 I feel the lift off, the podcast started, a rocker! Fun and welcome to another episode of the Punk Rocker Moonstomper podcast, and we are in person this time, which is so much fun! I am one of your intrepid hosts, Amy, and with me in person! I am the other host, Jason McClellan, and we have with us a guest, as we always do, but our wonderful friend, Jeff Knocken. Greetings Comrades! Thank you for joining us today, Jeff. Thank you for inviting me! I know it's been a long day. We are at SpaceFest right now, and you've been busy hawking your wares, and it is an exhausting task, I know. It is exhausting. I don't want you to really present me as some sort of hardcore salesman, though. I think I spent most of the day setting up the booth and dealing with technical issues. Right. But we did a bit of show and tell with customers late in the day. Even though we weren't officially open, it was the art opening. Because at the end of a long day of dealing with technical issues, setting up a booth and all that, you want to be dealing with sales, right? That's where you get all your energy. No, I got all my energy thinking about doing the podcast with you two heroes. All right. But thanks. Nice try. All right, so why don't we let you introduce yourself and tell us what it is that you do? I'm doing this podcast with you. Oh, a proper one. Let's talk about it. Maybe let's do, oh wait, we didn't do, hang on, because this is our non-regular format, and also it's 10 o'clock at night. We have to do the introductions of what we're drinking. Yes. I am drinking something that's like a cucumber thing that the hotel makes, and it is delicious. I don't know what's in it, but it's tasty. That is an amazing introduction or description, and you don't have to say anything more. That's it. I want a delicious cucumber thing right now. It's cucumber something. It's so refreshing. I like cucumber. That's great. Yeah. Well, what are you drinking? No, you go first. All right. Well, I will go first. I'm drinking a Sam Adams, because Sam Adams is a great brewery, and they make all sorts of wonderful things. But it is the summer, and they make fantastic summer ale. So it's got lemon in it, a nice light drink for the summer. So Sam Adams summer ale. That's what I've got. You could do ads for Sam Adams. That was really well done. I would like to. So I'm drinking, it's not quite as exotic, although it's also quite unusual. What appears to be just Pellegrino, Buongiorno, it's nice to sparkle in water, in a bottle, is Pellegrino, but I also put my secret vitamin cocktail in there, which doesn't contain anything illegal. But it was to give me a little extra sparkle for the show after my taxing day. Excellent. I like it. So a custom drink. Custom cocktail. I like it. I made it myself. I can get it down at no hotel bar. Fantastic. Yeah. Look at that. I'm on television because I just instinctively turned the label away from the camera. It gets so drilled into you. Turn the label away. Put tear the labels off. Turn the label away from the camera unless you're getting paid for it. Well, we are independent. So label the camera. Label the camera. Label it. I do all of that TV. I don't label labels. We're alt non indie alt. Scar wave number four. Yes. Yes. That's coming. So they say. Let me introduce myself. My name is Jeff Notkin. I am a British ex-pat. I grew up in London, England, and I now make my home in the glorious and weird city of Tucson, Arizona. I am a science writer, television host, film producer, and a meteorite specialist. And rocks from outer space have been my passion since I was a kid. And I, I've done a television show about it called Meteorite Men for three years. All around the world searching for space rocks. And I'm the president of AeroLite Meteorites Incorporated, which is a commercial meteorite company. And in order to fund my, what's the polite word for addiction, my passion for meteorites. In order to, in order to fund my enthusiasm for meteorites and expeditions to find meteorites and write books about meteorites and make television shows and films about meteorites have a commercial meteorite company. All you academic purists out there will agree with me that expedition and research money has to come from somewhere. And we'd rather not resort to crime. So we have a commercial meteorite company and funds from that go to support our nonprofit, the Science, Arts and Space Institute, and expeditions and educational work and publishing of science books. And that be my story. And that be why we love Jeff. Also, he's just rad. And also, another way I can tell that you're like honed into TV is how good you are at looking directly at the camera. This is great. Yeah. Just cheat yourself a little bit. Cheat yourself, cheat yourself a little bit. All these instincts down. For those of you listening to the audio version, check out the little bit of the video so you can see what Jeff looks like on camera and how very honed his skills are. I say thank you. Mr. Television Star. But I think that about wraps it up. I don't think we can do any more. So we might as well call this an episode. That was really good though. I did all the talking. Yeah. No. I mean, we can't do anything after that. No. I mean, I think we should probably because your story is a fascinating one and there's so much to talk about here. You want to cover space first because there's interesting... Do you want to start with space or do you want to start like literally... Let's start with space because the other stuff is like... Naughty. It is. It is. It gets a little naughty. He's into it. You know, it's a little off the beaten track for normal interviews related to Jeff's work. Road to that, sir. All right. All right. So let's talk space for a bit and let's go ahead and... Well, first, I mean, you mentioned that you developed your love for meteorites as a child. How did that come about? Like what was it that made you just decide that I'm fascinated by rocks from space? Yeah. Not rockets. Did you get there? Yeah. Bad on its way. I'm sorry. I did actually have an epiphany. It wasn't a slow build, but the groundwork was laid because I was fascinated by rocks and fossils. As a little kid, I was always out in the woods in the house behind the... I was out in the woods in the house. I was out in the woods behind the house where I grew up in South London in inquiries and looking for rocks and fossils. And my dad was a very keen amateur astronomer. And it's lucky he was a very patient guy because being an amateur astronomer in South London just doesn't really add up. So you've got a lot of clouds, lots of gray rain, and then the lights from London. It's not so great. But every now and then it would be