 Coming up. The International Lunar Station is taking shape. Super Moon! I talked with Jeff Faust about a Trump space policy. We've got some launches on the docket and comments from last week's show. All that and more on this episode of Tomorrow. And welcome to Tomorrow, Season 9, Episode 37 for Saturday, November 12, 2016. My name is Benjamin Higginbotham. Now, before we get started, huge shout out to all of the patrons of Tomorrow who have helped make this specific segment of this episode happen. These are people who have contributed $10 or more to this episode. We are a crowdfunded show. Every single dollar helps. That list keeps getting longer and longer. So thank you to all the patrons of Tomorrow. Head on over to patreon.com slash tmro for more information on how you can crowdfund this show. Now, before we get into the interview today, I did just want to remind everyone this is a fairly touchy subject. We have three basic rules here at Tomorrow. They're all very simple. The first is no dying. We do work in the aerospace industry. A lot of people work with explosives and whatnot. So be safe, be smart, no dying. Rule number two, don't be a dick. Treat people like you want to be treated. And rule number three is you debate the idea, not the person. So no name calling, no debating people and their personalities. You debate ideas themselves. Head on over to tomorrow.tv slash rules for more information. Now, because of the particular topic, you know, the citizens tomorrow, you guys are awesome. We traditionally have great comments in our comments area. You treat each other with respect, even when you disagree. All I ask is please continue to do that, even with the fairly heated topic. So on that news, we're going to bring on Jeff Faust. He is the senior staff writer over at Space News, or a senior staff writer over at SpaceNews.com. And we're going to be talking about the Donald Trump policy for space. So Jeff, first off, thank you very much for taking time out of your Saturday and joining us today. No problem. Pleasure to be here. All right. So we don't know a whole lot about what a space policy under Trump would mean, but some of these pieces are starting to come together a little bit. Can you tell us a bit about what we know? Sure. You know, the Trump campaign didn't talk much about space during the campaign. That's not surprising. Space isn't a big issue. There are a lot of their much bigger issues that got all the attention during the campaign. Clearly in sort of the final weeks of the campaign, leading up to the election where the campaign did bring in a space policy advisor. He is Robert Walker, former congressman, former chairman of the House Science Committee. He helped formulate sort of the framework of a policy. And that framework really calls for some very basic, more almost philosophical points. That includes promoting commercialization, promoting human exploration. Less of an emphasis on earth science. More cooperation between the various branches of the government where it comes to space. Issues like that. So not a lot of details, not a lot of depth, but you get sort of an idea of what a Trump administration might do once it takes office in January. So the big one, the big item you mentioned to us in human space exploration is the space launch system. Under Trump administration, have they said anything about SLS? Do we have any insight as to what might be happening with that particular program? That's a good question. They haven't specifically said anything about SLS or Orion or the other parts of the exploration program. You can read that to mean that they're not particularly interested in SLS, that they might make changes to that in the future, or simply because they haven't gotten down to that level of detail. And I suspect for the time being, that's really the latter explanation. They really hadn't had the need to think about what they would want to do with SLS, what they would want to do with Orion, what they would want to do with these other systems, because space wasn't a priority. With new administration coming in and some decisions to make about who's going to be NASA administrator, about fleshing out some of those policy basics that they unveiled during the campaign itself, you'll start to see some more details about what they might want to do with some of those key programs. Keeping in mind, and I think this is important, that what a campaign says during the campaign and what it attempts to do, maybe two different things, what it attempts to do once elected and what it's actually able to get through Congress can also be two very different things. And how long does something like this take? So when Obama took office, it wasn't right away when there was suddenly, like day one he had a space policy. How long do these transition periods generally take? Yeah, that's a very good point. A lot of people tend to think of the transition as taking place between Election Day in November and the inauguration in January. In reality, that transition can last months longer. Case in point with the Obama administration, they took office in January of 2009. It was four months later in May when they finally nominated Charlie Bolden to be NASA administrator after going through a number of other potential candidates for the office. So I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a Trump administration a while to fill that position simply because it's going to take a while to fill all the cabinet and higher level positions out there in the federal government. Likewise, it wasn't until January of 2010, actually February of 2010, when they actually unveiled their plan to cancel the Constellation Program to develop the Commercial Crew Program, things like that. So there's going to be a period of transition that will last for many months and until the Trump administration is really able to put its own stamp on space policy. So for the time being, we just sort of look at who's involved and what they're saying and trying to guess from there what they might do in a year or two. So when it comes to the United States president, how much does that matter? There's actually a question in the chat room from, I think it's Ferkeep, which is how much of the total space business can change or in how much is set in stone for the long term? Yeah, I mean, you know, the federal government, NASA runs on annual budgets so you can change things on an annual basis if you decide you don't want to continue a particular program or if you want to accelerate a particular program by adding more money to it. That's certainly a possibility. But again, we're almost ready to get the 2017 budget done. That's one of the priorities for Congress when it returns next week for its so-called lame duck session after the election. The new administration will have to quickly develop a 2018 budget proposal shortly after it takes office so there won't be much time for them to make major changes to NASA there. It's really going to be the 2019 budget proposal, which will come out in early 2018, that they really have their first opportunity to make major changes to NASA programs. So there's going to be a period of time running for, like I said, up to a year after the inauguration where NASA programs may more or less continue as they're going now as the new administration tries to figure out what changes they want to