Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, the sun
Speaker 1: and you and me and all the stars that we
Speaker 1: can see are moving at a million miles a day.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Folkebon, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: I'm totally paying attention. Alright, so we're we're here, we're
Speaker 1: sitting around the microphones. I expect that means we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about something space tourism again. I was about
Speaker 1: to say we we literally just talked about space tourism,
Speaker 1: but we didn't talk enough about money, the really exciting
Speaker 1: part of space. Alright, Joe had mentioned that he was
Speaker 1: upset that he wasn't able to afford it. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: of the cool things I want to do are way
Speaker 1: too expensive. Well, Joe, come on, give me a rundown.
Speaker 1: What how what are we talking about with too expensive? Well,
Speaker 1: just a few examples there were come and he's offering
Speaker 1: suborbital space flight. And as a reminder, that's where you
Speaker 1: sort of you go up in a spacecraft. It's pressurized
Speaker 1: vehicle and you technically enter space, but you don't orbit
Speaker 1: the Earth only just a ninety minute johnt Yeah, you
Speaker 1: stay up there briefly, you experience a little bit of weightlessness,
Speaker 1: you see the curvature of the Earth and the stars,
Speaker 1: and that sounds really cool. But Virgin Galactic is citing
Speaker 1: that that's going to cost you two dollars per person's
Speaker 1: that's just the proposal. Yeah. Um, so there is orbital
Speaker 1: space tourism, So that's where you would go up and
Speaker 1: in a vehicle, say join with the space station like
Speaker 1: the International Space Station, or maybe a little bit further
Speaker 1: in the future with some kind of private space station. Um,
Speaker 1: and you would orbit the Earth there. Trips like that
Speaker 1: so far of cost in the range of fifty million.
Speaker 1: It's pretty expensive. Yeah. If you want to go to
Speaker 1: the moon, and I totally want to go to the Moon,
Speaker 1: it sounds great, doesn't it. Yeah, well it's going to
Speaker 1: cost you seven fifty million dollars, or if you want
Speaker 1: to take your wife with you or somebody else, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's going to be one point five billion
Speaker 1: dollars for the two of you. I have so many
Speaker 1: jokes I want to make right now, but I also
Speaker 1: want to remain married, So I'm going to not joke
Speaker 1: about going to the moon without my wife. Let's be
Speaker 1: so sweet. Yeah, that would be a would be a
Speaker 1: romantic vacation, Gray, Gray, romantic adventure. You could have another
Speaker 1: honey moon. Congratulations sir, with across the line, with a quiet,
Speaker 1: quiet disinterce in space. No one can hear your scowling disapproval. Okay.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so expensive. There's no way anybody. I don't
Speaker 1: know about y'all's personal financials, there's no way I could
Speaker 1: ever ever afford to do this. And in fact, I
Speaker 1: remember reading an interview actually it was more of a
Speaker 1: more of a report that someone wrote about Richard Garriott,
Speaker 1: who is the one member of the the space tourists
Speaker 1: they hate that term, but the people, the private citizens
Speaker 1: who have paid to go up in the space private restaurants.
Speaker 1: He was the He's one that is considered to be
Speaker 1: kind of an evangelist for for uh space exploration among
Speaker 1: private citizens and um also the only one that I've
Speaker 1: ever personally met. But he was saying that he felt
Speaker 1: that that his work was going very far into the
Speaker 1: democratization of space travel. And the person who wrote the
Speaker 1: article critiqued that a little bit by saying, well, at
Speaker 1: and at thirty million dollars to go up, that's not
Speaker 1: really democratization you're talking. You know, Yes, you've opened it
Speaker 1: up in that private citizens have gone up there, but
Speaker 1: it's such a small number who can afford to that,
Speaker 1: it's not really democratization. Well, so we should ask the question,
Speaker 1: are these prices ever going to come down? And if so,
Speaker 1: how how can we make it cheaper for the average
Speaker 1: person to go to space. We need to know why
Speaker 1: is it so expensive to start with the FRA In
Speaker 1: order for it cannot be cheaper, we have to know
Speaker 1: why is it so expensive? Yeah, so one of the
Speaker 1: things is rockets, right, Yeah, they're not cheap. They're not cheap.
Speaker 1: The American Space Shuttle Endeavor cost some one point seven
Speaker 1: billion dollars to build um and NASA said that each
Speaker 1: launch of it costs some four hundred and fifty millions.
Speaker 1: And I gotta tell you, guys, the ice maker on
Speaker 1: the Endeavor totally does not work. Yeah, it's just I
Speaker 1: can't believe that you're in space. Can't you just stick
Speaker 1: water out the window? You can't, You can't. I don't
Speaker 1: recommend drawing sticking your whole arm outside the window. But
Speaker 1: and and the thing is is that is that four
Speaker 1: fifty million dollar expenditure is relatively low really when you
Speaker 1: consider the lifetime cost of the entire program though, of
Speaker 1: the Shuttle program overall, it's been estimated at a hundred
Speaker 1: ninety two billion in two yeah. Yeah, and that would
Speaker 1: put the average cost per launch from th at some
Speaker 1: one point five billion dollars. Yeah. Now, if you're talking
Speaker 1: about just launching a vehicle costs that much, that would
Speaker 1: go a long way to explaining why a ticket aboard
Speaker 1: any of these experiences would cost, you know, that huge
Speaker 1: amount of money. You're you're not if you're talking about
Speaker 1: paying a government agency. So, for example, the space the
Speaker 1: private astronauts we talked about in the last episode, they
Speaker 1: were all going through Space Adventures, which was coordinating with
Speaker 1: the Russian Space Agency, right, While the Russian Space Agency
Speaker 1: is a governmental agency that was looking to offset maintenance costs,
Speaker 1: and so this for them was a way of offsetting
Speaker 1: that that expense. Space Adventures obviously took some sort of cut.
