1
00:00:04,240 --> 00:00:06,640
Speaker 1: Often in sci fi people will be like, well, water

2
00:00:06,720 --> 00:00:08,959
Speaker 1: is going to be really valuable, and it's worth remarking

3
00:00:08,960 --> 00:00:10,480
Speaker 1: if you're in a place where you have to pay

4
00:00:10,560 --> 00:00:13,000
Speaker 1: huge amounts of money for clean drinking water, that's not

5
00:00:13,039 --> 00:00:16,160
Speaker 1: a good situation. You'd rather not do that. You're absolutely right.

6
00:00:16,200 --> 00:00:19,160
Speaker 1: If the economy already exists, than fine. Or as you say,

7
00:00:19,200 --> 00:00:21,600
Speaker 1: with California, I get frustrated, not with you.

8
00:00:24,040 --> 00:00:28,080
Speaker 2: But with the entire state as an idea, as an ethos. Oh,

9
00:00:28,120 --> 00:00:30,640
Speaker 2: this is two Virginias against one Californian. It's not fair.

10
00:00:30,720 --> 00:00:31,400
Speaker 2: It's not fair.

11
00:00:45,280 --> 00:00:45,440
Speaker 1: Hi.

12
00:00:45,560 --> 00:00:48,040
Speaker 2: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm pleased to

13
00:00:48,080 --> 00:00:50,840
Speaker 2: say that particle physics is still cheaper than going to space.

14
00:00:51,360 --> 00:00:54,640
Speaker 3: Hello, I'm Kelly wider Smith. I study parasites and space,

15
00:00:54,680 --> 00:00:56,800
Speaker 3: and there are parasites. You just got to pick up

16
00:00:56,800 --> 00:00:58,640
Speaker 3: some roadkill and you could see some parasites. It is

17
00:00:58,680 --> 00:01:00,560
Speaker 3: super cheap investment.

18
00:01:02,560 --> 00:01:05,959
Speaker 2: What about the space based parasite research industry shouldn't be

19
00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:08,679
Speaker 2: good at space to explore tapeworms in space?

20
00:01:08,840 --> 00:01:10,920
Speaker 3: I think that's a bad faith argument, Daniel.

21
00:01:10,880 --> 00:01:12,639
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I don't think there's.

22
00:01:12,520 --> 00:01:14,080
Speaker 3: A lot of money to be made from parasites in

23
00:01:14,120 --> 00:01:14,880
Speaker 3: space right now?

24
00:01:15,160 --> 00:01:16,920
Speaker 2: All right, so you're turning down that grant.

25
00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:19,160
Speaker 3: Then for now? Yeah, if you want to pay me

26
00:01:19,240 --> 00:01:22,040
Speaker 3: to think about what parasites women accidentally bring with us

27
00:01:22,080 --> 00:01:25,039
Speaker 3: to space, I'm taking money from just about anyone.

28
00:01:25,280 --> 00:01:28,039
Speaker 2: All right there, it is okay, send your money to Kelly.

29
00:01:28,080 --> 00:01:29,800
Speaker 2: Folks for space parasites.

30
00:01:29,920 --> 00:01:30,280
Speaker 3: Whoop?

31
00:01:30,319 --> 00:01:32,279
Speaker 2: Is it a science fiction movie? Is it a grant?

32
00:01:32,440 --> 00:01:33,600
Speaker 2: Who knows? We'll find out.

33
00:01:33,640 --> 00:01:35,920
Speaker 3: Could be both Porqueolo's dose.

34
00:01:38,440 --> 00:01:41,319
Speaker 2: Exactly. And so today on the podcast, we have a

35
00:01:41,360 --> 00:01:44,080
Speaker 2: special guest to come on and talk to us about

36
00:01:44,200 --> 00:01:48,160
Speaker 2: everything that's happening recently in launching two space industries and

37
00:01:48,160 --> 00:01:51,040
Speaker 2: trying to boost a space economy, trying to get humans

38
00:01:51,120 --> 00:01:54,559
Speaker 2: off this planet and live out in the cosmos. Kelly,

39
00:01:54,560 --> 00:01:55,680
Speaker 2: who is today's guest.

40
00:01:55,840 --> 00:01:58,000
Speaker 3: He's a real cutie pie, and you're gonna get a

41
00:01:58,040 --> 00:01:59,920
Speaker 3: taste of what it's like to live in the Winersmith

42
00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:02,720
Speaker 3: how Zach likes to go on long soliloquies where I

43
00:02:02,760 --> 00:02:05,360
Speaker 3: interject every once in a while by saying no, Nope,

44
00:02:05,440 --> 00:02:08,280
Speaker 3: that's wrong, And so welcome to our life, listeners, You're

45
00:02:08,280 --> 00:02:10,359
Speaker 3: going to get a little taste of the Wadersmith household.

46
00:02:10,680 --> 00:02:13,480
Speaker 2: All right, And so today's episode is in response to

47
00:02:13,520 --> 00:02:16,760
Speaker 2: a question from Kay Gilbert, a listener who wrote to

48
00:02:16,840 --> 00:02:20,640
Speaker 2: us asking specifically for an update about what's going on

49
00:02:20,720 --> 00:02:22,760
Speaker 2: in space. Here's Kay's question.

50
00:02:23,280 --> 00:02:26,280
Speaker 4: I learned a lot from doctor Katrine Whitson now please

51
00:02:26,280 --> 00:02:29,520
Speaker 4: invite Zach Wienersmith so he and Kelly can give us

52
00:02:29,520 --> 00:02:34,240
Speaker 4: an update on soonish, specifically the first section on space

53
00:02:34,320 --> 00:02:37,520
Speaker 4: travel becoming cheaper, because that seems to be the most

54
00:02:37,720 --> 00:02:41,400
Speaker 4: nowish since they wrote the book. Many more nations are

55
00:02:41,480 --> 00:02:47,000
Speaker 4: developing active space exploration programs and sending astronauts to the ISS.

56
00:02:48,080 --> 00:02:51,600
Speaker 4: Commercial spaceflight is still in the startup phase, but shows

57
00:02:51,639 --> 00:02:55,920
Speaker 4: a lot of potential and inexpensive CubeSats have made it

58
00:02:56,000 --> 00:02:58,680
Speaker 4: possible for almost anyone with an interest to launch a

59
00:02:58,720 --> 00:03:02,160
Speaker 4: satellite into lower Earth oad orbit. Of course, that just

60
00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:06,640
Speaker 4: makes usable orbits more crowded messes with astronomy and greatly

61
00:03:06,680 --> 00:03:10,800
Speaker 4: increases the amount of space junk. I'm especially interested in

62
00:03:10,840 --> 00:03:14,200
Speaker 4: what Kelly and Zach learned about space economics when writing

63
00:03:14,240 --> 00:03:16,799
Speaker 4: A City on Mars. Thanks all right.

64
00:03:16,840 --> 00:03:19,160
Speaker 2: I love this question because it means like, Wow, this

65
00:03:19,280 --> 00:03:22,400
Speaker 2: person really read both of your books and thought about it. Yeah,

66
00:03:22,440 --> 00:03:24,880
Speaker 2: and now they're coming to you for an accounting of

67
00:03:24,919 --> 00:03:27,360
Speaker 2: what's going on now. You are forever on the hook

68
00:03:27,480 --> 00:03:29,760
Speaker 2: on these topics, Kelly, you have to stay current forever.

69
00:03:30,040 --> 00:03:32,560
Speaker 3: You know. It does actually feel that way. I keep

70
00:03:32,560 --> 00:03:34,560
Speaker 3: trying to move on to the next book project, and

71
00:03:34,560 --> 00:03:37,160
Speaker 3: then I keep getting interview requests from people who are like, oh,

72
00:03:37,240 --> 00:03:38,760
Speaker 3: what do you think about this new thing? And I'm like,

73
00:03:39,080 --> 00:03:40,760
Speaker 3: I don't check the news. What new thing? And then

74
00:03:40,800 --> 00:03:42,440
Speaker 3: I got to check the news. But it's okay because

75
00:03:42,440 --> 00:03:43,120
Speaker 3: it's fascinating.

76
00:03:43,320 --> 00:03:44,760
Speaker 2: Kelly's so popular, Booty.

77
00:03:44,840 --> 00:03:48,080
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, you'd be stressed if you weren't getting

78
00:03:48,080 --> 00:03:50,840
Speaker 3: your other work done. But I do like getting to

79
00:03:50,840 --> 00:03:51,600
Speaker 3: talk about space.

80
00:03:51,920 --> 00:03:53,880
Speaker 2: Well, it's a great book, and so all the attention

81
00:03:54,200 --> 00:03:57,160
Speaker 2: is very worth it. So let's invite onto the podcast

82
00:03:57,360 --> 00:04:00,400
Speaker 2: the other Weeeners, Smith, who will join our conversation about

83
00:04:00,440 --> 00:04:02,360
Speaker 2: the future of the space economy.

84
00:04:06,840 --> 00:04:09,800
Speaker 3: All right, on today's show, we have the second best

85
00:04:09,840 --> 00:04:13,920
Speaker 3: Wiener Smith, Zach. He is the cartoonist behind Saturday Morning

86
00:04:13,920 --> 00:04:17,120
Speaker 3: Breakfast Cereal. He has three eighths of a physics degree

87
00:04:17,400 --> 00:04:21,200
Speaker 3: and he is a wonderful co author. Welcome to the show, Zach.

88
00:04:21,560 --> 00:04:24,080
Speaker 1: I do forgot two times. Hugo nominee.

89
00:04:24,240 --> 00:04:26,120
Speaker 2: Oh and one time winner and.

90
00:04:26,080 --> 00:04:28,719
Speaker 1: One time winner, but really the nomination is the true honor.

91
00:04:28,880 --> 00:04:30,960
Speaker 3: You also didn't get the Eisner, right.

92
00:04:31,080 --> 00:04:33,120
Speaker 1: I have twice not gotten the Eisner.

93
00:04:33,279 --> 00:04:35,880
Speaker 2: Actually I have many times.

94
00:04:36,320 --> 00:04:39,200
Speaker 3: Well, Zach was shortlisted. It's a slightly different.

95
00:04:39,080 --> 00:04:42,520
Speaker 1: I officially didn't live twice. That's right on the record.

96
00:04:43,279 --> 00:04:45,520
Speaker 2: Well, three eighths of a physics degree. I wonder at

97
00:04:45,520 --> 00:04:47,239
Speaker 2: what point you can round that up to one.

98
00:04:47,600 --> 00:04:54,360
Speaker 3: Not three eighths or ten. He also has a literature degree.

99
00:04:54,720 --> 00:04:56,320
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that's true.

100
00:04:56,440 --> 00:04:58,520
Speaker 2: Well, since we're going to be talking about physics and

101
00:04:58,600 --> 00:05:00,480
Speaker 2: space and all sorts of stuff, I think we need

102
00:05:00,480 --> 00:05:02,880
Speaker 2: to hear more about your credentials. Zach, tell us why

103
00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:05,080
Speaker 2: you didn't push that over the line to five eighth

104
00:05:05,120 --> 00:05:06,560
Speaker 2: So a physics degree, that's.

105
00:05:06,400 --> 00:05:09,560
Speaker 1: A good question. I actually had a like semester where

106
00:05:09,560 --> 00:05:12,520
Speaker 1: I felt like I had to choose. My comics career

107
00:05:12,600 --> 00:05:15,600
Speaker 1: was starting to go well. So I had already gotten

108
00:05:15,600 --> 00:05:18,599
Speaker 1: a degree in literature, and I went back for physics.

109
00:05:18,279 --> 00:05:19,880
Speaker 2: A well worn path from literature.

110
00:05:20,320 --> 00:05:22,839
Speaker 1: This was really weird because usually it's the other way around.

111
00:05:23,240 --> 00:05:25,240
Speaker 1: My last semester and I got like old bees, which

112
00:05:25,279 --> 00:05:28,159
Speaker 1: like if it's your second time in college. You know,

113
00:05:28,200 --> 00:05:30,240
Speaker 1: you're not like an undergraduate who doesn't know what they

114
00:05:30,240 --> 00:05:32,320
Speaker 1: want to do yet you really should be doing perfect.

115
00:05:32,680 --> 00:05:34,240
Speaker 1: And it was just that, like I was now managing

116
00:05:34,279 --> 00:05:36,080
Speaker 1: at a comic career that was getting bigger and bigger,

117
00:05:36,240 --> 00:05:37,920
Speaker 1: it seemed like the right path was to just kind

118
00:05:37,960 --> 00:05:39,880
Speaker 1: of like do comics that I could teach myself whatever

119
00:05:39,880 --> 00:05:42,120
Speaker 1: I wanted the side. And then things have gotten ever

120
00:05:42,200 --> 00:05:46,320
Speaker 1: busier and mestically self teach, which is in theory faster

121
00:05:46,480 --> 00:05:49,279
Speaker 1: the university, although I suppose professors have some role earlier.

122
00:05:51,279 --> 00:05:54,040
Speaker 2: So cartooning has stolen another physicist from us.

123
00:05:54,480 --> 00:05:57,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's quite a few lists.

124
00:05:58,440 --> 00:06:00,800
Speaker 2: But you're right about self teaching. I mean, I tell

125
00:06:00,839 --> 00:06:03,800
Speaker 2: my grad students to really pay attention in classes because

126
00:06:03,800 --> 00:06:06,240
Speaker 2: it's the last time somebody's going to spend all their

127
00:06:06,279 --> 00:06:08,880
Speaker 2: time trying to teach you something. After that, it's basically

128
00:06:08,920 --> 00:06:11,240
Speaker 2: like you in a textbook. That's how I learned something new.

129
00:06:11,440 --> 00:06:13,080
Speaker 1: I think it's the only way to get real depth,

130
00:06:13,120 --> 00:06:14,799
Speaker 1: and you can only get so much from another person.

131
00:06:14,839 --> 00:06:16,240
Speaker 1: You got to really sit with it.

132
00:06:16,360 --> 00:06:19,440
Speaker 2: All right, Well, then consider this your pahd final example.

133
00:06:19,920 --> 00:06:21,640
Speaker 2: If you do well today, we can round who.

134
00:06:21,560 --> 00:06:23,120
Speaker 3: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoah. I think you can give him

135
00:06:23,160 --> 00:06:25,479
Speaker 3: a bachelor's but he doesn't get a PhD.

136
00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:30,120
Speaker 2: How about a pod since the podcast, I can't.

137
00:06:29,920 --> 00:06:32,400
Speaker 3: Lurd my pod over him if he has one too.

138
00:06:34,720 --> 00:06:38,480
Speaker 1: My career fantasy is to get an honorary degree from anywhere,

139
00:06:38,920 --> 00:06:41,000
Speaker 1: just so I can say. That didn't seem that hard.

140
00:06:42,960 --> 00:06:45,320
Speaker 3: So Daniel, when we had your wife on the show,

141
00:06:45,360 --> 00:06:47,880
Speaker 3: it was very clear that you two are like supportive team.

142
00:06:48,360 --> 00:06:51,880
Speaker 3: Zach and I are competing over everything everything.