make, what new programs they want to implement, or what existing programs they want to cancel. But it's not just the president, right? I mean, the president can set some stuff, but ultimately it's a combination of the president and Congress together that are going to tell NASA what they're going to end up doing over time. Absolutely. You know, the president proposes Congress disposes, as the old saying in Capitol Hill, about budgets. You know, the president proposes a budget, but ultimately they have to Congress to come up with the appropriations bills to cover that. Likewise, you saw in the 2010 debate about the efforts to cancel the constellation program. You know, they ended up did canceling the Aries I and the Aries V, but they came up with a space launch system, which looks a lot like the Aries V in many respects, and the Orion program continued. So if a Trump administration came in and said, well, we really want to cancel the space launch system, I suspect you will see members of Congress who have their own stakes in the program because of activities going on in their districts or states, stepping up to fight that effort. With no guarantee that the Trump administration would be successful in any of these efforts. It will depend a lot on their relationships with the Congress, and also what sort of priority that they put on space and how much effort they would put in to try and implement their plans if it faces any sort of congressional opposition. One of the things that will also be happening is we're going to be getting a new NASA administrator. Has there been any word, do you have any insight as to who that might be or who they're looking at at this time? Yeah, the rumor mill is really starting to spin up now with the election now in place. One of the first teams that's really emerged is a congressman from Oklahoma, Jim Bridenstine. He was just re-elected to his third term in Congress. He represents the Tulsa area. He serves on the House Science Committee and the House Armed Services Committee, so he's seen a lot of both civil and military space issues, and he's been very active on space policy. Back in April, he introduced legislation called the American Space Renaissance Act, which was a very broad-reaching space bill with a number of policy provisions regarding military space, civil space, and commercial space. And so he's definitely thought a lot about it, so he would be a very interesting choice to be a NASA administrator if that does go forward and if, in fact, he's interested in doing so. He's also apparently also being considered for the position of Secretary of the Air Force, so it may not be the only job that he has to consider. A couple other names you might hear, one of them is Mark Albrecht. Back in the George H.W. Bush administration, Bush 41 administration in the early 90s, he was Executive Secretary of the National Space Council, which was this interagency body that oversaw space policy, and the National Space Council hasn't been in existence since the Bush 41 administration, but one of the tenants of the Trump campaign space policy was to restore the National Space Council, and Albrecht is involved with some of the NASA transition issues as part of the Trump transition team, so he's got a role there. Another name you might hear is Eileen Collins. She is the former astronaut, flew on several shuttle missions, was the first female commander of a shuttle mission as a matter of fact, now retired, but she spoke at the Republican National Convention very briefly in support of a reinvigorated space policy and in support of the Trump campaign, so that's another name you may hear. I suspect in the weeks that come you'll probably hear other names, how seriously they'll be considered, or how seriously those people are interested in the position remain to be seen, but just because you're starting to hear names now doesn't mean that a selection is imminent. It may take weeks or months, like I said, as was the case with the Obama administration, before the Trump administration finally settles on a pick for NASA administrator. There are a couple of questions in the chat room all kind of relating to themselves. They're all focused around kind of commercial space. Has there been any murmurings about what's going to happen to the commercial space side of NASA, the COTS program and commercial crew and whatnot? Not specifically to programs like commercial crew, but one of the priorities that the Trump campaign mentioned in their space policy was supporting space commercialization. Robert Walker in some of his op-eds that we published in Space News and some speeches that he made talked about turning over low earth orbit entirely to the commercial sector, bringing in new partners to help support the International Space Station. So I think if anything, a Trump administration would be more strongly supportive of commercial space, a commercial crew program, greater commercialization of the International Space Station, and so on, because that would allow them to free up resources to do deep space exploration, whether that's the Moon or Mars or elsewhere. It sounds like they're also wanting to work more closely with our international partners on things like Space Station, possibly extending the life of Space Station. One of the things that's been missing up until now is China. We've not allowed China onto the Space Station. Have there been any talks of allowing them in to the Space Station program at all, or is that no one said anything in that room? Yeah, Walker has talked a little bit about that. He is supportive to some degree of enhanced cooperation with China, whether that represents just his opinion or an opinion shared by the broader Trump campaign remains to be seen. I think any effort to do so is going to face some congressional opposition because it's Congress that has imposed the strict limitations on cooperation between NASA and China in space. In a series of appropriations bills such that NASA has to get permission from Congress, in essence, to do any sort of cooperation with China, even on issues like aviation and air traffic control or earth sciences or so on, let alone human spaceflight. So this kind of deviates a little bit from what we're talking about, but it is an interesting question from SpaceCookie84, which is, is there a way to isolate science and space from advancement from turmoil of politics because it only takes one bad administration to hamper what's been done so far? Or I think a different way of looking at that is it's very difficult for an agency like NASA who has very long-term 10, 20, 30, 40-year goals to have to shift every four to eight years into a new way. Is there any way to prevent that from happening? Not under the current structure. We do our appropriations on an annual basis and that's true whether you're at NASA or the National Science Foundation or NOAA or the National Institutes of Health to mention several agencies that do science and related research. And so, you know, it's each administration's prerogative to try and put their own stamp into place and their own policies into place onto these agencies. So trying to separate these agencies from politics isn't feasible because they are, you know, part of politics. They are part of policy. They are federally funded. They are run by either federal appointees or people who are nominated and then