 I feel the liftoff, punk rocker, moon stomper podcast. I am Amy, with me as always is... I am Jason McClellan, and today we have a very special guest with us, our friend Ben McGee. Ben, thanks for hanging out today. Hey guys, thanks for having me. All right, so yeah, before we get into any kind of talking, I would really like to open my beer, and I think we'd all probably like to start drinking, so let's do that. I just wanted to show you guys, so I went to the liquor store before we did this today, and I literally didn't have any beer inspirations, so I bought this purely by label, and I'm going to show you guys, and of course this doesn't help if you're listening to just the audio, but it's called Party Boy, and there's an astronaut on it, and it's also a giant bottle because they didn't have any small bottles, so this will be fun. You would have picked a big one anyway. I was actually looking for the Elysian Space Dust IPA, because I really like that one, but this is an unfiltered IPA-style beer, which is like, why is that not just an IPA? I don't totally get it, but it's fruity and citrusy, and it has an astronaut on it, so fitting. So I'm going to go ahead and open that, and I'm going to give us the like, beer sound. Nailed it. That was very nice. All right, what do you guys drink in? All right, Ben, you're up. Oh, I'm up. I'm going conventional. I cheated, apparently, and I opened it, but I haven't had anything to drink yet. I'm going with the classic Guinness. You have a Guinness. Well, you know what? That pisses me off, Ben, because... This is starting to get hostile right off the bat. I like it already. Well, I decided today to, in honor of you, my friend, to go with whiskey, so I have whiskey. There was talk. You're drinking whiskey. I also have whiskey. There you go. All right. So ace of plan B. All right. Nope, you got them both covered, then. All right. I didn't know which way we could go. We're going to go here, so... You could do anything you want, but today I'm drinking bullet rye. Good choice. Well, then since Jason's diving off the deep end to start, far be it from me to be left bar behind, and I got just a teeny little bottle of McCallan-12 that I'm going to pour or ceremoniously into my Wyoming glass, and we can get science in quickly here. I'm suddenly feeling a lot less awkward about the fact that I have a 1.9 ounce bottle of beer in front of me. So yeah, this is going to even out pretty good, I think. All right, guys. Well, cheers. All right. Well, cheers, everybody. Let's get to the nerdery. Mm-hmm. Well, Ben, we have to start by kind of talking about you, who you are, and why you are one of the most fascinating people in the world. No pressure. Yeah, well, I think the shortest way of explaining it is I'm a wildly interdisciplinary physical scientist who manages to get himself into trouble just about everywhere he shows up. That's the shortest possible version. That's a fantastic introduction. I love it, and it says a lot without saying much. So yeah, this is interesting. So I was thinking about it, and you and I first met oddly enough through the world of UFOs. Yes. And that's because I think it was chasing UFOs. That was our introduction, right? Yes, it was. All right. So you were on a TV show that was a Nat Geo show called Chasing UFOs, and I love when we talk about this because it makes me laugh every time, just because they pulled in this science guy and basically said, all right, go do some science. Like, we don't know what we want you to do, but go science. So you managed to do it, and you did it so well. And you held back the frustration I could see at many times. And we've had so many conversations over the years about that. But I guess talk a little bit about that experience, and so what you did on Chasing UFOs and a little bit about that show. Sure. Well, I'm not sure what I can. Well, at this point, it may all be fair game. It began as I wrote a paper. I had a paper published in the Journal of Space Policy on how you do archaeology in space. And I thought I had a sensible idea. It wasn't pushing really any envelopes other than to say, hey, look, if someone thinks they find something on Mars, it's irrelevant whether it is or not. You need a rigorous, credible way to address it. And so archaeologists aren't going to be familiar with planetary dynamics, and planetary geologists don't have a head for archaeological forensics. So we just need to blend the two before a potential aha moment in order to just do good science. So I was just trying to start a conversation. I didn't know the conversation I was starting would be with a producer in LA saying, hey, do you want to do some of this stuff you talk about where people say UFOs have crashed here on Earth? And I thought, wow, and you have this existential moment about, wow, my career as a scientist is flashing before my eyes, and then I stopped and went, wait a minute. When everyone else says no, you've got real people with genuine curiosity out there who are interested in this pop cultural stuff. And science has something to say about it. If you pick up a little Chatsky and you say, I think this came from space, we can tell you. We can do an isotopic analysis. That's how we can look at a meteorite and tell you whether or not it came from for Vesta or if it came from Mars or if it came from the moon or vice versa, we can do that. And people don't even know that that exists. So I climbed up on top of the soapbox and said, yes, by Gantry, I'm going to engage. I'm going to jump into this UFO project and show people science. And I mean, they ended up cutting all my science. Because television. Exactly, which I didn't understand at the time. But I ended up meeting a lot of amazing people. And that has had a domino effect that's continued for years. And I still feel I try and get involved in any public project I can because too many scientists, we complain all the time. Even science enthusiasts, everyone. Science is bad usually on TV and in docu-reality things. And we all complain, but nobody wants to jump into the trenches and try and do something about it. So that's how I ended up forging through the chasing UFOs thing, which, by the way, started off being called Sightings Investigated, which is that I need any more of this before I talk much more about it. But yeah, so I started there with the reason I ended there at all. The reason I wrote a paper about archaeology and space at all is because I'm an enormous space geek. I started out in astrophysics in college, jumped over to planetary geology because I wanted to get my boots dirty and walk on the moon someday. And my whole career ever since has basically been trying to leverage whatever opportunities were nearby to keep sneaking around toward finally getting off the rock. That's me in a nutshell. And so it's interesting that with the UFO thing, it's so funny when I think back. Maureen Ellsbury and I managed to hoodwink you into even giving a presentation at the International UFO Congress, the largest UFO conference in the world, about what you were just talking about, basically, xenoarcheology. So yeah, we'll go ahead. I was just going to ask because I know that you and I have talked about this. And I mentioned it to Amy that something that I tried to do when I was organizing that event, participating in the organization of that, was trying to infuse science into it and bring people that had a more scientific voice to the table to kind of get people thinking. And you were one of the first people, I think we tried that with Mr. Guinea Pig. So what was your experience? You know, this is a typically pretty far out crowd who likes to deal in a lot of crazy stuff. So having this guy talking science, basically, and talking what ifs and not not their their brand of they're already here to get used to it type mentality. What was your reception like? Oh, that's an interesting. So honestly, I was really apprehensive before I went because I thought for the same reason, hey, these are a bunch of people that even if they don't know it, they're really interested in astrobiology. They're really interested in cosmology. And what do we know about the universe and deep time and all this stuff? And so I thought, yeah, they might really be into what I'm going to talk about, or they may not. And as opposed to, you know, I had visions of like an effigy burning of a scientist, you know, who's I'm part of the establishment trying to knock them down. I mean, I had no idea what to expect. And I think honestly, I think maybe 50% of the people in the crowd are into what I was saying. And the other 50% were really resented what I was doing. And I tried to I mean, you can tell me if you thought I managed it or not, but I was trying to walk the line and be very gentle and like bridge building. Like, did you guys know that, you know, if we were to take a strictly dry scientific approach to what do we scientifically know about life in the universe? Start with the Drake equation, plug in some sensible numbers. You know, I tried to bring people into it. I think, well, the reception wasn't all bad. So I was encouraged. Ultimately, it was better than I feared. And, you know, I had a few people come up and