Speaker 1: We have no idea how much of a cut they took,
Speaker 1: but they took a cut as as coordinating this whole
Speaker 1: thing between the astronaut and the Russian Space Agency. But
Speaker 1: if you're talking about a private company that is making
Speaker 1: its main business as taking people from Earth into space,
Speaker 1: they have to be able to offset all costs and
Speaker 1: make a profit. Right. That's assuming that they're operating a
Speaker 1: business the way we traditionally want a business to run,
Speaker 1: which is that you are generating enough revenue to offset
Speaker 1: all your costs so that you're making a profit at
Speaker 1: the end of the day. Well, if you're talking about
Speaker 1: something that's this expensive, that explains why those tickets had
Speaker 1: to be so high. Well. And and people have given
Speaker 1: a lot of flat to NASA about the amount that
Speaker 1: they've spent on their Shuttle program. Um numbers aren't really
Speaker 1: available for the Russian space Shuttle program. Russians are not
Speaker 1: terribly communicative when it comes to that kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they've been rumored to cost as little as forty
Speaker 1: five to eighty million dollars per launch. That's uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: significantly less money. Yeah. And and you know, like SpaceX
Speaker 1: can send the Falcon nine. It advertises being able to
Speaker 1: send the Falcon Um up for for sixty million or
Speaker 1: under sixty million, even for the record space x is
Speaker 1: one of the private space companies right right, Elon Musk founded, right,
Speaker 1: although those are unmanned, um and they are still in
Speaker 1: testing phases for the manned Dragon capsules. Uh with it,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's you know, they they've got they're
Speaker 1: supposedly going to be doing some safety tests as early
Speaker 1: as Q two in so that's pretty exciting, But those
Speaker 1: would still be unmanned because they're still not entirely sure
Speaker 1: that the reason that they want to do some safety
Speaker 1: tests is to make sure that um, if things start exploding,
Speaker 1: that they can kind of throw the people to safety.
Speaker 1: Sure this isn't an early stage and yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it makes perfect sense. Yeah it. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: rockets specifically are incredibly expensive. They're expensive to build, their
Speaker 1: expensive of fuel, they're expensive to operate. Uh. When you
Speaker 1: listen to our last podcast when we're talking about the
Speaker 1: suborbital flights, and they were much lower in price. Part
Speaker 1: of that is because you're talking about a lot of
Speaker 1: aircraft that are launched from other aircraft. Right, They're not
Speaker 1: the piggyback game. Yeah, exactly, they're not. They're not launching
Speaker 1: from by a rocket from the surface of the Earth.
Speaker 1: And then have to reach escape velocity and then get
Speaker 1: out of Earth that way. So one of the big
Speaker 1: expenses is not really a concern there, you know, you
Speaker 1: don't have the have to worry about the rocket stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, as it turns out, getting into
Speaker 1: space pretty pricey, right, But this is a problem that
Speaker 1: people are working on. I mean, it's it's to everyone's
Speaker 1: advantage to to bring these costs down. Sure, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean everything from being able to do research and
Speaker 1: development to other types of scientific endeavors. Obviously, if you're
Speaker 1: able to lower that financial barrier, then you can do
Speaker 1: a lot more stuff, right right, You can start actually
Speaker 1: funding the projects, right instead of just getting them up there. Okay,
Speaker 1: so so some of these high costs involved. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, first of all, the startup costs are just
Speaker 1: absolutely crazy. I mean you have to be astronomical. Oh dear, um,
Speaker 1: you have to worry about regulations. I mean, first we
Speaker 1: have to build a regulation industry for this sort of thing. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean startup that's a problem for any new technology,
Speaker 1: right when you talk about people to space, it's it's
Speaker 1: more than doubly so but yes, well, there you have
Speaker 1: to do extensive testing and stuff because you're dealing with
Speaker 1: human safety. But with any new tech chnology, there's going
Speaker 1: to be a problem with not not many other people
Speaker 1: are doing this yet, so you don't have like a
Speaker 1: lot of standardized parts you can use and stuff like that. Sure.
Speaker 1: I mean like Elon Musk when he was working on SpaceX,
Speaker 1: talked about how when they were first looking at getting
Speaker 1: rockets from the Russian Space Agency, that they'd be quoted
Speaker 1: a price for something like, you know, five rockets will
Speaker 1: be twenty million dollars, and they would agree upon that price,
Speaker 1: and then they would go to Russia and they would say, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's twenty million dollars per rocket, and suddenly
Speaker 1: your your prices quintupled. Right, You've not had a hundred
Speaker 1: million to get those five rockets. And he said that
Speaker 1: the problem is that there weren't a lot of other
Speaker 1: places you could go. It's not like you had any alternatives.
Speaker 1: You you had a very few number of players in
Speaker 1: this game, so that was part of the problem. Although
Speaker 1: he's definitely invested in SpaceX to try and work around
Speaker 1: that now. Right, Sure, and and that's one of the
Speaker 1: big things that people are talking about, getting you know,
Speaker 1: allowing for multiple launch providers and vehicles, um, so that
Speaker 1: you can cut down on on launch failure costs. For example,
Speaker 1: well about nine uh only about of launches are successful, um,
Speaker 1: the the other ten percent having to be taken down
Speaker 1: for a few days in order to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: figure out what went wrong and to get it back
Speaker 1: up there, get it up safely. So when we're saying
Speaker 1: that there's a ten percent failure rate, we're not telling
Speaker 1: catastrophic failure right, certainly not um, You're you're not looking
Speaker 1: at the challenger happening of the time. Of course, then again,
Speaker 1: a catastrophic failure on a rocket is much worse than
Speaker 1: a catastrophic failure on a toaster. Yes, absolutely, And that
Speaker 1: is one of those things that that one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why testing is so expensive for this kind of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean also when you're dealing with equipment that has
Speaker 1: cost you a few hundred million dollars to put together
Speaker 1: and it does go wrong in testing, that's that's a
Speaker 1: more that's a bigger setback than again a toaster. Um.