confirmed by the Senate. So one of the other, no, I'm bouncing around a little bit, but one of the other things that was mentioned is they want to require that all federal agencies develop plans of how they would use space assets and space development as you mentioned a little bit earlier. What could that mean? All federal agencies, that's very broad. That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense in a lot of cases. Yeah, and I don't, that might be one of those issues that they really haven't thought through to that grade of detail in terms of how they would implement that. I think that would go back to this decision to re-institute the National Space Council because one of the issues the National Space Council dealt with was sort of bringing together all the different space programs across the federal government, whether it's NASA, whether it was in the Defense Department or elsewhere, and making sure that they are aligned to some degree and that there's no duplication of effort. You'll hear that, I think, continue from the campaign and desire to make sure that there is no duplication of effort among these agencies, that there's no waste of funding or so on. And that's done to some degree already through the White House and through the space policy that's oftentimes handled by the National Security Council or the Office of Science and Technology Policy. I think you may see a greater emphasis there, but again, asking all of these federal agencies how they intend to use space may be sort of more of a make-work exercise than any sort of substantive policy directive. So it sounds like the budget's going to generally, no one's expecting the budget to really increase as well, right? So it kind of sounds like it's going to be generally the same path forward for human spaceflight with a reduced path forward on Earth sciences. Yeah, I mean, Bob Walker has mentioned in conversations that he wasn't expecting great increases to NASA's budget. Exactly what NASA's budget is going to look like or even the federal budget's overall is one of the uncertainties that is part of this transition process, given all discussions on topics ranging from massive infrastructure investments to removing or replacing Obamacare. So space is sort of a small part of that much bigger picture. So that remains to be seen there. One of the issues that comes up when you mention Earth science is the idea that, and this is not new to the Trump campaign, but it's been mentioned by a number of other Republicans on the Capitol Hill in the past is a belief that there are other agencies doing Earth science and that NASA should be focused on space exploration and that those efforts should be handed over to an agency like NOAA. Well, if that happens, then the funding presumably for those programs would have to be handed over to NOAA as well. So it would not be as if you're freeing up money within the NASA budget. You're simply redirecting where that money goes and it may turn out that NOAA may have to go back to NASA because it does already with a number of its weather satellite programs and works with NASA to actually carry out some of these satellite programs because NOAA itself doesn't have the same degree of satellite expertise that NASA does, which is why the two agencies who often work together on programs like the GoZAR weather satellite that will be launching a week from today is a NOAA program but done in close cooperation with NASA. So even if a new administration attempts to divest Earth science from NASA, those other agencies may have to go back to that expertise within NASA to carry out those programs. There's a lot of talk that the Trump campaign kind of wants to or Trump presidency wants to kind of kill off Earth sciences entirely but that's not the whole story like you mentioned. It's actually just shifting the focus to another agency and even if that agency has to go back to NASA and they have to work together, that doesn't mean that we're getting rid of Earth sciences or more to the point it doesn't mean that we know anything yet about Earth sciences. It's too early to tell. Is this going to be a fair statement? I think too early to tell is a good explanation for that and for a lot of the other policy issues too. Simply given it's been only a few days since the election that the transition efforts are only now ramping up and there's been so little details about space policy in general that trying to, for example, figure out what's going to happen to a specific program as a result of the campaign and the election really remains to be seen in many respects and also keep in mind that all these changes will have to go through Congress and in recent years, for example, the House has attempted to cut funding for NASA's Earth science program. The Senate has come in and restored that and you may see that continuing in the years to come that the Congress, particularly the Senate which is almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats may be willing to compromise or temper some of the more extreme proposals that may come out of a Trump administration. What about military space? Has there been any rumor or talk about what's happening in the military space? Well, you know, the Trump campaign mentioned in their policy they're very concerned about threats to our military satellites posed by Russia and China in particular. Both have tested or suggested they may be testing anti-satellite weapons of some kind. China famously tested an anti-satellite weapon nearly a decade ago and created a tremendous amount of debris. They've been continuing testing but in not quite the same destructive way since then. So I think you may see more of an emphasis on technologies to either prevent such attacks or to mitigate their effects. They've talked for example about the use of small satellites which has been a topic that the Obama administration has been supporting in recent years. Making greater use of them to deal with any threats to the larger satellites that they have. Another technology area they've mentioned is hypersonics. The concern there is that Russia and China may be developing hypersonic technologies for missiles that could defeat missile defense systems. So you may see an emphasis on military development of hypersonic technologies but that could also have civil and commercial applications as well. I think the takeaway is that really it is too early to tell at this point. However, for people that are worried that there are going to be these huge sweeping changes it doesn't really sound like it. There might be possibly some shift in like how things are done but generally it's the same path forward. At least that's what it's starting to look like. As you mentioned again we're only a few days into it at this point. Yeah, you know there's potential for sweeping changes down the road but certainly not immediately. As I was mentioning simply because of the timing of the budgets there will be a 2017 budget likely in place by the time Trump takes office in January. A 2018 budget proposal will have to come out shortly thereafter so there's going to be some time for them to develop a policy and even if they develop a policy that attempts to make major changes much the same way as the Obama administration did in 2010 with their effort to cancel the constellation program there will be a debate in Congress and