clear and dad would set up his telescope and look at the sky and get excited and come and wake me up in the middle of the night. There are many instances when I was a little kid of being wrapped up in a blanket and carried outside to our garden and he'd hold me up to the telescope or put a ball when I was a bit older and look through. So some of my earliest memories from childhood were looking through my dad's telescope. You can see the rings of Saturn and the rings of Jupiter. And I found this an astonishing experience that from a garden in a fairly well-to-do suburb of London, you could see other worlds in space. So this fueled science fiction. And when I was a kid, Doctor Who was airing, Lost in Space, Star Trek, Prisoner, Thunderbirds, all this great stuff, all late 60s shows. And so I grew up watching that. So astronomy, rocks and fossils, science fiction. And then we've got the space program happening as well. So I was eight when Apollo 11 mission took place, the first moon landing. And I like to say that I was born in the year that the space program started for real 1961, which also explains a lot about my life. As old as the space program. So all of this sci-fi space program, I was allowed to stay home from school to watch the Apollo missions. My parents would write a note to the headmaster saying, Jeffrey's staying home from school to watch the moon mission. Which doesn't sound like anything today, but in England in the 60s, that are really strict, you know, British public school, they're tied, stupid cap and all that. Staying home to watch the moon landing. I don't understand that. But it just added to me being teased mercilessly at school. So anyway, really long answer to your question. So these are all the things I'm interested in. Star Trek's on TV and Lost in Spaces on TV. And I hated school. I hated going to school. So strict and stuffy, we had to wear these stupid uniforms, these ridiculous little beanie caps. I was 13 years old and still wearing shorts to school. Like, you know, some sort of, I don't know, convict. Except you have to wear shorts instead of a jumpsuit. So I would beg my parents to let me stay. I have faint illness. I don't want to go to school. I hate school. And my mum would sometimes let me skip school. And she'd take me to the museums in central London, Kensington, West London, Science Museum, Natural History Museum, Geological Museum, loved all of this. And I would go and look in the cabinets, the minerals and the fossils and be astounded by the, not just the specimens themselves, but the care with which they were curated. I loved the collection numbers and the labels and all the little things and the cataloging and how they were arranged. I was fascinated by all this. And then behind the big hall of minerals is the Hall of Meteorites. And it's this little dark hall. It was as if it was kind of the cast off of the meteorites. Go stick them in that kind of unpopular, bad, far eastern wing of the mineral hall. And there it's just this dark, down room. It's full of meteorites. And that was it for me. I got, well, here's everything I'm interested in. I probably didn't intellectualize it quite like that. But in hindsight, everything I was interested in. So here's rocks and fossils. Well, not fossils yet, but believe me, they're coming. Rocks and astronomy together. And they got here almost by science fiction means. They're visitors from other worlds. I was transfixed as a kid. And then at that time, there's no subculture of meteorite collectors. The comparatively small number of meteorites that were known were all in museums and universities. So I promised myself as a kid that one day I somehow, by some means would acquire a meteorite. And one of my first missions along that route, it's probably about eight. And we were vacationing in the States on Cape Cod. And I went out in the sand dunes and I dug this hole in the ground and I found some ashes from a barbecue or something. I threw them all in the bottom of the hole. It's a meteorite crater. At the time, we now know this is not the case. At the time, like everybody else, I thought meteorites were hot when they landed and they would burn the ground. So that was how it all started. I remember very clearly seeing these big meteorites for the first time and they had these fantastic shapes and these things on them that looked like craters. And I thought, gosh, not only does it come from outer space, it really looks like it came from outer space. It doesn't look like it belongs here. And maybe there's something to that too because I sure didn't belong in the school that I went to or the neighborhood that I grew up in. So I may have felt like a bit of an alien visitor in myself. Maybe that's why there's a bit of a, oh, Sympatica camaraderie there. We're all cast-offs. Celestial rubbish thrown out into space and landed here. So longest answer in history, probably to one of your questions. No, I like it. It's fantastic. It lays the groundwork. I like it. But I know you and I have talked about this before, but it's now hearing your initial love for fossils and meteorites. I'm curious to hear your... I don't know. I guess your initial excitement or interest in things like the Allen Hills meteorite, where you have the possibility of things like fossilized diatoms or things like that. So for the viewers, Jason's referring to ALH 84001. It's a meteorite that was found in 1984 in Antarctica, Allen Hills in Antarctica. And when it was taken back to the lab and examined under an electron microscope, there was a shape in this meteorite that some people interpret to be fossilized bacteria or something. And it surely looks like a worm-ish thing if you look at the photograph. So there are quite a few different schools here. Some say it's proof of alien life and some say it's not life at all. It's just a weird shape in the rock. And some say that it was life from Earth that somehow crawled into the meteorite. So whichever story you believe, well, I shouldn't say story, whichever theory you support, it still was very exciting at the time because it looked as if there may be proof of life in a meteorite. So as is so often the case in science, the majority's not been able to agree, really, on a particular thing. Although I think most meteorites have probably leaned towards feeling that it's not a fossilized anything. But let me just make it perfectly clear that there's going to be fossilized something sometime, probably soon, I think, the way the Mars exploration is going with the robots there. And you know what I'm talking about. We've seen these amazing photographs showing water, sorry, the results of the motion of water on Mars. And when I see these photographs