Speaker 1: But but but once you get multiple manufacturers working in
Speaker 1: this field, and uh, some some industry standards for how
Speaker 1: to build these parts. Uh, you know, you're you're not
Speaker 1: going to have the example of um, of a single
Speaker 1: company creating all the parts for something like with NASA
Speaker 1: back in the day. One of those big famous reasons
Speaker 1: why stuff got so expensive for NASA so quickly was
Speaker 1: that these companies that were making parts for them had
Speaker 1: basically gone out of business and all other sectors. They
Speaker 1: were only making parts of the Space program and uh,
Speaker 1: and no one else had the technology to make them,
Speaker 1: so they can determine what the prices NASA would have
Speaker 1: to pay it because it wasn't an alternative. And and furthermore,
Speaker 1: their costs of creating this stuff was we're way higher
Speaker 1: than they otherwise would have been because they weren't doing
Speaker 1: anything else to make income happen. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: there was that one time that I think NASA had
Speaker 1: to buy some stuff on eBay because they ran out
Speaker 1: of parts and no one was making them anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not not the most useful A lovely little
Speaker 1: Yoda cookie Di Spenser. What they needed was like an
Speaker 1: out of print grateful dead boot leg LP from the
Speaker 1: nineties seventies, a lot of black light posters to go
Speaker 1: aboard the I s we're very quickly disassembling this serious
Speaker 1: podcast anyway. Yeah, but there there are other problems with
Speaker 1: rocket launch, include the fact that you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of like material and part waste in it, right, you
Speaker 1: don't have enough reusable parts and materials. Like there's this
Speaker 1: idea of the single stage to orbit rocket. You've heard
Speaker 1: of this, right, that it's a single vehicle that can
Speaker 1: launch itself into space without having to just basically throw
Speaker 1: the rocket away and let it fall into the ocean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you could get some reusable tanks for stuff like that,
Speaker 1: then that would or or even better recycling processes would
Speaker 1: be much better. But as far as i'm a where,
Speaker 1: no technology like this has been even close to realize. No,
Speaker 1: they're thinking really hard about it, but right now it's
Speaker 1: it's all right in those early dangerous testing stages. Also,
Speaker 1: just infrastructure, you know, we would need to add a
Speaker 1: lot to either I mean to make it really cheap.
Speaker 1: If could add something to existing airports or or spaceports
Speaker 1: I guess um, uh, space centers, then that would help
Speaker 1: out a lot. But you know, we don't have the
Speaker 1: capacity to send tourist flights up. You know, one of
Speaker 1: the ones I like to talk about is um Spaceport America,
Speaker 1: which is in New Mexico. Real thing, Ill, I'm not joking,
Speaker 1: yea Spaceport America. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, it's it's a thing.
Speaker 1: So that would be a rare example. You guys are
Speaker 1: looking at me like I'm crazy. It really is. Never
Speaker 1: sounds like we're usually looking at you like you're crazy,
Speaker 1: but it's it's really, it's really a spaceport that's been
Speaker 1: built for commercial uh space endeavors. So it's you know,
Speaker 1: look it up. It really, I've got believe you. So anyway,
Speaker 1: it's it's um, that's a that's a rare example of
Speaker 1: someone getting together, raising the money and building out something
Speaker 1: from the ground up that is not an additive for
Speaker 1: facility on something that pre exists. Right, So, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: that's the exception of the rule because to do that
Speaker 1: costs even more money, right to just build the place
Speaker 1: where the spacecraft are gonna take off and land. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So okay, So so people are working on solutions to
Speaker 1: these problems, and Joe, I think that you had some
Speaker 1: numbers on how that's going. Yeah, I'm gonna quote from
Speaker 1: the abstract of a paper by Powell Maze and rather
Speaker 1: that I'm going to refer to in a minute here.
Speaker 1: But what they say is, quote, despite decades of efforts
Speaker 1: to reduce rocket launch costs, improvements are marginal. Launch cost
Speaker 1: for l e oh, for cargo is about ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per kilogram of payload, and to hire orbit and
Speaker 1: beyond much greater and human access to the I s
Speaker 1: s still costs about twenty million dollars for a single passenger.
Speaker 1: So that sounds like absolutely no progress at all, or
Speaker 1: maybe marginal progress depending on inflation. Right, can you take
Speaker 1: inflation into account? We have, uh, we have made progress,
Speaker 1: but it is hard to illustrate because the actual amounts
Speaker 1: it's like that race that you get that is almost
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be that whole cost of living. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So all right, so this is depressing. What other alternatives
Speaker 1: might we have to this whole really costly rocket business.
Speaker 1: Well you might have seen that video of a frog
Speaker 1: that had been on the side of the rocket and
Speaker 1: tried to hitch a ride up. I don't recommend that
Speaker 1: that that is still I I feel really bad for
Speaker 1: that frog, and it is still one of my favorite photos.
Speaker 1: So it's also still rocket, still rockets. But but but
Speaker 1: if you're hitching a ride that's free, that's what hitching means.
Speaker 1: There's no such thing as a free rocket. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so non rocket space launch. How do you get into
Speaker 1: space without a rocket? Well, being there already is great,
Speaker 1: But be born and born on the surface of the
Speaker 1: Earth from Earth to space, in fact, not just the space,
Speaker 1: but to orbit, because that's what really matters. So right now,
Speaker 1: we don't really have a way of doing that, but
Speaker 1: we have several ways that kind of border between science
Speaker 1: fiction and science fact. Like the principles we understand and
Speaker 1: we think, you know, on paper, we can get them
Speaker 1: to work. Whether we can ever make them practical is
Speaker 1: a matter of engineering. Yeah, So we've got hundreds of
Speaker 1: really interesting ideas on how to do this, but none
Speaker 1: are proven. So space elevator obviously one of our favorites.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this before on the show. Right. The
Speaker 1: idea is that you've got a essentially a line that
Speaker 1: is anchored at two points. One is on the surface
Speaker 1: of the Earth, somewhere on the equator, and another one
Speaker 1: is in on an anchor that's in orbit around the Earth.
Speaker 1: So you've got this tether that connects the the anchor
Speaker 1: point that's around orbit to the Earth to the Earth surface,
Speaker 1: and then you have an elevator, a device that can
Speaker 1: climb said tether from the surface of the Earth all
Speaker 1: the way out to the anchor point out in space,
Speaker 1: where you would then be able to launch off into
Speaker 1: wherever you need to go at a much lower cost
Speaker 1: of energy because you don't have to escape the Earth's gravity,
Speaker 1: you don't have to have that escape velocity because the
Speaker 1: elevator has done all that work for you. Yeah, and uh.