say, hey, that was really interesting. And I had other views say like grumble, grumble, grumble, you know, you're not listening to us at all. But I think that's exactly the sort of people we need to hit if we're going to increase science awareness and science literacy is people who are already interested and they may not know what they're interested in already has a field title, you know, like astrobiology. So let me ask you this just because I've never been to a UFO conference. I should preface this, but I have spoken as the real science at a sci-fi convention, which like I was the only person not wearing a costume. And I've never felt more out of place dressed like a normal human in my life. And I had like as much as I had a really good reception from the people that experienced my real science, there was like five of them compared to like the 50,000 that were at the conference. Did you have the experience of like trying to, I mean, because astrobiology and like, you know, effectively the search for life and other possible life having places, it is so cool. And like the real stuff is so cool. Did you have that experience of like there were 10 people that were into it? Yeah, well, how hard is it to like make that conversion on that scale? Well, you know, Jason can tell you, I'm pathologically stubborn and so the iris genes or something. So I got a lot of Q and A. I opened it. I ended early on purpose and had a wide Q and A just because I knew. That was your own fault. Well, and it was. You asked for it. But I wanted to try and win some converts from the other side. So like you found, you know, there were a handful of people who I think were already in. So preaching to the choir, they already kind of got it. And they were, I was trying to take them in a new direction, but from SETI to astrobiology show where the play space in the science is currently is and where it may end up being. But in the Q and A, there were a lot of really aggressive folks who, unlike in a sci-fi conference, you probably didn't have anybody come after you. But there were quite a few people who, you know, challenged everything I was saying and, you know, called me. I was afraid of the truth and I wasn't. I was the one who's closed-minded and you hear this a lot. You are the truth. Aha. But if you can't start that a priority, you have to establish it. So you're going to take everybody off. If so, instead, I tried to pivot and address everything that each person said. So what about that claim? You know, right now is outside what were demonstrate what can be demonstrated or what would you need in order to fully demonstrate it and kind of help explain science outreach. Help explain why, because they don't see the disconnect. They don't see why if you have 10,000 people all claim that this color is green and you do spectroscopy on it and it's not. I mean, I'm generalizing, of course. But why, like I like to call it, the plural of anecdote is not data. You can have a million people wrong and that's a logical fallacy. The fact that a million people believe something has no bearing on whether or not it's true. So to help kind of bridge the scientific method and gently immerse people into well, you know, how would you approach this if you were going to really demonstrate it in a repeatable way? So yes, I did find that there was, you know, definitely a minority who got it to start with and it really takes some effort to push up hill and try and grab people and take them with you on a journey. And I imagine the UFO world is similar to the sci-fi world and that people who believe so firmly in their own convictions based on something that may or may not be based in actual fact will fight you, fight your fact with their fiction. How much of that did you get? That's easy. I'm going to cough for a second. But you talk about like the, can you tell us like, did you have any insane people coming up and being like, but I saw this in a thing once and this means that you are not right. Like, did you have crazies? Oh, yeah, well, yeah, but no one's going to have crazies. The first step is, you know, is trying to recognize on a human level the legitimacy of their personal experience, which is new territory for me before I ended up doing chasing UFOs. And I ended up interviewing a bunch of people I would have never, ever talked to who sincerely believe to the bottom of their heart, you know, they've participated in world view changing experiences. And so you've got to be sensitive to, I couldn't approach them and just say, well, you've got this opinion, but here's reality. Bam, you don't win anybody that way. So instead, you've got to try and find a way to, I mean, I see it kind of like a deck turn on a battleship. They're focused this way. And this idea is what they believe it, you know, and they've got good reasons to them for believing it. And you've got to find a way to kind of swivel the deck turret to, you know, middle ground. And so in doing, so take for instance, you've got a guy who communicates as he communicated with an unidentified light in the sky said, you know, I thought to it and then it blinked in response. And then I thought some more and like we were communicating. And it was this transformational experience. And I can't just stare at him and go, well, because atmospheric scintillation. A, it's not convincing and B, it just makes me seem like a giant tool. And I think that's one of the problems with the ivory tower and scientific establishment right now is say pyramids. This always goes to, I mean, it's a quick jump from, okay, well aliens were here because the Egyptians couldn't have built the pyramids, you know, and in that case, you say, you know, sure, like Feynman said, the issue is not whether or not aliens might be here or not. Sure, they could be. The question is demonstrating whether or not they are here. And so you've got to kind of illuminate that space and say, sure, you know what aliens could have shown up and help the Egyptians build the pyramids. Sure, that is a cause and effect that could have happened. But did you know that there are smaller pyramids nearby from the same civilization earlier that literally show them experimenting with building pyramids trial and error until they get to the actual pyramid. So you didn't need the aliens to build the pyramids. And so zeroing in on that that sure you could have, you could have had somebody cast a magic spell and poof, you know, the pyramid showed up. But if you can show via science like archaeology that they didn't need the aliens, there is a slow buildup of technological advancement that leads to Giza pyramid style, you know, constructions. Then all of a sudden, you're talking about them on the level. You're not just saying, well, archaeologists say no, bam. And that's why I try it anyway. So I think I want a few people, but that's. I feel like you have the same challenges in the scientific community too. You know, anytime you challenge something that's an established norm or something that is generally accepted and a new idea is brought forth, there's resistance for sure. And people who won't even bother to look at the the published research because they've been told one thing or they think that this new idea is so ludicrous that it doesn't merit serious consideration. You know, at any time you're dealing with anything related to extraterrestrial life, that's certainly going to be the case. You know, look at any time any researcher has published anything on something like fossilized diatoms, you know, that gets written off almost immediately by many people, you know, questioning whether or not this thing was actually fossilized, whether or not it came from space, just assuming that we're dealing with earthly contamination. So it feels meteorite problem. You know, are we dealing with something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, this all blends together as the philosophy of science, which is one thing people don't get about science is just how what scientists do, if like you mentioned you have a good idea, you think is a good idea, and it's contrary to a prevailing view. I think people tend to believe and they're supported by pop culture when you see scientists in movies and stuff, they spend their time trying to support this idea. And they try and gather a bunch of facts to support the idea that their idea is right. That's actually the opposite of good science. The slowest possible way to get to the truth. The fastest way is if you think you have a good idea, you try your hardest to smash the heck out of it and see if it holds up. And so if you've smashed on it enough and it refuses to break, then you submit it to the rest of the scientific community and say, please, smash my idea to shreds. And if it stands up, it's real. And so we get such a bad rap as scientists is being so negative all the time. And someone says, I saw a weird light in the sky and it might have been an alien. And our first impulse is to go, well, which way were you facing and where was Venus at the time? I mean, it makes it seem so negative when it's really just an artifact of training. If you've got a particularly challenging or interesting idea, our first impulse is to smash