on Twitter from my friend Tanya Harrison or someone else, I typically tweet back and I go, where are my stromatolites? The stromatolite fossils are just out in there. So stromatolites are ancient algae colonies. They're one of the most primitive types of life on Earth. And they still exist in a few places on Earth. And they're a very good candidate for possible, if life did exist on Mars or elsewhere, it's an early evolutionary form of life. And so that would be a reasonable type of fossil to expect to find. One of the most fascinating conversations I've had with somebody about this topic was with a gentleman named Richard Hoover. And he established NASA's Astrobiology Program. And he is firmly of the opinion that there are many meteorites that show fossilized atoms. And that was the bulk of his personal research was diatoms and these algae. And he could distinguish what these things looked like in a fossilized form. And he was confident that even images that were taken on Mars showed that they were seeing these things on Mars too, fossilized life forms on Mars. And he tells a story about how these things were, you know, get into conspiracy theories here. But NASA actively, in their story as they tried to, you know, remove these things or something but intentionally destroyed with lasers or cutting tools or whatever these fossilized life forms. And he is firmly of the opinion that we found this many times over. And, you know, since then NASA's, of course, distanced themselves from him. But he firmly stands by it. And, you know, he was certainly of sound mind enough to lead their Astrobiology Program and work in this Astrobiology field for decades, yet when he, you know, asserts something that he is certainly qualified to make a claim then all of a sudden he's a lunatic. It's interesting how that works, isn't it? So were you here at SpaceFest last year? Yes. I can't remember. I thought you were, were you at Apollo Panel last year? Yes. So I had the great honor of moderating the Apollo Panel last year. It was one of the highlights of my career, I must say. So I was on stage with eight Apollo astronauts. I think we had, I think we had last year. So the panel ran 90 minutes and it was, it was packed. There's standing room only. There's the best audience I ever had for anything I've ever done. And quite close to the end I had a special question. I've been dying to ask the astronauts and I had a year to prepare and the Apollo Panel happens every year at SpaceFest and it's a big deal. And I wanted to ask them questions that hadn't been asked before, unusual questions. So towards the end of the panel I said gentlemen, I'm going to ask you a question now and I don't want you to think about it. I want you to give me an instinctive answer, gut reaction, and if the answer is yes I want you to just put your hand up. The question was do you think there is some form of life elsewhere in the universe and all but one put up their hands immediately. And I said, I think these gentlemen are better qualified than the average person to answer this question. Do you remember who didn't raise their hands? I do, but I don't want to get in trouble. Fair. Because I do like him. We just have a difference of opinion. That's fascinating. I wouldn't expect that. I remember just asking that question. And I followed up by saying I'm not talking Star Trek level civilizations. I'm not talking about starships. Just something. Microbes. Algae mats. Trilobites. And something. And probably not even remotely similar to what we expect. And I'm a great fan of the Canadian biologist Karen Bondar. I really like her work. She did a great web series about biology. She's a ballet dancer, turn biologist and television host. And she came to Arizona and did a presentation at the Science and Astronomy Expo. And I got up and asked her a question. And we got into a thing because I said, you so often hear people talking about the Goldilocks zone and how conditions have to be just right for life and it's probably very rare in the universe. And so we were talking about this and I said, have you not seen Star Trek ever? Because in Star Trek, which is based on a true story, as we all know, based on a true story, there are rock monsters like the Horta. And there are all types of life that have evolved so wacky, so different from what we expect that I think we should have broader expectations of what life might be like out there. It's not going to look like us. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, looking at astrobiology as a whole and then looking at habitable worlds I don't know. I find it hard to believe that one person wouldn't raise their hand with the possibility of some form of life, especially with all the exoplanets and exomoons and everything that we know that exists now. But our own solar system, there are so many habitable worlds in our own solar system. Agreed. I would like to ask you about the rock on the table and also ask that you describe it in proper meteorite terms for the people that are not watching the video. With pleasure. Because it's, yeah, go. Just you go. Proper meteorite terms. This is an iron meteorite. It is a complete individual. And that means that this specimen flew through the atmosphere, our atmosphere, as an autonomous, complete individual. We know that because it is covered with surface features that were formed during flight, during ablation. And these indentations, these little crater-like forms are called regma-glitz. That would be a really good one for the spelling bee. And they were created when the surface briefly turned molten and flowed across. And some of these features are probably also were caused by weathering on Earth. So this was once part of the molten core of a large asteroid, probably a main-belt asteroid between Norse and Jupiter, and was probably thrown out into space as the result of asteroid collisions. The core cooled, wandered through space for perhaps millions of years, and then encountered our atmosphere. And some audience members will know the difference between meteor and meteorite. I was just going to ask you that because even among journalists here, you see in mainstream media always seem to have a problem like this. So if you would walk us through what are meteorites, meteors, asteroids... With pleasure. So asteroids, fragments of rock, orbiting the sun, and most of them between Mars and Jupiter forming the asteroid belt. Most meteorites that we have on Earth originated from asteroids. So when a fragment, when an asteroid fragment is hurtling through Earth's atmosphere and the air around it is incandescing, forming a shooting star, that is a meteor. And if part of that survives, by re-journey, lands on