no guarantee that those changes will go through. So it's a lot of wait and see and keep close tabs on what's going on in terms of what sort of people are involved with the Trump transition when it comes to NASA military space as well as some of the policy positions that they may make in the weeks and months to come. Alright, before we go to break we're trying something new with our guests. We've got six really quick questions. These are not related to politics at all. These are all just your personal answers to these questions. First thing that comes to mind when I ask you each of these. Alright, here we go. First question is Moon or Mars first? Moon first. Liquid or solid propellant? Depends on the application. I like that answer. That's what I say. That's what I say. It's a constant debate here. What should the name of the first vehicle go into Mars be? That's a good question. I would call it Armstrong 1. Armstrong 1. I think Blue Origin would probably agree with you. When do you think humans will first land on Mars? Probably in the late 2030s. Late 2030s? Like in that orbital area whenever that opens up? One of those windows that opens up around that. Maybe surprises. When do you think humans will set foot on the Moon again? I will say 2025. 2025? Alright, and last question, why space? Because I think it's essential to our future and to both our survival and our growth as a species. Awesome. Jeff, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find more information about you, Space News and Space Politics? Well, go to our website, SpaceNews.com. It's updated all the time with the latest coverage on both the transition and all the other space issues taking place today. Jeff, I hope you don't mind. I'd love to bring you back later on in 2017 when some of this is solidified. We can kind of talk about what the path forward for NASA in military space is going to be in the United States when we have a little bit more data. I'm happy to be back. Alright, thank you so much for joining us. We're going to take a quick break and when we come back, some Space News. Coming back to 9.37, I, of course, am Carrie Anne Hagenbotham. And joining me shortly will be Jared and Mike. But before we get into news and all the other fun things that happened during this week, I want to give a huge thank you to our tomorrow premiere members. These are the Patreon people who have given us $10 or more per, or for the segment of this show. And their support is just astounding to me every single week. So thank you, thank you, thank you for that as well. We also have the Patreon producers. Thank you so much. I'm slacking there for a little bit. These are the people who have given us $5 or more for each and every segment in each and every show. They are also getting free worldwide shipping. I almost said wag shipping, didn't I? Free worldwide shipping from our swag store, which is really cool. We have a lot of fun things in there. Just like these mugs, as you see us drinking out of each and every week, they are fantastic like this. I know, right? They hold my liquids perfectly, as I should like them. In any case, we do have a couple of launches to get to this week. So I like this one, right? Long March 11. Is this the first one that's on? Yeah, we'll go around this because it's beautiful. China was busy this week. Yeah. So first off, they had a Long March 11, which is a four stage solid rocket booster. And unfortunately, we weren't able to find any video footage of it. All that we were able to find is some very grainy pictures of the launch. And the whole thing with this particular rocket, the Long March 11, is that it launches from a mobile launch platform. And this launch took place at the G-Quant satellite launch center at 2342 Coordinated Universal Time. And this was on Wednesday, November 9th. You can kind of see in that left shot what the tube looks like from its mobile launcher that it launches out of. Now, the primary payload for this mission is called the X-ray Polestar Navigation, is actually a really interesting mission that monitors the periodic X-ray signals that are emitted from pulsars to determine its location instead of just doing star tracking. And it's going to be tracking 26 pulsars that give off their radiation very consistently. So they're able to not just know where they are and which direction they're oriented, but also the timing and everything like that. And also this mission deployed four microsatellites as well. So very interesting. And I also would like to note that the Long March 11 is an extended version of the type of rocket that was used on that anti-satellite test that China did back in 2007. So this rocket as well as two other rockets that China uses is what's known as the Rapid Response Satellite Launcher. So very interesting to see that. And that's probably why we couldn't find any footage of the launch. I do like how it seems to know where it is though, so that's just fine. Even if we don't. And Jared, you should take this next one because you were there. Okay, yes. Actually just yesterday out of Vandenberg Air Force Base, there was a launch of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V in the 401 configuration. Wait, was there a launch or a launch? A launch. But there was a launch after it. Oh, then perfect. So it occurred at 1830 UTC. And if we want to go ahead and take a look at some of that beautiful launch. There you go. Six, five, four, three, two, one. We have RD-180 ignition. And we have liftoff of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying worldview four for digital glow, doubling the capacity of the world's highest resolution imaging satellite constellation and allowing everyone to see a better world. Aw. And as the ULA folks said there, the Earth Imaging Satellite goes for digital globe into a sun synchronous orbit known as worldview four. Okay, when you say sun synchronous, it only, explain that. So a sun synchronous orbit goes over the same spot at the same time of day during its orbit. So if we put your satellite into an orbit where it crosses over the Earth at 3pm, that's what it'll do. So if I really want to look at Mike and whatever he's doing at 3pm every single day. Yes, you can do that. In the sun synchronous, is that what we're saying? Yes. Okay, just want to make sure. Another benefit of sun synchronous orbit is it's kind of like a polar orbit where you're going 90 degrees instead of zero at the equator. Sure. But it's inclined slightly so that during its entire orbit around the Earth, it is always being exposed to the sun so that it can always collect energy with its solar panels. That's one of the big benefits of sun synchronous orbit. Gotcha. Okay, that makes way more sense now. Thank you. I appreciate. I'm sorry. This is a satellite that's sun synchronous. Go on. Yes. It's going to be an altitude of 617 kilometers. And at the end of the deployment of the spacecraft, the upper stage also deployed seven CubeSats as well in order to do experiments in orbit. And the footage you're looking at right now is actually footage I took yesterday because I was only about four kilometers from the launch pad. That's gorgeous. Look at you go. That's awesome. Donna was kind enough to give me a 500 millimeter lens. So there you go. And this is what it sounds like. And if we look close enough, you can see the high series clouds actually