143
00:06:52,360 --> 00:06:55,679
Speaker 1: I believe in a free market, I think the best

144
00:06:55,880 --> 00:06:56,880
Speaker 1: spouse should win.

145
00:06:58,320 --> 00:06:59,160
Speaker 3: And she's winning.

146
00:07:01,800 --> 00:07:04,479
Speaker 2: Wow. Well, we're not here to do Wiener Smith Merrick.

147
00:07:04,520 --> 00:07:07,520
Speaker 2: They as fun as that might be. We're here to

148
00:07:07,560 --> 00:07:10,360
Speaker 2: talk about space and whether we can access it and

149
00:07:10,400 --> 00:07:13,440
Speaker 2: whether you guys want to continue to throw a wet

150
00:07:13,480 --> 00:07:17,200
Speaker 2: blanket over the prospects of space colonization. You've been writing

151
00:07:17,240 --> 00:07:19,400
Speaker 2: about this for quite a while. Your first book, Sooni

152
00:07:19,440 --> 00:07:22,160
Speaker 2: Ish talked about space elevators and how they might be

153
00:07:22,160 --> 00:07:24,600
Speaker 2: a terrible idea, and then you wrote a whole book

154
00:07:24,640 --> 00:07:27,400
Speaker 2: about how we might not be ready to colonize Mars

155
00:07:27,480 --> 00:07:29,440
Speaker 2: and space, and the listener wants to know, are you

156
00:07:29,480 --> 00:07:33,840
Speaker 2: guys still bearish on space or have things changed? So

157
00:07:34,000 --> 00:07:37,600
Speaker 2: give us some background here, Why is space so hard

158
00:07:37,720 --> 00:07:38,600
Speaker 2: and expensive?

159
00:07:39,280 --> 00:07:41,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's a lot of angles on that, but

160
00:07:41,360 --> 00:07:43,920
Speaker 1: I think the probably place to start is just literally

161
00:07:43,920 --> 00:07:47,400
Speaker 1: the access to space, meaning like getting up and fast.

162
00:07:47,920 --> 00:07:50,360
Speaker 1: And so I would say you can make a pretty

163
00:07:50,360 --> 00:07:52,240
Speaker 1: good case that the main reason is expensive is because

164
00:07:52,320 --> 00:07:55,080
Speaker 1: rockets kind of suck. The main reason we use them

165
00:07:55,080 --> 00:07:57,200
Speaker 1: to go to space is we have no other method. Right,

166
00:07:57,280 --> 00:07:59,760
Speaker 1: So if you look at a rocket sitting on a pad,

167
00:08:00,520 --> 00:08:03,720
Speaker 1: it's something like eighty percent propellant meaning fuel and oxidizer

168
00:08:03,800 --> 00:08:06,240
Speaker 1: stuff that gets burned on the way up. It's something like,

169
00:08:06,840 --> 00:08:10,679
Speaker 1: depending on what you're doing, say sixteen to nineteen percent,

170
00:08:10,800 --> 00:08:14,400
Speaker 1: the like machine that historically you discard during the process,

171
00:08:14,480 --> 00:08:17,400
Speaker 1: although SpaceX has change that. And then at the very

172
00:08:17,520 --> 00:08:20,760
Speaker 1: top you have the firing, which is depending on again

173
00:08:20,800 --> 00:08:23,560
Speaker 1: on what you're doing, one to three percent, say of

174
00:08:23,600 --> 00:08:25,960
Speaker 1: the total mass, and that's what goes to space. And

175
00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:28,360
Speaker 1: you say, why is it so awful? Why is the

176
00:08:28,480 --> 00:08:31,560
Speaker 1: ratio so terrible? And you know, of course you could say,

177
00:08:31,560 --> 00:08:33,080
Speaker 1: well if this planet were a little bigger, may we

178
00:08:33,120 --> 00:08:35,679
Speaker 1: just couldn't do it. The example we like to use

179
00:08:35,800 --> 00:08:37,680
Speaker 1: is like if you had to take a road trip

180
00:08:37,720 --> 00:08:41,440
Speaker 1: from Alaska to Buenos Aires, you would gas up once

181
00:08:41,480 --> 00:08:43,800
Speaker 1: in a while. If you had to bring all the

182
00:08:43,840 --> 00:08:46,920
Speaker 1: gas you needed for the entire trip at the beginning,

183
00:08:46,920 --> 00:08:50,080
Speaker 1: you would look like a flea on like a gas tanker. Right,

184
00:08:50,320 --> 00:08:52,520
Speaker 1: And the main problem you're going to face is that

185
00:08:52,600 --> 00:08:54,960
Speaker 1: the first, say gallon of gas is mostly going to

186
00:08:55,000 --> 00:08:57,480
Speaker 1: move gas. There are gallons of gas you're going to

187
00:08:57,520 --> 00:09:00,480
Speaker 1: literally move the entire time, and finally we use up

188
00:09:00,520 --> 00:09:02,839
Speaker 1: at the end. The most efficient way to do it,

189
00:09:02,880 --> 00:09:05,280
Speaker 1: and this gets us to space elevators would be of

190
00:09:05,320 --> 00:09:08,360
Speaker 1: like a magic pixie just dropped the drop of gas

191
00:09:08,360 --> 00:09:10,440
Speaker 1: you need in whenever you needed it, so you never

192
00:09:10,520 --> 00:09:13,600
Speaker 1: had to carry any mass of gas. Because that's most

193
00:09:13,679 --> 00:09:15,000
Speaker 1: of what a rocket is doing. This is why we

194
00:09:15,040 --> 00:09:17,280
Speaker 1: have staging, right, That's why a rocket burns up a

195
00:09:17,320 --> 00:09:20,080
Speaker 1: bunch of propellant and then just drops off a hunk

196
00:09:20,120 --> 00:09:22,360
Speaker 1: into the ocean, or if it's SpaceX, drops off a

197
00:09:22,440 --> 00:09:23,800
Speaker 1: hunk that lands itself.

198
00:09:23,960 --> 00:09:26,080
Speaker 2: Well, if you have magic pixies as an option, we

199
00:09:26,080 --> 00:09:27,280
Speaker 2: can solve lots of problems.

200
00:09:27,320 --> 00:09:27,679
Speaker 1: Not just.

201
00:09:29,760 --> 00:09:32,480
Speaker 2: That opens up the door, that's.

202
00:09:32,360 --> 00:09:34,880
Speaker 1: Right, you know, space elevator in a certain sense wouldn't

203
00:09:34,880 --> 00:09:36,959
Speaker 1: be the magic pixie. Right. So space elevator is like

204
00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:40,240
Speaker 1: a cable or a ribbon that dangles from something up

205
00:09:40,240 --> 00:09:42,200
Speaker 1: in space, and there are different ways to do that,

206
00:09:42,240 --> 00:09:44,600
Speaker 1: but basically you can just visualize this cable that goes

207
00:09:44,679 --> 00:09:48,079
Speaker 1: up like a beanstalk, and you climb it. And the

208
00:09:48,200 --> 00:09:51,400
Speaker 1: nice thing about that is you just expend the energy

209
00:09:51,440 --> 00:09:53,880
Speaker 1: to you know, climb one more foot, right, so you

210
00:09:53,920 --> 00:09:56,720
Speaker 1: can beam the energy that goes up. Most of like

211
00:09:56,800 --> 00:09:59,839
Speaker 1: your efforts are going into fighting gravity in the sense

212
00:09:59,880 --> 00:10:01,959
Speaker 1: of just getting up the next step instead of carrying

213
00:10:01,960 --> 00:10:03,200
Speaker 1: oldest propellant, right.

214
00:10:03,600 --> 00:10:05,559
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think space elevators are hard for people

215
00:10:05,559 --> 00:10:08,160
Speaker 2: to grow because it feels like it's floating and if

216
00:10:08,160 --> 00:10:10,640
Speaker 2: you stand on it's going to fall down, and there's

217
00:10:10,679 --> 00:10:13,720
Speaker 2: some complex orbital physics there. But essentially the argument is

218
00:10:13,720 --> 00:10:15,800
Speaker 2: it's like a ladder. Right. It's a lot easier to

219
00:10:15,840 --> 00:10:18,000
Speaker 2: climb a ladder one hundred feet than it is to

220
00:10:18,120 --> 00:10:21,480
Speaker 2: jump ondred exactly, right, Yeah, And it takes a lot

221
00:10:21,520 --> 00:10:24,319
Speaker 2: of energy because the ladder is supporting you as you go.

222
00:10:24,400 --> 00:10:27,600
Speaker 1: Up, that's right. And there's been lots of hopes to

223
00:10:27,600 --> 00:10:30,440
Speaker 1: get around the rocket problem, right, yeah, classic one of

224
00:10:30,440 --> 00:10:32,880
Speaker 1: you read Jules Verne's First Spin on the Moon is

225
00:10:33,040 --> 00:10:33,920
Speaker 1: do you remember what they do?

226
00:10:34,240 --> 00:10:34,800
Speaker 2: I don't know.

227
00:10:34,960 --> 00:10:36,640
Speaker 1: They shooting a gun. There's actually a whole kind of

228
00:10:36,679 --> 00:10:39,240
Speaker 1: comedy bit about Americans with guns. It's the Baltimore Gun

229
00:10:39,280 --> 00:10:41,319
Speaker 1: Club and they shoot it and it's like a good

230
00:10:41,360 --> 00:10:44,400
Speaker 1: introductory physics thing because it's like, I think we calculated

231
00:10:44,400 --> 00:10:46,360
Speaker 1: it either for Sunnish or a city on Mars where

232
00:10:46,360 --> 00:10:49,680
Speaker 1: it's like the initial g's are like twenty thousand to

233
00:10:49,720 --> 00:10:51,959
Speaker 1: actually get to the Moon with the spaceship they're launching,

234
00:10:52,000 --> 00:10:53,240
Speaker 1: so the humans would go flat.

235
00:10:53,559 --> 00:10:55,719
Speaker 2: Oh I seem it's like a cannon. They fire you

236
00:10:55,800 --> 00:10:56,839
Speaker 2: out of a canon into the moon.

237
00:10:57,160 --> 00:10:58,839
Speaker 1: Literally, it's just a giant cannon. Yeah.

238
00:10:58,920 --> 00:11:01,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was a gun that came up with

239
00:11:01,120 --> 00:11:02,880
Speaker 3: the proposal. But anyway, the book is called From the

240
00:11:02,920 --> 00:11:03,720
Speaker 3: Earth to the Moon.

241
00:11:03,840 --> 00:11:04,480
Speaker 1: Oh I'm sorry.

242
00:11:04,559 --> 00:11:06,600
Speaker 2: Yes, well that's not so outlanders these days. If you've

243
00:11:06,600 --> 00:11:09,320
Speaker 2: seen those spin projects, whether they like spin something up

244
00:11:09,360 --> 00:11:12,360
Speaker 2: and then literally launch it into space, it's like good

245
00:11:12,360 --> 00:11:15,160
Speaker 2: for some payloads, but enough for people. Yeah, the gun.

246
00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:16,600
Speaker 1: Would work if your payload was like a hunk of

247
00:11:16,600 --> 00:11:19,200
Speaker 1: iron or like some some fluid or something. But yeah,

248
00:11:19,280 --> 00:11:21,120
Speaker 1: with like delicate, little splatty humans.

249
00:11:21,120 --> 00:11:24,040
Speaker 2: It's no good, all right, So getting off of Earth

250
00:11:24,080 --> 00:11:28,360
Speaker 2: is hard. Rockets are bad. Space elevators are problematic for

251
00:11:28,440 --> 00:11:30,880
Speaker 2: other reasons. We can dig into that in another episode.

252
00:11:31,200 --> 00:11:33,640
Speaker 2: Why do we want to lift stuff from Earth? I mean, yeah,

253
00:11:33,679 --> 00:11:35,880
Speaker 2: there's lots of stuff in space. Why don't we just

254
00:11:35,920 --> 00:11:37,920
Speaker 2: like build stuff in space for space?

255
00:11:38,200 --> 00:11:40,480
Speaker 1: So if you want to get stuff somewhere in space

256
00:11:40,520 --> 00:11:42,200
Speaker 1: to build with, you got to say to yourself, well,

257
00:11:42,240 --> 00:11:44,400
Speaker 1: where am I getting it? You don't have a lot

258
00:11:44,400 --> 00:11:47,040
Speaker 1: of options. It turns out you have the Moon, but

259
00:11:47,160 --> 00:11:48,679
Speaker 1: you know, the Moon is still pretty far away. It's

260
00:11:48,679 --> 00:11:49,920
Speaker 1: hard to get to and then you have to like

261
00:11:49,960 --> 00:11:52,040
Speaker 1: somehow land on the Moon and then boost off, which

262
00:11:52,080 --> 00:11:54,160
Speaker 1: takes a lot of energy less than doing it on Earth,

263
00:11:54,240 --> 00:11:56,400
Speaker 1: but a lot. Notably, this is true for the Moon

264
00:11:56,440 --> 00:11:58,719
Speaker 1: and Mars. You don't have a thick atmosphere, which is

265
00:11:58,840 --> 00:12:01,160
Speaker 1: very helpful when you'd like to land in right, you

266
00:12:01,280 --> 00:12:03,720
Speaker 1: visualize Neil Armstrong in the Lunar Lander. There's no wings

267
00:12:03,720 --> 00:12:06,240
Speaker 1: on it because there's no reason, and so that makes

268
00:12:06,280 --> 00:12:09,120
Speaker 1: it more complicated. You could alternatively, like go to get asteroids.

269
00:12:09,559 --> 00:12:11,280
Speaker 1: You know, people usually think when we say that we're

270
00:12:11,280 --> 00:12:13,760
Speaker 1: talking about the belt, and I think enthusiasts would say

271
00:12:13,760 --> 00:12:16,679
Speaker 1: that is ultimately the goal, but like for a plausible

272
00:12:16,880 --> 00:12:19,720
Speaker 1: ish scenario, we're actually talking about near Earth asteroids that

273
00:12:19,840 --> 00:12:22,520
Speaker 1: have a lot of unlikely characteristics, so like they have

274
00:12:22,559 --> 00:12:25,680
Speaker 1: to be high and valuable stuff usually called platinum group metals,

275
00:12:25,679 --> 00:12:28,599
Speaker 1: that's the really hot stuff, and ideally they should be

276
00:12:28,640 --> 00:12:30,400
Speaker 1: sort of locking velossity with the Earth, by which I

277
00:12:30,480 --> 00:12:32,880
Speaker 1: just mean as the Earth is moving, the asteroid comes

278
00:12:32,920 --> 00:12:34,960
Speaker 1: in such a way that it like is not going

279
00:12:35,000 --> 00:12:36,800
Speaker 1: too fast with respect to us, So you can imagine

280
00:12:36,840 --> 00:12:38,520
Speaker 1: like the Earth is going well way the asteroids going

281
00:12:38,520 --> 00:12:39,840
Speaker 1: to the other. Trying to catch it is going to

282
00:12:39,840 --> 00:12:42,560
Speaker 1: be a dangerous business. That's all really hard and well

283
00:12:42,559 --> 00:12:45,480
Speaker 1: beyond our current capacity. So we usually say, you know,

284
00:12:45,720 --> 00:12:47,840
Speaker 1: if you go up to geosynchronous, which is about twenty

285
00:12:47,840 --> 00:12:50,440
Speaker 1: four thousand miles high, you can make money pretty much

286
00:12:50,480 --> 00:12:55,000
Speaker 1: anywhere in that shell, by data transmission, by remote sensing,

287
00:12:55,040 --> 00:12:58,480
Speaker 1: by navigation, by doing stuff for militaries. Outside that shell,

288
00:12:58,520 --> 00:13:01,040
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of value financial sense. There is

289
00:13:01,040 --> 00:13:03,520
Speaker 1: obviously all sorts of cool science value, but there's not

290
00:13:03,559 --> 00:13:04,719
Speaker 1: a lot of value beyond that.