Earth, it becomes a meteorite. And just to confuse everyone a little bit more, there's another term, and that is meteoroid. So the meteor, in strictly scientific terms, is the atmospheric phenomenon created. So it's not strictly accurate to say the thing in the air that's coming down is a meteorite. It's really a potential meteorite. But when we're describing a fireball or a piece of asteroid debris in the atmosphere that we later recover, we go, we know it's going to be a meteorite, the fireball that made the meteorite. So that thing, that rock, as it enters the atmosphere is a meteoroid... meteoroid asteroid fragment, hits the atmosphere, incandesces, shooting star, meteor, lands on Earth. Meteoroid. We got it. Space rock. Space rock is a much easier way of explaining it. At this point, space rock. A couple more facts. This fell to Earth about 5,600 years ago. It is called Campo del Cielo. It was found in Argentina. And it is one of the oldest known meteorites on Earth, because it was first discovered by the Spanish in 1576. And iron was quite valuable. Look at that pure iron. We don't have to smelt that. So I don't know if anyone could possibly have speculated that it came from the sky. It's doubtful, because in the 16th century the official position of the Vatican was that meteorites did not exist because God created the heavens. So the heavens must be therefore perfect. And if the heavens were depositing stones that fell on the Earth, they couldn't be perfect. And so the official Catholic church position was that meteorites did not exist. Was that still before the... when we were in the era of the crystalline spheres, too? That I don't know. When was Tico? When did Tico see his sub-lunar comet? So why did meteors not exist? Because I remember... I'm sorry. Did you completely derail you? No, no, it's fine. You know, Renaissance era, I don't remember the dates off top of my head, but like 14, 1500s, each planet orbited in a sphere. I forget whose view this was, but they were in these crystalline spheres so they couldn't move, so that kept the orbits so no meteor could exist because they would shatter the crystalline spheres. Ah, I didn't know that. And that was one thing that I thought was the most... not that I make sense to say that, like, oh, the heavens are perfect there. Therefore, there are no meteors or asteroids or anything that's not a planet, but I thought that was so interesting that, like, no, it's because it's ordered in physical structure, so you can't have that because it would break it. Ah, that's intriguing. Physically break it. Oh, I wasn't familiar with that. So there's no disputing that rocks fell out of the sky and landed on Earth, and the Entchishheim meteorite from the 1500s, for a 1400s, 15th century, is a great example of that, because it's a large meteorite that still exists today, a lot of its mass was chipped off by souvenir hunters even then, and so all sorts of theories were cooked up about what these might be, and a quite popular one was that they were thunderstorms, and that thunder and lightning in the atmosphere somehow caused dust to congeal into rocks and then fall, which is kind of a colourful theory. I quite like that. But it really... it really all became... it could not be argued any more that meteorites didn't exist after the Legla fall in rural France and this 19th century fall and there are so many hundreds of meteorites fell in the daytime were witnessed by so many people that it just couldn't be disputed anymore and a French naturalist was dispatched to the scene to collect specimens and describe them, and his specimens can still be seen in museums all around the world with his beautiful labels and his handwritten notes. B-O-B-I-O-T A naturalist turned meteorite hunter. It's quite a good story. So... So this thing... No, please. I was going to ask, this thing is... what, like four... five? I'm very bad. Five inches across, kind of oddly shaped. How much does it weigh? I want to say... Oh my God. I want to say 35 pounds? 30 pounds? I thought you were a weightlifter. I've no... I'm really bad at this. How much is this? Is it because I'm so tired that this feels like it's way heavier than it really is? Yeah, probably. So I think it's... I think it's only about 12 pounds? Really? No, that feels... I'm exhausted then. Well, we'll weigh it later. Perhaps the weight of the world is just laying heavy upon you, perhaps. We have the peanut gallery and the corn rope you're laughing at me. I'm wiped. That's so much heavier than I thought it was going to be. Are you feeling... It's also confusing because this material is so dense that it feels a lot heavier than it should be. It's almost as dense as lead. It's a nickel-iron alloy. Right. So that makes me want to ask you a question about, like, bolides or, you know, fireballs that burn through the sky, different colors like the green ones. Ah. So what does that say about their physical makeup? Excellent topic. I do a lot of public speaking and a lot of exhibitions and gem shows and things, as you know. And something that happens quite frequently is that people come up and they'll be very excited. They're, I saw a fireball in 1987 as I was driving through Connecticut and it landed just over there. And how do I find it? So it's one thing if it was recently, but I love the enthusiasm of people and they think, well, there must be a kind of complete repository of all sightings and all information about meteorites and fireballs, which we wish there was. But the fact of the matter is if you see a very bright fireball and it appears to land nearby, and we've all seen this, I'm sure, ah, it landed just over there, what you're actually seeing is a fireball arcing over the horizon. It's that far away. So the color is indicative of the material of which it's comprised. And the green fireballs are sometimes satellites burning up because copper wiring burns green. And I saw a really good one from downtown Jersey City when I lived in New York and I was walking by the river and there's a lot of light there. It's New York City, you know, it's really bright. And I saw this green, streaking fireball go right across the sky and I thought, space junk. So we don't find copper meteorites and there are other things that would cause a green issue. But most fireball reports people say they're white or yellowish-orange or towards red. When people tell me their fireball stories and they tell me that they saw green, they saw it burning green, they're very excited. Maybe it's aliens. No, it's probably satellite. And there's always a bit of disappointment. And I think seeing a satellite burning up is pretty amazing. But I think it's perhaps to non-space fans, maybe it's