Speaker 1: Often in sci fi people will be like, well, water
Speaker 1: is going to be really valuable, and it's worth remarking
Speaker 1: if you're in a place where you have to pay
Speaker 1: huge amounts of money for clean drinking water, that's not
Speaker 1: a good situation. You'd rather not do that. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: If the economy already exists, than fine. Or as you say,
Speaker 1: with California, I get frustrated, not with you.
Speaker 2: But with the entire state as an idea, as an ethos. Oh,
Speaker 2: this is two Virginias against one Californian. It's not fair.
Speaker 2: It's not fair.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm pleased to
Speaker 2: say that particle physics is still cheaper than going to space.
Speaker 3: Hello, I'm Kelly wider Smith. I study parasites and space,
Speaker 3: and there are parasites. You just got to pick up
Speaker 3: some roadkill and you could see some parasites. It is
Speaker 3: super cheap investment.
Speaker 2: What about the space based parasite research industry shouldn't be
Speaker 2: good at space to explore tapeworms in space?
Speaker 3: I think that's a bad faith argument, Daniel.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I don't think there's.
Speaker 3: A lot of money to be made from parasites in
Speaker 3: space right now?
Speaker 2: All right, so you're turning down that grant.
Speaker 3: Then for now? Yeah, if you want to pay me
Speaker 3: to think about what parasites women accidentally bring with us
Speaker 3: to space, I'm taking money from just about anyone.
Speaker 2: All right there, it is okay, send your money to Kelly.
Speaker 2: Folks for space parasites.
Speaker 3: Whoop?
Speaker 2: Is it a science fiction movie? Is it a grant?
Speaker 2: Who knows? We'll find out.
Speaker 3: Could be both Porqueolo's dose.
Speaker 2: Exactly. And so today on the podcast, we have a
Speaker 2: special guest to come on and talk to us about
Speaker 2: everything that's happening recently in launching two space industries and
Speaker 2: trying to boost a space economy, trying to get humans
Speaker 2: off this planet and live out in the cosmos. Kelly,
Speaker 2: who is today's guest.
Speaker 3: He's a real cutie pie, and you're gonna get a
Speaker 3: taste of what it's like to live in the Winersmith
Speaker 3: how Zach likes to go on long soliloquies where I
Speaker 3: interject every once in a while by saying no, Nope,
Speaker 3: that's wrong, And so welcome to our life, listeners, You're
Speaker 3: going to get a little taste of the Wadersmith household.
Speaker 2: All right, And so today's episode is in response to
Speaker 2: a question from Kay Gilbert, a listener who wrote to
Speaker 2: us asking specifically for an update about what's going on
Speaker 2: in space. Here's Kay's question.
Speaker 4: I learned a lot from doctor Katrine Whitson now please
Speaker 4: invite Zach Wienersmith so he and Kelly can give us
Speaker 4: an update on soonish, specifically the first section on space
Speaker 4: travel becoming cheaper, because that seems to be the most
Speaker 4: nowish since they wrote the book. Many more nations are
Speaker 4: developing active space exploration programs and sending astronauts to the ISS.
Speaker 4: Commercial spaceflight is still in the startup phase, but shows
Speaker 4: a lot of potential and inexpensive CubeSats have made it
Speaker 4: possible for almost anyone with an interest to launch a
Speaker 4: satellite into lower Earth oad orbit. Of course, that just
Speaker 4: makes usable orbits more crowded messes with astronomy and greatly
Speaker 4: increases the amount of space junk. I'm especially interested in
Speaker 4: what Kelly and Zach learned about space economics when writing
Speaker 4: A City on Mars. Thanks all right.
Speaker 2: I love this question because it means like, Wow, this
Speaker 2: person really read both of your books and thought about it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and now they're coming to you for an accounting of
Speaker 2: what's going on now. You are forever on the hook
Speaker 2: on these topics, Kelly, you have to stay current forever.
Speaker 3: You know. It does actually feel that way. I keep
Speaker 3: trying to move on to the next book project, and
Speaker 3: then I keep getting interview requests from people who are like, oh,
Speaker 3: what do you think about this new thing? And I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't check the news. What new thing? And then
Speaker 3: I got to check the news. But it's okay because
Speaker 3: it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Kelly's so popular, Booty.
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, you'd be stressed if you weren't getting
Speaker 3: your other work done. But I do like getting to
Speaker 3: talk about space.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a great book, and so all the attention
Speaker 2: is very worth it. So let's invite onto the podcast
Speaker 2: the other Weeeners, Smith, who will join our conversation about
Speaker 2: the future of the space economy.
Speaker 3: All right, on today's show, we have the second best
Speaker 3: Wiener Smith, Zach. He is the cartoonist behind Saturday Morning
Speaker 3: Breakfast Cereal. He has three eighths of a physics degree
Speaker 3: and he is a wonderful co author. Welcome to the show, Zach.
Speaker 1: I do forgot two times. Hugo nominee.
Speaker 2: Oh and one time winner and.
Speaker 1: One time winner, but really the nomination is the true honor.
Speaker 3: You also didn't get the Eisner, right.
Speaker 1: I have twice not gotten the Eisner.
Speaker 2: Actually I have many times.
Speaker 3: Well, Zach was shortlisted. It's a slightly different.
Speaker 1: I officially didn't live twice. That's right on the record.
Speaker 2: Well, three eighths of a physics degree. I wonder at
Speaker 2: what point you can round that up to one.
Speaker 3: Not three eighths or ten. He also has a literature degree.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that's true.
Speaker 2: Well, since we're going to be talking about physics and
Speaker 2: space and all sorts of stuff, I think we need
Speaker 2: to hear more about your credentials. Zach, tell us why
Speaker 2: you didn't push that over the line to five eighth
Speaker 2: So a physics degree, that's.
Speaker 1: A good question. I actually had a like semester where
Speaker 1: I felt like I had to choose. My comics career
Speaker 1: was starting to go well. So I had already gotten
Speaker 1: a degree in literature, and I went back for physics.
Speaker 2: A well worn path from literature.
Speaker 1: This was really weird because usually it's the other way around.
Speaker 1: My last semester and I got like old bees, which
Speaker 1: like if it's your second time in college. You know,
Speaker 1: you're not like an undergraduate who doesn't know what they
Speaker 1: want to do yet you really should be doing perfect.
Speaker 1: And it was just that, like I was now managing
Speaker 1: at a comic career that was getting bigger and bigger,
Speaker 1: it seemed like the right path was to just kind
Speaker 1: of like do comics that I could teach myself whatever
Speaker 1: I wanted the side. And then things have gotten ever
Speaker 1: busier and mestically self teach, which is in theory faster
Speaker 1: the university, although I suppose professors have some role earlier.
Speaker 2: So cartooning has stolen another physicist from us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's quite a few lists.
Speaker 2: But you're right about self teaching. I mean, I tell
Speaker 2: my grad students to really pay attention in classes because
Speaker 2: it's the last time somebody's going to spend all their
Speaker 2: time trying to teach you something. After that, it's basically
Speaker 2: like you in a textbook. That's how I learned something new.
Speaker 1: I think it's the only way to get real depth,
Speaker 1: and you can only get so much from another person.
Speaker 1: You got to really sit with it.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, then consider this your pahd final example.
Speaker 2: If you do well today, we can round who.
Speaker 3: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoah. I think you can give him
Speaker 3: a bachelor's but he doesn't get a PhD.
Speaker 2: How about a pod since the podcast, I can't.
Speaker 3: Lurd my pod over him if he has one too.
Speaker 1: My career fantasy is to get an honorary degree from anywhere,
Speaker 1: just so I can say. That didn't seem that hard.
Speaker 3: So Daniel, when we had your wife on the show,
Speaker 3: it was very clear that you two are like supportive team.
Speaker 3: Zach and I are competing over everything everything.
Speaker 1: I believe in a free market, I think the best
Speaker 1: spouse should win.
Speaker 3: And she's winning.
Speaker 2: Wow. Well, we're not here to do Wiener Smith Merrick.
Speaker 2: They as fun as that might be. We're here to
Speaker 2: talk about space and whether we can access it and
Speaker 2: whether you guys want to continue to throw a wet
Speaker 2: blanket over the prospects of space colonization. You've been writing
Speaker 2: about this for quite a while. Your first book, Sooni
Speaker 2: Ish talked about space elevators and how they might be
Speaker 2: a terrible idea, and then you wrote a whole book
Speaker 2: about how we might not be ready to colonize Mars
Speaker 2: and space, and the listener wants to know, are you
Speaker 2: guys still bearish on space or have things changed? So
Speaker 2: give us some background here, Why is space so hard
Speaker 2: and expensive?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's a lot of angles on that, but
Speaker 1: I think the probably place to start is just literally
Speaker 1: the access to space, meaning like getting up and fast.