291
00:13:05,400 --> 00:13:07,320
Speaker 3: It's funny when I first invited Zach on the show,

292
00:13:07,320 --> 00:13:08,600
Speaker 3: He's like, I don't know that I'm going to have

293
00:13:08,720 --> 00:13:12,200
Speaker 3: a lot to say. And I had thought like, oh,

294
00:13:12,240 --> 00:13:14,559
Speaker 3: maybe it should just be Daniel and Zach on this episode.

295
00:13:14,600 --> 00:13:15,840
Speaker 3: And then Zach was like, all right, I don't think

296
00:13:15,880 --> 00:13:17,079
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have anything to say it. I was like,

297
00:13:17,080 --> 00:13:20,240
Speaker 3: all right, we'll see. But anyway, this is an interview

298
00:13:20,240 --> 00:13:22,160
Speaker 3: of Zach, so I will continue to let Zach.

299
00:13:23,160 --> 00:13:23,720
Speaker 1: Go for it.

300
00:13:25,080 --> 00:13:27,280
Speaker 2: Well, I guess, as an audience member to this, I

301
00:13:27,400 --> 00:13:29,520
Speaker 2: might be a little bit skeptical about that. I mean,

302
00:13:29,760 --> 00:13:32,080
Speaker 2: I buy the argument that there's not much in space

303
00:13:32,080 --> 00:13:33,960
Speaker 2: you want to bring back down to Earth. I mean,

304
00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:36,720
Speaker 2: I think people often think, ooh, platinum asteroid, that would

305
00:13:36,720 --> 00:13:39,560
Speaker 2: be worth seventy five quad trillion dollars if I could

306
00:13:39,559 --> 00:13:41,320
Speaker 2: bring it back here and sell it off bit by bit,

307
00:13:41,440 --> 00:13:45,160
Speaker 2: And obviously that's ridiculous, But still catching stuff in space

308
00:13:45,240 --> 00:13:46,920
Speaker 2: for building in space. I know we don't have the

309
00:13:46,960 --> 00:13:50,120
Speaker 2: technology now, but is it impossible to imagine that we

310
00:13:50,160 --> 00:13:52,000
Speaker 2: could never catch an astroid? I mean, I saw it

311
00:13:52,040 --> 00:13:53,600
Speaker 2: happen on for all mankind.

312
00:13:55,480 --> 00:13:58,120
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, obviously at some point we'll have the

313
00:13:58,160 --> 00:13:59,800
Speaker 1: technology to do that. I have no doubt about that.

314
00:14:00,120 --> 00:14:02,640
Speaker 1: None of this is anti gravity. There's no forbidden physics.

315
00:14:02,920 --> 00:14:04,880
Speaker 1: It's just engineering. The way I think about that is

316
00:14:05,040 --> 00:14:08,040
Speaker 1: essentially what you're implicitly doing. There's assuming some kind of

317
00:14:08,080 --> 00:14:11,480
Speaker 1: space economy, right, You're wishing it into existence, and then

318
00:14:11,520 --> 00:14:14,000
Speaker 1: it's justified. But it's kind of like saying, well, once

319
00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:16,920
Speaker 1: we have a on the bottom of the Marianna's trench,

320
00:14:17,080 --> 00:14:21,040
Speaker 1: my French bottom Chicken Sandwich company will really be valuable.

321
00:14:22,560 --> 00:14:23,840
Speaker 1: So I think this is why a lot of space

322
00:14:23,880 --> 00:14:26,120
Speaker 1: geeks are in the business of saying, we have to

323
00:14:26,120 --> 00:14:29,200
Speaker 1: build the city because it's existential. Kelly and I were

324
00:14:29,280 --> 00:14:30,800
Speaker 1: just talking about this. There's a guy we really like

325
00:14:30,880 --> 00:14:33,160
Speaker 1: named Winchell Chung who runs something called Project Row, which

326
00:14:33,240 --> 00:14:35,720
Speaker 1: kind of documents everything ever said about space travel. And

327
00:14:35,880 --> 00:14:38,760
Speaker 1: this idea calls mcguffinite, which is reference to the idea

328
00:14:38,920 --> 00:14:41,080
Speaker 1: in movies of a McGuff and like a certain something

329
00:14:41,120 --> 00:14:45,640
Speaker 1: everyone needs. You'll find that movies books everything for space colonization,

330
00:14:45,680 --> 00:14:49,920
Speaker 1: they always positive mcguffinite. So like an avatar, there's an unobtainium,

331
00:14:50,680 --> 00:14:55,760
Speaker 1: like insanely stupid name, really hard to get them, which

332
00:14:55,880 --> 00:14:59,600
Speaker 1: is like a room temperature superconductor that somehow you can't

333
00:14:59,640 --> 00:15:02,600
Speaker 1: just make back home from the same elements. You have

334
00:15:02,680 --> 00:15:06,440
Speaker 1: to get it from like these poor natives. And the

335
00:15:06,440 --> 00:15:08,000
Speaker 1: way I think with this is like, I'm sorry to

336
00:15:08,000 --> 00:15:09,840
Speaker 1: be really boring about this, but it's like the whole

337
00:15:09,840 --> 00:15:12,480
Speaker 1: world is running on the same periodic table. There's not

338
00:15:12,520 --> 00:15:14,520
Speaker 1: like magic stuff you can get. There's no special in

339
00:15:14,560 --> 00:15:17,240
Speaker 1: between e elements or whatever anything like this. So I

340
00:15:17,240 --> 00:15:18,720
Speaker 1: don't know why you'd suppose you would find them, of

341
00:15:18,720 --> 00:15:21,320
Speaker 1: all places like on an asteroid or on Mars, where

342
00:15:21,400 --> 00:15:24,440
Speaker 1: you know you're just working from the same Giant Solar

343
00:15:24,600 --> 00:15:27,040
Speaker 1: System accretion disc that made the other planets.

344
00:15:27,200 --> 00:15:29,120
Speaker 2: I mean, from a physics point of view, there could

345
00:15:29,160 --> 00:15:33,160
Speaker 2: be additional stable, super heavy elements. It is positive, yeah,

346
00:15:33,200 --> 00:15:36,320
Speaker 2: so there might be very heavy elements that are stable.

347
00:15:36,400 --> 00:15:38,840
Speaker 2: It's called the island of stability. But you'd need some

348
00:15:38,880 --> 00:15:42,520
Speaker 2: pretty exotic physics to explain why it's created and existing asteroids,

349
00:15:42,560 --> 00:15:45,000
Speaker 2: and it's not here on Earth, and it's also long lived,

350
00:15:45,280 --> 00:15:47,560
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. So you're right, Earth is mostly

351
00:15:47,600 --> 00:15:50,200
Speaker 2: made out of the same stuff as asteroids, and so'd

352
00:15:50,240 --> 00:15:53,040
Speaker 2: be pretty unusual that you could find something only in

353
00:15:53,160 --> 00:15:54,960
Speaker 2: asteroids to put in your chicken sandwich.

354
00:15:55,280 --> 00:15:57,880
Speaker 1: Yes, when we say island of stability, I thought physicists

355
00:15:57,920 --> 00:16:00,560
Speaker 1: meant like two millisecond.

356
00:16:04,360 --> 00:16:10,520
Speaker 2: Long lived is reli Okay, But isn't that the way

357
00:16:10,600 --> 00:16:13,080
Speaker 2: all economies get started? I mean, there used to be

358
00:16:13,400 --> 00:16:16,680
Speaker 2: no economy in California and then you know there was

359
00:16:16,680 --> 00:16:19,120
Speaker 2: a gold rush that we had him a guffn. All

360
00:16:19,160 --> 00:16:22,960
Speaker 2: economies do get started somehow, right, Your argument would essentially

361
00:16:23,000 --> 00:16:24,840
Speaker 2: suggest we can never have new economies.

362
00:16:25,200 --> 00:16:27,760
Speaker 1: Well, you know, so I say it this way, if,

363
00:16:27,920 --> 00:16:30,760
Speaker 1: as he promises, mister Musk wants to spend you know,

364
00:16:30,760 --> 00:16:33,560
Speaker 1: a trillion dollars or whatever and just plant a city

365
00:16:33,600 --> 00:16:34,960
Speaker 1: on Mars, you know, we have all sorts of other

366
00:16:35,000 --> 00:16:37,280
Speaker 1: concerns about that from other episodes you guys have done.

367
00:16:37,440 --> 00:16:38,920
Speaker 1: But I suppose he did it, Like I suppose you

368
00:16:38,920 --> 00:16:40,840
Speaker 1: woke up tomorrow and he had done it. Then maybe

369
00:16:40,840 --> 00:16:42,680
Speaker 1: there's an argument for some of this stuff. But that's

370
00:16:42,720 --> 00:16:46,840
Speaker 1: because you've made such a bad situation. Often in sci

371
00:16:46,880 --> 00:16:48,840
Speaker 1: fi people will be like, well, water is going to

372
00:16:48,880 --> 00:16:51,200
Speaker 1: be really valuable, and it's worth remarking if you're in

373
00:16:51,200 --> 00:16:53,040
Speaker 1: a place where you have to pay huge amounts of

374
00:16:53,040 --> 00:16:55,720
Speaker 1: money for clean drinking water, that's not a good situation,

375
00:16:55,760 --> 00:16:58,240
Speaker 1: you'd rather not do that. You're absolutely right if the

376
00:16:58,280 --> 00:17:01,840
Speaker 1: economy already exists and fine, or as you say, with California,

377
00:17:02,160 --> 00:17:06,080
Speaker 1: I get frustrated, not with you, of course, but.

378
00:17:06,040 --> 00:17:09,960
Speaker 2: With the entire state as an idea, as an ethos. Oh,

379
00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:12,480
Speaker 2: this is two Virginias against one Californian. It's not fair.

380
00:17:12,600 --> 00:17:13,240
Speaker 2: It's not fair.

381
00:17:13,520 --> 00:17:16,040
Speaker 1: I'm ancestrally from Texas, so I gave both of you

382
00:17:16,119 --> 00:17:22,080
Speaker 1: coastal leeds. My cost is filmed as it should be, is.

383
00:17:22,080 --> 00:17:23,440
Speaker 2: Near coast the Gulf of America.

384
00:17:23,520 --> 00:17:26,000
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, that's right, that's right. You can gas your

385
00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:29,679
Speaker 1: car up in the Gulf of America. So, you know,

386
00:17:29,720 --> 00:17:32,480
Speaker 1: often when we say this, I totally sympathize with not

387
00:17:32,520 --> 00:17:34,720
Speaker 1: wanting to be someone who's like, nah, dreams are dumb.

388
00:17:36,040 --> 00:17:38,199
Speaker 1: You know, people will say, well, if Columbus had thought that,

389
00:17:38,280 --> 00:17:39,800
Speaker 1: what would have happened, And first of all, I don't

390
00:17:39,800 --> 00:17:41,879
Speaker 1: want to say is probably fifty million people wouldn't have

391
00:17:41,920 --> 00:17:42,600
Speaker 1: been murdered.

392
00:17:43,080 --> 00:17:46,840
Speaker 2: But that side, we'd still have all of min in history, right, right,

393
00:17:46,880 --> 00:17:47,280
Speaker 2: you'd have.

394
00:17:47,240 --> 00:17:51,080
Speaker 1: A couple of nice things. But also, like Columbus shows

395
00:17:51,119 --> 00:17:53,760
Speaker 1: up and he gathers resources that are widely available in

396
00:17:53,800 --> 00:17:56,359
Speaker 1: part by the way, because those indigenous people had found

397
00:17:56,400 --> 00:17:59,000
Speaker 1: it and could tell them where it was willingly or otherwise,

398
00:17:59,280 --> 00:18:01,679
Speaker 1: that was generally true. Right, So like Theo's people who

399
00:18:01,680 --> 00:18:04,360
Speaker 1: show up in California, these settlers, they found the San

400
00:18:04,400 --> 00:18:07,080
Speaker 1: Fernando Valley. Right, you want to talk about value, and

401
00:18:07,119 --> 00:18:10,719
Speaker 1: this is in an agricultural era. Right, when I want

402
00:18:10,760 --> 00:18:11,920
Speaker 1: to get at more deeply, I think you and I

403
00:18:12,000 --> 00:18:14,520
Speaker 1: were talking about this earlier. Is people often talk about

404
00:18:14,560 --> 00:18:16,640
Speaker 1: resources in this funny way, like it's just the sort

405
00:18:16,680 --> 00:18:19,600
Speaker 1: of stuff and like it obviously exists in the moon

406
00:18:19,760 --> 00:18:22,119
Speaker 1: or asteroids in some sense because they're made of stuff.

407
00:18:22,600 --> 00:18:25,040
Speaker 1: But like in the modern world especially, and this is

408
00:18:25,040 --> 00:18:27,280
Speaker 1: maybe different from how it was for most of human history.

409
00:18:27,680 --> 00:18:31,520
Speaker 1: Value comes from organization, right, Like if you're running a country,

410
00:18:31,680 --> 00:18:36,360
Speaker 1: would you rather have a diamond mind or Google? Right, yeah,

411
00:18:37,840 --> 00:18:40,000
Speaker 1: if you had both. The diamond mind is trivial. It's

412
00:18:40,040 --> 00:18:41,919
Speaker 1: really not a big contributor to the economy, like that

413
00:18:41,960 --> 00:18:44,000
Speaker 1: tech sector. You know. We got into this. This is

414
00:18:44,000 --> 00:18:45,760
Speaker 1: actually a late addition to our book. We were talking

415
00:18:45,760 --> 00:18:49,000
Speaker 1: to an economists, to the developmental economists. We said something

416
00:18:49,040 --> 00:18:50,399
Speaker 1: sort vague about this stuff, and he was like, you

417
00:18:50,400 --> 00:18:52,000
Speaker 1: should look at this thing from the World Bank where

418
00:18:52,040 --> 00:18:54,600
Speaker 1: they actually taught it up, like the wealth of different nations,

419
00:18:55,320 --> 00:18:58,400
Speaker 1: and like what the actual value was to this planet

420
00:18:58,440 --> 00:19:00,640
Speaker 1: of natural resources, and it was like, I think two

421
00:19:00,680 --> 00:19:03,160
Speaker 1: and a half percent of overall wealth is a natural resource.

