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