not as astounding as, oh, it's not actually alien stuff. It's just something we put up there that's coming back down and burning up. It's like a rubbish. I could barely even bring myself to watch it burn up. I forget the website, but there is at least some tracking now or some database of fireball. No, but you're absolutely correct. So there's meteor-obs and of course there's the meteoritical bulletin which publishes all known meteorites. But I mean, the guys will tell stories and they'll go, yeah, I think it was like 1987 or maybe 89, I can't remember, it was coming back from the game or something, but it went right over the highway. Somebody must have found something and it was so kind of insistent. No, no, but it was so bright you should have seen it. Well, we can't remember what year it was or what state it was in or which direction it was going or what time of day, except it was dark out. Well, let's now transition. We'll use that as a segue. You mentioned asteroids. And are you still involved in deep space industries? All right, so deep space industries, you are on the board of directors? I am on the advisory board of deep space industries. Advisory board and deep space industries for those who aren't familiar, among other things, is a company looking to mine asteroids, right? Mm-hmm. And more. It's a very, it's a very exciting time to be space enthusiast. And we grew up in the era of NASA and we all love NASA but NASA's not funded as well as they once were. I wish they were but they're not. And so we're seeing a very obvious shift towards private commercial exploration of space and space tourism. So DSI, Deep Space Industries, is one of the furthest along in most exciting projects, I think. And I was invited by Rick Tumlinson, who is one of the founders, to join the advisory board because meteorites come from asteroids. So if we look at meteorites, we learn about them, we discover what they're made of, we can get some pretty good indications of what the asteroids might be like when we get there. And so, briefly, the DSI plan is to send small robot ships out to the asteroids and we can start with asteroids that come closer to the Earth, to NEOs, and don't have to go all the way to the main belt, to scout for asteroids that have materials that we could use. So when you say that, a lot of people think, oh, so we would go to the asteroids and get the gold and platinum and all the good stuff and bring it back to Earth. No, that's not the plan. That'd be difficult and expensive. The plan is to go to asteroids and get goodies from them and use those goodies to do bold deeds in space. So if we can extract metals, which we can, we've virtually gotten technology to do it. Microfoundries in space, 3D printing, you get the bits that you need from the asteroids, you 3D print parts that you want, you can build anything in space. So what your immediate need is water and oxygen. Because, as you well know, both of you being spaceflight enthusiasts, everything that goes to the ISS has to be blasted into space and it costs $10,000 a pound to send things into space at the moment. So all the water that the astronauts drink on the ISS and all their food and spare space helmets and cameras and all the stuff that they use, that all has to be blasted up into space. So if we could extract oxygen and water from the asteroids or the moon should be pretty easy once we get there. Those products could be used to supply the space station and other colonies. And the part that I really like is that if you are 3D printing stuff in space and building things in space the spaceships don't have to be aerodynamic anymore. They're never going to go to the atmosphere. So we can finally make ships that look like the cruisers in Babylon 5 with the really fantastic fronts and the bit that spins and all the big cannons everywhere. You could do that. It wouldn't have to land. We're this close. I just absolutely love the idea of the space gas stations too. It's brilliant. It's so awesome. It's an enormous shift away from the 1960s concept of space travel, which is we take everything up there and we build a moon base and hopefully we can extract some stuff from the moon and build more things. You get everything you need from the asteroids to build virtually everything that you need. A lot of the grunt work can be done by robots. So it's very far along. I think we're going to see this in not very many years. That's the thing that I don't think a lot of people understand that even companies like Mars One and these private companies that are out there are talking about these elaborate plans of colonization. They're not talking about futuristic technology. They're talking about technology that exists today. It's just a matter of implementing it and making it happen. Executing that plan. It's really exciting to watch all of this. So many of the great developments and innovations have been made in the private sector. When the private sector is doing stuff there is not an unlimited budget. It's got to be financially viable and hopefully even commercially successful. So I'm very excited to witness it and I'm very excited to be part of it. What a journey for me from kid staying home and watching the moon landings and staring at meteorites in the glass cabinets to being an advisor to DSI. I'm on the board of directors of the Astrosociology Research Institute and I'm on the board of governors of the National Space Society which was founded by Bernard von Braun in 1974 and is the largest grassroots space advocacy group in the world. So I wanted to like many of us wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid and I didn't quite make it. There's a lot of math apparently involved and also disciplines of my best subjects but I get to hang out with asteroids. I think all three of us have been stymied by that. Math. So that's what we want to be mining although really the asteroids that produce some of the darker asteroids that produce meteorites that we call carbonaceous chondrites could be probably more useful because we've recovered a number of meteorites on Earth that contain water. So we know that some asteroids have water it's not that we think there might be some there if we get meteorites from the asteroid belt and there's water in them there's water in the asteroids and maybe there's oxygen too but at least we could easily make oxygen from the bits that we need. Such an exciting thing because we've learned I mean when we look from an astrobiological perspective the thought is looking for life as we know it where there is water there is life and we found that water is plentiful in space. So that's just incredible we're going to find life very soon I know. I expect to