422
00:19:03,359 --> 00:19:05,000
Speaker 1: It's minimal. So when people talk about what we have

423
00:19:05,040 --> 00:19:06,600
Speaker 1: to do the asteroids because we'll get so rich because

424
00:19:06,600 --> 00:19:09,520
Speaker 1: of natural resources. Like, by the way, ninety percent of

425
00:19:09,560 --> 00:19:12,560
Speaker 1: that was possil fuels, right, which don't exist on Mars.

426
00:19:14,119 --> 00:19:15,640
Speaker 1: I was talking to someone who's a real long term

427
00:19:15,640 --> 00:19:18,480
Speaker 1: mist about this and she was like, well, but eventually

428
00:19:18,800 --> 00:19:20,400
Speaker 1: we're going to have to push into space because we're

429
00:19:20,400 --> 00:19:21,800
Speaker 1: going to run out of resources. And I was like,

430
00:19:21,840 --> 00:19:23,920
Speaker 1: if you want to have a ten thousand year eventually,

431
00:19:24,080 --> 00:19:25,520
Speaker 1: why don't you just say we'll all be hooked to

432
00:19:25,600 --> 00:19:28,639
Speaker 1: like the matrix and we'll just experience infinite value in

433
00:19:28,680 --> 00:19:31,200
Speaker 1: our heads. If you can invote these crazy sci fi scenarios,

434
00:19:31,240 --> 00:19:33,040
Speaker 1: the idea of value goes bonkers, and I don't think

435
00:19:33,040 --> 00:19:34,720
Speaker 1: it's even worth speculating about.

436
00:19:34,960 --> 00:19:37,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll all just be downloading our chicken sand, which

437
00:19:37,119 --> 00:19:39,120
Speaker 2: is no need to even go to your chicken sand

438
00:19:39,160 --> 00:19:39,800
Speaker 2: with shack.

439
00:19:39,680 --> 00:19:41,240
Speaker 1: And they'll be perfect yeah.

440
00:19:41,000 --> 00:19:44,920
Speaker 2: All right, So getting the space is hard, mining stuff

441
00:19:44,920 --> 00:19:48,160
Speaker 2: and using resources in space. It doesn't really have value

442
00:19:48,200 --> 00:19:50,919
Speaker 2: unless it's already an economy, which means people there to

443
00:19:51,160 --> 00:19:53,560
Speaker 2: value it and to need it. So that sort of

444
00:19:53,600 --> 00:19:55,359
Speaker 2: sets the scene. Let's take a break, and when we

445
00:19:55,440 --> 00:19:57,840
Speaker 2: come back, I want to hear from the Wiersmith's all

446
00:19:57,880 --> 00:20:01,320
Speaker 2: about the updates since they're b was written, since we

447
00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:05,160
Speaker 2: have had some rapid progress in reusable rockets and access

448
00:20:05,160 --> 00:20:08,080
Speaker 2: to space and CubeSats and starlink and all sorts of

449
00:20:08,080 --> 00:20:10,240
Speaker 2: other crazy stuff. All right, so everybody go get a

450
00:20:10,320 --> 00:20:12,040
Speaker 2: chicken sandwich and take a break and we'll see you

451
00:20:12,119 --> 00:20:31,280
Speaker 2: on the other side. Okay, we're back, and I'm mediating

452
00:20:31,320 --> 00:20:32,840
Speaker 2: a Wiener Smith marital session.

453
00:20:36,320 --> 00:20:38,240
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty clear that I'm winning, but I'm

454
00:20:38,240 --> 00:20:40,600
Speaker 3: going to continue to let you have the stage for

455
00:20:40,640 --> 00:20:42,719
Speaker 3: a little while and answer these questions since you were

456
00:20:42,760 --> 00:20:43,080
Speaker 3: the guest.

457
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:48,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So we've been hearing about how difficult

458
00:20:48,960 --> 00:20:50,560
Speaker 2: it is to get to space and to build an

459
00:20:50,560 --> 00:20:53,960
Speaker 2: economy there if you don't already have one. What's changed

460
00:20:54,000 --> 00:20:56,119
Speaker 2: since you guys have written your book. That's essentially what

461
00:20:56,200 --> 00:20:59,520
Speaker 2: our listener wanted to know. Do you have a new perspective.

462
00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:02,360
Speaker 2: First start with what has changed, and then let's talk

463
00:21:02,359 --> 00:21:03,240
Speaker 2: about what it means.

464
00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:04,760
Speaker 1: One of the funny things that happened with us when

465
00:21:04,800 --> 00:21:08,600
Speaker 1: we were writing soon Ish was that the change began

466
00:21:08,840 --> 00:21:11,200
Speaker 1: as we were like, going to press, we're really mad

467
00:21:11,240 --> 00:21:14,640
Speaker 1: at SpaceX because they kept landing reasonable rockets when we've

468
00:21:14,680 --> 00:21:15,320
Speaker 1: been trying.

469
00:21:15,080 --> 00:21:17,040
Speaker 3: To discuss impressed with not mad as.

470
00:21:17,440 --> 00:21:20,359
Speaker 1: I wish they would cut it out because we were like,

471
00:21:20,400 --> 00:21:22,040
Speaker 1: this is future tech and they were doing it and

472
00:21:22,080 --> 00:21:24,160
Speaker 1: we were like, well, this is just ruining everything. Butzz

473
00:21:24,400 --> 00:21:26,480
Speaker 1: and I don't remember the number, maybe Kelly you did,

474
00:21:26,480 --> 00:21:28,119
Speaker 1: It was like when we went to press, it was

475
00:21:28,200 --> 00:21:30,560
Speaker 1: like six times they had landed. The reason we were

476
00:21:30,560 --> 00:21:32,600
Speaker 1: walked with something like that wasn't much, but it was

477
00:21:32,640 --> 00:21:34,640
Speaker 1: a huge deal. I remember talking to someone who said

478
00:21:34,640 --> 00:21:36,879
Speaker 1: something like I watched the moon landing and this was

479
00:21:36,920 --> 00:21:38,640
Speaker 1: a bigger deal. And I think most people wouldn't agree

480
00:21:38,640 --> 00:21:41,640
Speaker 1: with that, but I did. But the moon landing was expensive.

481
00:21:41,680 --> 00:21:43,119
Speaker 1: There was no way they were going to let us

482
00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:45,280
Speaker 1: do this for very long, right the government, whereas like

483
00:21:45,320 --> 00:21:47,560
Speaker 1: reasonable rockets, this has been like the dream since like

484
00:21:47,600 --> 00:21:50,800
Speaker 1: the fifties. You know, if you go back Max Bajay

485
00:21:50,920 --> 00:21:54,240
Speaker 1: of one of the big NASA engineers had these drawings

486
00:21:54,320 --> 00:21:56,560
Speaker 1: of reasonable rocket. It would have worked by having three

487
00:21:56,600 --> 00:21:59,280
Speaker 1: stacked rockets with a pilot in each of them with

488
00:21:59,320 --> 00:22:02,200
Speaker 1: wings right, would have flown back down like insanely dangerous.

489
00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:05,280
Speaker 1: It's super awesome. Nothing like it ever happened. There are

490
00:22:05,320 --> 00:22:07,760
Speaker 1: a couple like experiments in the nineties, but they weren't

491
00:22:07,760 --> 00:22:09,520
Speaker 1: like doing the high speed or any of thething you

492
00:22:09,560 --> 00:22:11,879
Speaker 1: needed to do. And then all of a sudden SpaceX

493
00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:14,119
Speaker 1: was going to orbit and coming back. And the reason

494
00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:16,440
Speaker 1: that matters is that math we talked about earlier. Right,

495
00:22:16,720 --> 00:22:18,240
Speaker 1: The old line is like if you have a seven

496
00:22:18,280 --> 00:22:20,760
Speaker 1: forty seven, but you have to throw it into the

497
00:22:20,760 --> 00:22:24,040
Speaker 1: ocean after each use, the tickets are expensive, and that's

498
00:22:24,119 --> 00:22:27,320
Speaker 1: essentially how we did space for the entire Space age

499
00:22:27,440 --> 00:22:28,840
Speaker 1: up to SpaceX.

500
00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:31,000
Speaker 2: And why are we usable rockets so hard? I mean,

501
00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:33,240
Speaker 2: landing a seven forty seven is tricky, but we can

502
00:22:33,280 --> 00:22:35,280
Speaker 2: do it. Why is landing a rocket so much harder?

503
00:22:35,359 --> 00:22:36,960
Speaker 1: I misspake when I said it was the only time

504
00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:38,920
Speaker 1: because the course of the Space Shuttle was time before that,

505
00:22:38,960 --> 00:22:42,200
Speaker 1: which was partially reusable. And I feel like that's actually

506
00:22:42,240 --> 00:22:44,959
Speaker 1: indicative because you know, in the case of the Space Shuttle,

507
00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:46,959
Speaker 1: we had two total losses out of you know, one

508
00:22:47,000 --> 00:22:49,320
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty something flights. And it's just because it's

509
00:22:49,359 --> 00:22:52,679
Speaker 1: really dangerous to take something that's in orbit, meaning like

510
00:22:52,760 --> 00:22:54,840
Speaker 1: if it were in air, it would be at whatever

511
00:22:54,880 --> 00:22:57,040
Speaker 1: it is Map twenty five or something, and just sort

512
00:22:57,040 --> 00:22:59,320
Speaker 1: of gently cruise back into the atmosphere. Right, you get

513
00:22:59,320 --> 00:23:01,480
Speaker 1: a lot of heated it's hard to deal with, you know,

514
00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:04,040
Speaker 1: you get all sorts of crazy accelerations, and so it's

515
00:23:04,119 --> 00:23:06,760
Speaker 1: just tough, especially if you're trying to keep the humans alive.

516
00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:08,879
Speaker 1: The nice thing about SpaceX is they don't do this

517
00:23:08,960 --> 00:23:11,439
Speaker 1: trick with humans in the vehicle right, operated by computer.

518
00:23:12,160 --> 00:23:14,880
Speaker 1: It's still insanely impressive though, but yeah, it's just hard

519
00:23:14,880 --> 00:23:16,680
Speaker 1: to make a vehicle that can endure all that. I mean,

520
00:23:16,680 --> 00:23:18,199
Speaker 1: this is really hard stuff.

521
00:23:18,400 --> 00:23:20,880
Speaker 3: It was about thirty thousand dollars per pound to send

522
00:23:20,880 --> 00:23:23,560
Speaker 3: a mass of stuff to space using the shuttle. It

523
00:23:23,800 --> 00:23:26,359
Speaker 3: was really expensive. Once you got that shuttle safely on

524
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:28,600
Speaker 3: the ground, refurbishing it, getting it ready to go back

525
00:23:28,640 --> 00:23:31,040
Speaker 3: up again cost a lot of money. And so it

526
00:23:31,119 --> 00:23:33,440
Speaker 3: did not lower the cost of sending masks to space

527
00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:34,640
Speaker 3: like people had anticipated.

528
00:23:34,840 --> 00:23:37,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, interesting. People thought that the space shuttle was going

529
00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:40,000
Speaker 2: to be like a shuttle literally and make it cheap

530
00:23:40,040 --> 00:23:41,800
Speaker 2: to get stuff to and front space.

531
00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:43,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was actually evidence that it was the most

532
00:23:43,760 --> 00:23:46,479
Speaker 1: expensive way during its like heyday, it's funne Ever, when

533
00:23:46,520 --> 00:23:49,560
Speaker 1: they retired it, like everyone outside the space community was like,

534
00:23:49,560 --> 00:23:52,000
Speaker 1: this is the end of America, and like everyone in

535
00:23:52,040 --> 00:23:54,880
Speaker 1: the space community was like, thank god, they like took

536
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:56,280
Speaker 1: that death trap off the market.

537
00:23:56,400 --> 00:23:59,400
Speaker 2: You know, well, what was wrong, like what was wrong

538
00:23:59,440 --> 00:24:02,000
Speaker 2: about their kindations or the physics or why didn't it

539
00:24:02,040 --> 00:24:03,719
Speaker 2: work out? Was it never going to work out? It

540
00:24:03,760 --> 00:24:04,879
Speaker 2: was just silly politics.

541
00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:08,920
Speaker 1: This is like an endless nerd debate. I think people

542
00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:11,440
Speaker 1: who are more pro shuttle want to defend it would say, look,

543
00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:13,480
Speaker 1: the government made them do all sorts of crazy stuff.

544
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:16,120
Speaker 1: They didn't fund it enough the beginning, and then for

545
00:24:16,200 --> 00:24:18,840
Speaker 1: quote unquote safety reasons, you had to disassemble and assess

546
00:24:18,840 --> 00:24:21,560
Speaker 1: all these different parts. So part why SpaceX is cheap,

547
00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:23,520
Speaker 1: it's not just three usables. They did a clean sheet

548
00:24:23,560 --> 00:24:25,639
Speaker 1: design that uses a lot of off the shelf parts.

549
00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:28,639
Speaker 1: What argument as part of why SpaceX can exist is

550
00:24:28,680 --> 00:24:30,680
Speaker 1: because a lot of off the shelf electronics just got

551
00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:32,840
Speaker 1: really good in a way that wasn't true in like

552
00:24:32,880 --> 00:24:36,159
Speaker 1: the late seventies. So it's confluence of things. It's possible,

553
00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:38,639
Speaker 1: it just wasn't the time yet. Notably, the Soviet Union

554
00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:41,400
Speaker 1: had a very similar vehicle called Brand which I think

555
00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:42,439
Speaker 1: flew exactly once.

556
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:46,480
Speaker 2: So let's talk about why it's possible. Is it just

557
00:24:46,760 --> 00:24:50,840
Speaker 2: cheap and fast electronics that are also like somehow radiation hard?

558
00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:52,960
Speaker 2: Like why is it possible for SpaceX to do this?

559
00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:55,919
Speaker 2: Was it a moment of genius a particular insight? Was

560
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:58,840
Speaker 2: it Elon Musk being super cool? What was it that

561
00:24:58,840 --> 00:24:59,640
Speaker 2: made this possible?

562
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:02,159
Speaker 1: Eric Berger has a great book about this called Liftoff,

563
00:25:02,240 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 1: kind of going into the details. I think it's a

564
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:05,920
Speaker 1: couple of things, like, I mean, reusables matter, but actually

565
00:25:05,920 --> 00:25:08,480
Speaker 1: they were doing pretty well before reusables. And a big

566
00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 1: part of it is like, if you look at the

567
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:12,840
Speaker 1: history of rocketry, most rockets are not clean sheet designs.

568
00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:16,040
Speaker 1: Their old military stuff. The rockets the Mercury guys were

569
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:18,360
Speaker 1: flying and was just there was a warhead and they

570
00:25:18,359 --> 00:25:20,440
Speaker 1: took it off and they put Alan Shepherd on top,

571
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:23,000
Speaker 1: and it was reportedly pretty bumpy too, because it was

572
00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:24,920
Speaker 1: not meant for humans, right, and This is like the

573
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:27,200
Speaker 1: history of rockets for many years, and in fact, a

574
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:29,080
Speaker 1: lot of those early rocket designs go back to like

575
00:25:29,119 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 1: the NAZV too rockets. That's like where all early rocketry

576
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:33,360
Speaker 1: comes from, or much of it.