Speaker 1: In contrast to the figures we cited a minute ago,
Speaker 1: the numbers that usually float around or that people estimate
Speaker 1: the space elevator would cost about a hundred to four
Speaker 1: hundred dollars per pound, but significant total estimate, we don't
Speaker 1: really know because there's nothing and we don't know how
Speaker 1: expensive it would be to build. So when you take
Speaker 1: into that that that lifetime cost or if it's even possible,
Speaker 1: because we don't know that we can find anything that
Speaker 1: will have the tent stile strength necessary to be able
Speaker 1: to to provide that tether. And of course people really
Speaker 1: like saying things about carbon nanotubes, so well, carbonano tubes
Speaker 1: may not even have the tense stream. They are stronger
Speaker 1: than diamond, but they may not have the tin cil
Speaker 1: strength necessary to be a viable cable. There are some
Speaker 1: other possible alternatives that are even stronger than carbon nanotubes,
Speaker 1: but all of those are are uh materials that are
Speaker 1: so experimental that we're able to Yeah, you're able to
Speaker 1: produce like a one atom thick strand of it, which
Speaker 1: obviously would not work for something like an elevator tether. Okay,
Speaker 1: are there any cookie non rocket launch ideas out there
Speaker 1: that don't involve exotic materials of something? Heard? Let me
Speaker 1: talk about a launch loop. A launch loop. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was one that I had to read. I had to
Speaker 1: read for about an hour. It sounds so crazy, it's
Speaker 1: pretty crazy. So alright, so a launch loop, imagine that
Speaker 1: you've got a really long um they call it a sheath.
Speaker 1: Think of it as a a tube. It's an enclosed
Speaker 1: tube in which you are able to create a vacuum.
Speaker 1: So it's a hyper loop to space. Hyper loop to
Speaker 1: space is it's not totally wrong, but that's a little
Speaker 1: it's a little different. You don't have a little air
Speaker 1: air bearings to go on. So yeah, but think of
Speaker 1: a tube. So you've got a tube that's got a
Speaker 1: vacuum inside of it. Uh. And also inside this tube
Speaker 1: is a second tube. This tube is made out of iron.
Speaker 1: It's called a rotor and it's uh. You use magnets
Speaker 1: so that it ends up being suspended within the first tube, right,
Speaker 1: because irons, you know, uh, ferrest materials. You should do that.
Speaker 1: So you you create this system where the iron is
Speaker 1: essentially floating within the confines of this sheath. Then you
Speaker 1: use electro magnets, linear motors essentially to start um spinning
Speaker 1: that iron rotor within the sheath. Once it starts spinning,
Speaker 1: that's going to create angular momentum, which will actually cause
Speaker 1: the sheath to rise up into the air if you
Speaker 1: start spinning it fast enough. We're talking super fast, so
Speaker 1: fast that uh for a four thoul in kilometer length
Speaker 1: sheath in in one loop, uh, the iron would make
Speaker 1: a full revolution in six minutes for four thousand kilometers UM.
Speaker 1: That's really fast. So you're going super fast at that
Speaker 1: speed it rises up this this it's anchored at the
Speaker 1: on the earth at two points um. Some cables actually
Speaker 1: are also anchoring it so it doesn't fly into the
Speaker 1: wrong shape it eventually, at around eighty kilometers, ends up
Speaker 1: becoming more or less parallel to the ground. It also
Speaker 1: has to be somewhere close to the equator, probably on
Speaker 1: the ocean somewhere. Uh. You would have two stations that
Speaker 1: would be elevated, UH, the East station in the West station.
Speaker 1: You would travel from the west to the east. So
Speaker 1: the way this would work is, first you would catch
Speaker 1: essentially what would amount to be an elevator UH that
Speaker 1: would climb the cable up until you got to the
Speaker 1: West station. For the West station, you would then board
Speaker 1: a capsule which would they be propelled across the length
Speaker 1: of the of the the cable that's like two thousand
Speaker 1: kilometers long. At this point toward the East station. Along
Speaker 1: the way, you would reach orbital velocity and be released
Speaker 1: out into space, where then you would use whatever your
Speaker 1: capsule's UH propulsion mechanism is to orient yourself properly and
Speaker 1: then go on your mary little way. UM. This sounds
Speaker 1: crazy to me because the amount of energy you would
Speaker 1: need to move that much iron, essentially four thousand kilometers
Speaker 1: of iron that fast, would be equivalent to what you
Speaker 1: would see in a nuclear explosion. UH. You would be
Speaker 1: using these really super powerful linear motors to to achieve that.
Speaker 1: But I can't imagine where you get all that power,
Speaker 1: And if something bad happens, I can't imagine what the
Speaker 1: fallout would be. And now granted it would not be
Speaker 1: a nuclear explosion, there's no nuclear reaction going on with
Speaker 1: this purely physical. Also, you would have to worry about
Speaker 1: heat if any leak happened along that sheath. Uh an
Speaker 1: air got in those little bitty air molecules which would
Speaker 1: seem to be harmless to anybody, are going to interact
Speaker 1: with that rotor moving at incredible speeds, generate tons of heat,
Speaker 1: and then you have a catastrophic failure. Yeah, this all
Speaker 1: sounds like like obviously you would be using a lot
Speaker 1: less fuel from that capsule, you know, from this from
Speaker 1: this great height into orbit itself. But the an energy expenditure,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't really be saving anything. I don't think from well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it supposedly takes less energy to operate it. You would
Speaker 1: have to operate continuously. I can imagine how you would
Speaker 1: turn it off. If you've turned it off, that seems
Speaker 1: like it would collapse. It would start they're supposed to
Speaker 1: be The designs also involved parachutes, so that if the
Speaker 1: thing does turn off, that it would parachute down because
Speaker 1: otherwise you're talking about you know, four kilometers of iron
Speaker 1: falling to the Earth's surface or possibly if it breaks off,
Speaker 1: could go into orbit. Um. But it's yeah, it's not uh.
Speaker 1: And the whole thing, by the way, your capsule and
Speaker 1: everything it connects to this cable, uh as a like electromagnetically,
Speaker 1: So it's not that you it's not like it's got
Speaker 1: a little hooks Like the first time I read it,
Speaker 1: I imagine one of those uh if you've ever played
Speaker 1: with one of those really old race car tracks where
Speaker 1: the car went on to a hook, like the car
Speaker 1: that there was nothing special about the car. It would
Speaker 1: just hook onto a little hook and the hook would
Speaker 1: travel the length of the track. That's what I imagined
Speaker 1: at first. But no, it's electromagnetic. It's not actually a
Speaker 1: physical connection. But um, the more I read about this,
Speaker 1: and I don't pretend to understand everything about this, I'm
Speaker 1: not an engineer, and a lot of the stuff I
Speaker 1: read was I mean, all of this is really hypothetical
Speaker 1: or you know, at best theoretical. Um. I have a
Speaker 1: real hard time believing that this would be something that
Speaker 1: that could be achievable. I I think just getting it
Speaker 1: to uh to the right elevation would be really challenging
Speaker 1: because you're talking about something that's mounted on platforms out
Speaker 1: in the ocean, and you would have to start it
Speaker 1: off at a very gradual speed and then build up
Speaker 1: speed to have this thing elevate to the right height
Speaker 1: based upon that angular momentum. I have a real hard
Speaker 1: time imagining all of that. I mean, it's it could
Speaker 1: very well be in the realbot possibility. It's just beyond
Speaker 1: my understanding it does. It's something about the the picture
Speaker 1: of it in your brain seems so violent, you know,
Speaker 1: just the movement of that much mass around in the loop.