Speaker 1: And so I would say you can make a pretty
Speaker 1: good case that the main reason is expensive is because
Speaker 1: rockets kind of suck. The main reason we use them
Speaker 1: to go to space is we have no other method. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you look at a rocket sitting on a pad,
Speaker 1: it's something like eighty percent propellant meaning fuel and oxidizer
Speaker 1: stuff that gets burned on the way up. It's something like,
Speaker 1: depending on what you're doing, say sixteen to nineteen percent,
Speaker 1: the like machine that historically you discard during the process,
Speaker 1: although SpaceX has change that. And then at the very
Speaker 1: top you have the firing, which is depending on again
Speaker 1: on what you're doing, one to three percent, say of
Speaker 1: the total mass, and that's what goes to space. And
Speaker 1: you say, why is it so awful? Why is the
Speaker 1: ratio so terrible? And you know, of course you could say,
Speaker 1: well if this planet were a little bigger, may we
Speaker 1: just couldn't do it. The example we like to use
Speaker 1: is like if you had to take a road trip
Speaker 1: from Alaska to Buenos Aires, you would gas up once
Speaker 1: in a while. If you had to bring all the
Speaker 1: gas you needed for the entire trip at the beginning,
Speaker 1: you would look like a flea on like a gas tanker. Right,
Speaker 1: And the main problem you're going to face is that
Speaker 1: the first, say gallon of gas is mostly going to
Speaker 1: move gas. There are gallons of gas you're going to
Speaker 1: literally move the entire time, and finally we use up
Speaker 1: at the end. The most efficient way to do it,
Speaker 1: and this gets us to space elevators would be of
Speaker 1: like a magic pixie just dropped the drop of gas
Speaker 1: you need in whenever you needed it, so you never
Speaker 1: had to carry any mass of gas. Because that's most
Speaker 1: of what a rocket is doing. This is why we
Speaker 1: have staging, right, That's why a rocket burns up a
Speaker 1: bunch of propellant and then just drops off a hunk
Speaker 1: into the ocean, or if it's SpaceX, drops off a
Speaker 1: hunk that lands itself.
Speaker 2: Well, if you have magic pixies as an option, we
Speaker 2: can solve lots of problems.
Speaker 1: Not just.
Speaker 2: That opens up the door, that's.
Speaker 1: Right, you know, space elevator in a certain sense wouldn't
Speaker 1: be the magic pixie. Right. So space elevator is like
Speaker 1: a cable or a ribbon that dangles from something up
Speaker 1: in space, and there are different ways to do that,
Speaker 1: but basically you can just visualize this cable that goes
Speaker 1: up like a beanstalk, and you climb it. And the
Speaker 1: nice thing about that is you just expend the energy
Speaker 1: to you know, climb one more foot, right, so you
Speaker 1: can beam the energy that goes up. Most of like
Speaker 1: your efforts are going into fighting gravity in the sense
Speaker 1: of just getting up the next step instead of carrying
Speaker 1: oldest propellant, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think space elevators are hard for people
Speaker 2: to grow because it feels like it's floating and if
Speaker 2: you stand on it's going to fall down, and there's
Speaker 2: some complex orbital physics there. But essentially the argument is
Speaker 2: it's like a ladder. Right. It's a lot easier to
Speaker 2: climb a ladder one hundred feet than it is to
Speaker 2: jump ondred exactly, right, Yeah, And it takes a lot
Speaker 2: of energy because the ladder is supporting you as you go.
Speaker 1: Up, that's right. And there's been lots of hopes to
Speaker 1: get around the rocket problem, right, yeah, classic one of
Speaker 1: you read Jules Verne's First Spin on the Moon is
Speaker 1: do you remember what they do?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: They shooting a gun. There's actually a whole kind of
Speaker 1: comedy bit about Americans with guns. It's the Baltimore Gun
Speaker 1: Club and they shoot it and it's like a good
Speaker 1: introductory physics thing because it's like, I think we calculated
Speaker 1: it either for Sunnish or a city on Mars where
Speaker 1: it's like the initial g's are like twenty thousand to
Speaker 1: actually get to the Moon with the spaceship they're launching,
Speaker 1: so the humans would go flat.
Speaker 2: Oh I seem it's like a cannon. They fire you
Speaker 2: out of a canon into the moon.
Speaker 1: Literally, it's just a giant cannon. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was a gun that came up with
Speaker 3: the proposal. But anyway, the book is called From the
Speaker 3: Earth to the Moon.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Yes, well that's not so outlanders these days. If you've
Speaker 2: seen those spin projects, whether they like spin something up
Speaker 2: and then literally launch it into space, it's like good
Speaker 2: for some payloads, but enough for people. Yeah, the gun.
Speaker 1: Would work if your payload was like a hunk of
Speaker 1: iron or like some some fluid or something. But yeah,
Speaker 1: with like delicate, little splatty humans.
Speaker 2: It's no good, all right, So getting off of Earth
Speaker 2: is hard. Rockets are bad. Space elevators are problematic for
Speaker 2: other reasons. We can dig into that in another episode.
Speaker 2: Why do we want to lift stuff from Earth? I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's lots of stuff in space. Why don't we just
Speaker 2: like build stuff in space for space?
Speaker 1: So if you want to get stuff somewhere in space
Speaker 1: to build with, you got to say to yourself, well,
Speaker 1: where am I getting it? You don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of options. It turns out you have the Moon, but
Speaker 1: you know, the Moon is still pretty far away. It's
Speaker 1: hard to get to and then you have to like
Speaker 1: somehow land on the Moon and then boost off, which
Speaker 1: takes a lot of energy less than doing it on Earth,
Speaker 1: but a lot. Notably, this is true for the Moon
Speaker 1: and Mars. You don't have a thick atmosphere, which is
Speaker 1: very helpful when you'd like to land in right, you
Speaker 1: visualize Neil Armstrong in the Lunar Lander. There's no wings
Speaker 1: on it because there's no reason, and so that makes
Speaker 1: it more complicated. You could alternatively, like go to get asteroids.
Speaker 1: You know, people usually think when we say that we're
Speaker 1: talking about the belt, and I think enthusiasts would say
Speaker 1: that is ultimately the goal, but like for a plausible
Speaker 1: ish scenario, we're actually talking about near Earth asteroids that
Speaker 1: have a lot of unlikely characteristics, so like they have
Speaker 1: to be high and valuable stuff usually called platinum group metals,
Speaker 1: that's the really hot stuff, and ideally they should be
Speaker 1: sort of locking velossity with the Earth, by which I
Speaker 1: just mean as the Earth is moving, the asteroid comes
Speaker 1: in such a way that it like is not going
Speaker 1: too fast with respect to us, So you can imagine
Speaker 1: like the Earth is going well way the asteroids going
Speaker 1: to the other. Trying to catch it is going to
Speaker 1: be a dangerous business. That's all really hard and well
Speaker 1: beyond our current capacity. So we usually say, you know,
Speaker 1: if you go up to geosynchronous, which is about twenty
Speaker 1: four thousand miles high, you can make money pretty much
Speaker 1: anywhere in that shell, by data transmission, by remote sensing,
Speaker 1: by navigation, by doing stuff for militaries. Outside that shell,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of value financial sense. There is
Speaker 1: obviously all sorts of cool science value, but there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of value beyond that.
Speaker 3: It's funny when I first invited Zach on the show,
Speaker 3: He's like, I don't know that I'm going to have
Speaker 3: a lot to say. And I had thought like, oh,
Speaker 3: maybe it should just be Daniel and Zach on this episode.
Speaker 3: And then Zach was like, all right, I don't think
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have anything to say it. I was like,
Speaker 3: all right, we'll see. But anyway, this is an interview
Speaker 3: of Zach, so I will continue to let Zach.
Speaker 1: Go for it.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess, as an audience member to this, I
Speaker 2: might be a little bit skeptical about that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I buy the argument that there's not much in space
Speaker 2: you want to bring back down to Earth. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think people often think, ooh, platinum asteroid, that would
Speaker 2: be worth seventy five quad trillion dollars if I could
Speaker 2: bring it back here and sell it off bit by bit,
Speaker 2: And obviously that's ridiculous, But still catching stuff in space
Speaker 2: for building in space. I know we don't have the
Speaker 2: technology now, but is it impossible to imagine that we
Speaker 2: could never catch an astroid? I mean, I saw it
Speaker 2: happen on for all mankind.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, obviously at some point we'll have the
Speaker 1: technology to do that. I have no doubt about that.
Speaker 1: None of this is anti gravity. There's no forbidden physics.
Speaker 1: It's just engineering. The way I think about that is
Speaker 1: essentially what you're implicitly doing. There's assuming some kind of
Speaker 1: space economy, right, You're wishing it into existence, and then
Speaker 1: it's justified. But it's kind of like saying, well, once
Speaker 1: we have a on the bottom of the Marianna's trench,
Speaker 1: my French bottom Chicken Sandwich company will really be valuable.