it and see if it stands up. And so it's not just being negative. It's us just having through the history of the philosophy of science learned the fastest way to get to reality. I'll tell you, as a UFO researcher, one of the most thrilling, exciting parts of looking into a UFO sighting is trying to identify it, you know, eliminating all the possibilities. So that kind of quest is so much fun for me. But then once you eliminate all those and you're still left scratching your head, then it's even more exciting. But, you know, being able to come up with those rational identifications is what I love about it. Yeah. And it, you know, that's just one of the things I got. What did they call me on the show? They started calling me dream crusher, all the crew. You know, they would get really into the story. The cameraman, you know, the guys, they'd listen to this really compelling story about something happening. And I'd go, well, you know, it could have just been blank. And they'd go like, oh, and then they finally started looking at me. Like the really cool story, Ben, what do you think? Okay, dream crusher. What's it really? But it's overwhelmingly negative. And I tried to tell as a scientist, you know, your curiosity doesn't really know bounds. So it's not in a sense less exciting to me if a weird light in the sky is a jet fighter or a cool electrical phenomena, like a sprite or an elf above a thunderstorm or something, you know, they're all cool. It's all interesting. So if you find something weird, it's automatically cool. And I'm not going to be disappointed necessarily if I find that it's atmospheric phenomenon versus, you know, some military exercise or something. And like you mentioned, I mean, people get so invested in their interpretation that that's where the problem, the reason, you know, I challenge you, try and find 10 scientist heroes in all of pop culture go, like try and listen, you'll get to about five and go like, I can think of two, like, now try 10, 10 scientist villains. They just list a few more than two, and you're already here. Yeah. So why, you know, why? And I think about that a lot because that's why I'm doing, you know, that's why I ended up doing chasing UFOs is how can you turn the perception over? It does seem weird now, like, again, not being in the UFO field at all. But talking to you guys about this, that like, people who see UFOs or see things that they can't identify wouldn't love the hunt of trying to figure out what it is, because like, that is what's kind of fun about it, because I get a lot of emails from people saying, like, oh, I saw this light, and it always turns out to be a launch. It always turns out to be some missile that like, some weird cloud formation made it scatter this way. And it's like being able to explain what it was, even if it destroys the illusion of aliens is like, this is actually really cool, really fun, deductive science thing. And like, why did it's it's odd to me that the UFO community wouldn't be like, more into that exactly like what you're saying, Ben. They're like, if you have an idea and you can't smash it, then maybe it's true. Like, there are some things that you're just like, I have no idea what that was. It's like, that's kind of fun. It is fun. People love that. It's a big problem, too, with the UFO community. They have a big identity crisis. And I guess a big part of the problem is just grouping the UFO community in this one large bunch. And I mean, they do it to themselves. But like Ben said, I mean, approximately 50% of the audience at the conference was kind of digging what he was saying. They were into the talk. That's a pretty big percentage when you're talking about this crowd. And there are a lot of people within this community who are very scientific-minded. And they do want to find the truth. And they want to get rid of all the garbage that's in the way, all the crap sightings and lights in the sky that don't mean anything, and really look scientifically at the unknowns that do exist. So they do exist, those type of people in the community. But again, that's an uphill battle that people who are in the UFO field will always face because you have that other 50% or so who just aren't having it. I feel like it's an uphill battle in basically any science community. Like people don't want to believe in science. It's maddening, but also really fun to be like, OK, now I get to have a teachable moment and I get to tell you something that you didn't know. This is going to be fun for me. You're going to hate it, but I'm going to love it. It's a human issue. It's stubbornness and I know more than you. I saw a documentary once. Therefore I know way more than you with all your degrees. Not even a documentary. It was a video on YouTube. Come on, Amy. It's all about YouTube. I love that YouTube, isn't it? Cheers, YouTube. Well, we need to get into... I need to jump into Vegas here, Ben. You are based in Vegas. You mentioned that you're a space nerd, so you're in good company. We are all space nerds here, and you've taken the nerdery to another level with some of the things you have managed to do in the space industry. We'll talk about that soon, but before we get to that, I want to kind of dig back into your history in Vegas. I also just want to ask you, what is it like to live in Vegas? I was there last weekend and driving out of the city. And I'm going next weekend. Going on the 15. And it's like, there's nothing on the one side of you, and then the strip on the other side is just like, nothing that is in this city should exist anywhere. I always describe Vegas as like, if you told an alien, speaking of UFOs, if you told an alien all about humanity, about the excess, the depravity, the good, the bad, the insane, everything, everything, and said, now put it in five miles. They would give you the strip. Like, it's so fucked up. What is it like to live in that city? Well, I can, you know what? I grew up here. So I wasn't born here, but I grew up here. And I can tell you, growing up in Vegas does a lot of things to you. A, you almost never, ever, ever go down to the strip. It's a tourist trap. The traffic's terrible. The everything's expensive. You never go down there. So there's- Jason loves it. I hate it. Give me downtown. You're right. But so I will, A, locals don't tend to go down there. The rest of the town is fairly just sort of mainline southwest. But it also plays with your mind in that things are open way later here than anywhere else. So as soon as I moved out of Vegas, downtown Vegas lights up after dark. Every other metropolitan downtown shuts down at five. And it's like the post-apocalypse. I wander around downtown Denver. And there's like nobody there at seven at night. And the paper's blowing across the street. And like, where are all the people? What happened? There's a cure is your desire to gamble. Because you can't see all the casino hotel complex is popping up because the people are winning. And so that's a natural anti-gambling sort of effect there. But all in all, aside from having- you lose all capability of seeing stars because it's one of the brightest cities in the world. What's it like to live here? Things are open late, which is awesome. And you've got ready access to- you can get to LA, drive to LA in a few hours. You've got the top third hiking and repelling spot in the US. Red Rock Canyon, just a few minutes to the west. You got Lake Mead to the east. You got Mount Charleston with ski runs to the northwest. Great Basin National Park is just a few- it's like three hours north. So you can really strike out and hit a lot of cool stuff. And on a side note, which I've thought about recently, why Vegas? Do you think that nothing should be here? Well, it started out as a little artesian aquifer. You know, you had some fresh water with some springs way back in the day. But it occurs to me that this is one of the most stable environments to live in that there is. Low humidity means things don't degrade as fast. We're not on a coastline. So there are no hurricanes or tsunami. There's mountains. So there are no tornadoes. It's too dry for mosquitoes. So you don't have any of the really, almost any bug problems. We're not near any major volcanic centers. So you don't have to worry about Yellowstone wiping us out. You guys do have flooding though. Yeah, but- Don't you also get earthquakes? Well, technically there- I mean, the whole Basin and Range exists because there were- but I've never felt an earthquake here in Vegas. I mean, this- This is like my biggest fear of being in California is that like my house is just going to implode one day. Well, yeah, I mean- Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's an active ring of fire, you know, plate boundary going on right there. And lots of people live right there. You know, it's rolling the dice. Well, and we have a house in Boise, and that's going to go in Yellowstone blows. Yeah. So if I were to pick a spot to just cluster humanity and survive, I would actually come out to a stable desert southwest-y environment, the fewest physical hazards. I love Vegas a lot, and I've spent a lot of time recently driving through the state of Nevada. And I just- I love Nevada. I think it's got some of the greatest visual mountains. It's just a gorgeous state. There's a lot more to it than people think. Ah, yeah. It is gigantic. But let's take it back to your younger years, Ben, and a big part of this show is music, our love for punk and or ska music. And you've got a little history with that. You are a trombone player, which has a special place in my heart. I only learned about this recently. Really? I did not know this about you. So I'm excited. But I need to know about your band history, Ben, because I don't think I knew that you'd actually played in a ska punk band before. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, so ironically, I'm the black sheep scientist and a family of musicians. So that's the reason we're in Vegas. My dad's a trombone player conductor. He was on his way to LA and stopped by and ended up becoming the lead trombone player in the Tropicana hotel house band for the Follies for Hereby. Yeah. I mean, so we just ended up here. And so I ended up picking up trombone and hit around high school. I ended up being wrapped into a ska band named Barney Fife out here. And we ended up, I guess you call it third wave ska, but we evolved into it. We got jazz funk influences going on in there. We ended up putting out three albums. The last one I think was really, you know, actually worth listening to. And we opened for the specials. Like we did some stuff here back in the day. They played at the Huntridge. I don't know if you drove by. There's like the oldest building in Las Vegas, but they blow everything up here. But it's an actual deco theater and it's downtown and old town. And we played there before they shut it down. And now it was awesome, man. I mean, it was a thick ska scene here in the late 90s, early 2000s. And the shows were big and everybody was into it. And it was, it was a real kick in the pants, I gotta tell you. Yeah. And you guys had some, some really big festivals there toward the end of the ska explosion. Yes. Let's see what was it. What was the big one there? That was a big one. I know the International Ska Circus happened there. It was a tour, but they stopped in Vegas. Yeah. Before that, there was like the ska celebration. No, I don't remember what it was, but it was it one of the fields there, like a ball field. It had like three stages or something and every single band was there. Yeah. Not, I mean, people don't know that. You talked about, you know, the science is intersecting. A lot of, I work in radiation safety right now. So, yeah, I guess as far as I take, radiological engineering. And one of the guys I ended up working with most, we actually, he was, he's a drummer, and he played in a competing band here in town. And we were actually at the same shows and we had no idea, you know. So, yeah, the crossover here is pretty thick. Love it. Well, you know, this isn't always the case, but, you know, you have a good hint that somebody's a little bit nerdy if they've been in a ska band. What? I mean, we actually had a band here in town, 51 Peg, after 51 Peg is this one of the first exoplanets that you, yeah. That's awesomely nerdy. Case in point. Well, all right. Well, Vegas is, like Amy said, one of my favorites tourist destinations. But one of my favorite tourist destinations right now to follow, something that's on my radar quite a bit, is space. And space tourism is definitely taking off and taking off very soon. Somebody that is kind of a hero of mine in the private space race is Mr. Robert Bigelow, somebody who is also based in Vegas and launched Bigelow Aerospace. And that is one of the leaders in kind of charging into space with private use in mind. And Ben, you actually worked for Bigelow Aerospace for a time, and I had a major geek boner when I found that out. I was very happy for you because I knew that's something you'd followed along with and been very passionate about. So what actually did you work on the module that's currently attached to the ISS? Only slightly. So what I did at Bigelow is I ended up joining and then running what they call the Crew Systems Program, which is the Human Factors Group, or basically Crew Support. Human architecture, it covered everything from toilets to the galley to radiation protection to clothes, washing, logistics. I mean, you cover it basically, whatever the human crew would touch. We had responsibility for making sure we could define it safely. Come down to fonts, color schemes. I mean, trying to do a spacecraft for people is no one's ever actually done it because even NASA has a huge handbook called the Human Integration Design Handbook. And it's basically a collection of all the lessons learned during the human spaceflight effort. And the International Space Station doesn't conform to the HIDH because it was only published the first revision, I think it was in 2010 maybe. But all the modules on the station, now, were designed in the 80s, built in the 80s and 90s, and then flown in the late 90s and early 2000s such that by the time they collected all the data and published it, we had an opportunity at Big Low to be the first human spaceflight program to be able to implement best practices. This seriously didn't exist until five years ago? No, well, the handbook didn't. They had a set of standards, a standard 3,000. You think this would have started from like way back in the day, like, note to self, don't use pure oxygen or people die. Like, why is this only a recent thing that people are being, like, using? Well, I can tell you exactly why. You know, the man systems program is what they first started calling it. And that, I think, officially started in 83 was the first time that people, that the spaceflight machine realized that you had to consider the people an equal part of the spacecraft as the propulsion system and the guidance and aviation system and, you know, everything else. The people were at least as important. And up until then, really, the challenges, the physical challenges of spaceflight were so intense that they were just focused on getting there. They weren't focused on improving human efficiency once you got there. And human safety was called the rocket worked. It wasn't called removal sharp edges on the interior. So that kind of thinking, you know, we had to reach a certain stage in spaceflight before everyone could kind of, and of course you had people screaming like, hey, astronauts are always cutting their elbows on this thing in the limb, or, you know, but they were like, yeah, whatever, they're astronauts, they're bad asses, they'll deal with it, put some duct tape on it, what, you know, this is not what we have to worry about right now. But if you're talking about space tourism, or paying clients, or people that were paying to go up there commercially, commercial crew, we're in an absolutely brand new ball game. And Bigelow is the first domestic space station provider up until recently, there have been a couple new entrants. But the first to really do that, and I pushed as hard as I could while I was there, to say, hey, look, if we don't want OSHA to swoop in and declare that they're governing human commercial spaceflight activities, because NASA doesn't have scope of responsibility over anyone who's not NASA. So right now, it's unregulated. There are no regulations that cover, there's a launch and reentry, FAA does that. But what about in between? If you park someone up there for a lookie loo for a week, no regulations at all currently exist. There's no precedent at all. FAA went before Congress and said, not us right now, so OSHA could, under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, just say, hey, guess what, it's ours now. As soon as you pay someone like the crew to manage the tourists, OSHA can just say, you have to meet OSHA standards, which would kill civilian commercial spaceflight. So Bigelow has been trying to get FAA more involved in a lot of the regulation, right? Yeah, but still, it's like a hot potato right now, and no one has to worry about it yet, because nobody has, so if we're commercially flying a tourist, Russia's flying a tourist to ISS, technically it's Russia's responsibility under Russia's safety regulations. But even if they agree to play around on the US segment on the station, this NASA, so you can follow NASA's safety regulations and standards and everything that's fine. But now, it's virgin territory, the wild west, the real wild west now, is civilians in orbit. I'm sure Richard Branson would be happy to hear you say it's virgin territory. I was just gonna say. Yeah, a little quiet shout out to Virgin Galactic. Hopefully it doesn't help more people. Brought a place to get by accident, okay. Well, as long as it's not going against your employer or something, you're fine. No, that's good. Yeah, but as far as it's so beam, the Bigelow expandable activity module, so Bigelow, for those who don't know, licensed NASA's expandable spacecraft technology was called Transit Habitat to go to Mars. Which started in about 1962, I will point out. Yeah, and yeah, I will defer there. I even found when I wanted to talk to you about, oh, I forgot the acronym. There was an inflatable moon extended the stay time, the stem, the stay time