Speaker 1: It seems crazy for that reason. But then again, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm no engineer. I I couldn't really judge, but
Speaker 1: it does seem pretty wacky. Yeah, so let's talk about
Speaker 1: something else. Let's talk about something that is perfectly feasible,
Speaker 1: like shooting people into space with magnets. There are all
Speaker 1: different kinds of ways to shoot people into space. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there is this concept of something that's like basically
Speaker 1: a space gun. It's just like a cannon that you
Speaker 1: could shoot something to try to achieve orbital French film
Speaker 1: that covered the Yeah, the problem is, of course, that
Speaker 1: creates way too many G forces and would kill you
Speaker 1: your your skull, your skull would liquefied, just like an
Speaker 1: event Horizon. Lauren remember that movie. I do remember that movie.
Speaker 1: And so there are other ideas that are like, well,
Speaker 1: what if we could do a similar concept. So the
Speaker 1: goal is to throw you into space, right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: to get talking about Bob's big boy with an arm
Speaker 1: that's cocked back to get you going so fast that
Speaker 1: you just by your own momentum, escape Earth's gravity and
Speaker 1: achieve orbital velocity. Um. So wow that that seems like
Speaker 1: that would require a lot of speed, and it does.
Speaker 1: But if they slowly work you up to that speed,
Speaker 1: you could do it well. And again they're talking in
Speaker 1: this case, you're talking about a a mag lev approach. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanna cite one specific example of the general mass
Speaker 1: driver kind of approach, and this is the Star Tram.
Speaker 1: So again we're talking about a system where you have
Speaker 1: a vacuum or near vacuum tube, so you've cut down
Speaker 1: on air resistance, so that's no longer a factor. No,
Speaker 1: I can explain it here is Uh, I'm siding from
Speaker 1: a paper maglev launch ultra low cost, ultra high volume
Speaker 1: access to space for cargo and humans. And that's uh
Speaker 1: the paper are referred to earlier by Powell, Maze and rather.
Speaker 1: And so basically the proposed star tram system is like
Speaker 1: an orbital launch version of a maglev train. UM. So,
Speaker 1: a magnetized capsule containing cargo or passengers is accelerated by
Speaker 1: electrically powered magnetic propulsion through a ground level tube that's
Speaker 1: been pumped free of atmosphere. Uh. And so you think
Speaker 1: about it like basically a giant vacuum pipe. So it
Speaker 1: is kind of like we referred to. Yeah, we referred
Speaker 1: to the hyper loop earlier. Hyper loop is low pressure,
Speaker 1: but this would be total vacuum. Is close to it
Speaker 1: as we could possibly get, right to be near vacuum. Um.
Speaker 1: And so super conducting magnets on the vehicle push outward
Speaker 1: and they keep the vehicle from touching the inner walls
Speaker 1: of this giant tunnel. So you're not losing speed due
Speaker 1: to friction. Right. It levitates magnetically just like a maglov train.
Speaker 1: It's floating in the air, and so that helps it
Speaker 1: achieve virtually unlimited speed. There's no friction to hold it back. Um.
Speaker 1: And Meanwhile, the tunnel sends pulses of current through aluminum
Speaker 1: rings along the length of the tube, and this pushes
Speaker 1: the magnets on the vehicle to accelerate it. Um And Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, there's basically no limit to the speed
Speaker 1: as long as it remains in a vacuum or near vacuum.
Speaker 1: And eventually the spacecraft attains speeds greater than eight kilometers
Speaker 1: per second or about five miles per second uh and
Speaker 1: is blasted out the end of the tunnel like a bullet.
Speaker 1: Uh And with the help of a very modest rocket burst,
Speaker 1: it makes its way to low Earth orbit. Yeah. And also,
Speaker 1: by the way, if you happen to be where near
Speaker 1: that other side, you don't want to be anywhere near
Speaker 1: it because you're gonna get some sonic booms. No, they
Speaker 1: they say that this thing should come out in an
Speaker 1: unoccupied area. Um. And so what they proposed is a
Speaker 1: two stage system. So the first implementation is generation one,
Speaker 1: and that's easier, but it's only okay for cargo and uh.
Speaker 1: Generation two would experience less G force trauma, so it
Speaker 1: would be okay for humans. And the way Generation one
Speaker 1: works is that it can just frankly, it can just
Speaker 1: accelerate along the ground and then run up the side
Speaker 1: of a tall mountain and that's all they have to do.
Speaker 1: Um and the authors think that this is doable by
Speaker 1: ideal funding, but that's probably not gonna happen. That would
Speaker 1: be uh, Generation two cannot go up the side of
Speaker 1: the mountain. Why, Well, what happens when you come out
Speaker 1: of the tube from the vacuum tube to suddenly a
Speaker 1: place where there's air hit You hit air, which imminately
Speaker 1: means that you hit resistance. Yeah, so you're gonna decelerate
Speaker 1: and you're gonna heat up. Yeah, you're gonna slow down
Speaker 1: and heat up really fast. That's fine for cargo, but
Speaker 1: if you've got people in the capsule, the g forces
Speaker 1: of doing that could kill them. Um. So what it
Speaker 1: needs to do is it needs to be magnetically levitated
Speaker 1: up higher, higher and higher until the end of that
Speaker 1: tube is about twenty kilometers or twelve point four miles
Speaker 1: up off the surface of the Earth. And it dis
Speaker 1: blows my mind. Yeah, so what what Basically what they
Speaker 1: say is that the twenty kilometer exit is doable through
Speaker 1: magnetic levitation, So you've got dual maglov here the capsule
Speaker 1: is suspended in the tube by magnets, but then the
Speaker 1: tube itself is suspended by magnets over the surface of
Speaker 1: the Earth. And this is a dual system, so it's
Speaker 1: got super conducting magnets pointing in both directions from the
Speaker 1: bottom of the tube and from the track along the ground. Sure. Now,
Speaker 1: this is where I have a real hard time imagining this,
Speaker 1: because I'm trying to imagine the end of a tube
Speaker 1: that's suspended twenty kilometers above the surface of the Earth,
Speaker 1: that has uh magnets powerful enough both in the tube
Speaker 1: and along the ground beneath so that the tube remains
Speaker 1: uh yeah, right, yeah, levitated. Because you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know what angle they're talking about here, Like I can't,
Speaker 1: I don't know what distances we're talking about, right, I
Speaker 1: would imagine it's probably a fairly aggressive angle, because you know,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know why you would have a
Speaker 1: gradual angle to get out of the Earth's orbit. That
Speaker 1: would mean that your track would have to be incredibly long.