Speaker 1: So I think this is why a lot of space
Speaker 1: geeks are in the business of saying, we have to
Speaker 1: build the city because it's existential. Kelly and I were
Speaker 1: just talking about this. There's a guy we really like
Speaker 1: named Winchell Chung who runs something called Project Row, which
Speaker 1: kind of documents everything ever said about space travel. And
Speaker 1: this idea calls mcguffinite, which is reference to the idea
Speaker 1: in movies of a McGuff and like a certain something
Speaker 1: everyone needs. You'll find that movies books everything for space colonization,
Speaker 1: they always positive mcguffinite. So like an avatar, there's an unobtainium,
Speaker 1: like insanely stupid name, really hard to get them, which
Speaker 1: is like a room temperature superconductor that somehow you can't
Speaker 1: just make back home from the same elements. You have
Speaker 1: to get it from like these poor natives. And the
Speaker 1: way I think with this is like, I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: be really boring about this, but it's like the whole
Speaker 1: world is running on the same periodic table. There's not
Speaker 1: like magic stuff you can get. There's no special in
Speaker 1: between e elements or whatever anything like this. So I
Speaker 1: don't know why you'd suppose you would find them, of
Speaker 1: all places like on an asteroid or on Mars, where
Speaker 1: you know you're just working from the same Giant Solar
Speaker 1: System accretion disc that made the other planets.
Speaker 2: I mean, from a physics point of view, there could
Speaker 2: be additional stable, super heavy elements. It is positive, yeah,
Speaker 2: so there might be very heavy elements that are stable.
Speaker 2: It's called the island of stability. But you'd need some
Speaker 2: pretty exotic physics to explain why it's created and existing asteroids,
Speaker 2: and it's not here on Earth, and it's also long lived,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. So you're right, Earth is mostly
Speaker 2: made out of the same stuff as asteroids, and so'd
Speaker 2: be pretty unusual that you could find something only in
Speaker 2: asteroids to put in your chicken sandwich.
Speaker 1: Yes, when we say island of stability, I thought physicists
Speaker 1: meant like two millisecond.
Speaker 2: Long lived is reli Okay, But isn't that the way
Speaker 2: all economies get started? I mean, there used to be
Speaker 2: no economy in California and then you know there was
Speaker 2: a gold rush that we had him a guffn. All
Speaker 2: economies do get started somehow, right, Your argument would essentially
Speaker 2: suggest we can never have new economies.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, so I say it this way, if,
Speaker 1: as he promises, mister Musk wants to spend you know,
Speaker 1: a trillion dollars or whatever and just plant a city
Speaker 1: on Mars, you know, we have all sorts of other
Speaker 1: concerns about that from other episodes you guys have done.
Speaker 1: But I suppose he did it, Like I suppose you
Speaker 1: woke up tomorrow and he had done it. Then maybe
Speaker 1: there's an argument for some of this stuff. But that's
Speaker 1: because you've made such a bad situation. Often in sci
Speaker 1: fi people will be like, well, water is going to
Speaker 1: be really valuable, and it's worth remarking if you're in
Speaker 1: a place where you have to pay huge amounts of
Speaker 1: money for clean drinking water, that's not a good situation,
Speaker 1: you'd rather not do that. You're absolutely right if the
Speaker 1: economy already exists and fine, or as you say, with California,
Speaker 1: I get frustrated, not with you, of course, but.
Speaker 2: With the entire state as an idea, as an ethos. Oh,
Speaker 2: this is two Virginias against one Californian. It's not fair.
Speaker 2: It's not fair.
Speaker 1: I'm ancestrally from Texas, so I gave both of you
Speaker 1: coastal leeds. My cost is filmed as it should be, is.
Speaker 2: Near coast the Gulf of America.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, that's right, that's right. You can gas your
Speaker 1: car up in the Gulf of America. So, you know,
Speaker 1: often when we say this, I totally sympathize with not
Speaker 1: wanting to be someone who's like, nah, dreams are dumb.
Speaker 1: You know, people will say, well, if Columbus had thought that,
Speaker 1: what would have happened, And first of all, I don't
Speaker 1: want to say is probably fifty million people wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been murdered.
Speaker 2: But that side, we'd still have all of min in history, right, right,
Speaker 2: you'd have.
Speaker 1: A couple of nice things. But also, like Columbus shows
Speaker 1: up and he gathers resources that are widely available in
Speaker 1: part by the way, because those indigenous people had found
Speaker 1: it and could tell them where it was willingly or otherwise,
Speaker 1: that was generally true. Right, So like Theo's people who
Speaker 1: show up in California, these settlers, they found the San
Speaker 1: Fernando Valley. Right, you want to talk about value, and
Speaker 1: this is in an agricultural era. Right, when I want
Speaker 1: to get at more deeply, I think you and I
Speaker 1: were talking about this earlier. Is people often talk about
Speaker 1: resources in this funny way, like it's just the sort
Speaker 1: of stuff and like it obviously exists in the moon
Speaker 1: or asteroids in some sense because they're made of stuff.
Speaker 1: But like in the modern world especially, and this is
Speaker 1: maybe different from how it was for most of human history.
Speaker 1: Value comes from organization, right, Like if you're running a country,
Speaker 1: would you rather have a diamond mind or Google? Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you had both. The diamond mind is trivial. It's
Speaker 1: really not a big contributor to the economy, like that
Speaker 1: tech sector. You know. We got into this. This is
Speaker 1: actually a late addition to our book. We were talking
Speaker 1: to an economists, to the developmental economists. We said something
Speaker 1: sort vague about this stuff, and he was like, you
Speaker 1: should look at this thing from the World Bank where
Speaker 1: they actually taught it up, like the wealth of different nations,
Speaker 1: and like what the actual value was to this planet
Speaker 1: of natural resources, and it was like, I think two
Speaker 1: and a half percent of overall wealth is a natural resource.
Speaker 1: It's minimal. So when people talk about what we have
Speaker 1: to do the asteroids because we'll get so rich because
Speaker 1: of natural resources. Like, by the way, ninety percent of
Speaker 1: that was possil fuels, right, which don't exist on Mars.
Speaker 1: I was talking to someone who's a real long term
Speaker 1: mist about this and she was like, well, but eventually
Speaker 1: we're going to have to push into space because we're
Speaker 1: going to run out of resources. And I was like,
Speaker 1: if you want to have a ten thousand year eventually,
Speaker 1: why don't you just say we'll all be hooked to
Speaker 1: like the matrix and we'll just experience infinite value in
Speaker 1: our heads. If you can invote these crazy sci fi scenarios,
Speaker 1: the idea of value goes bonkers, and I don't think
Speaker 1: it's even worth speculating about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll all just be downloading our chicken sand, which
Speaker 2: is no need to even go to your chicken sand
Speaker 2: with shack.
Speaker 1: And they'll be perfect yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, So getting the space is hard, mining stuff
Speaker 2: and using resources in space. It doesn't really have value
Speaker 2: unless it's already an economy, which means people there to
Speaker 2: value it and to need it. So that sort of
Speaker 2: sets the scene. Let's take a break, and when we
Speaker 2: come back, I want to hear from the Wiersmith's all
Speaker 2: about the updates since they're b was written, since we
Speaker 2: have had some rapid progress in reusable rockets and access
Speaker 2: to space and CubeSats and starlink and all sorts of
Speaker 2: other crazy stuff. All right, so everybody go get a
Speaker 2: chicken sandwich and take a break and we'll see you
Speaker 2: on the other side. Okay, we're back, and I'm mediating
Speaker 2: a Wiener Smith marital session.
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty clear that I'm winning, but I'm
Speaker 3: going to continue to let you have the stage for
Speaker 3: a little while and answer these questions since you were
Speaker 3: the guest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So we've been hearing about how difficult
Speaker 2: it is to get to space and to build an
Speaker 2: economy there if you don't already have one. What's changed
Speaker 2: since you guys have written your book. That's essentially what
Speaker 2: our listener wanted to know. Do you have a new perspective.
Speaker 2: First start with what has changed, and then let's talk
Speaker 2: about what it means.
Speaker 1: One of the funny things that happened with us when
Speaker 1: we were writing soon Ish was that the change began
Speaker 1: as we were like, going to press, we're really mad
Speaker 1: at SpaceX because they kept landing reasonable rockets when we've
Speaker 1: been trying.
Speaker 3: To discuss impressed with not mad as.
Speaker 1: I wish they would cut it out because we were like,
Speaker 1: this is future tech and they were doing it and
Speaker 1: we were like, well, this is just ruining everything. Butzz
Speaker 1: and I don't remember the number, maybe Kelly you did,
Speaker 1: It was like when we went to press, it was
Speaker 1: like six times they had landed. The reason we were
Speaker 1: walked with something like that wasn't much, but it was
Speaker 1: a huge deal. I remember talking to someone who said
Speaker 1: something like I watched the moon landing and this was
Speaker 1: a bigger deal. And I think most people wouldn't agree
Speaker 1: with that, but I did. But the moon landing was expensive.