577
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:35,879
Speaker 2: But if you already have a system that mostly works,

578
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:37,639
Speaker 2: why do you want to clean sheet design? Aren't you

579
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:40,159
Speaker 2: saving money by building off of something you already have.

580
00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:43,840
Speaker 1: I think the argument is usually that those designs they're

581
00:25:43,840 --> 00:25:46,119
Speaker 1: built for military stuff, so that means a lot of stuff.

582
00:25:46,119 --> 00:25:48,440
Speaker 1: It means, you know, maybe they're paying for high reliability

583
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 1: as opposed to cost. It could also mean famously, you

584
00:25:51,320 --> 00:25:53,080
Speaker 1: looked like the F thirty five, where like the Navy

585
00:25:53,080 --> 00:25:55,160
Speaker 1: gets to say, the Army gets to say, Marines get

586
00:25:55,160 --> 00:25:56,880
Speaker 1: to say, and so you end up with this big,

587
00:25:56,920 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 1: complicated machine, where I think the SpaceX is like a

588
00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:02,760
Speaker 1: very spare rocket. It's very stripped down. It's also like

589
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:05,640
Speaker 1: not as many spoke parts. So that a NASA way

590
00:26:05,680 --> 00:26:07,960
Speaker 1: of doing things, which kind of makes sense for research agency,

591
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:09,640
Speaker 1: is you use a lot of smoke parts, you don't

592
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:11,560
Speaker 1: use a lot of off the shelf. And part of

593
00:26:11,560 --> 00:26:14,479
Speaker 1: that's like historically these parts didn't even exist, right, and

594
00:26:14,560 --> 00:26:16,560
Speaker 1: so now you can like drop an iPhone in space,

595
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:18,960
Speaker 1: it has a chance. These things are pretty durable now,

596
00:26:19,160 --> 00:26:21,960
Speaker 1: and so I think something between doing a clean sheet

597
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:25,560
Speaker 1: design having access to modern electronics and yeah, I don't

598
00:26:25,600 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 1: like always big of a position of complimenting e On Musk,

599
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:30,280
Speaker 1: but you know, he brought a kind of Silicon Valley

600
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: view to things. And that was, by the way possible

601
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:35,680
Speaker 1: because of the COTS program, which started at NASA, which

602
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:37,560
Speaker 1: we don't need to get into, but essentially said look,

603
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:39,560
Speaker 1: we're going to stop doing this cost plus contract business.

604
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:41,080
Speaker 1: We're going to actually go out and try to create

605
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:43,200
Speaker 1: a private sector for launch. I think that mattered a

606
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:45,160
Speaker 1: lot too, and people like Musk stepped in to fill

607
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:45,560
Speaker 1: the gap.

608
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:48,359
Speaker 2: So there wasn't an economy there, and the government invested

609
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:50,720
Speaker 2: in something and built an economy there.

610
00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 1: Right, I would say have still built it. I mean

611
00:26:52,840 --> 00:26:54,760
Speaker 1: a lot of the money that ghost to SpaceX is

612
00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:57,200
Speaker 1: government contracts and there's still sustaining it.

613
00:26:57,320 --> 00:26:58,880
Speaker 2: So then what is the state of the art now?

614
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:01,040
Speaker 2: How cheap is it to go to space compared to

615
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:02,520
Speaker 2: how it used to be twenty years ago?

616
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:04,240
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, So even we were writing the book, the

617
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 1: standard number was something like ten thousand of kilogram the

618
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 1: latest numbers for Leo or twenty six hundred dollars per kilogram,

619
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:13,560
Speaker 1: and that's on Falcon nine. So for comparison to the

620
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:15,720
Speaker 1: numbers we have for the Space Shuttle was sixty five

621
00:27:16,080 --> 00:27:18,640
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars per kilogram. So that's a pretty non

622
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:21,760
Speaker 1: trivial drop. And it's possible that SpaceX's own internal numbers

623
00:27:21,800 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 1: are even cheaper when they reuse a lot of rockets

624
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:26,240
Speaker 1: for their starlink system. The numbers we have for the

625
00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:28,439
Speaker 1: Falcon Heavy, which is essentially like a Falcon with two

626
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:31,040
Speaker 1: other Falcon boosters strapped to it, is fifteen hundred dollars

627
00:27:31,119 --> 00:27:34,159
Speaker 1: per kilogram, like an order of magnitude cheaper than it

628
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:35,840
Speaker 1: was just when we were writing ten years ago.

629
00:27:36,040 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 2: All right, So if I had a really big chicken

630
00:27:37,800 --> 00:27:40,080
Speaker 2: sandwich it's a kilogram, and I wanted to launch it

631
00:27:40,119 --> 00:27:42,760
Speaker 2: to space, it would only cost me fifteen hundred bucks.

632
00:27:43,040 --> 00:27:44,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean, you know you really want to

633
00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:47,080
Speaker 1: fill the firing with chicken sandwiches, You just have a

634
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:48,520
Speaker 1: lot of chicken sandwich. You have to pay for the

635
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:54,399
Speaker 1: whole vehicle. You don't get a.

636
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 2: All right, Well, still, fifteen hundred dollars is not crazy number.

637
00:27:55,359 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 2: I mean, it would cost me like one hundreds of

638
00:27:57,040 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 2: dollars to send a chicken sandwich in China, for example,

639
00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 2: and so you know a factor tend to go to

640
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,760
Speaker 2: space honestly seems reasonable. But this is for cargo. What

641
00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:07,720
Speaker 2: about for people? Where are we in terms of like

642
00:28:07,760 --> 00:28:09,000
Speaker 2: sending people into space?

643
00:28:09,440 --> 00:28:11,920
Speaker 1: So you know, the Shuttle retired and basically the way

644
00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:14,080
Speaker 1: we were able to get to space was embarrassingly by

645
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:17,080
Speaker 1: employing the Russians to launch us. And then SpaceX comes

646
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:19,160
Speaker 1: along and made it possible. But it's like it's hard

647
00:28:19,200 --> 00:28:21,880
Speaker 1: to have the extra step where you get humans on board.

648
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:23,639
Speaker 1: There's just a lot of extra stuff that has to

649
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:26,119
Speaker 1: not go wrong. You have to have high reliability, you

650
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:28,600
Speaker 1: have to have these little capsules that have oxygen. And

651
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:32,400
Speaker 1: so they built one. They built the Dragon Capsule, where notably,

652
00:28:32,440 --> 00:28:35,080
Speaker 1: like companies like Boeing which is a pretty storied company,

653
00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:38,840
Speaker 1: have not really succeeded, they built this capsule successfully docked

654
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:42,240
Speaker 1: multiple times now with the ISS. They also have sent

655
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 1: up restocking missions that bring like, you know, consumables, that

656
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:46,400
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Cool.

657
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:48,800
Speaker 2: All right, so then what does this mean? Right? We

658
00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 2: talked earlier about how difficult it is to get into space.

659
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:55,400
Speaker 2: Getting up from Earth is expensive. But now things have changed,

660
00:28:55,440 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 2: things are cheaper. Does that change our calculus about building

661
00:28:59,360 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 2: stuff out in space, getting that space economy going? That

662
00:29:02,960 --> 00:29:05,920
Speaker 2: things changed qualitatively or just quantitatively.

663
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:08,800
Speaker 1: I would say both. I mean so quantitatively. More and

664
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:12,080
Speaker 1: more of the space business has become private. You know.

665
00:29:12,120 --> 00:29:14,720
Speaker 1: Of course, at the beginning it was exclusively governments, and

666
00:29:14,760 --> 00:29:17,120
Speaker 1: for a very long time that was true. And it's

667
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:20,520
Speaker 1: really changed, especially in the last ten years. It's majority private.

668
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:22,640
Speaker 1: We tried to find people who are trying to estimate this.

669
00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:23,960
Speaker 1: In a couple of years ago it was already three

670
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:27,040
Speaker 1: quarters private, and I'm sure that's just continued. The business

671
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:28,880
Speaker 1: has grown. I mean, the nice thing is, you know,

672
00:29:29,120 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 1: the stuff grows in what am I trying to use?

673
00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:33,520
Speaker 2: Tandem Panda? Thank you so good? Kelly?

674
00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 3: Is he one for Kelly? Zero point ten?

675
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:41,200
Speaker 1: Oh? All right, well you're way behind this plant. We're

676
00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:44,520
Speaker 1: all ever more data hungry for like I cat videos.

677
00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:46,880
Speaker 1: There's also practical stuff like even ten years we're all

678
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:48,640
Speaker 1: in self driving cars. Then they might want you know,

679
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 1: lowers orbit satellite uplinks for constant connectivity, and so we

680
00:29:51,600 --> 00:29:53,520
Speaker 1: just want more and more and more data and so

681
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 1: the satellites can supply that, right, So you know I

682
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 1: said earlier everything below geosynchronous is valuable, and that's what

683
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:00,800
Speaker 1: it's valuable for. This is nice because it's a sort

684
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:03,560
Speaker 1: of ratchet where you know, you keep throwing up more satellites.

685
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 1: It gets cheaper to mass produce them. Data gets cheaper.

686
00:30:06,240 --> 00:30:08,080
Speaker 1: But when the data gets cheaper, we just demand more

687
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:09,720
Speaker 1: and more and more of it, and so we keep

688
00:30:09,720 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: throwing up satellites. And so this is why we're finally

689
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:13,800
Speaker 1: you know, for a long time people talked about having

690
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:15,960
Speaker 1: problems with like satellites smashing into each other, and it's

691
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:18,880
Speaker 1: finally becoming like maybe a bit more serious. And it's

692
00:30:18,920 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 1: also maybe we want to lead it into this. It's

693
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:23,560
Speaker 1: making space tourism at least more plausible. That we haven't

694
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:25,120
Speaker 1: seen like an explosion in that yet.

695
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:27,959
Speaker 2: All right, So then is there a space economy for tourism?

696
00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:30,200
Speaker 2: I mean people have been launching on these things, you know,

697
00:30:30,200 --> 00:30:31,760
Speaker 2: I don't know how high up they're getting, whether their

698
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:34,240
Speaker 2: accounts of space, whether their counts is tourism, whether they're

699
00:30:34,480 --> 00:30:37,160
Speaker 2: you know, commercial knots or whatever. Do you think this

700
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 2: is the beginning of a space tourism industry.

701
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:41,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean, you know, people have been doing

702
00:30:41,280 --> 00:30:44,080
Speaker 1: space tourism for like over twenty years now. A bunch

703
00:30:44,120 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 1: of people have gone up to the ISS. They're all

704
00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:47,880
Speaker 1: very rich people. Most of them wrote books about it.

705
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:50,960
Speaker 1: We read some of them. And more recently Blue Origin

706
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 1: has been sending people up and you can kind of

707
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:57,760
Speaker 1: debate if they are space tourists because they don't go

708
00:30:57,840 --> 00:31:00,600
Speaker 1: to orbit, which is kind of like for a nerd,

709
00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:02,240
Speaker 1: the important thing when you go to space, you want

710
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 1: to go to orbit, which is much harder to do

711
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:05,720
Speaker 1: than to just do what they do, which is they

712
00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:08,360
Speaker 1: go up really high. They get the view of space

713
00:31:08,400 --> 00:31:10,120
Speaker 1: you want, right, They get to see you above the

714
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:12,240
Speaker 1: atmosphere with the stars above, and they get to I

715
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:14,800
Speaker 1: think something like four minutes in free fall floating, so

716
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:16,800
Speaker 1: they get a kind of like astronaut like experience. So

717
00:31:16,800 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 1: if you count that, the number has gone way up.

718
00:31:18,800 --> 00:31:21,360
Speaker 2: But why does the nerd only value being in orbit?

719
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 2: Why does it only count if you're in orbit?

720
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:25,080
Speaker 1: Because it's the hard part, right, I forget. There's some

721
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:27,160
Speaker 1: famous line from Hindline which is like the hard part

722
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 1: about going to space is not going up high, it's

723
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:32,120
Speaker 1: going over fast. Right, So you feel aout this idea

724
00:31:32,120 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 1: that when you're in orbit you don't experience gravity, But

725
00:31:33,960 --> 00:31:36,040
Speaker 1: of course you experience gravity because you didn't as you know,

726
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 1: you fling off in a straight line until you encountered

727
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 1: something else. And so it's just that you're at the

728
00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:44,320
Speaker 1: right velocity. The slingy outy tendency is balanced by the

729
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:46,840
Speaker 1: polleyanny tendency, and so you go to a circle.

730
00:31:47,360 --> 00:31:48,640
Speaker 2: I guess. So, but if I wanted to go to

731
00:31:48,680 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 2: the Moon or Mars, whatever, I wouldn't go to orbit,

732
00:31:50,800 --> 00:31:53,720
Speaker 2: and I would still count that as going out into space, right.

733
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:56,080
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, sure, sure. If if Vegas was shipping build to

734
00:31:56,120 --> 00:32:01,960
Speaker 1: the Moon, I would waive my objection by all means.

735
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:04,360
Speaker 2: I'm glad we settled that here in nerd Corta.

736
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: That's right, it's good, right, Yeah, so we don't need

737
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:09,640
Speaker 1: to go on this change. But actually comes up legally

738
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: because you have different legal protections if you're an astronaut

739
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:15,280
Speaker 1: versus a non astronaut under international law.

740
00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:16,400
Speaker 2: Protection from who.

741
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:20,040
Speaker 3: That's a good question, Aliens.

742
00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:24,240
Speaker 2: Ghosts on the Moon, Moon's haunted bro.

743
00:32:24,680 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 3: I think it's usually imagined that if there's some disaster

744
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:29,680
Speaker 3: in space or you land in a foreign country, there's

745
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 3: a legal obligation to whoever could help you out to

746
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 3: help you out.

747
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:36,920
Speaker 1: So like if you went to orbit with your chicken

748
00:32:36,960 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 1: sandwich and you fell over Siberia, the Russians, even if

749
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 1: they were really mad at us, would be obligated to

750
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 1: deliver you and your vehicle and not be jerks about it. Basically,

751
00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:50,440
Speaker 1: there's more precise language in the out of space Street,

752
00:32:50,440 --> 00:32:52,920
Speaker 1: but not much more precise. And I guess they'd have

753
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:55,800
Speaker 1: to render up the sandwich or something you can visualize, right,

754
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:59,000
Speaker 1: So SpaceX dragon capsule goes up. If you wash the rocket,

755
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:02,160
Speaker 1: it'll turn and it will go at high speed into

756
00:33:02,200 --> 00:33:05,520
Speaker 1: an orbital trajectory, whereas a Blue Origin rocket and this

757
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:08,200
Speaker 1: is still really cool, but it'll just go up and

758
00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:10,400
Speaker 1: then come down. There's no attempt to go into orbit

759
00:33:10,520 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: anything like that. So they're not doing the hard part.

760
00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 1: And that's why you know, you only get to spend

761
00:33:13,720 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 1: whatever it is, like some amount of minutes doing space

762
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 1: as opposed to days or weeks or whatever.

763
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:20,200
Speaker 3: Can I ask a quick clarifying question, So when Kentucky

764
00:33:20,200 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 3: Fried Chickens sent one of their chicken sandwiches up on

765
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:25,960
Speaker 3: a high altitude balloon, because it didn't orbit. That doesn't count.