I know this some people are going to poo poo this but I really expect sooner or later evidence of fossil life on Mars not dinosaurs or primates just you think so? Well maybe. I mean they went somewhere. They're just hiding. To escape the asteroid impact. That's a good theory. Dinosaurs on Mars sounds like the next Roger Kerman film. Love it. I will so watch that. Dinosaursonmars.com get it quick! Dinosaursonmars themovie.com is probably someone's already gotten that. We should talk about this. I think we can make that happen. Alright so we've talked about space rocks. We've talked about rocks. Now let's talk about a rock of a different variety and talk about your history as a rock star. Good grief! You are a rock star in many senses but let's talk about music because something that's near and dear to our hearts on this show is punk music and you are sir a punk rocker. I am a punk rocker. Look at my hair. Tell us a little bit about your punk rock history. My history is quite colourful and as you both know I went to school in south London and when I was 10 years old I met this strange boy and he was into comics as I was and there were 860 boys at my school and there were the two of us who were into comics and our one other friend Dave Dixon three guys comic book fans and so we gravitated together and we hung out together all the time and we would get in trouble for reading comics at school and we would escape from school and sneak up to central London and go to the one store in all of the UK that sold American comics at that time in the 70s and my friend was always reading, he's always reading these hefty science fiction novels and many years later he became one of the most famous living writers in the world and his name is Neil Gaiman you might have heard of him he wrote a comic book called Sandman and a little movie with Robert De Niro called Star Dust and this little show called American Gods is on stars right now so Neil's my oldest friend, we're still friends still great friends, I saw him a couple of weeks ago actually up in Mesa and Neil really turned me on to rock and roll music so I'd heard some music but he turned me on to Lou Reed in fact he took me to my first concert when I was 15 we went to see Lou Reed the new Victoria in London my first concert can you imagine seeing Lou Reed first concert 15 years old, he walks on stage ohms with Sweet Jane and that was the great band, that was the rock and roll animal era Prakash John on bass, Steve Hunter on guitar killer band my life's changed forever within that first minute of seeing him cranking out as chords Lou Reed in the 70s with the leather jacket and the sunglasses and the curly hair so after this Neil says we've got to start a band I didn't play an instrument we've got to start a band, be a good way to meet girls so this is 1976 I think that's how most bands started that's a good reason, he was right he was right about a lot of things so he was totally into Lou Reed Bowie fan, he turned me into a lot of stuff I didn't know, Iggy Pop so we're listening to all this proto punk stuff Iggy Nastuages Bowie, Lou Reed, New York Dolls and we started this kind of glam band and he said I should play the drums because I was good at hitting stuff we used to argue, he was a DC Comics guy he was a Marvel guy we used to shove each other you know, Fantastic Four is better than Justice League or whatever you play drums, you're good at hitting things and then you won't hit me, you hit the drums so I convinced my parents to let me have a drum kit and I put on a pair of headphones and I listened to Z Stardust Spiders from Mars about 15,000 million billion times and played along with it and that's how I learned to play drums Woody Woodmansey who later in real life became my actual drum teacher so I learned playing along to Woody Woodmansey and then incredibly enough Neil is friends with Woody Woodmansey somehow, he knew Woody, David Bowie's drummer so I did drum lessons so we started this band and we did a few gigs and then I went to see this band my friends go, you've got to go see this band they're playing this little pub in London it's like nothing you've ever seen before so I remember going and waiting outside and I got my long hair and I got my baggy jeans with studs on the side a kind of totally mid-70s look what we would think very square today and going to this club and these three guys come out, these three skinny guys jackets and ties and everything, Rick and Bakker guitars and they go, 1, 2, 3, 4 and they just blast through the sets about 35 minutes long, they do about 11 songs and get off and that's it and it was the jam, it was a very early jam concert and it was like someone had taken a hood off my head and I just my life absolutely direction of my life was changed forever and I go, this is it this is it super high energy music, the guys dress really well bouncing all over the stage political stuff, cursing bad language, mad energy so that was early 1977 and it was all punk rock for me after that so I went to every possible concert that I could, I was so took about being in the right place at the right time I was in South London in a band 1976 and then so which went to every concert Clash, Buzzcocks Ramones, Vibrators all of these great bands there was always something going on, the Stranglers the Dictators, the American bands came to London the Ramones and the Dictators and Blondie were more popular in the UK than they were here in their home country Johnny Thunders, Heartbreakers all of this great stuff so my poor parents I would get the music weekly music newspaper every week and look at the gig list things and the problem was deciding which concerts to go to, Friday nights Stranglers are playing at the roundhouse Clash are playing at the rainbow Jam are playing at the marquee which gig are we going to go to and I would have gone out seven nights a week for two or three years but my parents did put something of a curfew on me so I probably only went to about 100 concerts a year and after an incident at a gig we're doing with the band Neil and me and Graeme Smith our bass player and Baggy our guitarist who is one of the first casualties of rock and roll for my generation he's sadly long gone somebody threw a full can of beer and it hit Neil in the head cut him quite badly and then he had a bit of a meltdown and he kicked in all the lights smashed all the lights on stage and it was very punk rock so then we called the ambulance and I helped him into the ambulance and he went to hospital and had stitches and he goes yeah this rock and roll thing is not for me but it was too late and then he decided crazily enough to pursue a career as a writer he was moderately successful