Speaker 1: There was no way they were going to let us
Speaker 1: do this for very long, right the government, whereas like
Speaker 1: reasonable rockets, this has been like the dream since like
Speaker 1: the fifties. You know, if you go back Max Bajay
Speaker 1: of one of the big NASA engineers had these drawings
Speaker 1: of reasonable rocket. It would have worked by having three
Speaker 1: stacked rockets with a pilot in each of them with
Speaker 1: wings right, would have flown back down like insanely dangerous.
Speaker 1: It's super awesome. Nothing like it ever happened. There are
Speaker 1: a couple like experiments in the nineties, but they weren't
Speaker 1: like doing the high speed or any of thething you
Speaker 1: needed to do. And then all of a sudden SpaceX
Speaker 1: was going to orbit and coming back. And the reason
Speaker 1: that matters is that math we talked about earlier. Right,
Speaker 1: The old line is like if you have a seven
Speaker 1: forty seven, but you have to throw it into the
Speaker 1: ocean after each use, the tickets are expensive, and that's
Speaker 1: essentially how we did space for the entire Space age
Speaker 1: up to SpaceX.
Speaker 2: And why are we usable rockets so hard? I mean,
Speaker 2: landing a seven forty seven is tricky, but we can
Speaker 2: do it. Why is landing a rocket so much harder?
Speaker 1: I misspake when I said it was the only time
Speaker 1: because the course of the Space Shuttle was time before that,
Speaker 1: which was partially reusable. And I feel like that's actually
Speaker 1: indicative because you know, in the case of the Space Shuttle,
Speaker 1: we had two total losses out of you know, one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty something flights. And it's just because it's
Speaker 1: really dangerous to take something that's in orbit, meaning like
Speaker 1: if it were in air, it would be at whatever
Speaker 1: it is Map twenty five or something, and just sort
Speaker 1: of gently cruise back into the atmosphere. Right, you get
Speaker 1: a lot of heated it's hard to deal with, you know,
Speaker 1: you get all sorts of crazy accelerations, and so it's
Speaker 1: just tough, especially if you're trying to keep the humans alive.
Speaker 1: The nice thing about SpaceX is they don't do this
Speaker 1: trick with humans in the vehicle right, operated by computer.
Speaker 1: It's still insanely impressive though, but yeah, it's just hard
Speaker 1: to make a vehicle that can endure all that. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is really hard stuff.
Speaker 3: It was about thirty thousand dollars per pound to send
Speaker 3: a mass of stuff to space using the shuttle. It
Speaker 3: was really expensive. Once you got that shuttle safely on
Speaker 3: the ground, refurbishing it, getting it ready to go back
Speaker 3: up again cost a lot of money. And so it
Speaker 3: did not lower the cost of sending masks to space
Speaker 3: like people had anticipated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, interesting. People thought that the space shuttle was going
Speaker 2: to be like a shuttle literally and make it cheap
Speaker 2: to get stuff to and front space.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was actually evidence that it was the most
Speaker 1: expensive way during its like heyday, it's funne Ever, when
Speaker 1: they retired it, like everyone outside the space community was like,
Speaker 1: this is the end of America, and like everyone in
Speaker 1: the space community was like, thank god, they like took
Speaker 1: that death trap off the market.
Speaker 2: You know, well, what was wrong, like what was wrong
Speaker 2: about their kindations or the physics or why didn't it
Speaker 2: work out? Was it never going to work out? It
Speaker 2: was just silly politics.
Speaker 1: This is like an endless nerd debate. I think people
Speaker 1: who are more pro shuttle want to defend it would say, look,
Speaker 1: the government made them do all sorts of crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: They didn't fund it enough the beginning, and then for
Speaker 1: quote unquote safety reasons, you had to disassemble and assess
Speaker 1: all these different parts. So part why SpaceX is cheap,
Speaker 1: it's not just three usables. They did a clean sheet
Speaker 1: design that uses a lot of off the shelf parts.
Speaker 1: What argument as part of why SpaceX can exist is
Speaker 1: because a lot of off the shelf electronics just got
Speaker 1: really good in a way that wasn't true in like
Speaker 1: the late seventies. So it's confluence of things. It's possible,
Speaker 1: it just wasn't the time yet. Notably, the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: had a very similar vehicle called Brand which I think
Speaker 1: flew exactly once.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about why it's possible. Is it just
Speaker 2: cheap and fast electronics that are also like somehow radiation hard?
Speaker 2: Like why is it possible for SpaceX to do this?
Speaker 2: Was it a moment of genius a particular insight? Was
Speaker 2: it Elon Musk being super cool? What was it that
Speaker 2: made this possible?
Speaker 1: Eric Berger has a great book about this called Liftoff,
Speaker 1: kind of going into the details. I think it's a
Speaker 1: couple of things, like, I mean, reusables matter, but actually
Speaker 1: they were doing pretty well before reusables. And a big
Speaker 1: part of it is like, if you look at the
Speaker 1: history of rocketry, most rockets are not clean sheet designs.
Speaker 1: Their old military stuff. The rockets the Mercury guys were
Speaker 1: flying and was just there was a warhead and they
Speaker 1: took it off and they put Alan Shepherd on top,
Speaker 1: and it was reportedly pretty bumpy too, because it was
Speaker 1: not meant for humans, right, and This is like the
Speaker 1: history of rockets for many years, and in fact, a
Speaker 1: lot of those early rocket designs go back to like
Speaker 1: the NAZV too rockets. That's like where all early rocketry
Speaker 1: comes from, or much of it.
Speaker 2: But if you already have a system that mostly works,
Speaker 2: why do you want to clean sheet design? Aren't you
Speaker 2: saving money by building off of something you already have.
Speaker 1: I think the argument is usually that those designs they're
Speaker 1: built for military stuff, so that means a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: It means, you know, maybe they're paying for high reliability
Speaker 1: as opposed to cost. It could also mean famously, you
Speaker 1: looked like the F thirty five, where like the Navy
Speaker 1: gets to say, the Army gets to say, Marines get
Speaker 1: to say, and so you end up with this big,
Speaker 1: complicated machine, where I think the SpaceX is like a
Speaker 1: very spare rocket. It's very stripped down. It's also like
Speaker 1: not as many spoke parts. So that a NASA way
Speaker 1: of doing things, which kind of makes sense for research agency,
Speaker 1: is you use a lot of smoke parts, you don't
Speaker 1: use a lot of off the shelf. And part of
Speaker 1: that's like historically these parts didn't even exist, right, and
Speaker 1: so now you can like drop an iPhone in space,
Speaker 1: it has a chance. These things are pretty durable now,
Speaker 1: and so I think something between doing a clean sheet
Speaker 1: design having access to modern electronics and yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: like always big of a position of complimenting e On Musk,
Speaker 1: but you know, he brought a kind of Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: view to things. And that was, by the way possible
Speaker 1: because of the COTS program, which started at NASA, which
Speaker 1: we don't need to get into, but essentially said look,
Speaker 1: we're going to stop doing this cost plus contract business.
Speaker 1: We're going to actually go out and try to create
Speaker 1: a private sector for launch. I think that mattered a
Speaker 1: lot too, and people like Musk stepped in to fill
Speaker 1: the gap.
Speaker 2: So there wasn't an economy there, and the government invested
Speaker 2: in something and built an economy there.
Speaker 1: Right, I would say have still built it. I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of the money that ghost to SpaceX is
Speaker 1: government contracts and there's still sustaining it.
Speaker 2: So then what is the state of the art now?
Speaker 2: How cheap is it to go to space compared to
Speaker 2: how it used to be twenty years ago?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, So even we were writing the book, the
Speaker 1: standard number was something like ten thousand of kilogram the
Speaker 1: latest numbers for Leo or twenty six hundred dollars per kilogram,
Speaker 1: and that's on Falcon nine. So for comparison to the
Speaker 1: numbers we have for the Space Shuttle was sixty five
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars per kilogram. So that's a pretty non
Speaker 1: trivial drop. And it's possible that SpaceX's own internal numbers
Speaker 1: are even cheaper when they reuse a lot of rockets
Speaker 1: for their starlink system. The numbers we have for the
Speaker 1: Falcon Heavy, which is essentially like a Falcon with two
Speaker 1: other Falcon boosters strapped to it, is fifteen hundred dollars
Speaker 1: per kilogram, like an order of magnitude cheaper than it
Speaker 1: was just when we were writing ten years ago.