vibrate with the acoustical energy. That's so cool. Which was very cool to see yesterday. Very awesome footage. Great job. How do you recommend going to a launch if you've never gone to one? It's pretty awesome. So very good stuff. Yeah. That's super awesome. Okay. And we do have another launch. Is that correct, Mike? You said China was busy. Yes. Yeah. Actually, so yesterday morning was the Atlas V launch. And then yesterday evening, China launched a Long March 2D launch. And this we do have footage of. Oh, yay. This launched from the G-Quan Satellite Launch Center at 2314, a coordinated universal time on Friday. And it was launching the Yunhai-1 weather observation satellite that is looking at the atmosphere and the disaster mitigation and stuff like that. And so they were able to successfully orbit that. And everything was well for that. And with all these kind of public satellites, it's a lot easier to get information for the launch that they had earlier this week. Yeah. Very happy for them. It looks like there's pixels falling off of the rocket. Yeah. Well, Ben doesn't work for him. Yes. Right. They don't have a pixel janitor. That's right. As Ben likes to say. Okay. So launches. Very exciting. Very exciting things. I don't understand this one even. You're going to have to explain this one to me. The title says a failed solar panel likely blocked Beagle 2. Yes. What the white? Oh, poor Beagle 2, the European Space Agency's mission to Mars that landed on the 25th of December on Christmas Day, 2003. Unfortunately, it did not work. And everybody thought Beagle 2 had actually just basically burned up and the atmosphere or crashed on the surface. Turns out they found it with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's imager system on board and they found it. And they were actually able to take images of it and analyze it at De Montfort University. Now they looked at the reflectivity of the solar panels and generated an accurate 3D model. And basically what they found out is that one solar panel did not deploy from Beagle 2, which blocked the antenna from deploying and sending back signals to Earth. Interesting. Okay. So close. One stupid solar panel screwed everything up. Is that what you're saying? Yes. It was so close to working. That seems like a really terrible thing. And there's actually some engineers who say that Beagle 2 may actually be working on the surface of Mars right now. But because of the solar panel not deploying, it's blocking the antenna. And so we can't get a signal so we don't know if it is working or not. Exactly. So what we need to do is send a person there to pick it up. Crap. And work with it. Okay. So what can we learn from this? I don't want this to sound offensive. Okay. But is this like a design flaw? Essentially? Obviously it is a design issue. What do you mean? But what this proves is that Beagle 2 actually really did survive entry and it worked except for that last solar panel coming in. Except for... So they had a good system to land on Mars in place. Yeah, I suppose that's true. It's just that the system to deploy the solar panel not so much. So as far as we can tell it didn't crash or anything. It landed in fact. It landed. It's totally fine. Happy. And then one panel didn't do this. And so the antenna went... And then that was it. Yeah. Totally SOF. It's literally one of those things where it's like just that one slim margin of error happened and you lost it. This is why you keep your egos in check. Mars is fine. Oh no, it'll be fine. It'll totally be fine. No big deal. Poor guys. Okay. So this... I read this title and this is very interesting to me but I have a lot of questions. So Mike, you're talking about International Lunar Station is taking shape. Tell me more. That is right. So to kind of give it a little bit of back history the five biggest space agencies that cooperate on the International Space Station. NASA, Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, the Japanese Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. They do planning meetings all the time to... And what's kind of been the focus of discussion lately has been what to do after the International Space Station. Now of course NASA wants to go to Mars but the rest of those agencies want to go back to the moon and want to send human missions to the moon. Even Japan and the European Space Agency have very much expressed interest in wanting to go to the moon and send human missions there. So these planning meetings have been taking place on what to do and there's lots of different modules that are being built for either future stations in Earth orbit or for other different applications. And so there was a meeting last month and of course this is probably subject to change with the new Trump Administration but there was a meeting last month where these agencies discussed and finalized some plans for making a lunar station either in orbit around the moon or in one of the Earth's moon Lagrange points so that NASA can use that station as a launching point towards going to Mars and all the other space agencies can use that as a base towards going to the moon. Now what you see on screen right now is one of the Russian hardware pieces that they would be using. That would be the Russian airlock. That would be their contribution to this station and the other contributions is that the United States and the European Space Agency would provide a space tug. Canada would of course provide a robotic arm and then from Europe and Japan they would both provide some habitation modules to put this together for all the different uses that these agencies want to use it for. So please, fire away. This was a legit meeting, right? This wasn't like some sort of villain from a James Bond movie that was like okay, okay, okay, okay. I know you have an extra arm, come on. You've got the arm? Yeah, you've got the module? Yeah, great, solar panels? Do I hear solar panels? This was a legit thing, right? Yeah. And this is actually a fruition of the promises that the heads of these different space agencies made last year at the International Astronautical Congress. Okay. All of them were saying that they wanted to go to the moon. The head of Roscosmos was like, yes, we absolutely want to do this. We want to get our support. China, are you guys in? And they were just like absolutely. So there might even be more opportunities to work with China on something like this since they want to send human missions to the moon as well. Interesting. But you were like, yeah, you know, so NASA can go to Mars and everybody else can go to the moon. It seems to me that if one person can go to Mars, wouldn't the other people want to also go to Mars? You know, that would be the thought. Right? No, no, no, no, no. You guys, you stay here. We're just going to go over there. It's not a big deal. You go to where we've gone, we'll go to the new plane. Don't get me wrong, I love this idea. I just, it clearly needs to be hammered out a little bit more, yeah? Oh yeah, obviously, yeah. I mean, this is still very much in the planning stages. But the fact that even this amount of a plan has moved forward to me is very exciting. And with the whole administration change that's going to be coming up and looking at more, wanting to do more human exploration stuff, we might even be a part of going to the moon together as international