with that I think but for me no it was rock and roll so after I joined a London band called the Marines played the London circuit for a couple of years and then I moved to Boston played the Boston punk scene for one year a character sort of hippie punk hybrid called Latch in Boston and he goes yeah I'm really from New York I don't like Boston we got to go to New York and play in the New York punk scene so we left Boston we went to New York and we started a punk band and I played all through the 80s New York punk scene CBGB's Cat Club Mercury Lounge all that stuff so I played I played rock and roll non-stop for about 25 years I would say and I started as a drummer but when I moved to the States I decided my real calling was bass guitar and also I'm big show off and sitting at the back of stage wasn't really working for me I want to be up there doing the power chords and all that and then somebody said at some point if you wanted to do power chords you should have been a rhythm guitarist not a bass player you can't really do power chords on the bass but I don't really care the bass only got four strings so it's not that difficult really we should have been more assertive because drummers can you can move the riser and be front and center elevated above everywhere some clubs I've seen have drum risers that are incredibly tall and I know at venue I used to own we've built a gigantic riser and wanted to elevate the drummer so I did I liked some heavy metal a bit I went to heavy metal concerts in the experiment and he played Blackmore's Rainbow and Cozy Powell was the drummer he's a great drummer drumsticks the size of chair legs but his drum riser was on this giant kind of elevator gantry thing and it actually went up in the air and came out over the audience that's the way to get people to watch but I've been kidding aside I wanted to jump around backing vocals it's a very interesting experience from me having been a drummer so I knew what the drummer was doing and I always worked very closely with my drummer I was super lucky to have played in London, Boston and New York punk scenes in the 70s and 80s and met I mean virtually everyone the sex pistols, the clash, the Ramones, Blondie a few of them were really good friends of mine Billy Ficca, the drummer from television a very pivotal band I'm sure he was my drummer for many years I did a couple of albums with him and I was very friendly with Pete Fenton who was the original bass player I'm an original guitarist for Suzie and the Banshees and I was thinking about you two today and they were going to ask me some questions about Scar and I look back at those years one of my very few regrets in life is one time we're in my own little rehearsal space with Graeme Smith my bass player is in London so I'm still playing drums and Pete Fenton from Suzie and the Banshees jamming and having fun and Pete goes we should start a scar band we should form a scar band three of us and I go I don't like Scar I don't do Scar and now I'm mad for Scar now and I look back I could have been in Scar band with Pete Fenton from Suzie and the Banshees ah well so most mostly punk mostly punk stuff I worked with Latch the crazy guy that I met in Boston for I don't know 15, 20 years all through the New York scene we did a few albums together and he went in a little bit more of an acoustic folk direction he's the only guy I know in the world who's managed to get a word added to the dictionary and that word is antifope and he invented the antifope subgenre because he got thrown out of the New York folk festival for playing electric at Bob Dylan and you guys well to heck with this New York folk festival I'm going to go have an antifope festival in my apartment and it grew into an international movement so that's how you start your music scene I like it so you still play music do you still play punk? I do yeah I'm not in a working band anymore I do the occasional gig here in Tucson I've played at the Rialto Club Congress so occasional charity concert and I my house is still I've got all my guitars and all my basses and I still write and record do you still play Rickenbacker? no I sold the Rickenbacker because I fell in love with a Steinberger bass and that Rickenbacker was such a great bass it deserved to be played and I sold it to a lady in New York City who fronts her own band and she still plays it to this day she doesn't have a bass in storage or on the wall that was a great bass need to be played no I am totally a Steinberger not two Steinbergers that's made out of mostly graphite weighs four pounds never goes out of tune great piece of gear you need to get one custom made that's got a meteorite in it some sort of inlay that is actually a really good idea so I did have a friend of mine who is really fancy but I'm always losing my picks and I was always afraid that one day I might just throw it into the audience and go oh no 500 dollar pick stop the gig bring that back that's a good idea though the inlay I still love the music the reason I'm not in a working band is because television and bands work for me because I go at it it could if the right network were to give you the right cover so if we could do an on the road thing about my meteorite bands my bands playing meteorite guitars on the road there could possibly be a hybrid there you're a touring musician who is also out exploring for meteorites on your gigs sort of like sound check we're in the Sahara there is a Martian meteorite fall that was actually what was happening in the later days of the night in New York in 97 Latch and I recorded our second album it's called Blang which is my favorite of our records and as soon as we finished recording I jumped on a plane and flew to Chile where I met Steve Arnold who became my co-host on meteorite men and we went on a screaming through week expedition across the Atacama desert so straight from recording a punk whatever punk folk album to meteorite hunting in the Atacama and that happened for quite a few years and it was just too much I felt like I wasn't doing either job quite properly so I semi retired from the music business I'm not fully retired well that's good, keep it that way if anyone has the right offer so Graham Smith who is a fantastic musician who now is a television producer in the UK, he was the bass player in the Neil Gaiman's band Neil Gaiman's and my band which was originally called Chaos but then we discovered there was another band called Chaos and they were really severe looking guys and we thought they would beat us up so we changed their name to the Ex-Ex the Ex-Ex so Neil Gaiman, Graham Smith I've said this before but I hereby challenge you on this podcast to do a reunion and since our