extension module. Was this the concept of the early lunar rovers that was like an expandable, basically inchworm that would crawl along the surface? No, no. Because they had one of those that was an expandable inflatable module that's very similar to what Bigelow has. So before, I think before the rover, they actually have, I'll send you the stuff. It's a really cool start. Okay, awesome. Getting into the same time. So the stay time extension module was built and tested and it was right near the end. They were planning Apollo 18 before Nixon canceled the rest of them. And the idea was they needed, they wanted to be able to park a lunar expedition for longer than a few days and for contingency's sake, up to 30 days. And so they basically had a beam. It's almost the same form factor. And it's designed to crush into the same space as the rover. So it would actually fit on the limb and then expand upon arrival. And it had a workspace. They had a mock-up. It's cool. But yes, so Bigelow licensed that, that, you know, the eventual descendant of that technology. And there's a test module on the space station right now, on node three. And my involvement was the radiation modeling. So I did that for the proprietary stack of materials that make up its flexible skin. But I want to reiterate, media gets it wrong all the time, just because it's flexible doesn't mean it's weak. And if you blow up your tire on your car at 30 psi and you can't get hard enough to break your foot, you won't break the tire. The exact same principle applies with expandable spacecraft. They may be collapsible, but that doesn't mean they're weak. Yep. And I love how the media, I got nothing to add to that. The media and talking about the whole process of the launch and attachment of the beam, you know, everybody just wanted to call it like a bouncy fun house. I know, they kept showing up the bounce house in space. Like, what are you people doing? Why? Because regular humans know what a bounce house is. So that is their, like, equivalency that they can actually understand. Yeah, and people like bounce houses. So if you want to get them excited about it, tell them it's a fun bounce house. And they're all, yeah, that's awesome. I mean, having worked as a journalist, like, you have to make it things that people have a reference frame for. And like, everyone's been in a moon bounce. So therefore, moon bounce in space is like, instantly people are going to click on that. It's basically. Yeah. And as we, Amy and I rant about this quite a bit, but the fact that, you know, one journalist probably called it that. Every other journalist found that story and decided to use it too. So it's like whoever writes for associated press or something, everybody picks up that article, either syndicates it directly or writes off that instead of waiting four days to like figure out what's actually going on. Because like, I want to say 80% of people who write journalism that space are not space journalists per se. They're just like people that do general technology, which is like, you obviously don't really understand how this works. Therefore, when you call it a moon bounce, that makes sense to you. Even if that is not a thing that's happening. The tires are good analogy. Because I was going to say that people, when you think of things that like, you don't think should be flexible and malleable because that means that are weak is when people freak out seeing airplane wings like oscillating in flight. People are like, oh my God, the wings going to fall off. And I'm like, no, if the wing didn't do that, it would actually fall off. Yes, my wife's actually terrified of flying. And I go through the same sort of explanations with her, which unfortunately don't tend to help the same way they'd help me. But it's the same idea. Yeah, it's flexing. So it doesn't snap in half. It's like the buildings that are allowed to rock in metropolitan areas. If they didn't, they'd just fall over. Well, Amy, you said the moon bounce, and I guarantee you that when Big O actually puts a habitat on the moon, which is not too far off, that's going to be the headlines. People are just going to call it the moon bounce. The thing is at that point, that's going to be awesome branding and people are going to fucking love it. And I would love to go in a moon bounce on the moon. Oh, you could jump so high. You can't bounce in any of them. That's the thing. We get them false hope. It looks bouncy on the outside. Yeah, you can punch the thing, and it was just like a solid, you know, we got to come up with a better analogy. I feel like the brain trust represented here, we could do it. It's better than a more accurate than a bounce house, but somehow convey the same idea that things can expand and then they're meant to be hard after that. You know, when I managed to go out for drinks with Bob, I'll see if we can come up with something. Don't mention, well anyway. No, no, I got it. So, you know, talking about these flights for people, the capsules for manned flight. I'm curious, Ben, have you looked at what currently exists in terms of SpaceX's Dragon capsule, their manned capsule, and what are your thoughts on that? I mean, I haven't looked at it in a while, so I don't know how much they published in terms of the design of it all and how flier-friendly that looks. Yeah, go for it. But before we get into your intimate knowledge of SpaceX and stuff, I would actually like to know if you're legally allowed to say it because of your work and stuff. What are your thoughts on SpaceX? And Jason, I don't actually, I don't think we've ranted about this or definitely not recorded a rant about this, but what your thoughts are on SpaceX because I'm not a huge fan. You and I have had brief conversations about SpaceX. I am a SpaceX lover, so that's good. But we're looking at the same thing. So yeah, I... All right. Yeah, I come at this from, from like most things in my life, I come at this from left field. And if you go back, Sherman set the Wayback machine to the beginning of United Launch Alliance. So I was shocked to learn that we didn't have any domestic launch capability up until not that long ago. Like we just couldn't launch our own stuff into space and on conventional rockets, you know, not the shuttle. And so the government paid Boeing and Lockheed to get together and come up with a reliable launch system, Atlas Rocket. And they paid them every year, whether they generated a rocket or had rocket contract or not, just to keep them afloat, which you can understand why we wanted to be able to launch from rockets. Okay, makes sense. But there it stayed and launch prices stayed and everyone was happy to just keep getting paid boatloads of money. And there was no evolution of the concept and there was no reason to keep evolving them. I'm not being very kind in principle, the ULA right now, but you know, from the sidelines, nothing was ever going to bring down the cost of the price per pound to launch to Leo. Under that arrangement, why? I mean, Congress just found out, wait a minute, we're paying ULA. I forgot what it was, like $500 million a year for nothing. That's not even for their contract, whether they even bid on an Air Force contract and they didn't even bid on the last one, which is crazy town. So I like, I love the disruptive element that SpaceX presented to that system to just shake up the equilibrium and start really making space launch providers terrified and make them put some R&D dollars into considering things like reusable first stages. Okay, can you really save money doing that? Or do you end up with a shuttle problem where it costs so much to refurb, it's kind of a wash, you know? But I just, I love that somebody bothered to take on this Goliath, which is ULA, and provide an option B commercially without having to have any taxpayer dollars go into it. And it's organic in a way. It's what we always wanted. We dream of spaceflight becoming what airflight was. So airplanes came out and the government started running it for a while to do the U.S. mail system and stuff and then they kind of let it go to the ecosystem of industry to come up with better planes and new types of planes and things like that. So in my mind anyway, that's how I see that SpaceX's influence. So that's from 40,000 feet. Now you asked me what I think about people I know who have worked there or have been driven into the ground while working there or things like that. That's what I hear. Driven into the ground, rockets held together right. Space is hard. We all know that. Come on. Right. So I think there are arguable points on all sides of this. But personally, I love the effect that SpaceX has had on getting to Leo. I can get behind that. I can get behind that. And look, the real thing I think for me is just not even focusing on SpaceX. I mean, SpaceX makes a lot of noise. But thank God for billionaires who are space nerds. Yes, yes. Yes, that for sure. Yes, let's drink to billionaires space nerds. To billionaires who are space nerds. Space for the rest of us. So what's talking about, let's get into the tourism aspect of space. I mean, the easy one, we already mentioned Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic. That's