community. And I would hope that everyone else would want to go with us to Mars and we would all do that as an international community as well. So, yeah. All right. It gets me excited. Yes. That's right. Yeah, so the Super Moon is coming up as was mentioned this Monday. And we're very excited about it because this is the closest Super Moon that we have had with the Earth. This is, what was it needed? The supermassive black holes last week? Yes, we talked about supermassive black holes last week. Is this like a supermassive Super Moon? It's kind of like a super super moon. It's a super super... It is a super super moon but it is not a moon super of the super moon super. Okay, that's fine. So, but it is the closest super moon since 1948 and the next closest one will be in 2034. Basically a super moon is when a full moon occurs near perigee or basically the closest point of the moon's orbit around the Earth. You get a better idea of that. There is this little model right here where you've got apogee and perigee. So, super moon occurs at perigee when the moon is closest to the Earth. And the size difference will be very difficult for you to actually notice. It's sort of like having a nickel and a quarter held about three meters away from you. So, you're not going to notice the size difference. If anybody says, yeah, the moon looks a lot bigger than that, they're lying to you. But if somebody says, wow, that moon is a lot brighter than I remember it being, that is true because the moon will be about 30% brighter than a typical full moon will be. So, it is going to be really bright on Monday night. And, so how do I see this? How do you use special glasses? How do you see the super moon? I need like a telescope, right? Let me demonstrate for you. Yes. There you go. That's how you see a super moon. You literally just look up on the sky. Around full moon, the sun the moon rises right around sunset. So, basically, if you really want to see an awesome rising of the moon go out at sunset. I'll go out probably about 9 or 10 o'clock at night and take a look at it and go, wow, that's a really bright moon. Now, what time is this in UTC? Because I'm wondering if I actually need to go out on Monday night or late Monday morning. So, it's 1123 UTC is when the super moon will, that's the instantaneous moment that your super moon will occur at. But full moon technically occurs two hours after that. So, if you want to, you can go out sort of, for us folks here in the United States and in North and South America. It would be a good idea to go out probably on Sunday evening to take a look at that, probably near midnight wherever you may live would be a good time. But, honestly, you know, you're going to have such a difficult time telling the difference for the next couple of days. You can go out the night of the 14th and it's going to be just as spectacular as it would be on the 13th through the 15th. Thanks for the chat room is saying, looking forward to when lunar occupants can talk about a super earth. Yeah, that's true. That's awesome. I think because of the relative size of the earth that you might be able to actually tell the difference between a regular perigee and a super perigee or a super moon, potentially. But that may be something, that may be some math that I would have to do. Let's go and find out. That's perfect. That's so perfect. I love it. All right. So, a little bit more. We were talking about Long March 5 last week and it had to be explained to me a little bit of why this was different and why we cared and how Long March 5 was different than other things with a V or 5 at the end or 4 all different. There was a lot of confusion. But Mike, you're telling us that the Long March 5 while really interesting kind of was underperforming. Is that correct? What's happening there? Yeah, they had quite a few problems with this particular launch. I mean, before the launch itself they actually postponed the launch twice and almost missed their launch window. The first time they were having vents that vent out some of the oxygen as it's boiling off those weren't working and they had this pause for quite a while to get that to work and then later, right before the launch the pre-cooler system there is a system on the engine bells where they will put through the liquid hydrogen, I believe to cool the engine nozzle, the bell, so that when they light it up, you know, they are a, doesn't melt it. And that wasn't getting down to the coldest temperature they wanted it to be at but they proceeded with the launch anyway. And then during the flight itself there have been some reports that the first stage underperformed and as you can see or rather what was on screen just a moment ago with that the upper stage engine, their new YZ upper stage had to kind of compensate for that and put the satellite into its geosynchronous transfer of orbit. So it's kind of like the Atlas mission several missions ago where the Atlas first stage didn't perform as well as expected and then the Centaur upper stage was able to compensate for that. So that is a even though it was kind of like a partial failure if you will with the first stage of the Long March 5, I think that it's really awesome. That's why I was so excited about this new upper stage that when they have a problem like that, that this new upper stage is able to compensate. So even though they had some problems it still was a successful mission and means a lot of new capabilities for China. That's yeah. I mean as long as you're learning from any sort of failure or misstep, then you're still learning. Right? Yes. Right? Absolutely. Alright, one more thing because again this is another thing that I don't completely understand. So there's alright, you start. Alright. So there was a new study that was put out by the European Southern Observatories very large telescope using an instrument called SPHERES which basically is supposed to look at exoplanets and take the best images that we can of them. So instead of looking at exoplanets they looked at what are called protoplanetary disks. So these are disks of gas and dust and material that are going around little baby stars. Of course I mean little baby stars, I mean years old. Right. And this is essentially what we would call the beginnings of a potential solar system. Okay, so when you're saying protoplanetary disks, because these look like rings to me. Yes. They can be in rings. These are actual images by the way. These are not computer simulations, these are actual images of the protoplanetary disks. So they're not, they don't always necessarily manifest in a ring kind of form we would see around like Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus. Yes, they can be in this sort of spiral pattern and when you look at these patterns you're seeing the influence of the gravity of objects that are going around that star. So in this case you're looking at two planets larger than Jupiter flinging that material around as they orbit around. And they're orbiting around a star, because this looks like a black hole. Is that just because of the coloring it would have you? Yes, the light from the star has been blocked out. Okay. And we're looking at the light from the star reflecting off of the material around it. And so then what does this information actually give us other than really freaking cool images like this? Well