Speaker 2: All right, So if I had a really big chicken
Speaker 2: sandwich it's a kilogram, and I wanted to launch it
Speaker 2: to space, it would only cost me fifteen hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean, you know you really want to
Speaker 1: fill the firing with chicken sandwiches, You just have a
Speaker 1: lot of chicken sandwich. You have to pay for the
Speaker 1: whole vehicle. You don't get a.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, still, fifteen hundred dollars is not crazy number.
Speaker 2: I mean, it would cost me like one hundreds of
Speaker 2: dollars to send a chicken sandwich in China, for example,
Speaker 2: and so you know a factor tend to go to
Speaker 2: space honestly seems reasonable. But this is for cargo. What
Speaker 2: about for people? Where are we in terms of like
Speaker 2: sending people into space?
Speaker 1: So you know, the Shuttle retired and basically the way
Speaker 1: we were able to get to space was embarrassingly by
Speaker 1: employing the Russians to launch us. And then SpaceX comes
Speaker 1: along and made it possible. But it's like it's hard
Speaker 1: to have the extra step where you get humans on board.
Speaker 1: There's just a lot of extra stuff that has to
Speaker 1: not go wrong. You have to have high reliability, you
Speaker 1: have to have these little capsules that have oxygen. And
Speaker 1: so they built one. They built the Dragon Capsule, where notably,
Speaker 1: like companies like Boeing which is a pretty storied company,
Speaker 1: have not really succeeded, they built this capsule successfully docked
Speaker 1: multiple times now with the ISS. They also have sent
Speaker 1: up restocking missions that bring like, you know, consumables, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Cool.
Speaker 2: All right, so then what does this mean? Right? We
Speaker 2: talked earlier about how difficult it is to get into space.
Speaker 2: Getting up from Earth is expensive. But now things have changed,
Speaker 2: things are cheaper. Does that change our calculus about building
Speaker 2: stuff out in space, getting that space economy going? That
Speaker 2: things changed qualitatively or just quantitatively.
Speaker 1: I would say both. I mean so quantitatively. More and
Speaker 1: more of the space business has become private. You know.
Speaker 1: Of course, at the beginning it was exclusively governments, and
Speaker 1: for a very long time that was true. And it's
Speaker 1: really changed, especially in the last ten years. It's majority private.
Speaker 1: We tried to find people who are trying to estimate this.
Speaker 1: In a couple of years ago it was already three
Speaker 1: quarters private, and I'm sure that's just continued. The business
Speaker 1: has grown. I mean, the nice thing is, you know,
Speaker 1: the stuff grows in what am I trying to use?
Speaker 2: Tandem Panda? Thank you so good? Kelly?
Speaker 3: Is he one for Kelly? Zero point ten?
Speaker 1: Oh? All right, well you're way behind this plant. We're
Speaker 1: all ever more data hungry for like I cat videos.
Speaker 1: There's also practical stuff like even ten years we're all
Speaker 1: in self driving cars. Then they might want you know,
Speaker 1: lowers orbit satellite uplinks for constant connectivity, and so we
Speaker 1: just want more and more and more data and so
Speaker 1: the satellites can supply that, right, So you know I
Speaker 1: said earlier everything below geosynchronous is valuable, and that's what
Speaker 1: it's valuable for. This is nice because it's a sort
Speaker 1: of ratchet where you know, you keep throwing up more satellites.
Speaker 1: It gets cheaper to mass produce them. Data gets cheaper.
Speaker 1: But when the data gets cheaper, we just demand more
Speaker 1: and more and more of it, and so we keep
Speaker 1: throwing up satellites. And so this is why we're finally
Speaker 1: you know, for a long time people talked about having
Speaker 1: problems with like satellites smashing into each other, and it's
Speaker 1: finally becoming like maybe a bit more serious. And it's
Speaker 1: also maybe we want to lead it into this. It's
Speaker 1: making space tourism at least more plausible. That we haven't
Speaker 1: seen like an explosion in that yet.
Speaker 2: All right, So then is there a space economy for tourism?
Speaker 2: I mean people have been launching on these things, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know how high up they're getting, whether their
Speaker 2: accounts of space, whether their counts is tourism, whether they're
Speaker 2: you know, commercial knots or whatever. Do you think this
Speaker 2: is the beginning of a space tourism industry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean, you know, people have been doing
Speaker 1: space tourism for like over twenty years now. A bunch
Speaker 1: of people have gone up to the ISS. They're all
Speaker 1: very rich people. Most of them wrote books about it.
Speaker 1: We read some of them. And more recently Blue Origin
Speaker 1: has been sending people up and you can kind of
Speaker 1: debate if they are space tourists because they don't go
Speaker 1: to orbit, which is kind of like for a nerd,
Speaker 1: the important thing when you go to space, you want
Speaker 1: to go to orbit, which is much harder to do
Speaker 1: than to just do what they do, which is they
Speaker 1: go up really high. They get the view of space
Speaker 1: you want, right, They get to see you above the
Speaker 1: atmosphere with the stars above, and they get to I
Speaker 1: think something like four minutes in free fall floating, so
Speaker 1: they get a kind of like astronaut like experience. So
Speaker 1: if you count that, the number has gone way up.
Speaker 2: But why does the nerd only value being in orbit?
Speaker 2: Why does it only count if you're in orbit?
Speaker 1: Because it's the hard part, right, I forget. There's some
Speaker 1: famous line from Hindline which is like the hard part
Speaker 1: about going to space is not going up high, it's
Speaker 1: going over fast. Right, So you feel aout this idea
Speaker 1: that when you're in orbit you don't experience gravity, But
Speaker 1: of course you experience gravity because you didn't as you know,
Speaker 1: you fling off in a straight line until you encountered
Speaker 1: something else. And so it's just that you're at the
Speaker 1: right velocity. The slingy outy tendency is balanced by the
Speaker 1: polleyanny tendency, and so you go to a circle.
Speaker 2: I guess. So, but if I wanted to go to
Speaker 2: the Moon or Mars, whatever, I wouldn't go to orbit,
Speaker 2: and I would still count that as going out into space, right.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, sure, sure. If if Vegas was shipping build to
Speaker 1: the Moon, I would waive my objection by all means.
Speaker 2: I'm glad we settled that here in nerd Corta.
Speaker 1: That's right, it's good, right, Yeah, so we don't need
Speaker 1: to go on this change. But actually comes up legally
Speaker 1: because you have different legal protections if you're an astronaut
Speaker 1: versus a non astronaut under international law.
Speaker 2: Protection from who.
Speaker 3: That's a good question, Aliens.
Speaker 2: Ghosts on the Moon, Moon's haunted bro.
Speaker 3: I think it's usually imagined that if there's some disaster
Speaker 3: in space or you land in a foreign country, there's
Speaker 3: a legal obligation to whoever could help you out to
Speaker 3: help you out.
Speaker 1: So like if you went to orbit with your chicken
Speaker 1: sandwich and you fell over Siberia, the Russians, even if
Speaker 1: they were really mad at us, would be obligated to
Speaker 1: deliver you and your vehicle and not be jerks about it. Basically,
Speaker 1: there's more precise language in the out of space Street,
Speaker 1: but not much more precise. And I guess they'd have
Speaker 1: to render up the sandwich or something you can visualize, right,
Speaker 1: So SpaceX dragon capsule goes up. If you wash the rocket,
Speaker 1: it'll turn and it will go at high speed into
Speaker 1: an orbital trajectory, whereas a Blue Origin rocket and this
Speaker 1: is still really cool, but it'll just go up and
Speaker 1: then come down. There's no attempt to go into orbit
Speaker 1: anything like that. So they're not doing the hard part.
Speaker 1: And that's why you know, you only get to spend
Speaker 1: whatever it is, like some amount of minutes doing space
Speaker 1: as opposed to days or weeks or whatever.
Speaker 3: Can I ask a quick clarifying question, So when Kentucky
Speaker 3: Fried Chickens sent one of their chicken sandwiches up on
Speaker 3: a high altitude balloon, because it didn't orbit. That doesn't count.
Speaker 2: Rat did that really happen?
Speaker 3: That did really happen? Yes, that doesn't count.
Speaker 1: Right to Zach, that doesn't count as the chicken sandwich
Speaker 1: being an astronaut.
Speaker 3: No, no, going to space, going to space? Did they
Speaker 3: waste their money on that advertising campaign?