something that was at the forefront of all this, been delayed many times unfortunately. But again, space is hard. That's what happens. Given the opportunity, if you guys were presented with a, not even a coupon, a free ticket right now on the first flight, would you go? First flight? You know, it's interesting because Jason, you know, Amy, I'm not sure if you know. I mean, I've had a goal for years now to become a commercial scientist astronaut. So, you know, see the potential need. There are a lot of research dollars floating around. And if I pay for the overhead for training to run your experiment, it'll be cheaper for you to hire me than to hire, you know, train up one of your own. So, fine. I think that, well, which part of this do you want to talk about first? I mean, this is like a monster topic here. Just go with it. Just go with it. So, I'll tell you right now. I don't know. It's so big. I know. Personally, you know, thinking about these trips into space that are coming very soon. As a technology geek, you know, I love technology, but I also know that with any technology, it's smarter to wait and let them work the bugs out. That's basically where I am too. It's like, I love space, but I love living to write about space more. Yeah, exactly. So, if they were given the opportunity right now, if Sir Richard called me on the phone and said, hey, you're an awesome guy, got a seat for you on our first flight. I would think for a couple seconds or minutes about it, but I would most likely decline because it's just, I think, too risky at this point. I'll let them work everything out, but I'm incredibly excited about it. And I am anxious to be in one of those seats. Yeah, fourth flight, maybe I'd be kind of okay with it. And I keep, people have asked me so many times, like, would you go into space? Have you been into space? And I keep thinking, like, at some point, someone's going to ask me to write about it. So, yes, I will take that for a flight. It's so funny that you guys both have this opinion, because we're all, as it turns out, around exactly the same page. So, where I was going is, as part of the pre-commercial astronaut not training, there are some surveys from different flight providers that I had to take. And one of the questions was, because I think they were working on managing what the potential assets are in the commercial, you know, when it looked like it was really hot, it was 2012, everyone was going to fly in 2013. There was a lot of steam on getting people trained and, you know, seeing what the landscape was like. And they asked that question, would you fly on a flagship flight to do research? A to A, do you have a death wish? And I said, no, I want to do science in space. I don't want to see if I can do science in space. I'm not a test pilot. I'm a scientist. So, there's a difference there. And I think we're all feeling the same thing here. But then I think there's the other aspect of space tourism, where people just have fetishized it in a way that they will go up in any means possible, because then it's space flight. And I'll tell you guys about this really weird German billionaire I met at a conference once, who I believe has bought all six seats on the second Virgin Galactic flight. Because I think the first flight is all Richard Branson's family. Like he's going to prove that it's safe by putting himself and his family up there. This guy bought all the second flight. Okay, so one seat, there's six seats. One seat is for him. One seat is for Buzz Aldrin, who will be officiating the in-space wedding to the woman that this guy has yet to meet. And then there are three witnesses to the marriage. So then that happens. This is where space tourism gets weird for me, because then it becomes the novelty playground of billionaires, as much as for every scientist who wants to do this kind of thing for research, for whatever reason, there's the guy who just wants to be like, whatever, I was the first person to get married in orbit. It's really, it just like, it opens up the door to all kinds of like weird. Well, you know, I thought about that too. I guess that's a way to do it. The problem with that is that's finite. How many people go to Everest every year? And how many times would you- Like a lot, actually. Well, actually it's more than I, right. It's more, I actually like looked, I like weirdly looked up this stat recently, because I re-read it into thin air and it's just as horrifying for like seventh time to read it. But yeah, there's a lot of people that do Everest every year. You're ruining this analogy. Come on. Okay, so no one goes to Everest because it's the hardest thing in the world. Well, so maybe a more, a more appropriate analogy is how many people climb Everest twice? So, you know, how many people have enough money to do that? So now you zoom over to spaceflight and that's got the best that the tourism pulse can do is act as a stop gap. So in my mind, the business case, which we talked about a lot. I mean, I wasn't officially involved in the business case at Bigelow, but obviously it's on our minds when we're talking about, you know, what crew are we potentially designing the interior of a B-330 spacecraft for? And how long can we expect, you know, we're setting up time frames? And the best, I think, for some orbital flight, like X-Cor and Virgin, or orbital, even tourist spaceflight, the best that the pure tourism aspect can do without some larger umbrella is to connect the present to the future economy. So there has to be some other reason or else you're going to burn up all your tourists who are giving you critical dollars and a little bit of time to connect your business model to some other reason to go there. And I think that's why Alan Stern and crew do the Next Generation Subverbal Researchers Conference, NSRC, every other year or so now, because they bring the research arm in. They bring universities and government in to say, hey, look, you know, you could get some, if you have a reason to work on microgravity research, you can do parabolic flights, that'll give you something. But if you can figure out a way to do it in four minutes on a parabolic flight out to space, this is a new, they're treating it like a resource. And if there's a way to connect to regular university research dollars or big pharma, you know, and you grow some treatment for something, make purer crystals, you know, I know that their biochemists are interested in access to good microgravity. That's what has to be happening now while everyone else is talking about tourism. The players have to be talking about what happens next or else it's going to flare out. And my fear is it won't be anything. They'll crater before, if they start then going, ah, look at our tourists, they're dropping out, we don't have any business. It's too late to then go to Dow Chemical and go, what do you guys think about going up on our spaceship? No, you might know better than I do. Like, does a research company have the kind of money that an eccentric billionaire has to just launch a team into space to do research on micro crystals? I mean, I feel like you almost might need that first wave of insane billionaires who just want to get married by buzz and orbit to make it routine enough to keep the costs down so that then it becomes accessible to research organizations who you think that they have all the money, but you know, they have no money for the amount of things they're meant to be doing because I feel like that, yeah, that's the ideal of space tourism. Like, I'm all for team science and not for team like, like jerks being like, oh, I'm so much wealthier than you because I went into space. Like, good congratulations. No, let's do something real with it. Yeah, basically. So it's, I feel like you kind of need that wave, but at the same time, like I can't imagine it being affordable without that sort of like first wave of intensive funding almost to make it accessible to the people that actually need to use it. Yeah, and I hope, I hope that it goes that way. You know, I just want to point out things like imagine it's unpopular, but drilling for oil, you know, exploratory drill pad, those are 20 million bucks, boom, boom, boom, boom, not all of them pan out. So there are big companies out there and I'm not about biology is not my thing. I'm a physical scientist, but I have a sense that I think is a pretty valid sense that it's the same level of magnitude when you're looking at chemical production and salt mining, you know, to take the chlorine out and, you know, do things like that. You're talking about millions of dollars and not all of it pans out and they routinely work that into their giant, you know, business models. So being able to find a way to make space relevant to them. And that's why I think orbital has a much better chance than suborbital because suborbital, you know, you're falling back no matter what you do. So you only get a few minutes of microgravity, whereas if you go orbital, you're going to go up there until atmospheric drag slows you down or until you decide to come back. In either case, you get a lot more time and you can do a lot more stuff. So if it's set up the right way, I think you, in