besides the really cool images what this information gives us is it lets us go back and look at our computer models that we develop to try to understand the formation of our own solar system. Okay. Because we've got a lot of material in our solar system. Well it's not I don't want to call it too complex because there's probably solar systems out there that are more complex than ours are. Sure. We just haven't found them yet. Right. But our solar system seems to be a very complex exception compared to most other systems that we see out there. We're special snowflake aren't we? We're also probably not special. So we're special but not at the same time. Yeah, well this is not always the case. So this allows us to go back and look at our computer models and see if the formation of things actually does end up the way that it should. Okay. And it looks like our computer models are correct. All right. And that's what's awesome is that the computers our simulations are confirming what nature actually can do. Okay. That's awesome. I really like that. Yeah, somebody in the chat room citizen74662 was saying is this the opening credits from Dr. Who? Right? That looks like it. Oh, it's so funny. Anyway, so yeah, really gorgeous. So I think that's about enough for now because we've got a lot of other stuff we still need to get you. We have your questions and comments and concerns and complaints from last week's show coming up right after this break. We will do all of that coming up. Stay with us. We've always looked to the stars. They guide us. Give us comfort. Help us find our way. We see ourselves out there. When we look up it inspires us. We long for something we don't yet know. We yearn to go there. So we venture forth. We choose to go to the moon in this decay and do the other thing. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and the people have landed. It's one small step for men one family for business. The exploration of space will go ahead whether we join in it or not. Many think we stopped exploring. But we know our journey didn't end. We've only just begun. And explore tomorrow. Welcome back. Before we get to the comments from last week's show we do want to give a huge shout out to all of our patrons of tomorrow. Of course we have our tomorrow premiere members. These folks give us ten dollars or more per episode. They get access to our Slack channel. We also have our tomorrow producers who give us five dollars or more per episode. Who get free worldwide swag store shipping. We've also got our tomorrow plus Patreon plus members. Who get early access to After Dark in the full show. And then in addition to that we do have our tomorrow patrons where you can give up to two dollars and forty nine cents to get your name in the show. Access to Google Hangouts and other fun things. And if you would like to help crowdfund the shows of tomorrow you can head on over to Patreon.com slash T-M-R-O and we're back at it again here at the desk. Everybody's here. The desk of tomorrow. I guess it's time for comments, right? You know I just realized I have not figured out the orbit ten comments section. Yes. Let's do a let's do a comment. Yes, on that note. That's sort of too much. Okay. There you go. I mean might as well. Just as a reminder last week's episode we were talking about Vector Aerospace. Jim Cantrell. With Jim Cantrell. Thank you. I was like with Jim with that guy. With that guy. Jim with a C. It wasn't written in here. I apologize. I really like that interview. That was that was pretty cool. That was good. That was good. And there's some really great comments about it. So the first one however it's coming up. This one's from YouTube. This is from Michael Wright. It says like the new new segment Carrie and asking questions about things really puts things in perspective. Thank you. Mostly that's just Carrie and going back and forth because I don't understand most of these things. We have a unique audience. The citizens of tomorrow are everywhere from people who are just kind of generally geeks and you know kind of understand things but maybe they're just now getting into space. So they don't have that fundamental knowledge yet because they haven't been exposed to it. They're not I mean they're certainly not done. They just you haven't been exposed to that knowledge. Exactly. And then you've got everything in between all the way up to rocket scientists actually making rockets that go to space. So the challenge of a show like this is to make sure that we don't we don't end up in that just that segment that's close to the rocket scientists. We try to make it as broad as possible so if you're excited about space and you're just getting started we have a no acronyms policy right so that we're not speaking in gibberish to people who don't know what the acronyms mean. It's still sometimes gibberish let's be honest. But then sometimes it is still gibberish because I don't understand what some of these terms mean even though they're not acronyms and that's where I think that really helps saying okay wait no hang on what does this mean? Right. So yeah as you guys have noticed and as we talked about we've been tweaking the new segment trying to find the right and proper format and I think we're quite a bit closer now. I think we're getting there. And as I've been saying for like the last three four weeks now whether you like it or hate it whatever leave your constructive criticism as a comment let us know what you think and we'll continue to tweak until we get it right. I think we're a lot closer though. I think we're really really fun and we really get to dive deep into the stories and help you guys understand why these things are important and that is the critical key. I feel like as a presenter too with all the research that we do it's so easy to fall into that trap of assuming that everyone knows what we're talking about. There might be some very important stuff that we might just gloss right over so I'm really liking this new format to go into depth of that so that we're clear of whatever it is that we're talking about. Orbit 10 is going to be fun because we have a new set and I was doing some of the wiring for that this last week so it's going to be pretty cool. I'm excited for you guys to have kind of this you're going to have to stand though. That's the only down. I'm fine with that. I can stand. I have legs. Citizen Big Number says you guys need a glossary of rocket engine names. Yeah. No. Rocket engine names. Yeah. Looks like RD-180, RD-191, R-68A. That's actually a valid point. How do we deal with that? All of the things. Like maybe we create, actually it's not a bad idea. Half of them have numbers and some of them don't and then some of them have things that make sense and others don't and I don't know who does the... We can create just static graphics in the Orbit 10 design that have like an RD-180 like who made it when it was made with the R-86 stats on it that we can go to. Yeah. And then you've also got like the Atlas 5 like you know 4, 4, 1. Yeah. The configuration. Or the Delta 4. It's confusing when like say there's the RD line of engines that are typically Russian made engines. But then there's other people who are using the RD line of engines that are Russian companies. And then there's like other... There's like the BE engines that are... Some of them are based off of the