Speaker 1: So I imagine that it's probably a fairly aggressive angle.
Speaker 1: Kind of similar to um and not necessarily like straight
Speaker 1: back like you would be if you were on a rocket.
Speaker 1: But no, it's much more gradual than that. Oh is it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's angle. Well, I mean, I saw I have some
Speaker 1: illustrations here, but I don't Yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 1: the illustrations are are actually just makes me think like
Speaker 1: it's certainly not vertical, because if you're talking about going
Speaker 1: out so that you're twenty kilometers high, keep in mind
Speaker 1: the uh that that side of your right triangle is
Speaker 1: going to be the longest side, right, that's the distance
Speaker 1: down and the distance straight back to the point of
Speaker 1: origin are going to be shorter than that that angle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're essentially at the hypot noose. Um. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to imagine how powerful those magnets
Speaker 1: would have to be to keep it suspended. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's possible. It's just one of those where I'm thinking, like, man,
Speaker 1: don't wear any ferrest material. Yeah. Yeah, So they address
Speaker 1: this in the paper. So they say that it's going
Speaker 1: to be lifted up by the magnets and it has
Speaker 1: to be held in place for stabilization by tethers to
Speaker 1: the ground. Um, and so what what they say is
Speaker 1: that the launch tube has high current superconducting cables that
Speaker 1: magnetically interact with the second set of high current sc
Speaker 1: cables on the surface beneath, and that creates a levitation
Speaker 1: force that it's several metric tons per meter of two blink.
Speaker 1: That's a quote from the paper. And what they say
Speaker 1: is that that levitation force is greater than the weight
Speaker 1: of the launch too. I understand that, I just don't
Speaker 1: understand where they're getting the energy to do. When you
Speaker 1: start putting it this way, I'm starting to think that
Speaker 1: this whole space elevator thing has a lot of promise
Speaker 1: because they see the superconducting. Also that the problem with
Speaker 1: superconductors in general is that most of them have to
Speaker 1: be super cooled to work, right. You can't just there
Speaker 1: are very few superconductors that work at quote unquote warm temperatures,
Speaker 1: and by warm, i'm talking about hundreds of degrees below uh, freezing,
Speaker 1: but but still not at absolute zero, not at absolute
Speaker 1: zero um although although I mean people are working on
Speaker 1: that technology as well, but right now it's happening in
Speaker 1: you know, like the nano to micro kind of escape.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's just it's just I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's a possibility. Again, it's one of those things like
Speaker 1: the launch loop. It's very hard for me to envision
Speaker 1: based upon my admittedly limited understanding of superconductors and magnetism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so even if we believe they can do what they
Speaker 1: say they can do, the authors of this paper themselves
Speaker 1: suggest that the generation two one, the one that will
Speaker 1: provide human passengers, so that's the one relevant space tourism,
Speaker 1: will cost sixty seven billion dollars um. But put that
Speaker 1: in contrast with something that they also cite, which is
Speaker 1: that the launch volume of this would make it worth
Speaker 1: it because it could pump out three hundred tons of
Speaker 1: cargo and four hundred thousand passengers a year. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that make it up in volume. Yeah yeah. And and
Speaker 1: for for that kind of system, that's not a very
Speaker 1: expensive cost at all, So I you know, I look, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I again one of those things that that if
Speaker 1: they can get the engineering to work out, then that
Speaker 1: would be amazing. I mean, uh, I think I think
Speaker 1: this would be truly an awesome site to behold, just
Speaker 1: the just the levitating track that extends twenty kilometers into
Speaker 1: the sky alone with yeah, yeah, for for the record,
Speaker 1: like Mount Everest is about eight kilometers up, so if
Speaker 1: that gives you any kind of earthly idea. So all
Speaker 1: of these non rocket space launch ideas, they sound really cool,
Speaker 1: but at the same time sound like, how is that possible?
Speaker 1: Over and over again. When you look at these, it's like,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. It seems so implausible. I don't want
Speaker 1: to say they can't do it, because I think they
Speaker 1: should go for it. I mean, I'm all four people
Speaker 1: researching methods like these, but for now, maybe we should
Speaker 1: turn back and try to focus on Okay, let's say
Speaker 1: these ideas like the space elevator, launch loop maglev. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's say they're twenty to thirty years away. Let's say
Speaker 1: they're not. Let's say that they are actually as implausible
Speaker 1: as they sound. O Um, what are some ways that
Speaker 1: we could practically reduce the cost of space tourism if
Speaker 1: we're stuck with with basically still pretty expensive launch costs. Okay,
Speaker 1: so what you're saying is the cost of getting someone
Speaker 1: up into space has remained the same. So we haven't
Speaker 1: magically found some way to make rockets super cheap. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, well, just you know, yeah, how can
Speaker 1: we make it cheaper um for travel. Okay. So yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's hear some ideas. Okay, So we can't if
Speaker 1: we can't affect the cost that's going to be incurred
Speaker 1: at the base level, then how can we make the
Speaker 1: ticket price lower? Joe? You you seem to have an idea. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not my idea, But how about a lottery? Are
Speaker 1: you right now? I'm bad at math. I like lotteries,
Speaker 1: and you did not participate in the last office lottery idea.
Speaker 1: You are so correct, And they bought the ticket two
Speaker 1: blocks away, so it was one of those moments where
Speaker 1: like the winning ticket was bought near my office. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about a lottery that's better than one for money.