Speaker 1: Are you guys trying to get KFC as a sponsor
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 2: We talked about Taco Bell recently having a target for
Speaker 2: a reusable vehicle.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't go on a tangent, but there is a
Speaker 1: kind of formal line called the carm online you've probably
Speaker 1: talked about at some point, which is like sixty something
Speaker 1: miles up that like is technically space, but who cares,
Speaker 1: it's not orbit. It doesn't count as tourism. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Let's address the actual question, are we going to get
Speaker 1: a tourism business? And doesn't matter. If you look at
Speaker 1: the number of satellites, it's just totally exploded in the
Speaker 1: last ten years. That has not happen with space towards
Speaker 1: The equivalent would be something like dozens of tourists are
Speaker 1: up right now. SpaceX wants that they've talked about they
Speaker 1: have this new vehicle called starship. It's as big as
Speaker 1: a Saturn five, Like, it's enormous. It could put we
Speaker 1: don't know yet, but say fifty or one hundred, one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty tons in orbit, so plausibly you could
Speaker 1: have like fifty people there all puking on each other
Speaker 1: at the same time as they enter orbit, but getting
Speaker 1: that magnificent view that John Glenn got on his first orbit, right,
Speaker 1: And so one question you might ask is is there
Speaker 1: any money in this? And so Kelly and I actually
Speaker 1: tried to look into this. There's not a lot of
Speaker 1: people who run surveys that are like how much would
Speaker 1: you pay to go into space? But there's some evidence
Speaker 1: everything the exact number, but it's something like a decent
Speaker 1: amount of middle class Americans would at least say on
Speaker 1: a survey that they would part with like fifty grand
Speaker 1: for an orbital trip. Whether they would whether you could
Speaker 1: convince your spouse that that's like a good investment, is
Speaker 1: therek question? It does seem like there's an economy there, right,
Speaker 1: There is a market. And what's exciting about that if
Speaker 1: you want there to be like a really cool moon base,
Speaker 1: is you know, if you've got a tourist market like this,
Speaker 1: even if it was just adventure tourism for the relatively rich,
Speaker 1: Like that's going to require a lot of development of
Speaker 1: like high reliability vehicles, life support. One of our big
Speaker 1: things we winged about is there all these basics that
Speaker 1: you don't think about, like making sure the toilet doesn't
Speaker 1: break like it did on inspiration for launched by SpaceX,
Speaker 1: you know. And so you're getting all this basic tiki
Speaker 1: TACKI life support stuff really worked out. One thing is
Speaker 1: a big d the US is like most astronauts are
Speaker 1: middle aged dudes, right, just some high percentage of all
Speaker 1: astronauts ever middle aged men who are in like peak
Speaker 1: physical condition, and so like the question is, like what
Speaker 1: happens when like I go up, I bring like a
Speaker 1: slightly sub average body into space slightly.
Speaker 3: Oh you're very handsome.
Speaker 2: Let's have some boundaries here, Yeah, thank you, minus one.
Speaker 2: I'm blowing a whistle on that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but no more seriousness, Like we don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of on like old people, people have various conditions
Speaker 1: how they're going to performance this. We just don't have it.
Speaker 1: And so there's all this stuff you'd want to have
Speaker 1: for a really cool moon base that you would get
Speaker 1: naturally from a tourism business.
Speaker 3: Zach and I in a city on Mars, call ourselves
Speaker 3: this space. I'm gonna say jerks for the show so
Speaker 3: that our editor doesn't have to do too many bleeps,
Speaker 3: but to just to provide a non space jerk counter argument.
Speaker 3: One of the Wiener Smiths leaves the house, and so
Speaker 3: I went to a bunch of space conferences. And if
Speaker 3: you go to the space conferences, they would say that
Speaker 3: space tourism is just absolutely taking off. They count the
Speaker 3: suborbital flights. They are saying that the number of astronauts
Speaker 3: is increasing rapidly. And so I do think there's a
Speaker 3: lot of activity in this area, a lot of people
Speaker 3: who are excited. And so there are people who are
Speaker 3: not as negative as the Wiener Smiths.
Speaker 2: Is there anybody who's more negative than.
Speaker 3: There are there are?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there are friends.
Speaker 3: That's right. There are the people who talk to us.
Speaker 3: All right, So let's take a break and when we
Speaker 3: get back we will talk a bit more about the
Speaker 3: space economy.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're back, and we're talking to the Winnersmith's about
Speaker 2: the future in space. Where are the great great, great
Speaker 2: great great grandkids of this wonderful marriage, going to set
Speaker 2: down their roots where they live on the moon, where
Speaker 2: they live in space, or would they still be in Virginia.
Speaker 3: It's hard to be in Virginia.
Speaker 2: I don't think we're gonna have sunsets on the moon
Speaker 2: the way we have in Virginia for quite agreed, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: we have to paint them on the wall or something.
Speaker 2: All right, So let's talk about realistic space economies. I mean,
Speaker 2: we've talked a lot about how difficult to it is,
Speaker 2: how expensive it is, but it is getting easier, and
Speaker 2: we have an explosion of space satellites. And you guys
Speaker 2: are skeptical about space tourism, But what are some space
Speaker 2: economies that we could have eventually, maybe somehow get going
Speaker 2: without finding gold on the Moon?
Speaker 3: Can I clarify real quick that I'm not necessarily skeptical
Speaker 3: about space tourism. That seems to me to be a
Speaker 3: thing that's happening right now. I might be a little
Speaker 3: less skeptical than Zach. All right, go ahead, Zach.
Speaker 1: I would actually agree with that it's not exploding, But
Speaker 1: I would actually say that's the most optimistic case of
Speaker 1: space tourism. You know, it's not like an industry that
Speaker 1: makes us all more productive, but it is one that
Speaker 1: might exist. I there's enough each people want to go,
Speaker 1: so yeah, so let's talk about other possibilities. So there's
Speaker 1: been this desire for many years for there to be
Speaker 1: some reason to go to the Moon or Mars or
Speaker 1: the asteroid belt. So we could talk about like some
Speaker 1: of the most common things and why we're a little
Speaker 1: bit skeptical. I would say the most common ones you
Speaker 1: hear Kelly current me of you disagree are space based
Speaker 1: solar and let's go mind the Moon or the asteroids
Speaker 1: or something and space based solar. You know, it could
Speaker 1: be a whole episode, but the short version is do
Speaker 1: a back of the envelope calculation, and you know, even
Speaker 1: with really low launch costs, it's almost always going to
Speaker 1: be better to put up a good voltap panel and
Speaker 1: like Arasz or the Sahara desert them launching itto space.
Speaker 3: If I can just quickly plug some work that Daniel
Speaker 3: and I have done in the past back on Daniel
Speaker 3: and Jorge Explain the Universe. Daniel and I did a
Speaker 3: chat about space based solar where we talk about some
Speaker 3: of the limitations, and also I do feel like something
Speaker 3: we've sort of skipped over. That's important to mention is
Speaker 3: that the economy and low Earth orbit for satellites and
Speaker 3: stuff is huge. That is making tons of money, and
Speaker 3: we'll continue to expand. And we talked to Jonathan McDowell
Speaker 3: about the implications of more satellites going into space and
Speaker 3: collisions and how that could affect the economy. But so
Speaker 3: now we're working beyond just putting satellites in space, right, And.
Speaker 2: There aren't some arguments for space based solar power. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think on the whole they don't win out, but
Speaker 2: there are some reasons. It's not total insanity. The idea
Speaker 2: is that your solar panels are always in the sun right,
Speaker 2: because you're never in the Earth shadow, which is cool.
Speaker 2: So it's a gain of three x right there on
Speaker 2: Moost or two x. And they could beam power to
Speaker 2: anywhere on Earth, which is very cool. So you don't
Speaker 2: have to have solar panels in a place where you
Speaker 2: have lots of sun Norwegians can get solar power in
Speaker 2: the winter. That would be amazing and nice and cozy,
Speaker 2: But of course there's lots of issues there, like you're
Speaker 2: building a huge beam and pointing it at the Earth.
Speaker 2: Could that ever go wrong? I can't imagine.
Speaker 1: The father of rocketry, Hermon Obert, actually proposed putting a
Speaker 1: giant mirror in space for agriculture and for weaponizations. This
Speaker 1: is one of the oldest ideas in space.
Speaker 2: But of course we do use solar power in space, right,
Speaker 2: satellite solar panels and all sorts of stuff. There is
Speaker 2: a solar power up there, and you know, I think
Speaker 2: that highlights it, like, if you want to do something
Speaker 2: in space, you should do it for the space economy
Speaker 2: bringing it back down to Earth is almost never profitable. Yes,
Speaker 2: so then what is like, what is the space economy?
Speaker 2: What is the space version of the chicken sandwich.
Speaker 1: One of the possibility which I'll just do this very quickly,
Speaker 1: is we either mind the Moon or there's something we
Speaker 1: need to make in zero gravity. And so there's been
Speaker 1: talk of the something for decades and you will still
Speaker 1: say this be like, well, you can make very pure materials.
Speaker 1: I guess there are plays to be easier to make
Speaker 1: certain biochemicals in space. And this is all to my understanding, true.