RD engines but some of them aren't. And like I don't... And the BE are from... Blue Origin. Thank you. Blue Origin. Like I can't... Oh my goodness. But you have the RS series from Aerojet Rocketdyne. Right. RD RS, BE, Yeah. That'd be something that, you know, Dutta, you might know in advance... You're watching us build orbit 10 in real time right here. Yes. Here we are. Doing it live on the show. I mean, as you guys know, we're in our permanent space but this is a temporary setup and we're just kind of... What you don't see is that week after week we actually move a little bit. So we're sometimes a little bit further depending upon where the construction requires we go. So in this shot, did we zoom in enough? I think I zoomed in enough like 10 seconds prior to coming back. You can actually see right over my shoulder is a bunch of wood. Anyhow. It is. I do like the Rocket Cheat Sheet too and actually that along with a better viewing experience on tmro.tv slash live where you'll have a better chat and viewing experience. The calendar is going to kind of go away and turn into a button you open click on it. It's going to all be awesome but you do have to wait until Orbit 10 for a good chunk of that. We're focusing on all of our attention on Orbit 10 at this point. We're playing with Season 9 to make Orbit 10 even better if that makes sense. Stay with us. It's working. Next comment comes off of YouTube. This is from a good friend of ours and one that we have interviewed before Mr. Everyday Astronaut and Everyday Astronaut says, my favorite part of this is how we're talking about Rocket Company who's just hanging out in his modest home office with a window air conditioner. It just shows space is not just for nations anymore but it's trickled down to ambitious entrepreneurs and tinkerers. I love it. I hate that word. Thanks for that Everyday Astronaut but tinkerers. I agree. I think it's really cool that you can basically build. Dave Mastin is another perfect example of that. He just kind of went out and built a J.P. Aerospace Electron Rocket Copenhagen Suborbitals That's like almost a crowdfunded rocket program. I keep saying I'm not sure a crowdfunded rocket program will work I don't see it blah blah blah and then Copenhagen Suborbitals. That's basically what they're doing. They're the good kind of crazy. I like it. I like those guys a lot. They're the right kind of crazy. Hi Mads. It is an interesting and amazing time in which we live. Very exciting. Next comment comes off of Patreon from a one Kevin McCoy says this was a great interview and I enjoyed learning about Vector's plan to use smaller rockets but when it really clicked for me was seeing their rocket being pulled through town by a pickup truck. That was pretty cool. Talk about perspective. It's both large and small but then it's scrappy in that they're just using a pickup truck to move their rocket with their strong back. I kind of want to do that on a regular basis. I kind of don't want you to do that. Just kind of tow a rocket out of the jeep. Traffic is bad enough in L.A. the way it is. You don't want to rocket on the back. Jeep is slow enough the way it is. That's true. You barely keep up with us when we're going to lunch and I can only imagine how painfully slow it would be if you had a rocket at the back of your jeep. How many times do I have to explain this to people which is that a jeep cannot be driven fast. Just... Oh, yes, rocket balloons. There we go. You don't even need that. You just need to light the engines. Wow. So you're not really towing the rocket more like the rockets pushing you down the freeway. Wow. That's how you make a jeep go fast. It's like a Genesis to take off but it's a Jeep-assisted take off. Jeep-assisted? Oh my gosh. There needs to be a button in there. I'm doing it. I'm making it happen. Right after the Project Orion high-power rocket we're going to make a Jeep-assisted take off. Jeep-assisted. We just have balloon rockets. It'll be fine. Yeah. I'm sure you'll use them whenever you get stuck in the mud. Yes. How often do you get stuck in the mud? When I was at one show. That's right. We had pictures of you. It was hilarious. I feel like we're crushing space mic. Like my shoulder. Bam! Your computer is shining my eyes pretty bright. Is that what it is? A few people in the chat room are a little weirded out that you and I have flip-flop spots but that's because I'm in control now. So there's that. You'll just have to deal. Sorry. That's little freaky. The next comment comes off of YouTube. This is great. I actually had to look up the pronunciation. Hang on. She did. She legitimately spent a good half hour looking up this pronunciation. And what did we end up determining? Tobias Funke. Hopefully that's correct. Hi Tobias. How's it going? How's baby? Tobias Funke says and that, gentlemen ladies why you could MDF outside of any closed room. Yep. What is it? What's the F? Fiberboard. So it's MDFB. So I've actually renamed it. It's actually FDF. It's fairly dense. Freaking dense fiberboard. It is legitimately. Anywhere there was a cable running on the ground you could actually see the outline of the cable now because on either side of it is covered in a light coating of MDF dust. It's amazing. Through the entire, not just the room in which, not just the studio space it permeated everything in here. It is an absolute mess. And we didn't know that it was going to be this messy so while we did cover a good chunk of our floor I'm pointing down as if you can see it a chunk of our floors are covered in plastic but the plastic ends like right here. Can you see it from there Mike? You see it right down there. Yeah. Yeah, so anything beyond the plastic. It is. CJ says it's like a chalk outline of dead snakes. It's very similar to that, yes. And somebody else pointed out that it's fumekin dense. Oh goodness. Sorry. Yeah, that's a good point. So we're all silent right now and nobody understands why. What I was pointing out is each sheet of MDF is just under 100 pounds. Sure. And we are one story up we're actually like a story and a half up I think because these are tall buildings. So we're on the second story which means we had to carry it up this winding stairwell which was not pleasant to say the least. So what we did not want to have to do is then take it all back downstairs again cut it and then bring it back upstairs because you know some of these boards you know even though he's cutting them they're still good 70 plus pounds. Yeah, anyhow. Yeah, space bogus says it feels like we're in after dark already. It does in fact feel like we're in after dark already but we're not although we're going to go to after dark now so that you continue to bore us all with MDF stories. So what's the show? I have no control, we have to go. Yeah, this is very true. And in any case, if you feel enjoying this right, for more tomorrow or next week I suppose our next week's guest will be John Powell from J.P. Aerospace not to be confused with Japanese Aerospace that of course is next week tomorrow. Those are the balloons in orbit. That's my balloon castle. We talked about balloon castles on the show came out and I was super excited about this and I'm like we're contacting them and we're bringing them on and so that's what they do and it's going to be awesome so on that note thank you guys so much for watching after darks up next