Speaker 1: This is a lottery to go to space. Buzz Buzz
Speaker 1: Alter and his voice support for this idea. I want
Speaker 1: to give a quote that he gave to Popular Mechanics
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. He said, I want to
Speaker 1: increase the opportunity for more people UH to share in
Speaker 1: going to orbit. I think I can establish a controlled, legal,
Speaker 1: highly productive, random selection of small investments by people, and
Speaker 1: a selection process that works like a lottery. The experience
Speaker 1: that you can win is non transferable, that means you
Speaker 1: put it named down, you buy a ticket, and that
Speaker 1: person has to use it or lose it, so you
Speaker 1: can't scalp your ticket. Really good, thank you, thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think that that idea makes a lot of
Speaker 1: sense to me. So you could have well, there there
Speaker 1: will obviously still be rich people who can afford to
Speaker 1: pay the costs to get a guaranteed ticket to space,
Speaker 1: but there will also be plenty of tickets that you
Speaker 1: can put up for lottery. So you could buy a
Speaker 1: ten dollar space lottery ticket. Unfortunately there's a night teen
Speaker 1: point nine million dollar convenience fee. I'm just thinking that
Speaker 1: buzz Aldrin would work like ticketmaster. Nice. No, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, that's a great idea, this idea of sure,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, you're buying a chance, and that
Speaker 1: chance maybe determined by how many other people are participating
Speaker 1: in that particular lottery, right as sure, And in the
Speaker 1: same way that many state money related lotteries go to
Speaker 1: fund the state education system or something like that, the
Speaker 1: money that you would be putting in would be going
Speaker 1: to to awesome stuff, I mean space research and sending
Speaker 1: one of your fellow human people up for that kind
Speaker 1: of experience. That's pretty cool exactly, And I think one
Speaker 1: thing that's cool about this is um so obviously we'll
Speaker 1: still mean that most people who buy a ticket won't
Speaker 1: get to go, but what it will mean is that
Speaker 1: not everybody who goes is going to be somebody who's
Speaker 1: filthy rich. I'm gonna go ahead and call DIBs here.
Speaker 1: I volunteers tribute lotteries here. So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: get my word in there before for all the tickets
Speaker 1: are sold. Nice, thank you. So yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting idea. Again, we're obviously you're talking
Speaker 1: about how this does not truly offset the cost of
Speaker 1: getting someone into space directly. But again, if you have
Speaker 1: a lottery that's successful enough, then just through the sheer
Speaker 1: number of tickets you've sold, you've managed to offset that.
Speaker 1: That's a fantastic idea. I very much support that idea.
Speaker 1: And I want to talk about another one. Okay, Uh,
Speaker 1: this is one that I mentioned in the video episode
Speaker 1: I wrote about this. Uh, how about doing research? Yeah,
Speaker 1: every single person, as far as I can tell, every
Speaker 1: single person who has gone to the I S S
Speaker 1: as their private astronauts has done some kind of scientific
Speaker 1: research while up there. But if you take it a
Speaker 1: little bit further, if you really do volunteers tribute to
Speaker 1: have to go up for for scientific purpose, you want
Speaker 1: to find out what the effects of space have on
Speaker 1: a tubby podcaster, I am a perfect subject for that.
Speaker 1: I hear zero gravity restores hair growth. Hall, don't tease me, Joe,
Speaker 1: that's a dragon. Have been chasing along time just got
Speaker 1: in here, you guys. I'm fine with being bald. It's beautiful, y'all. No, no,
Speaker 1: but no, thank you. I appreciate that, but no. Richard
Speaker 1: Garriott is a great example that truly an evangelist for
Speaker 1: space travel and that uh, well, there there aren't any
Speaker 1: hard and fast figures that are absolutely verifiable. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of estimates that are out there that suggests
Speaker 1: that the work he did and he talks about, you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that he did perform scientific experiments while aboard
Speaker 1: the I S S may have offset his ticket price
Speaker 1: by a significant amount of money. Now, granted, we're still
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, a potential thirty million dollar price
Speaker 1: tag and a six or seven million dollar uh reduction
Speaker 1: in that because of the work he did, but that's
Speaker 1: still kind of a proof of concept. Now, if you
Speaker 1: were able to perhaps have a private company that created
Speaker 1: a program where people could apply to be the next pioneer,
Speaker 1: you know, the next private astronaut, and they're going to
Speaker 1: be continuing on some sort of scientific research in the process.
Speaker 1: Maybe that would bring things within the range of more people,
Speaker 1: perhaps not your average traveler, but at least lower that
Speaker 1: ceiling a bit. Right, So, Richard Garriott was able to
Speaker 1: offset part of his costs with scientific research. But the
Speaker 1: thing about him is he's not like a PhD scientific researcher.