Speaker 1: It's just that it's hard to win on price when
Speaker 1: you have to fly to like a space station and
Speaker 1: assent bloat there, and so far it just hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: And if someone in your audience is probably objecting, like, well,
Speaker 1: such and such company just put in millions of dollars
Speaker 1: to do it, so what are they crazy? And my
Speaker 1: answer is that our book I read a book from
Speaker 1: the eighties it was like, you know, John Deere just
Speaker 1: paid three million dollars to send this thing into space,
Speaker 1: and it's like, look, companies do this for promo. It's
Speaker 1: not proof that it's a good idea. But the other
Speaker 1: option is the moon or the asteroid bilt like we're
Speaker 1: going to go mine. And that goes back to what
Speaker 1: we were saying earlier about like, look, there's no special stuff.
Speaker 1: So the exception people often say is on the moon,
Speaker 1: we'll get helium three. And their papers written about this.
Speaker 1: Harrison Schmidt, the senator slash astronaut slash geologist, it was
Speaker 1: big on it, and we cite in our book there's
Speaker 1: a great paper. I'm blanking on the name, but basically
Speaker 1: just is this incredible takedown. But the very short version is,
Speaker 1: you know, the only real use for helium three that's
Speaker 1: big money is you could have a neutronic fusion, which
Speaker 1: is to cleaner form of fusion. And the problem is,
Speaker 1: like it's a much harder version of fusion that the
Speaker 1: fusion we already can't do, and the vision we already
Speaker 1: can't do is actually quite clean compared to like other
Speaker 1: energy methods. I think of like this a neutronic stuff
Speaker 1: as like a kind of show off version of fusion.
Speaker 1: We've already achieved utopia, why not push it a little further.
Speaker 1: It's not like there's hunks of it on the moon.
Speaker 1: It's just an a moderately higher concentration on the You're
Speaker 1: in the position of saying we have to like mine
Speaker 1: and process huge parts of the moon, and like, don't
Speaker 1: even get us started on how to run construction equipment
Speaker 1: in a vacuum at one six gravity. It's a whole
Speaker 1: other thing. But also, and this for me really got me.
Speaker 1: If you know your nuclear reactors, think y'all did an
Speaker 1: episode on this at some point. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: type called a heavy water reactor. The main ones are
Speaker 1: in Canada, the mini states that are built thinking that
Speaker 1: uranium would be hard to come across in the future.
Speaker 1: As they're a little more efficient, they use deuterated water
Speaker 1: and one of their byproducts is helium three. We really
Speaker 1: urgently needed loads of helium three. Probably you're better off
Speaker 1: building these like weird fission reactors and just sucking off
Speaker 1: the byproduct. So unfortunately, if you're boring, you run into
Speaker 1: this problem every time you have one of these ideas
Speaker 1: about why we need to go to space.
Speaker 3: I think another problem is that you're always kind of vulnerable.
Speaker 3: So say you did start mining helium three, it would
Speaker 3: be super expensive. As soon as someone figured out a
Speaker 3: cheaper way to do it on Earth, or any way
Speaker 3: to do it on Earth, they almost immediately can beat
Speaker 3: you at cost. And so there's fiber optic cables I
Speaker 3: think that people want to make in space. But again,
Speaker 3: if you can figure out how to do it on
Speaker 3: Earth and get them just as good, you immediately beat
Speaker 3: the competition. So I feel like you're always at risk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the whole Like sex sorting story,
Speaker 1: this is our favorite story, which is there were proposals
Speaker 1: in the seventies to send bull seam into space for
Speaker 1: sex sorting, which I guess is a little easier in
Speaker 1: zero gravity. And then the eighties methods were developed, and
Speaker 1: so it's like any money that had been spent in
Speaker 1: like nineteen seventy five to sort bullga meats on Skylab
Speaker 1: would have been really badly spent.
Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of these ideas are sort
Speaker 2: of bad faith reverse engineering to cover. Like somebody just
Speaker 2: wants to go to space, and like, let's come up
Speaker 2: with an excuse to do it. And I think there's
Speaker 2: just sort of like an enthusiasm there, like it feels
Speaker 2: like it's the future. Let's just get it started.
Speaker 3: I know those people. I go to conferences with those people,
Speaker 3: and I genuinely believe that a lot of them really
Speaker 3: do feel like the things they're doing in space are
Speaker 3: just so much better than what we could do on Earth.
Speaker 3: I think there's plenty of people who believe and aren't
Speaker 3: acting in bad faith. I'm just not convinced.
Speaker 2: I guess bad faith is too strong. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think the real motivation is enthusiasm for space, not like, hey,
Speaker 2: this is a good idea and it needs space, so
Speaker 2: therefore let's go there. Is that fair?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think, all.
Speaker 2: Right, so let's get back to trashing other people's data
Speaker 2: centers in space. I've heard people talk about these data
Speaker 2: centers because, like Google spends huge amounts of money building
Speaker 2: these computers and taking up a lot of land and
Speaker 2: using a lot of energy and like warming the planet
Speaker 2: and you know, using a lot of water. But like,
Speaker 2: why don't we build this stuff in space? Right? Space
Speaker 2: is big and cold? So what are your thoughts about
Speaker 2: data centers in space? Exactly?
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean this is one of those ideas that
Speaker 1: structure is one of the most bizarre ideas I'd never heard.
Speaker 1: I was like nervous to argue about it because people
Speaker 1: be like, no, the physics works out, and I was like,
Speaker 1: but so may maybe we should go over for your audience.
Speaker 1: Like it's hard to dump heat in space. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: really hard. Space is like colded in some formal sense,
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean it's easy to dump heat right,
Speaker 1: for the same reason, like if you have a hot
Speaker 1: hunk of metal, it's easier if you have a bucket
Speaker 1: of water than like cold air to dump heat. There's
Speaker 1: just more molecules to pull away the heat. In space,
Speaker 1: You've got nothing or almost nothing, right, and so it's
Speaker 1: very hard to dump heat. If you look at the ISS,
Speaker 1: a lot of it is just radiators that are dumping
Speaker 1: the heat, like generated by the systems and the humans
Speaker 1: in it. It's just one of the problems for space
Speaker 1: based solar is you have to deal with all this heat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's get into the physics that for a minute, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: how do you cool down? You cool down in two
Speaker 2: different ways. One is like you have air around you,
Speaker 2: which is bouncing off of you, and it's stealing your heat.
Speaker 2: If you're hotter than the air, you're going to lose
Speaker 2: your heat to the air. It's like heat diffusion essentially,
Speaker 2: and out in space you don't have that method. There
Speaker 2: is no wind to make it feel cold. There is
Speaker 2: another method you can use to cool down, that's what
Speaker 2: you mentioned, which is radiation. You know, everything that has
Speaker 2: a temperature it can be thought of as a black body,
Speaker 2: and so it radiates, and things that are hotter radiated
Speaker 2: higher frequency. That's your only way to lose heat in
Speaker 2: space because there is no wind. So, as you say,
Speaker 2: even though space is technically cold, although parts of space
Speaker 2: are technically super duper hot because the particles are moving
Speaker 2: really high speed and so like you would freeze to
Speaker 2: death in a super hot but very dilute plasma. But
Speaker 2: also you could burn up, right, you could burn up
Speaker 2: because it's hard to cool down, even if you're in
Speaker 2: a super hot, very dilute plasma. But so all your
Speaker 2: intuition about hot and cold goes out the window. And
Speaker 2: the bottom line is it's hard to shed heat in
Speaker 2: space because there's no air to dump it into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and to be clear, the people proposing data centers
Speaker 1: in orbit know this. Yeah, But the point is, like,
Speaker 1: data centers are hot, so what is the solution.
Speaker 2: The solution is basically giant radiators. And I think the
Speaker 2: people proposing data centers in space they understand that they
Speaker 2: are complicated, right, because you need more elaborate cooling and
Speaker 2: also like refurbishing your data center is harder, Like everything
Speaker 2: is in space, right, and you need radiation protection and
Speaker 2: getting up there to swap out a new GP or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's complicated. I think they acknowledge that all these things
Speaker 2: are hard. I think the argument, if we're going to
Speaker 2: like steal man it to try to be fair about it,
Speaker 2: is that resources eventually on Earth aren't limited, right. We
Speaker 2: have limited space and limited energy and basically unlimited demand
Speaker 2: for computing, so eventually space has to be an efficient
Speaker 2: way to do This.
Speaker 3: Is another part of the argument that they're using the
Speaker 3: space based solar to power the data center, and so
Speaker 3: being in space solves a bunch of the problems for
Speaker 3: space bace solar we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't need to bring the power back to Earth.