766
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:27,480
Speaker 2: Rat did that really happen?

767
00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:31,600
Speaker 3: That did really happen? Yes, that doesn't count.

768
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:34,520
Speaker 1: Right to Zach, that doesn't count as the chicken sandwich

769
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: being an astronaut.

770
00:33:35,440 --> 00:33:37,920
Speaker 3: No, no, going to space, going to space? Did they

771
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:39,840
Speaker 3: waste their money on that advertising campaign?

772
00:33:40,120 --> 00:33:42,680
Speaker 1: Are you guys trying to get KFC as a sponsor

773
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:43,120
Speaker 1: right now?

774
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:46,320
Speaker 2: We talked about Taco Bell recently having a target for

775
00:33:46,520 --> 00:33:47,600
Speaker 2: a reusable vehicle.

776
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:49,360
Speaker 1: We shouldn't go on a tangent, but there is a

777
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 1: kind of formal line called the carm online you've probably

778
00:33:51,600 --> 00:33:53,720
Speaker 1: talked about at some point, which is like sixty something

779
00:33:53,760 --> 00:33:56,360
Speaker 1: miles up that like is technically space, but who cares,

780
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 1: it's not orbit. It doesn't count as tourism. I don't know.

781
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:01,600
Speaker 1: Let's address the actual question, are we going to get

782
00:34:01,600 --> 00:34:04,040
Speaker 1: a tourism business? And doesn't matter. If you look at

783
00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:06,800
Speaker 1: the number of satellites, it's just totally exploded in the

784
00:34:06,880 --> 00:34:09,279
Speaker 1: last ten years. That has not happen with space towards

785
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:11,960
Speaker 1: The equivalent would be something like dozens of tourists are

786
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 1: up right now. SpaceX wants that they've talked about they

787
00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:17,120
Speaker 1: have this new vehicle called starship. It's as big as

788
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:19,319
Speaker 1: a Saturn five, Like, it's enormous. It could put we

789
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 1: don't know yet, but say fifty or one hundred, one

790
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:24,160
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty tons in orbit, so plausibly you could

791
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:27,359
Speaker 1: have like fifty people there all puking on each other

792
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:30,240
Speaker 1: at the same time as they enter orbit, but getting

793
00:34:30,239 --> 00:34:33,680
Speaker 1: that magnificent view that John Glenn got on his first orbit, right,

794
00:34:33,760 --> 00:34:36,400
Speaker 1: And so one question you might ask is is there

795
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 1: any money in this? And so Kelly and I actually

796
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:40,000
Speaker 1: tried to look into this. There's not a lot of

797
00:34:40,000 --> 00:34:42,080
Speaker 1: people who run surveys that are like how much would

798
00:34:42,120 --> 00:34:44,600
Speaker 1: you pay to go into space? But there's some evidence

799
00:34:44,719 --> 00:34:46,520
Speaker 1: everything the exact number, but it's something like a decent

800
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:48,840
Speaker 1: amount of middle class Americans would at least say on

801
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:50,920
Speaker 1: a survey that they would part with like fifty grand

802
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:53,319
Speaker 1: for an orbital trip. Whether they would whether you could

803
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:55,719
Speaker 1: convince your spouse that that's like a good investment, is

804
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:59,120
Speaker 1: therek question? It does seem like there's an economy there, right,

805
00:34:59,200 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 1: There is a market. And what's exciting about that if

806
00:35:01,600 --> 00:35:03,600
Speaker 1: you want there to be like a really cool moon base,

807
00:35:04,400 --> 00:35:06,400
Speaker 1: is you know, if you've got a tourist market like this,

808
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:09,040
Speaker 1: even if it was just adventure tourism for the relatively rich,

809
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:11,719
Speaker 1: Like that's going to require a lot of development of

810
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:16,439
Speaker 1: like high reliability vehicles, life support. One of our big

811
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 1: things we winged about is there all these basics that

812
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:20,680
Speaker 1: you don't think about, like making sure the toilet doesn't

813
00:35:20,719 --> 00:35:24,719
Speaker 1: break like it did on inspiration for launched by SpaceX,

814
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 1: you know. And so you're getting all this basic tiki

815
00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:31,160
Speaker 1: TACKI life support stuff really worked out. One thing is

816
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:33,600
Speaker 1: a big d the US is like most astronauts are

817
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 1: middle aged dudes, right, just some high percentage of all

818
00:35:36,520 --> 00:35:39,200
Speaker 1: astronauts ever middle aged men who are in like peak

819
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:41,600
Speaker 1: physical condition, and so like the question is, like what

820
00:35:41,600 --> 00:35:43,759
Speaker 1: happens when like I go up, I bring like a

821
00:35:43,920 --> 00:35:47,160
Speaker 1: slightly sub average body into space slightly.

822
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:51,240
Speaker 3: Oh you're very handsome.

823
00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:55,120
Speaker 2: Let's have some boundaries here, Yeah, thank you, minus one.

824
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:56,440
Speaker 2: I'm blowing a whistle on that one.

825
00:35:56,560 --> 00:35:59,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, but no more seriousness, Like we don't have a

826
00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:03,440
Speaker 1: lot of on like old people, people have various conditions

827
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:05,239
Speaker 1: how they're going to performance this. We just don't have it.

828
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,080
Speaker 1: And so there's all this stuff you'd want to have

829
00:36:08,200 --> 00:36:10,279
Speaker 1: for a really cool moon base that you would get

830
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: naturally from a tourism business.

831
00:36:12,520 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 3: Zach and I in a city on Mars, call ourselves

832
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:16,520
Speaker 3: this space. I'm gonna say jerks for the show so

833
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:18,760
Speaker 3: that our editor doesn't have to do too many bleeps,

834
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:22,240
Speaker 3: but to just to provide a non space jerk counter argument.

835
00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:24,719
Speaker 3: One of the Wiener Smiths leaves the house, and so

836
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 3: I went to a bunch of space conferences. And if

837
00:36:27,040 --> 00:36:29,360
Speaker 3: you go to the space conferences, they would say that

838
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:32,440
Speaker 3: space tourism is just absolutely taking off. They count the

839
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:36,160
Speaker 3: suborbital flights. They are saying that the number of astronauts

840
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:39,120
Speaker 3: is increasing rapidly. And so I do think there's a

841
00:36:39,160 --> 00:36:41,439
Speaker 3: lot of activity in this area, a lot of people

842
00:36:41,440 --> 00:36:44,040
Speaker 3: who are excited. And so there are people who are

843
00:36:44,080 --> 00:36:45,720
Speaker 3: not as negative as the Wiener Smiths.

844
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:48,720
Speaker 2: Is there anybody who's more negative than.

845
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 3: There are there are?

846
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:52,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there are friends.

847
00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 3: That's right. There are the people who talk to us.

848
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:57,200
Speaker 3: All right, So let's take a break and when we

849
00:36:57,239 --> 00:36:59,279
Speaker 3: get back we will talk a bit more about the

850
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:16,360
Speaker 3: space economy.

851
00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:20,080
Speaker 2: Okay, we're back, and we're talking to the Winnersmith's about

852
00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:23,120
Speaker 2: the future in space. Where are the great great, great

853
00:37:23,160 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 2: great great grandkids of this wonderful marriage, going to set

854
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:31,160
Speaker 2: down their roots where they live on the moon, where

855
00:37:31,160 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 2: they live in space, or would they still be in Virginia.

856
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:34,960
Speaker 3: It's hard to be in Virginia.

857
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:36,759
Speaker 2: I don't think we're gonna have sunsets on the moon

858
00:37:36,800 --> 00:37:40,440
Speaker 2: the way we have in Virginia for quite agreed, Yeah, exactly,

859
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:43,120
Speaker 2: we have to paint them on the wall or something.

860
00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:47,279
Speaker 2: All right, So let's talk about realistic space economies. I mean,

861
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 2: we've talked a lot about how difficult to it is,

862
00:37:49,239 --> 00:37:51,440
Speaker 2: how expensive it is, but it is getting easier, and

863
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 2: we have an explosion of space satellites. And you guys

864
00:37:55,200 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 2: are skeptical about space tourism, But what are some space

865
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:02,560
Speaker 2: economies that we could have eventually, maybe somehow get going

866
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:04,680
Speaker 2: without finding gold on the Moon?

867
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:07,880
Speaker 3: Can I clarify real quick that I'm not necessarily skeptical

868
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:09,680
Speaker 3: about space tourism. That seems to me to be a

869
00:38:09,719 --> 00:38:12,200
Speaker 3: thing that's happening right now. I might be a little

870
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:14,480
Speaker 3: less skeptical than Zach. All right, go ahead, Zach.

871
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:16,880
Speaker 1: I would actually agree with that it's not exploding, But

872
00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:19,000
Speaker 1: I would actually say that's the most optimistic case of

873
00:38:19,040 --> 00:38:21,759
Speaker 1: space tourism. You know, it's not like an industry that

874
00:38:21,880 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 1: makes us all more productive, but it is one that

875
00:38:23,640 --> 00:38:25,400
Speaker 1: might exist. I there's enough each people want to go,

876
00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:29,279
Speaker 1: so yeah, so let's talk about other possibilities. So there's

877
00:38:29,320 --> 00:38:31,799
Speaker 1: been this desire for many years for there to be

878
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:35,200
Speaker 1: some reason to go to the Moon or Mars or

879
00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:36,920
Speaker 1: the asteroid belt. So we could talk about like some

880
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:38,799
Speaker 1: of the most common things and why we're a little

881
00:38:38,800 --> 00:38:40,840
Speaker 1: bit skeptical. I would say the most common ones you

882
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:44,400
Speaker 1: hear Kelly current me of you disagree are space based

883
00:38:44,400 --> 00:38:46,920
Speaker 1: solar and let's go mind the Moon or the asteroids

884
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:50,359
Speaker 1: or something and space based solar. You know, it could

885
00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:52,000
Speaker 1: be a whole episode, but the short version is do

886
00:38:52,040 --> 00:38:54,200
Speaker 1: a back of the envelope calculation, and you know, even

887
00:38:54,280 --> 00:38:56,759
Speaker 1: with really low launch costs, it's almost always going to

888
00:38:57,040 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: be better to put up a good voltap panel and

889
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: like Arasz or the Sahara desert them launching itto space.

890
00:39:03,200 --> 00:39:06,080
Speaker 3: If I can just quickly plug some work that Daniel

891
00:39:06,120 --> 00:39:08,120
Speaker 3: and I have done in the past back on Daniel

892
00:39:08,160 --> 00:39:11,080
Speaker 3: and Jorge Explain the Universe. Daniel and I did a

893
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:13,400
Speaker 3: chat about space based solar where we talk about some

894
00:39:13,480 --> 00:39:16,719
Speaker 3: of the limitations, and also I do feel like something

895
00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:18,719
Speaker 3: we've sort of skipped over. That's important to mention is

896
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 3: that the economy and low Earth orbit for satellites and

897
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:24,840
Speaker 3: stuff is huge. That is making tons of money, and

898
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:27,800
Speaker 3: we'll continue to expand. And we talked to Jonathan McDowell

899
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:30,640
Speaker 3: about the implications of more satellites going into space and

900
00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:32,920
Speaker 3: collisions and how that could affect the economy. But so

901
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:36,879
Speaker 3: now we're working beyond just putting satellites in space, right, And.

902
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:40,359
Speaker 2: There aren't some arguments for space based solar power. I mean,

903
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:42,600
Speaker 2: I think on the whole they don't win out, but

904
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 2: there are some reasons. It's not total insanity. The idea

905
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:47,759
Speaker 2: is that your solar panels are always in the sun right,

906
00:39:47,800 --> 00:39:50,800
Speaker 2: because you're never in the Earth shadow, which is cool.

907
00:39:51,120 --> 00:39:53,080
Speaker 2: So it's a gain of three x right there on

908
00:39:53,160 --> 00:39:55,640
Speaker 2: Moost or two x. And they could beam power to

909
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 2: anywhere on Earth, which is very cool. So you don't

910
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:00,120
Speaker 2: have to have solar panels in a place where you

911
00:40:00,120 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 2: have lots of sun Norwegians can get solar power in

912
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:05,440
Speaker 2: the winter. That would be amazing and nice and cozy,

913
00:40:05,560 --> 00:40:07,440
Speaker 2: But of course there's lots of issues there, like you're

914
00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:09,479
Speaker 2: building a huge beam and pointing it at the Earth.

915
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:11,839
Speaker 2: Could that ever go wrong? I can't imagine.

916
00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:16,279
Speaker 1: The father of rocketry, Hermon Obert, actually proposed putting a

917
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:19,440
Speaker 1: giant mirror in space for agriculture and for weaponizations. This

918
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 1: is one of the oldest ideas in space.

919
00:40:22,080 --> 00:40:24,160
Speaker 2: But of course we do use solar power in space, right,

920
00:40:24,239 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 2: satellite solar panels and all sorts of stuff. There is

921
00:40:27,239 --> 00:40:29,719
Speaker 2: a solar power up there, and you know, I think

922
00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:31,319
Speaker 2: that highlights it, like, if you want to do something

923
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:33,719
Speaker 2: in space, you should do it for the space economy

924
00:40:33,960 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 2: bringing it back down to Earth is almost never profitable. Yes,

925
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:40,719
Speaker 2: so then what is like, what is the space economy?

926
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:42,960
Speaker 2: What is the space version of the chicken sandwich.

927
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 1: One of the possibility which I'll just do this very quickly,

928
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:48,040
Speaker 1: is we either mind the Moon or there's something we

929
00:40:48,080 --> 00:40:50,200
Speaker 1: need to make in zero gravity. And so there's been

930
00:40:50,239 --> 00:40:53,439
Speaker 1: talk of the something for decades and you will still

931
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:55,560
Speaker 1: say this be like, well, you can make very pure materials.

932
00:40:55,640 --> 00:40:57,440
Speaker 1: I guess there are plays to be easier to make

933
00:40:57,480 --> 00:41:00,880
Speaker 1: certain biochemicals in space. And this is all to my understanding, true.

934
00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 1: It's just that it's hard to win on price when

935
00:41:04,080 --> 00:41:06,000
Speaker 1: you have to fly to like a space station and

936
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:08,480
Speaker 1: assent bloat there, and so far it just hasn't happened.

937
00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:11,080
Speaker 1: And if someone in your audience is probably objecting, like, well,

938
00:41:11,080 --> 00:41:13,360
Speaker 1: such and such company just put in millions of dollars

939
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 1: to do it, so what are they crazy? And my

940
00:41:15,600 --> 00:41:17,239
Speaker 1: answer is that our book I read a book from

941
00:41:17,239 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 1: the eighties it was like, you know, John Deere just

942
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:22,040
Speaker 1: paid three million dollars to send this thing into space,

943
00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:24,439
Speaker 1: and it's like, look, companies do this for promo. It's

944
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: not proof that it's a good idea. But the other

945
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:29,920
Speaker 1: option is the moon or the asteroid bilt like we're

946
00:41:29,920 --> 00:41:31,319
Speaker 1: going to go mine. And that goes back to what

947
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:34,080
Speaker 1: we were saying earlier about like, look, there's no special stuff.