Speaker 1: Is it like a like a professional. He's a computer
Speaker 1: games programmer. I mean it's smart, grant super smart, but
Speaker 1: no scientist. Not to knock him at all. I just
Speaker 1: mean that that's an example physicist, right that. I think
Speaker 1: that your average person with the right amount of training,
Speaker 1: I'm sure could be authorized to do useful research in space,
Speaker 1: especially if they document everything in a way that makes sure, okay,
Speaker 1: we can rule out errors. And I agree that. I
Speaker 1: still think that if you are secretive enough, when you're
Speaker 1: the corporation and the real experiment is finding out what
Speaker 1: happens to the person you know, you can give them
Speaker 1: any busy work and it's fine. Um. I think that
Speaker 1: would be really cool. In fact, for some people it
Speaker 1: might even enhance the experience if I were going to
Speaker 1: go to space making a contribution to be able to
Speaker 1: do research in space. I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 1: we talked about do we mentioned earlier how much of
Speaker 1: a premium there is on zero G space? We did,
Speaker 1: We we kind of alluded to it, but we didn't
Speaker 1: really go into it. Yeah, I mean, there's there are
Speaker 1: a lot of industries that are looking at using zero
Speaker 1: G environments to do all sorts of testing, everything from
Speaker 1: medical testing to designing various prototypes and yeah, just about
Speaker 1: anything you can imagine, all these different industries. It's an
Speaker 1: invaluable resource and it's the most limited resource we have
Speaker 1: right now because you have one option, really, which is
Speaker 1: to go and work on the I S S and
Speaker 1: that that is an incredibly shortlist of people that are
Speaker 1: allowed to do that. And aside from science, this could
Speaker 1: be a really worthwhile event. Sure, coming back to money, actually,
Speaker 1: this could make economic sense in the long run, um
Speaker 1: if we work out exactly how to do it. Back
Speaker 1: in NASA and the Space Transportation Association put together a
Speaker 1: whole report on what they thought about this potentially future
Speaker 1: burgeoning space tourism industry, and they pointed out that travel
Speaker 1: and tourism are one of the world's largest businesses. Gross
Speaker 1: revenues in the US alone exceed like four hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars per year UM, so not too shabby. And if
Speaker 1: you can expand that beyond the you know, into into
Speaker 1: the limitless reaches of space, then this, this could make
Speaker 1: us some money. The scope of the project, you know,
Speaker 1: would would have to be worthwhile in order to kind
Speaker 1: of cash into that. Um. There was another really good
Speaker 1: report done in the mid nineties by the Japanese Rocket
Speaker 1: Society that looked at all of the costs and development
Speaker 1: of this kind of program and what exactly would take
Speaker 1: to make it profitable um and they estimated that to
Speaker 1: be financially feasible, UH, space tours and program would need
Speaker 1: over fifty vehicles and would need to embark on tens
Speaker 1: of flights every day. Although tens of flights to space
Speaker 1: is still a lot of I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it sounds ridiculously low, especially when you consider that commercial
Speaker 1: flights do some you know, three million passengers per day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: flying to Duluth is a little different than flying to
Speaker 1: the moon. It is. But but once you they were
Speaker 1: saying there, it's about the same. Well in either way,
Speaker 1: you know that the relative merits of Duluth aside um,
Speaker 1: people aren't going to be spending these millions of dollars
Speaker 1: on on a trip to Duluth anytime soon. Um. But
Speaker 1: if you could get that number down to something slightly
Speaker 1: more reasonable, something like like twenty dollars per flight, This
Speaker 1: report from the Japanese Rocket Society was was saying that
Speaker 1: at that cost, they were looking at generating over ten
Speaker 1: billion dollars per year from the sort of industry. Um,
Speaker 1: So it could, it could. In theory, it almost becomes
Speaker 1: a chicken in the egg thing, right, because you're like,
Speaker 1: how how do you get up the money so that
Speaker 1: you can end up creating the business that will then
Speaker 1: allow you to create the money so that you can
Speaker 1: continue to grow the business. Um. I mean we're talking
Speaker 1: about a brand new industry that's growing on something that
Speaker 1: has been established but not put to the purpose of tourism. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. I I still remain optimistic. I think that
Speaker 1: we are going to see successful space tourism industries. I
Speaker 1: hope that we see it soon. Like even if we're
Speaker 1: talking just suborbital. Just suborbital seems so dismissive. It's still
Speaker 1: an incredible achievement. But assuming that we can see some
Speaker 1: real success in the coming year, uh and and next
Speaker 1: couple of years, I'm really hopeful that this actually does
Speaker 1: become a real industry. I would love to be able
Speaker 1: to go up into space and that experience that phenomenal.
Speaker 1: And these these initial reports we're talking about this kind
Speaker 1: of thing being feasible by about and that was back
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties, so I think that that was
Speaker 1: um I mean, you know, consider in the state of
Speaker 1: the industry at the time, that was a pretty ambitious estimate. However,
Speaker 1: we've made such wonderful advances in the past ten years
Speaker 1: that I wonder if it's still a thirty year rollout though.
Speaker 1: I mean, we do have those rolling rollouts right the
Speaker 1: whole in thirty years that will happen in twenty years alive.
Speaker 1: We do, we do. But I think that some of
Speaker 1: the some of the numbers that the companies that are
Speaker 1: looking into this have have stated have been similar, and
Speaker 1: and it's clear that people like Richard Branson, people like
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos, people like Elon Musk are very serious about this.
Speaker 1: They have made huge strides toward it. It's not like
Speaker 1: they came up with a crazy plan, did a little
Speaker 1: bit of work and then said, Yo, this is way
Speaker 1: too hard. Now they've stuck with it. I mean Virgin
Speaker 1: Galactic is a great example, and that that was something
Speaker 1: they were hoping they would have their first flight sub
Speaker 1: orbital flight in two thousand seven didn't happen. They're still
Speaker 1: working on it, but they in they've already had another
Speaker 1: test flight. They that they're determined to make this work.
Speaker 1: So that gives me a lot of hope as well,
Speaker 1: because I know that when people put their minds to something, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty much impossible to stop them from doing
Speaker 1: it eventually, right, I mean, if they're determined to do it,
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen unless the very laws of physics themselves
Speaker 1: deny it and get a sonic screwdriver in there and
Speaker 1: you're good to go. So um, Well, I know that
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about the the barriers and obstacles
Speaker 1: that are in the way. Remember that and forward thinking.
Speaker 1: We always like to acknowledge the fact that there are
Speaker 1: barriers and obstacles, but we don't let that discourage us. Right,
Speaker 1: that's just something else that we take into account when
Speaker 1: we start to think about the future, and it's not
Speaker 1: this is what's going to prevent the future from happening.
Speaker 1: It's this is something we need to remember when we're
Speaker 1: working toward that future. So, you know, I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to see where this goes in the next few years,
Speaker 1: and I really do hope that sometime in my life
Speaker 1: I'm able to take advantage of this. Uh In may
Speaker 1: mean that I'm going to have to sell a limb,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna figure it out. It's gonna happen. So
Speaker 1: actually make you cheaper to take into space way less. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a good way to lose lose ten pounds
Speaker 1: really quickly. Alright, So guys, if you've enjoyed this, make
Speaker 1: sure you go to our website, f W thinking dot com.
Speaker 1: That's where we have all the videos, we have the
Speaker 1: blog posts, we have the podcast episodes. We've got lots
Speaker 1: of content there. It's really awesome. You should go check
Speaker 1: that out. Also, remember you can follow us and interact
Speaker 1: with us on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Google Plus with f W Thinking where all of
Speaker 1: those come and be part of this conversation. Tell us
Speaker 1: what you're excited about in the future. Maybe we'll even
Speaker 1: be able to do an episode about it. We're really
Speaker 1: excited with the exchanges we've had with our audience. It's
Speaker 1: been fantastic, So keep up the good work, guys. You
Speaker 1: guys are an inspiration to us and we hope we
Speaker 1: can help inspire you guys, and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this topic and
Speaker 1: the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot Com Problem
Speaker 1: brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places