the

309
00:16:19,160 --> 00:16:22,160
Speaker 1: donations come in. Surprising how many people don't have to

310
00:16:22,200 --> 00:16:24,800
Speaker 1: give me any money, but they want to because they

311
00:16:24,960 --> 00:16:27,640
Speaker 1: want to support what I'm doing. It's amazing that we

312
00:16:27,680 --> 00:16:31,960
Speaker 1: are approaching this month fifty one years since we first

313
00:16:32,040 --> 00:16:35,040
Speaker 1: landed on the Moon with a man. Yeah, fifty one

314
00:16:35,160 --> 00:16:38,400
Speaker 1: year years. It's half a century, half a century, and

315
00:16:38,440 --> 00:16:40,480
Speaker 1: the fact it's a disgrace that it's half a century

316
00:16:40,640 --> 00:16:43,280
Speaker 1: and we have not been back. And even more, why

317
00:16:43,280 --> 00:16:46,760
Speaker 1: didn't we stop? Well, we stopped because we decided. And

318
00:16:46,800 --> 00:16:48,760
Speaker 1: this is what I talked about at length in my

319
00:16:48,880 --> 00:16:50,800
Speaker 1: book on the Apollo eight mission, that orbit as the

320
00:16:50,840 --> 00:16:54,040
Speaker 1: Moon and Christmas Eve Genesis story of Apollo eight. We

321
00:16:54,160 --> 00:16:56,760
Speaker 1: took the wrong lessons from the space race. We went

322
00:16:56,800 --> 00:16:59,680
Speaker 1: into the space race, as Kennedy said, to prove that

323
00:16:59,760 --> 00:17:02,800
Speaker 1: a three people could do it better. But we copied

324
00:17:02,840 --> 00:17:06,240
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union by creating a program run by the

325
00:17:06,320 --> 00:17:09,520
Speaker 1: government fromont and then stop. We've been copying that model

326
00:17:09,560 --> 00:17:11,800
Speaker 1: for the last forty years, and it's only in the

327
00:17:11,880 --> 00:17:14,439
Speaker 1: last decade that we're starting to abandon that model and

328
00:17:14,520 --> 00:17:19,640
Speaker 1: allow instead of a space program, a chaotic space industry

329
00:17:19,760 --> 00:17:23,640
Speaker 1: of many different companies and people following their individual dreams

330
00:17:23,840 --> 00:17:27,399
Speaker 1: with no government decision on how it should be operated.

331
00:17:27,760 --> 00:17:31,520
Speaker 1: By having a government command control on top, nothing gets done.

332
00:17:31,840 --> 00:17:35,080
Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at

333
00:17:35,160 --> 00:17:38,080
Speaker 1: one am Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am

334
00:17:38,160 --> 00:17:39,160
Speaker 1: dot com for more