Speaker 2: You just power the computers there, and in principle, maybe
Speaker 2: even the compute is for your space economy. Right. For
Speaker 2: people who are generating images of chicken sandwiches on the Moon,
Speaker 2: they don't have to go back and forth from Earth
Speaker 2: in order to have their AI slave make their art
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 1: Whoa. You know. One of the things I probably often
Speaker 1: had writing the books is you'd be talking to someone
Speaker 1: and they'll be like, and that's why we'll need a
Speaker 1: thousand foot tall tower in the poles of Mars. And
Speaker 1: you'd be like, but I don't see when that's going
Speaker 1: to be a good idea. They'll be like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about ten thousand years from now, when we're I'm
Speaker 1: like Kardashev scale level eighty three, And you're like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I guess I would even argue about that. So people
Speaker 1: will say this right, so like, we'll eventually have to
Speaker 1: do this because we're going to use up all the resources.
Speaker 1: But resources don't work that way. There's not like a
Speaker 1: sort of lump of stuff called resources that you can
Speaker 1: use up right. So like before lithium ion batteries, like
Speaker 1: lithium had uses, but it wasn't this super valuable stuff.
Speaker 1: Now it's a really important resource. The same was true
Speaker 1: for like high quality sand, for silicon. It was true
Speaker 1: of petroleum before the combustion engine. Right. People substitute stuff
Speaker 1: when new technology comes along, right, And that's how you
Speaker 1: get more valuable over time. And so you know, not
Speaker 1: to be too deprising, but you mentioned like we're all
Speaker 1: going to have our like AI, I'll say servants, like, look,
Speaker 1: if you just want value, value means humans say they're
Speaker 1: willing to pay dollars for it or whatever for it, right,
Speaker 1: So like you can literally have infinite value just by
Speaker 1: putting people in the matrix or something like if we're
Speaker 1: willing to entertain these like, well, in a thousand years,
Speaker 1: we'll do this possibility, like wehen as well entertain that.
Speaker 1: And just to like talk about what it would mean
Speaker 1: to need to go to space for a data center, Kelly,
Speaker 1: you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think under
Speaker 1: the Antarctic Treaty system you could like litter Antarctica with
Speaker 1: data centers. You could probably do that now, and it's
Speaker 1: like cold and there's water. They have pancake breakfast at McMurdo,
Speaker 1: and we're not doing that. So I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: when we're done with Antarctica and we've like filled the
Speaker 1: oceans with data centers and we're all just made of data,
Speaker 1: then that like aggregative like computronium, will need to expand
Speaker 1: into space. I have trouble seeing it earlier. The only
Speaker 1: last thing I would say is I think people who
Speaker 1: are really into this, well, I think often have a
Speaker 1: kind of libertarian leaning, so they'll say, well, look like
Speaker 1: the Earth is getting bureaucratic and overregulated, and this is
Speaker 1: going to be the only place where we could put
Speaker 1: more stuff without having the like save the whales. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's the future. I don't know. The costs are so extravagant.
Speaker 1: I mean, like even if you had elon Musk predictions,
Speaker 1: like it's ten dollars, it's kilogram to go to space,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if anyone's way to data center,
Speaker 1: but it's a lot of kilograms. It's just hard to
Speaker 1: imagine you're gonna win on price here.
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of this feels like chicken and egg problems. Right,
Speaker 2: you argue that there's no eggs because there's no chickens.
Speaker 2: There's no chicken because there's no eggs. Let me ask
Speaker 2: you this in fact, like think a thousand years in
Speaker 2: the future or five thousand years of the future, do
Speaker 2: you think humans will ever have a viable space economy
Speaker 2: or do you think it's never. Because if it's ever,
Speaker 2: that means it's going to happen, and eventually you are
Speaker 2: going to want data centers in space. The only other
Speaker 2: argument I think is that it's never going to happen.
Speaker 2: Is that what you think?
Speaker 1: I would actually say, there's a middle argument, which I
Speaker 1: prefer to make. I'd be curious if Kelly disagrees with me.
Speaker 1: But it's like, so, it may be the case that
Speaker 1: there's never a quote unquote good economic reason to do this,
Speaker 1: just meaning you pay a dollar or someone does something,
Speaker 1: you get two dollars back. Right, I think there's a
Speaker 1: pretty good case that it'll either never be like that
Speaker 1: or wouldn't be any time soon. It doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: won't do it. It just means that at some point it
Speaker 1: might be like Star Trek, Right, so it's like, why
Speaker 1: does Captain Kirk go around the galaxy? Was because we're
Speaker 1: all doing well and we'd like to see what's out there,
Speaker 1: and so, meaning like it could be at some point
Speaker 1: we're just so technologically advanced and riched we put people
Speaker 1: on Mars as a sort of esthetic choice.
Speaker 2: Like building particle colliders or something exactly like that.
Speaker 1: I don't want to let up the secret, but I
Speaker 1: don't think CERN is going to like get you cheaper butter.
Speaker 1: You do grow cows abuff parts, it don't think so.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: There are buffalo at Fermulab, yes, and bison butter is
Speaker 2: pretty good.
Speaker 1: Okay with drawn, but no, I mean, like why do
Speaker 1: we have a base at McMurdo. I mean there is geopolitics.
Speaker 1: It's not like nice all the way down, But mostly
Speaker 1: it's because we think it's cool. We're much richer than
Speaker 1: we were one hundred years ago, and we just do it,
Speaker 1: and so like stuff like that could lead to a
Speaker 1: serious martyrs presence. It's just that there's no good economic
Speaker 1: case for it. If you really want to give me
Speaker 1: a thousand years to work with, I don't see why
Speaker 1: you don't get to a stage where we all individually
Speaker 1: have like four thousand robot butlers who attend on us
Speaker 1: all day long, and we have like amazing rockets to
Speaker 1: do anything we want and it's all very safe. Then yeah,
Speaker 1: why not that at least rules out what ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of advocates are saying when they say we have
Speaker 1: to go soon to get rich or to fix society
Speaker 1: or not be like thwarted by the bureaucrats who are
Speaker 1: dominating Earth. All that stuff goes out the window. If
Speaker 1: you're saying it's just an aesthetic choice will make because
Speaker 1: it's cool.
Speaker 3: So Zach and I spent like five years writing the book,
Speaker 3: and we had to argue until we agreed in the
Speaker 3: content that would go in the book.
Speaker 2: That's why it took so long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, so we don't usually diverge too much,
Speaker 3: but I do want to add to what Zack said.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of why we do stuff in
Speaker 3: space comes down to prestige, and I suspect Zach agrees
Speaker 3: with me on this point too. Yes, and so you
Speaker 3: could end up getting a space economy because the US
Speaker 3: and China are in a race to put research out there,
Speaker 3: and then they need data centers and things just kind
Speaker 3: of build up over time, and so it might not
Speaker 3: be because there's something out there that's so valuable we
Speaker 3: should actually go out there and get it. It might
Speaker 3: just be that both nations think that they look great
Speaker 3: on the international stage if they were doing these things,
Speaker 3: so they'll do it. So I think that could be
Speaker 3: another way we create the economy that makes some of
Speaker 3: these ideas worthwhile.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't be the first time that science and technology
Speaker 2: has ridden on the back of nationalism and patriotism to
Speaker 2: make its case, right. I accuse other folks of bad
Speaker 2: faith arguments, but there's a lot of that also in science, Like, Hey,
Speaker 2: what we really want to do is X. We're going
Speaker 2: to sell it to you as why because we think
Speaker 2: you want to buy why. So I'm a little bit
Speaker 2: of a hypocrite there, or at least a ten billion
Speaker 2: dollar here.
Speaker 3: Zach and I are waiting for our alien question. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: don't let us sound Daniel.
Speaker 2: All right, here's my alien question. So, Zach, do you
Speaker 2: think that you guys are the reason for the Fermi paradox?
Speaker 2: Do you think on every planet is somebody out there
Speaker 2: that's written the wet blanket book about going to space?
Speaker 2: And that's why the aliens have never gone to space
Speaker 2: and we haven't been visited by aliens. It's all the
Speaker 2: Wiener Smith's faults.
Speaker 1: There's some kind of tentacle like Smith.
Speaker 3: Holding the back humanity exactly.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's what I'm suggesting.
Speaker 1: As a guy with a book to sell, I would
Speaker 1: go on any broadcast. I suppose maybe our message has
Speaker 1: reached other planets and they gave up.
Speaker 2: Are you guys going to sell your book on Mars
Speaker 2: when there is an economy on.
Speaker 5: Mars if we can, that's right, Well premise, that's right,
Speaker 5: that's right, you know, even if they're just selling it
Speaker 5: to laugh at us because of how wrong we were.
Speaker 3: That's great. We'll take the royalties, will.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Just like I love hate downloads of the podcast,
Speaker 2: and there people who downloaded just to complain about it, like,
Speaker 2: keep going for it.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful, all.
Speaker 2: Right, So thank you very much Zach for coming on
Speaker 2: the podcast to tell us all about why going into
Speaker 2: space is still hard and still expensive and everybody should
Speaker 2: go to Antarctica first.
Speaker 3: Great job, Zach, All right, yes, thank you, yeah, yeah yeah.
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