my mind, the only, you know, there aren't enough billionaires in the world, I think to give enough time to drive the costs down. I think these companies need to connect to big businesses and find a way to make the environment important to say, look, you're currently, Dow, you're currently spending, or who knows, Monsanto, maybe you're growing, who knows what they're fiddling with, but you're currently spending $30 million on that. Well, if you spent $15 million on, you know, sending up a leasing space in a Bigelow module for three years, then you can do it better with twice the, you know, whatever. I mean, that's, but that's a sort of business planning. I think people need to be doing or else I worry that we'll get really excited and watch a bunch of this flight and then watch it stop. And I think that would be the most heartbreaking thing for us who love this stuff is watching it stop. Yeah, definitely. You know, it's funny and this is totally random, but I have to bring it up because this is the random show. And I don't know why. When you were saying that, it reminded me of the Simpsons. And anytime I have a Simpsons thing pop in my mind, I have to mention it because I love Simpsons and I know you do too. I'm looking around. My purse isn't next to me, but I do have a paper Simpsons wallet because I'm 12. So that's awesome. Go on. Let's, let's, but I was thinking about the suborbital flights and, you know, people having buyers or more. So that made me think of the episode, the ribwitch episode where everybody wants the last ribwitch and Homer gives it to the guy who gives him the lease to his car. And then he has the buyer's remorse. So you know, he's paying the buyer's remorse. Yeah. Probably the lease of to my car. Yeah. So he is people paying $250,000 for six minutes of time and space. And you know, I'm sure it's rad, but you know, $250,000 worth. I don't know. Yeah. Again, which is exactly why I know that if I ever do it, it'll be because some outlet is paying me to cover it or to promote them. And I'm super happy with that. But like I do not have this much. If I had that much money to burn, I totally do it. But like, no, you can pay me. Thank you. All right. So I'll throw this out there then. Let's keep it going with tourism. And given the option if both of these happen to exist, would you rather go to a habitat on the moon? You know, essentially a hotel on the moon or an orbital hotel? Moon. Which would you go to? I'm a geologist. Take me to the moon. I want to stand in another world. That's why I got my degree. I actually, the moon is why I got my degree. I studied lunar geology for a while. And I think the moon is about 10,000 times the smarter target for exploration than Mars. But again, that puts me over in the minority of my peers today. But to me, we need to create a cis-lunar environment. We need to control earth, moon, space. We need to own it. We need to increase safety. We need to have salvage operations, repair stuff, rescue options, redundancy. Once we do that, once we own this, I'll look at it this way. Because I'm bigger than asteroid mining. So I'm finishing up a thesis at North Dakota on how radiation from the sun, whether it's asteroid surfaces, fakes out their composition in case you wanted to mine them or save the world and figure out the best way to deflect them. And the problem there is the same problem with the moon, is we don't know quite what to do with it yet. But unlike Mars, the moon is right there. It's three days away. It's got a weaker gravity. It's got a weaker gravity well. So it's cheaper to get away from and to land things on. And it's got a whole bunch of stuff. It's just waiting there for us to figure out what to do with it. And when we, the analogy I like to use with asteroid mining, it works for the moon, too, is coming over from Europe to the new world. So we came here looking for spice, because there was an economy built around that. OK. We came back looking for gold, because we found some of that on the first exploration. And we stayed here because of tobacco, which we found here during this level of exploration and brought back and suddenly everyone wanted it. So we had no idea, looking for spice, that we'd move through gold as a resource and end up at tobacco, which is what let us stay. So my argument is we can't possibly forecast right now the reason we will stay on the moon or create a sustained presence in this lunar space. We know why we might want to go. Helium-3 for future fusion reactors or maybe in-situ resources. It's cheaper to mine something on the moon and put it into Leo than it is to launch it from Earth up to Leo. But there are going to be a couple of iterations and it could be something ridiculous, like the pet rock on the moon. For some reason, everybody on Earth suddenly decides they need to have a pet moon rock and there's a gajillion-dollar industry and all of a sudden, yes, we can just pay to go to the moon and and collect moon rocks. That could happen. The point is we have to make the first step to start the ball rolling to figure out what's our, what's, figure out what our spice is now, get through the gold that'll bring us back and figure out what is the 21st century tobacco on the moon and then, or asteroids, or even Mars, and then we'll have done it. I like that of all the weird 80s things, you went to pet rock. That was pretty good. Why was that ever a craze? I don't get it, but like I would totally love pet moon rock. Yeah. So maybe just right now, we just did it, we could start promoting it. That's pay us to go be to moon rock. Yeah. No, I love your your point about the moon being three days away as opposed to like two years away is why I don't really understand why people are so obsessed with Mars. I know that liking the moon in any academic circle is like professional suicide. Oh, not suicide, but people don't like it. They're like, oh, you study the moon. I don't get that, guys. I don't get that at all. Why is that the mindset? I don't get it. I don't know, but I've met so many geologists that are like, no, no. If you're cool, you study the outer moon. When did this become like the mean girls of planetary science? Like what is happening right now? Yeah, don't get me wrong. You both know how much love I have for so many moons in the solar system, but we don't throw any love to our own moon. And it's right there. It's so exciting and it's so unexplored. Get to there. And we can actually like do science there without a significant enough light time delay. And we can like explore it and we can rescue people and all the things. I mean, it's so close. It's why are we not doing that? And as a huge Apollo nerd, I would, unquestioningly, just speaking of moon or orbit hotel. Moon hotel. Because then you get to see the Earth rise. Yes. And there's a very practical reason. You have 180 degrees of shielding from galactic cosmic rays. Yes. Yes. You have to be the first you don't have to worry about and not to get technical. But you guys would appreciate it. You know how Buzz Aldrin has to get your Aston Mars shirt from Total Recall? Yep. I mentioned that on the previous episode. But yes. Talk to Buzz. Buzz being a bit of a weirdo has been a topic. Well, I went totally rogue and made my own. Did you really? Yeah, which is get your ass to Luna. And then I changed it to the Lunar, I mean this. Yeah, I modified it. I made it for myself. But I'll send you guys one if this is probably a zazzle thing there. We might have to make that. That'll be one of our podcast shirts. For our side ventures. And we'll put Ben's face on it too. Just give it a cheesy double thumbs up. Sure. That's the marketing. So people will be sick of hearing me say this, but I'm a big fan of subsurface exploration. So, you know, with the Google Lunar X Prize, launching all these random rovers to the moon at some point, I hope somebody drives one into a lava tube and just say, there's John and checks it out. I'm so excited to get into those lava tubes and look. It's fun that you mentioned that because, you know, what one of the things the moon doesn't have is an atmosphere compared to Mars. And so there's some, you know, atmospheric recycling things you can just a body of reactor and you can work on creating your own breathable atmosphere and things like that. You can't do that on the moon. So you got to bring some raw resources with you or more power so you can separate them from the native rocks. You're going to have to bring it to Mars too. It's easier to get to the moon. Yes. I love talking to you guys. I don't talk to anybody that agrees with me on this stuff. It's like trying to take a Viking longboat from Spain to Plymouth. It's just not smart. If you take it from Spain to England, okay, and you figure that out for a while and improve your logistics and build better ships and the technology, but why in the world would we fling a tiny capsule as hard as we can is so far away that we couldn't even, it's a 40 minute round trip to get a distress signal response back when we could just bop to the world that stares at us every night. And I mean it's a place, it's a mountain range that look at you all the time. The funny thing that, you know, our country seems to be