948
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:37,760
Speaker 1: So the exception people often say is on the moon,

949
00:41:38,080 --> 00:41:40,560
Speaker 1: we'll get helium three. And their papers written about this.

950
00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:44,960
Speaker 1: Harrison Schmidt, the senator slash astronaut slash geologist, it was

951
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:47,359
Speaker 1: big on it, and we cite in our book there's

952
00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:49,760
Speaker 1: a great paper. I'm blanking on the name, but basically

953
00:41:49,800 --> 00:41:53,840
Speaker 1: just is this incredible takedown. But the very short version is,

954
00:41:54,680 --> 00:41:57,000
Speaker 1: you know, the only real use for helium three that's

955
00:41:57,000 --> 00:41:59,759
Speaker 1: big money is you could have a neutronic fusion, which

956
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:03,360
Speaker 1: is to cleaner form of fusion. And the problem is,

957
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 1: like it's a much harder version of fusion that the

958
00:42:05,680 --> 00:42:08,320
Speaker 1: fusion we already can't do, and the vision we already

959
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:11,319
Speaker 1: can't do is actually quite clean compared to like other

960
00:42:11,480 --> 00:42:14,600
Speaker 1: energy methods. I think of like this a neutronic stuff

961
00:42:14,600 --> 00:42:16,320
Speaker 1: as like a kind of show off version of fusion.

962
00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 1: We've already achieved utopia, why not push it a little further.

963
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 1: It's not like there's hunks of it on the moon.

964
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:26,839
Speaker 1: It's just an a moderately higher concentration on the You're

965
00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:28,800
Speaker 1: in the position of saying we have to like mine

966
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:31,319
Speaker 1: and process huge parts of the moon, and like, don't

967
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:33,920
Speaker 1: even get us started on how to run construction equipment

968
00:42:34,040 --> 00:42:36,479
Speaker 1: in a vacuum at one six gravity. It's a whole

969
00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:39,480
Speaker 1: other thing. But also, and this for me really got me.

970
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:41,400
Speaker 1: If you know your nuclear reactors, think y'all did an

971
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:43,520
Speaker 1: episode on this at some point. You know, there's a

972
00:42:43,560 --> 00:42:45,799
Speaker 1: type called a heavy water reactor. The main ones are

973
00:42:45,800 --> 00:42:48,040
Speaker 1: in Canada, the mini states that are built thinking that

974
00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:50,680
Speaker 1: uranium would be hard to come across in the future.

975
00:42:50,800 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 1: As they're a little more efficient, they use deuterated water

976
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:58,560
Speaker 1: and one of their byproducts is helium three. We really

977
00:42:58,680 --> 00:43:01,719
Speaker 1: urgently needed loads of helium three. Probably you're better off

978
00:43:01,719 --> 00:43:04,239
Speaker 1: building these like weird fission reactors and just sucking off

979
00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:07,839
Speaker 1: the byproduct. So unfortunately, if you're boring, you run into

980
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:10,480
Speaker 1: this problem every time you have one of these ideas

981
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:11,920
Speaker 1: about why we need to go to space.

982
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:14,719
Speaker 3: I think another problem is that you're always kind of vulnerable.

983
00:43:14,800 --> 00:43:18,439
Speaker 3: So say you did start mining helium three, it would

984
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:21,000
Speaker 3: be super expensive. As soon as someone figured out a

985
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:23,080
Speaker 3: cheaper way to do it on Earth, or any way

986
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:25,399
Speaker 3: to do it on Earth, they almost immediately can beat

987
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:28,000
Speaker 3: you at cost. And so there's fiber optic cables I

988
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:29,960
Speaker 3: think that people want to make in space. But again,

989
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:31,600
Speaker 3: if you can figure out how to do it on

990
00:43:31,640 --> 00:43:34,600
Speaker 3: Earth and get them just as good, you immediately beat

991
00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:36,680
Speaker 3: the competition. So I feel like you're always at risk.

992
00:43:37,239 --> 00:43:39,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the whole Like sex sorting story,

993
00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:41,200
Speaker 1: this is our favorite story, which is there were proposals

994
00:43:41,239 --> 00:43:43,160
Speaker 1: in the seventies to send bull seam into space for

995
00:43:43,200 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 1: sex sorting, which I guess is a little easier in

996
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:48,200
Speaker 1: zero gravity. And then the eighties methods were developed, and

997
00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:50,440
Speaker 1: so it's like any money that had been spent in

998
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:54,279
Speaker 1: like nineteen seventy five to sort bullga meats on Skylab

999
00:43:54,320 --> 00:43:56,280
Speaker 1: would have been really badly spent.

1000
00:43:57,440 --> 00:43:59,479
Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of these ideas are sort

1001
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:03,480
Speaker 2: of bad faith reverse engineering to cover. Like somebody just

1002
00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 2: wants to go to space, and like, let's come up

1003
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:07,719
Speaker 2: with an excuse to do it. And I think there's

1004
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:10,160
Speaker 2: just sort of like an enthusiasm there, like it feels

1005
00:44:10,200 --> 00:44:12,760
Speaker 2: like it's the future. Let's just get it started.

1006
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:15,520
Speaker 3: I know those people. I go to conferences with those people,

1007
00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:18,120
Speaker 3: and I genuinely believe that a lot of them really

1008
00:44:18,160 --> 00:44:20,160
Speaker 3: do feel like the things they're doing in space are

1009
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:22,000
Speaker 3: just so much better than what we could do on Earth.

1010
00:44:22,560 --> 00:44:25,320
Speaker 3: I think there's plenty of people who believe and aren't

1011
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:27,960
Speaker 3: acting in bad faith. I'm just not convinced.

1012
00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:30,200
Speaker 2: I guess bad faith is too strong. I mean, I

1013
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:34,480
Speaker 2: think the real motivation is enthusiasm for space, not like, hey,

1014
00:44:34,480 --> 00:44:36,360
Speaker 2: this is a good idea and it needs space, so

1015
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:39,080
Speaker 2: therefore let's go there. Is that fair?

1016
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:40,239
Speaker 3: Yeah?

1017
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:42,319
Speaker 1: I think, all.

1018
00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:45,800
Speaker 2: Right, so let's get back to trashing other people's data

1019
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 2: centers in space. I've heard people talk about these data

1020
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:52,000
Speaker 2: centers because, like Google spends huge amounts of money building

1021
00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:54,400
Speaker 2: these computers and taking up a lot of land and

1022
00:44:54,480 --> 00:44:57,360
Speaker 2: using a lot of energy and like warming the planet

1023
00:44:57,600 --> 00:45:00,319
Speaker 2: and you know, using a lot of water. But like,

1024
00:45:00,360 --> 00:45:03,320
Speaker 2: why don't we build this stuff in space? Right? Space

1025
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:06,360
Speaker 2: is big and cold? So what are your thoughts about

1026
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 2: data centers in space? Exactly?

1027
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean this is one of those ideas that

1028
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:13,239
Speaker 1: structure is one of the most bizarre ideas I'd never heard.

1029
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:14,879
Speaker 1: I was like nervous to argue about it because people

1030
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:16,360
Speaker 1: be like, no, the physics works out, and I was like,

1031
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:18,600
Speaker 1: but so may maybe we should go over for your audience.

1032
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:21,520
Speaker 1: Like it's hard to dump heat in space. Okay, it's

1033
00:45:21,600 --> 00:45:24,400
Speaker 1: really hard. Space is like colded in some formal sense,

1034
00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:26,400
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean it's easy to dump heat right,

1035
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:28,120
Speaker 1: for the same reason, like if you have a hot

1036
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 1: hunk of metal, it's easier if you have a bucket

1037
00:45:30,640 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 1: of water than like cold air to dump heat. There's

1038
00:45:33,680 --> 00:45:35,479
Speaker 1: just more molecules to pull away the heat. In space,

1039
00:45:35,520 --> 00:45:38,440
Speaker 1: You've got nothing or almost nothing, right, and so it's

1040
00:45:38,520 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 1: very hard to dump heat. If you look at the ISS,

1041
00:45:40,680 --> 00:45:43,360
Speaker 1: a lot of it is just radiators that are dumping

1042
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:45,520
Speaker 1: the heat, like generated by the systems and the humans

1043
00:45:45,520 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 1: in it. It's just one of the problems for space

1044
00:45:47,040 --> 00:45:48,760
Speaker 1: based solar is you have to deal with all this heat.

1045
00:45:48,840 --> 00:45:51,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's get into the physics that for a minute, Like, yeah,

1046
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:54,040
Speaker 2: how do you cool down? You cool down in two

1047
00:45:54,040 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 2: different ways. One is like you have air around you,

1048
00:45:56,760 --> 00:45:59,120
Speaker 2: which is bouncing off of you, and it's stealing your heat.

1049
00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 2: If you're hotter than the air, you're going to lose

1050
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:04,280
Speaker 2: your heat to the air. It's like heat diffusion essentially,

1051
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:06,359
Speaker 2: and out in space you don't have that method. There

1052
00:46:06,400 --> 00:46:08,840
Speaker 2: is no wind to make it feel cold. There is

1053
00:46:08,880 --> 00:46:11,200
Speaker 2: another method you can use to cool down, that's what

1054
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:13,799
Speaker 2: you mentioned, which is radiation. You know, everything that has

1055
00:46:13,800 --> 00:46:15,920
Speaker 2: a temperature it can be thought of as a black body,

1056
00:46:15,960 --> 00:46:18,520
Speaker 2: and so it radiates, and things that are hotter radiated

1057
00:46:18,600 --> 00:46:21,960
Speaker 2: higher frequency. That's your only way to lose heat in

1058
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 2: space because there is no wind. So, as you say,

1059
00:46:24,719 --> 00:46:27,800
Speaker 2: even though space is technically cold, although parts of space

1060
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:31,399
Speaker 2: are technically super duper hot because the particles are moving

1061
00:46:31,520 --> 00:46:35,000
Speaker 2: really high speed and so like you would freeze to

1062
00:46:35,040 --> 00:46:38,480
Speaker 2: death in a super hot but very dilute plasma. But

1063
00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:41,360
Speaker 2: also you could burn up, right, you could burn up

1064
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 2: because it's hard to cool down, even if you're in

1065
00:46:43,560 --> 00:46:46,440
Speaker 2: a super hot, very dilute plasma. But so all your

1066
00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:48,480
Speaker 2: intuition about hot and cold goes out the window. And

1067
00:46:48,520 --> 00:46:51,319
Speaker 2: the bottom line is it's hard to shed heat in

1068
00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:53,440
Speaker 2: space because there's no air to dump it into.

1069
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:55,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to be clear, the people proposing data centers

1070
00:46:55,800 --> 00:46:57,840
Speaker 1: in orbit know this. Yeah, But the point is, like,

1071
00:46:57,880 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 1: data centers are hot, so what is the solution.

1072
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:03,440
Speaker 2: The solution is basically giant radiators. And I think the

1073
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 2: people proposing data centers in space they understand that they

1074
00:47:07,360 --> 00:47:10,560
Speaker 2: are complicated, right, because you need more elaborate cooling and

1075
00:47:10,719 --> 00:47:14,040
Speaker 2: also like refurbishing your data center is harder, Like everything

1076
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:17,360
Speaker 2: is in space, right, and you need radiation protection and

1077
00:47:17,560 --> 00:47:20,719
Speaker 2: getting up there to swap out a new GP or whatever.

1078
00:47:21,040 --> 00:47:24,040
Speaker 2: It's complicated. I think they acknowledge that all these things

1079
00:47:24,080 --> 00:47:26,239
Speaker 2: are hard. I think the argument, if we're going to

1080
00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:28,799
Speaker 2: like steal man it to try to be fair about it,

1081
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:32,719
Speaker 2: is that resources eventually on Earth aren't limited, right. We

1082
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:36,800
Speaker 2: have limited space and limited energy and basically unlimited demand

1083
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 2: for computing, so eventually space has to be an efficient

1084
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:42,680
Speaker 2: way to do This.

1085
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:45,040
Speaker 3: Is another part of the argument that they're using the

1086
00:47:45,080 --> 00:47:48,520
Speaker 3: space based solar to power the data center, and so

1087
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:50,920
Speaker 3: being in space solves a bunch of the problems for

1088
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 3: space bace solar we were talking about earlier.

1089
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:54,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't need to bring the power back to Earth.

1090
00:47:54,719 --> 00:47:57,239
Speaker 2: You just power the computers there, and in principle, maybe

1091
00:47:57,280 --> 00:48:00,160
Speaker 2: even the compute is for your space economy. Right. For

1092
00:48:00,200 --> 00:48:03,279
Speaker 2: people who are generating images of chicken sandwiches on the Moon,

1093
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:05,800
Speaker 2: they don't have to go back and forth from Earth

1094
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:08,319
Speaker 2: in order to have their AI slave make their art

1095
00:48:08,360 --> 00:48:08,560
Speaker 2: for that.

1096
00:48:09,440 --> 00:48:13,040
Speaker 1: Whoa. You know. One of the things I probably often

1097
00:48:13,120 --> 00:48:15,280
Speaker 1: had writing the books is you'd be talking to someone

1098
00:48:15,280 --> 00:48:17,239
Speaker 1: and they'll be like, and that's why we'll need a

1099
00:48:17,400 --> 00:48:20,680
Speaker 1: thousand foot tall tower in the poles of Mars. And

1100
00:48:20,719 --> 00:48:23,640
Speaker 1: you'd be like, but I don't see when that's going

1101
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:24,839
Speaker 1: to be a good idea. They'll be like, well, I'm

1102
00:48:24,840 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 1: talking about ten thousand years from now, when we're I'm

1103
00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:30,280
Speaker 1: like Kardashev scale level eighty three, And you're like, well, okay,

1104
00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:32,600
Speaker 1: I guess I would even argue about that. So people

1105
00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:34,880
Speaker 1: will say this right, so like, we'll eventually have to

1106
00:48:34,880 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 1: do this because we're going to use up all the resources.

1107
00:48:37,040 --> 00:48:39,360
Speaker 1: But resources don't work that way. There's not like a

1108
00:48:39,400 --> 00:48:41,640
Speaker 1: sort of lump of stuff called resources that you can

1109
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:45,040
Speaker 1: use up right. So like before lithium ion batteries, like

1110
00:48:45,040 --> 00:48:47,399
Speaker 1: lithium had uses, but it wasn't this super valuable stuff.

1111
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 1: Now it's a really important resource. The same was true

1112
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:52,200
Speaker 1: for like high quality sand, for silicon. It was true

1113
00:48:52,200 --> 00:48:55,919
Speaker 1: of petroleum before the combustion engine. Right. People substitute stuff

1114
00:48:55,920 --> 00:48:58,319
Speaker 1: when new technology comes along, right, And that's how you

1115
00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:01,160
Speaker 1: get more valuable over time. And so you know, not

1116
00:49:01,160 --> 00:49:03,440
Speaker 1: to be too deprising, but you mentioned like we're all

1117
00:49:03,480 --> 00:49:07,439
Speaker 1: going to have our like AI, I'll say servants, like, look,

1118
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:10,359
Speaker 1: if you just want value, value means humans say they're

1119
00:49:10,400 --> 00:49:13,399
Speaker 1: willing to pay dollars for it or whatever for it, right,

1120
00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:16,359
Speaker 1: So like you can literally have infinite value just by

1121
00:49:16,360 --> 00:49:18,480
Speaker 1: putting people in the matrix or something like if we're

1122
00:49:18,480 --> 00:49:20,560
Speaker 1: willing to entertain these like, well, in a thousand years,

1123
00:49:20,600 --> 00:49:23,400
Speaker 1: we'll do this possibility, like wehen as well entertain that.