guitarist Baggy has moved on to another dimension I think we should get Brian May to play guitar for us so Neil Gaiman, Brian May, Graham Smith and me, Ex-Ex-Reborn that would be massive we can do an album and we can use meteorite pics I like that, yes meteorite pics it's a good, good, I like it Brian May is an astronomer, he's perfect for the band he'll do it, of course he'll do it of course he will, alright so we asked all of our guests on this show the same question so we will pose that to you right now is it a bad one? it can be bad if you want to no it's fantastic so and you will love it given the opportunity to travel anywhere in our solar system the technology is all there so don't worry about logistics or anything you can go anywhere in the solar system where would you go and why that is a super question I love it when I get asked questions that I've never been asked before well the first thing that came to mind I'm not saying this is my answer the first thing that came to mind is I would like to see the rings of Saturn up close so so one of Saturn's moons maybe although if technology was not an object I would like to travel through Saturn's rings nice but also as I believe you know the greatest honour paid to me was the minor planet centre named an asteroid Nockin and it's 132904 and I would really like to visit my own asteroid that makes sense I would like to go there in a little ship it's a fairly big asteroid it was discovered by Rob Mattson at Mount Palomar and on that asteroid and get out in my space suit with my own little flag and this is one of the few times in life you could actually do this I get out with my flag and the flag says Nockin and I go I claim my asteroid in the name of myself and leave that flag there okay that's what I'll do I'll go see my asteroid I like that it's not too megalomaniacal it totally makes sense but it could be I mean it's almost rude to not go if it's being named after you I mean if they gave you somebody giving you keys to the city and you're going well I can't be bothered to go try the key that's right it's just rude isn't it alright it's good so perhaps because I'm one of your more difficult guests maybe we could kind of do like a slingshot thing we go through the rings of Saturn and that's the short feature that's the warm up the warm up band the opening act the big loop and then we come down we land on 132904 and I do my my little prince thing I take my watering can and maybe there's life on my asteroid maybe we could do a little digging smell the dirt asteroid dirt yeah smells like carbon something carbon footprint oh tiny diatoms alright let's wrap this up you're becoming a pain in the asteroid we're going to have to bring you back it's been too long a day where I think we're all ok so we'll do scon next time yeah I love the older person of the three here is the one with the most energy who's that who's the older one well probably me but here's this is the old one it's got tons of energy that one went to bed a long time ago so when I come back on the show I'll tell you the story about my Chinese martial arts master and how he was fascinated by the energy that he claimed lived inside meteorites and he's a smart guy four degrees I would like to hear that very much where would you like to direct people to go on the internet to find more about you well thank you so much AeroLite Meteorites my commercial meteorite company we've got two websites so we have AeroLite.org A-E-R-O-L-I-T-E and that is our flagship website with all the information about meteorites and the expeditions and all that meteorites.com which is a mobile friendly site you can scan through it on a cell phone and on the social media I'm everything at Jeff Notkin G-E-O-F-F-N-O-T-K-I-N I love Twitter I'm a Twitter guy you already know that We love Twitter as well Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube check out my Jeff Notkin YouTube channel I have a show called Meteorite Minute which is we did a mini season of 13 episodes of short films with me doing funny accents and talking about space rocks and even a bit of expeditioning and metal detectors and all that so yeah do a search I'm easy to find, I'm friendly I do my own social media so if you enjoyed the show or if you were disappointed that I didn't do any accents apart from that one and a little bit of Italian on the Pellegrino I think you did a lot of accents on this I did a bit of London East then as well didn't I alright so maybe next time we'll do the Russians and the old minor 49er guy I think we can get into that and I will say AeroLight is a very cool company and you've got very cool t-shirts just so people know oh and I should just draw attention to my Meteorite Bello tie which I wore especially, this is actually its debut that's awesome I was going to wear it at Science March but I was standing on the stage facing into the sun when I spoke at Science March and we were filming and I thought that's going to burn out the lens on the camera so bright so this is a Kenyan Diablo Meteorite from Arizona well and it's certainly fitting for Tucson so I don't like it well ladies and gents you've both been friends for many years this is really a treat to A, be on the show but B, most importantly seeing you two doing something together person, yes, really fantastic this doesn't happen that often so we're excited to finally have you on and we'll have you on again wouldn't we have more energy for sure no it's not but again we're at a conference so kind of exhausting but you can always follow me website acentric that's a-c-e-c-e-n-t-r-i-c dot com and that's the same for twitter also check out RoguePlanet.tv all sorts of interesting stuff about space and UFOs and aliens and fun stuff you can find me a-s-t vintage space on twitter and on instagram or by name on facebook and of course right here vintage space weekly episodes about space history on the usually mondays-ish maybe Tuesdays and these go up every other Friday also available on iTunes you'll have the link below that's about it so let us know all of your thoughts of course in the comment section people you want us to try to hunt down because we have access to all of them obviously and things you want us to drink within the not poison category we drink poison if you'll go on amazon and buy our books and if you have other questions I'm tired enough that I'm losing my voice and I haven't even been the one talking that's how tired I am if you have questions for Jeff too of course leave them in the comments because we know Jeff and we have access to Jeff so that's it thank you guys for sticking around oh this is awesome thank you guys for sticking around we hope you enjoyed it we are done everyone