1124
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:25,839
Speaker 1: And just to like talk about what it would mean

1125
00:49:26,040 --> 00:49:28,480
Speaker 1: to need to go to space for a data center, Kelly,

1126
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:29,919
Speaker 1: you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think under

1127
00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:32,719
Speaker 1: the Antarctic Treaty system you could like litter Antarctica with

1128
00:49:32,840 --> 00:49:35,839
Speaker 1: data centers. You could probably do that now, and it's

1129
00:49:35,920 --> 00:49:39,480
Speaker 1: like cold and there's water. They have pancake breakfast at McMurdo,

1130
00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 1: and we're not doing that. So I don't know. Maybe

1131
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:46,319
Speaker 1: when we're done with Antarctica and we've like filled the

1132
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:49,720
Speaker 1: oceans with data centers and we're all just made of data,

1133
00:49:50,320 --> 00:49:55,040
Speaker 1: then that like aggregative like computronium, will need to expand

1134
00:49:55,040 --> 00:49:58,719
Speaker 1: into space. I have trouble seeing it earlier. The only

1135
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:00,279
Speaker 1: last thing I would say is I think people who

1136
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:02,680
Speaker 1: are really into this, well, I think often have a

1137
00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:05,400
Speaker 1: kind of libertarian leaning, so they'll say, well, look like

1138
00:50:05,400 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 1: the Earth is getting bureaucratic and overregulated, and this is

1139
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:10,399
Speaker 1: going to be the only place where we could put

1140
00:50:10,400 --> 00:50:13,360
Speaker 1: more stuff without having the like save the whales. Maybe

1141
00:50:13,360 --> 00:50:16,880
Speaker 1: that's the future. I don't know. The costs are so extravagant.

1142
00:50:16,960 --> 00:50:19,360
Speaker 1: I mean, like even if you had elon Musk predictions,

1143
00:50:19,360 --> 00:50:21,320
Speaker 1: like it's ten dollars, it's kilogram to go to space,

1144
00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:23,440
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if anyone's way to data center,

1145
00:50:23,680 --> 00:50:26,800
Speaker 1: but it's a lot of kilograms. It's just hard to

1146
00:50:26,840 --> 00:50:28,279
Speaker 1: imagine you're gonna win on price here.

1147
00:50:28,560 --> 00:50:31,279
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of this feels like chicken and egg problems. Right,

1148
00:50:31,320 --> 00:50:33,600
Speaker 2: you argue that there's no eggs because there's no chickens.

1149
00:50:33,600 --> 00:50:35,759
Speaker 2: There's no chicken because there's no eggs. Let me ask

1150
00:50:35,800 --> 00:50:37,880
Speaker 2: you this in fact, like think a thousand years in

1151
00:50:37,880 --> 00:50:39,480
Speaker 2: the future or five thousand years of the future, do

1152
00:50:39,560 --> 00:50:43,320
Speaker 2: you think humans will ever have a viable space economy

1153
00:50:43,520 --> 00:50:45,320
Speaker 2: or do you think it's never. Because if it's ever,

1154
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:47,680
Speaker 2: that means it's going to happen, and eventually you are

1155
00:50:47,680 --> 00:50:49,920
Speaker 2: going to want data centers in space. The only other

1156
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:51,839
Speaker 2: argument I think is that it's never going to happen.

1157
00:50:51,920 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 2: Is that what you think?

1158
00:50:52,719 --> 00:50:55,239
Speaker 1: I would actually say, there's a middle argument, which I

1159
00:50:55,360 --> 00:50:57,719
Speaker 1: prefer to make. I'd be curious if Kelly disagrees with me.

1160
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:00,360
Speaker 1: But it's like, so, it may be the case that

1161
00:51:00,480 --> 00:51:03,600
Speaker 1: there's never a quote unquote good economic reason to do this,

1162
00:51:03,840 --> 00:51:06,239
Speaker 1: just meaning you pay a dollar or someone does something,

1163
00:51:06,239 --> 00:51:08,840
Speaker 1: you get two dollars back. Right, I think there's a

1164
00:51:08,880 --> 00:51:11,000
Speaker 1: pretty good case that it'll either never be like that

1165
00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:13,400
Speaker 1: or wouldn't be any time soon. It doesn't mean we

1166
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:16,120
Speaker 1: won't do it. It just means that at some point it

1167
00:51:16,200 --> 00:51:18,160
Speaker 1: might be like Star Trek, Right, so it's like, why

1168
00:51:18,200 --> 00:51:20,319
Speaker 1: does Captain Kirk go around the galaxy? Was because we're

1169
00:51:20,360 --> 00:51:22,880
Speaker 1: all doing well and we'd like to see what's out there,

1170
00:51:23,280 --> 00:51:25,120
Speaker 1: and so, meaning like it could be at some point

1171
00:51:25,200 --> 00:51:27,680
Speaker 1: we're just so technologically advanced and riched we put people

1172
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:29,719
Speaker 1: on Mars as a sort of esthetic choice.

1173
00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:33,200
Speaker 2: Like building particle colliders or something exactly like that.

1174
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:35,080
Speaker 1: I don't want to let up the secret, but I

1175
00:51:35,120 --> 00:51:38,120
Speaker 1: don't think CERN is going to like get you cheaper butter.

1176
00:51:39,360 --> 00:51:41,279
Speaker 1: You do grow cows abuff parts, it don't think so.

1177
00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:41,680
Speaker 1: I don't know.

1178
00:51:42,480 --> 00:51:45,880
Speaker 2: There are buffalo at Fermulab, yes, and bison butter is

1179
00:51:45,920 --> 00:51:46,600
Speaker 2: pretty good.

1180
00:51:46,560 --> 00:51:49,560
Speaker 1: Okay with drawn, but no, I mean, like why do

1181
00:51:49,600 --> 00:51:51,839
Speaker 1: we have a base at McMurdo. I mean there is geopolitics.

1182
00:51:51,840 --> 00:51:53,520
Speaker 1: It's not like nice all the way down, But mostly

1183
00:51:53,520 --> 00:51:55,440
Speaker 1: it's because we think it's cool. We're much richer than

1184
00:51:55,440 --> 00:51:57,680
Speaker 1: we were one hundred years ago, and we just do it,

1185
00:51:57,840 --> 00:52:00,360
Speaker 1: and so like stuff like that could lead to a

1186
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:03,840
Speaker 1: serious martyrs presence. It's just that there's no good economic

1187
00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:05,920
Speaker 1: case for it. If you really want to give me

1188
00:52:05,960 --> 00:52:08,640
Speaker 1: a thousand years to work with, I don't see why

1189
00:52:09,000 --> 00:52:10,960
Speaker 1: you don't get to a stage where we all individually

1190
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:14,400
Speaker 1: have like four thousand robot butlers who attend on us

1191
00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:16,920
Speaker 1: all day long, and we have like amazing rockets to

1192
00:52:16,960 --> 00:52:19,239
Speaker 1: do anything we want and it's all very safe. Then yeah,

1193
00:52:19,280 --> 00:52:21,920
Speaker 1: why not that at least rules out what ninety nine

1194
00:52:21,920 --> 00:52:23,839
Speaker 1: percent of advocates are saying when they say we have

1195
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:26,840
Speaker 1: to go soon to get rich or to fix society

1196
00:52:26,920 --> 00:52:29,160
Speaker 1: or not be like thwarted by the bureaucrats who are

1197
00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:31,239
Speaker 1: dominating Earth. All that stuff goes out the window. If

1198
00:52:31,239 --> 00:52:33,239
Speaker 1: you're saying it's just an aesthetic choice will make because

1199
00:52:33,239 --> 00:52:33,680
Speaker 1: it's cool.

1200
00:52:34,000 --> 00:52:36,399
Speaker 3: So Zach and I spent like five years writing the book,

1201
00:52:36,400 --> 00:52:38,680
Speaker 3: and we had to argue until we agreed in the

1202
00:52:38,719 --> 00:52:39,960
Speaker 3: content that would go in the book.

1203
00:52:40,080 --> 00:52:41,200
Speaker 2: That's why it took so long.

1204
00:52:41,280 --> 00:52:46,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, so we don't usually diverge too much,

1205
00:52:46,160 --> 00:52:48,160
Speaker 3: but I do want to add to what Zack said.

1206
00:52:48,440 --> 00:52:50,440
Speaker 3: I think a lot of why we do stuff in

1207
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:53,360
Speaker 3: space comes down to prestige, and I suspect Zach agrees

1208
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:55,160
Speaker 3: with me on this point too. Yes, and so you

1209
00:52:55,160 --> 00:52:57,919
Speaker 3: could end up getting a space economy because the US

1210
00:52:57,960 --> 00:53:00,799
Speaker 3: and China are in a race to put research out there,

1211
00:53:00,840 --> 00:53:03,440
Speaker 3: and then they need data centers and things just kind

1212
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:05,279
Speaker 3: of build up over time, and so it might not

1213
00:53:05,400 --> 00:53:08,000
Speaker 3: be because there's something out there that's so valuable we

1214
00:53:08,040 --> 00:53:10,080
Speaker 3: should actually go out there and get it. It might

1215
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:12,359
Speaker 3: just be that both nations think that they look great

1216
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:14,840
Speaker 3: on the international stage if they were doing these things,

1217
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:16,840
Speaker 3: so they'll do it. So I think that could be

1218
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:19,319
Speaker 3: another way we create the economy that makes some of

1219
00:53:19,360 --> 00:53:20,480
Speaker 3: these ideas worthwhile.

1220
00:53:20,640 --> 00:53:23,560
Speaker 2: It wouldn't be the first time that science and technology

1221
00:53:23,600 --> 00:53:27,040
Speaker 2: has ridden on the back of nationalism and patriotism to

1222
00:53:27,120 --> 00:53:29,640
Speaker 2: make its case, right. I accuse other folks of bad

1223
00:53:29,640 --> 00:53:32,640
Speaker 2: faith arguments, but there's a lot of that also in science, Like, Hey,

1224
00:53:32,680 --> 00:53:34,319
Speaker 2: what we really want to do is X. We're going

1225
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:36,160
Speaker 2: to sell it to you as why because we think

1226
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:38,239
Speaker 2: you want to buy why. So I'm a little bit

1227
00:53:38,239 --> 00:53:39,919
Speaker 2: of a hypocrite there, or at least a ten billion

1228
00:53:39,960 --> 00:53:40,319
Speaker 2: dollar here.

1229
00:53:42,760 --> 00:53:45,400
Speaker 3: Zach and I are waiting for our alien question. Oh yeah,

1230
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:48,560
Speaker 3: don't let us sound Daniel.

1231
00:53:48,800 --> 00:53:50,960
Speaker 2: All right, here's my alien question. So, Zach, do you

1232
00:53:51,000 --> 00:53:54,800
Speaker 2: think that you guys are the reason for the Fermi paradox?

1233
00:53:54,880 --> 00:53:57,200
Speaker 2: Do you think on every planet is somebody out there

1234
00:53:57,320 --> 00:54:00,160
Speaker 2: that's written the wet blanket book about going to space?

1235
00:54:00,239 --> 00:54:02,400
Speaker 2: And that's why the aliens have never gone to space

1236
00:54:02,480 --> 00:54:04,840
Speaker 2: and we haven't been visited by aliens. It's all the

1237
00:54:04,840 --> 00:54:05,920
Speaker 2: Wiener Smith's faults.

1238
00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:09,239
Speaker 1: There's some kind of tentacle like Smith.

1239
00:54:11,719 --> 00:54:14,080
Speaker 3: Holding the back humanity exactly.

1240
00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:16,800
Speaker 2: Wow, that's what I'm suggesting.

1241
00:54:17,040 --> 00:54:18,839
Speaker 1: As a guy with a book to sell, I would

1242
00:54:18,880 --> 00:54:23,239
Speaker 1: go on any broadcast. I suppose maybe our message has

1243
00:54:23,239 --> 00:54:24,880
Speaker 1: reached other planets and they gave up.

1244
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:30,680
Speaker 2: Are you guys going to sell your book on Mars

1245
00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:31,839
Speaker 2: when there is an economy on.

1246
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:38,000
Speaker 5: Mars if we can, that's right, Well premise, that's right,

1247
00:54:38,120 --> 00:54:41,319
Speaker 5: that's right, you know, even if they're just selling it

1248
00:54:41,360 --> 00:54:43,120
Speaker 5: to laugh at us because of how wrong we were.

1249
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:45,320
Speaker 3: That's great. We'll take the royalties, will.

1250
00:54:47,239 --> 00:54:49,480
Speaker 2: Yeah. Just like I love hate downloads of the podcast,

1251
00:54:49,520 --> 00:54:51,799
Speaker 2: and there people who downloaded just to complain about it, like,

1252
00:54:51,960 --> 00:54:52,960
Speaker 2: keep going for it.

1253
00:54:55,560 --> 00:54:56,719
Speaker 1: That's beautiful, all.

1254
00:54:56,680 --> 00:54:58,319
Speaker 2: Right, So thank you very much Zach for coming on

1255
00:54:58,320 --> 00:55:00,520
Speaker 2: the podcast to tell us all about why going into

1256
00:55:00,560 --> 00:55:04,480
Speaker 2: space is still hard and still expensive and everybody should

1257
00:55:04,480 --> 00:55:05,680
Speaker 2: go to Antarctica first.

1258
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:15,279
Speaker 3: Great job, Zach, All right, yes, thank you, yeah, yeah yeah.

1259
00:55:16,120 --> 00:55:19,960
Speaker 3: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We

1260
00:55:20,000 --> 00:55:22,400
Speaker 3: would love to hear from you, We really would.

1261
00:55:22,560 --> 00:55:25,319
Speaker 2: We want to know what questions you have about this

1262
00:55:25,520 --> 00:55:27,200
Speaker 2: extraordinary universe.

1263
00:55:27,320 --> 00:55:30,280
Speaker 3: We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions

1264
00:55:30,280 --> 00:55:33,279
Speaker 3: for future shows. If you contact us, we will get

1265
00:55:33,320 --> 00:55:33,719
Speaker 3: back to you.

1266
00:55:33,960 --> 00:55:37,440
Speaker 2: We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us

1267
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:40,320
Speaker 2: at Questions at danieland Kelly dot.

1268
00:55:40,120 --> 00:55:42,000
Speaker 3: Org, or you can find us on social media. We

1269
00:55:42,040 --> 00:55:45,920
Speaker 3: have accounts on x, Instagram, Blue Sky and on all

1270
00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:48,719
Speaker 3: of those platforms. You can find us at D and K.

1271
00:55:49,239 --> 00:55:51,359
Speaker 2: Universe will be shy right to us