the one that doesn't get it for whatever reason because other countries are still eyeing the moon and have missions to land it. Because we've been there and we've done that. We've done that move on. Yeah, no, I hate that. Because we can't, because we don't have the capability now, it's falling back on the, been there, done that. Now it's humans to Mars, which I've had conversations with people at NASA who I will not name, who are like, have said to me like, well, if you pay attention to the way we talk about it, it's humans to Mars, never humans on Mars. Because like I've had a lot of conversations with like EDL, sorry, entry, descent and landing because I shouldn't use acronyms, EDL engineers who are like, we don't actually know how to land something as heavy as a human spacecraft on Mars. Like we know how in theory, but we do not have the money to actually like make the thing happen. Yeah, it's all about humans to Mars, never on Mars. Why do people think this is the thing that's going to happen in like 20 years? I feel kind of bad for the kids who are like, I'm 18 and I want to be the first person on Mars and like, that's nice. Maybe your grandchild will be. I know, I mean the Mars generation, you know, there's so much initiative I see behind them, you know, lots of young STEM people and showing up in flight suits, you know, really engaged in giving public talks even and it's great, but the Mars generation is, if we're lucky, will be the CIS lunar generation, meaning the space between Earth and the moon. So do I need to keep this jargon light? I'm sorry. I feel like we should keep it jargon light, but maybe I'm being over overthinking it. No, I mean if we're nice for our audience, it would be a good idea for us to explain more of what we're talking about. I think for most of our audience, our audience understands a lot of what we're talking about, but it's always the struggle I have in talking about this stuff is making sure that I don't kind of forget that some people might not be familiar with things. This is my biggest problem when I give talks to non-space nerd groups. I forget that not everybody knows everybody knows the timeline of Apollo. It's like, oh right, I can't just mention a mission and have you understand what was happening with NASA at the time. Ben, you were wonderful earlier when you actually explained what beam was. Like I kind of just glanced over that whole thing. That was very good of you, yeah. Yeah, well good. Hey, we got a moon crew here. This is awesome. Totally go to the moon. Well, I don't know if it's still on. I mean, I was skeptical from the start, but the ESA and Russia were talking about doing a moon village. I don't know if that's still on. I thought there were some issues there with Russia. But talking about the lunar village, plenty of rovers planned for the moon. So I'm excited any time I see any type of lunar exploration on the table. I just wish some of our billionaires would get on board. Fortunately, Robert Bigelow has it in his site. So let's go Bigelow. So what do you guys think? I'm curious about this whole idea of going for deep-space exploration being the moon or further away for the sake of science or for the sake of fun? Because that's where I feel like this weird breakdown of space tourism happens that a lot of people are just like, no, no, no. It's just going to be fun and awesome. And some people are like, no, no, no. We need to like this is going to be fun and awesome, but it's going to be for science. And I have a bit of a problem with space tourism for the sake of like fun times, good times, because it's like, what's the point? Whereas if it's going to the moon and like building a habitat because you want to actually gain something from that, then I can get behind it. Well, I definitely go ahead then. Go ahead. I was just going to say, if you look at classic exploration, so the old plan of flag in the South Pole, plan of flag in the North Pole, turn of the last century kind of stuff, those are privately funded. And they were there not for science. They were for the achievement, but a lot of science was involved and there was a lot of science spin-off. So it's difficult enough. I feel like, and maybe I could be wrong about this, but I feel like even with some aspects of survival, that it's going to be difficult enough. It'll self-select. Well, maybe survival is not fair, because almost anyone could take 6Gs for like 10 seconds. But if you've got people who are going deep space, like you mentioned, so we're talking why go to deep space, moon and beyond. I wouldn't discredit the flag planting impulse outright, because it's going to be difficult enough. You're not just going to have a pure yacht who go out and do that. It's going to take a lot of personal effort, time, years of your life. So the people who went to try and plant flags at the poles here were deadly serious about it, and lives were on the line. And blue things happened as a result. Now, I think it's an important analogy, because we don't have cities at the north and south poles right now. So just like we don't have a city up in the sea of tranquility, the flag planting impulse by itself, I don't think creates anything sustaining where you explore. Because that, yeah, and I think maybe the way to think about this is the inspiration Mars. I don't know if that's even still a thing that anybody is talking about, but this is the mission to do, not even an Apollo 8, go into orbit around Mars, just figure eight around Mars, free return trajectory come right back home. To inspire humanity, cue rainbows. Like for me, that mission is just bullshit, because what's the point of going that far, risking lives, developing all that technology, and not at least go into orbit and do some serious orbital science to maybe take some, I mean, we've got high rise, the camera on, MRO is up when it's on. Yeah, we've got really great images, but like do some science while you're there, like make it for a reason, as opposed to like, happy inspiration for humans and have nothing sustainable come from it. Because I feel like when people think about going to Mars, it's all about like, I want to be the first to plant that flag, and nobody's thinking like, okay, then what? Right. That's where I like get annoyed at people talking about like, I want to go to Mars because, and I've met people, oh my God, I've met people who are finalists for Mars One, which is the biggest insane scam of all time, as recently in Australia, and there's an Australian who's one of the eight finalists. So like Australia's understanding of Mars is through Mars One, which is so weird. But yeah, nobody, I've talked to people that are finalists in that mission, and they don't even understand how far Mars is. And they don't understand what a light time delay is. They don't understand that you can't just call your friends and you get lonely. It's so weird. It's just like you can't just make it about like, rah, rah, rah exploration. It's got to be like, rah, rah, rah something sustainable. Well, I mean, you know, I love the Mars, inspiration Mars example, because it was supposed to have an inflatable trans tab module as the habitat. Was it supposed to also launch this year as per their original? Sure. There are two windows. I think they had it. And I don't think either of them are in range. And I think the website is defunct now. I mean, they deliberately never mentioned the rocket they were going to launch in that press conference, which everybody on Twitter was having a field day because their little placards for who was talking at the table were made of folded paper. Yes. And placards on paper. I like the impulse. I mean, the big problem with inspiration Mars is the orbital dynamics, which is if you look, you know, spacecraft, tracing ellipse or circle around whatever they're orbiting. And Kepler's laws tell you that when you're closest to what you're orbiting, you're moving fastest. So if you're going to propel yourself around Mars to come back, we'll literally, you're without getting into the, trying to stay out of the jargon. But that means you're literally moving quickest at Mars. You have the least amount of time of the whole mission at the one thing you want to see on the mission. So you're literally within range of any remote sensing for like a day. And then you're slung back out and you're headed back home. So, you know, could you do good science there? Yes. You could do a lot of good science, not on Mars. So, I mean, to me, the real science you'd extract from a mission like that would be all human factors. And it would be all closed life support system work. And it would be a lot of logistics, which, so, I mean, I would contest that there's no scientific impact that you can have from a raw exploration mission. You can and you can get a lot of good science about it, but you have to, there are two stories are required. One is we're going to Mars and the other is we're performing a deep space human factor study for a year and a half. And, you know, if we can do something like that, I mean, that's the whole reason that exists is it's cheaper. You don't have to have a lander. You don't have to be going. You don't have to have the fuel. Way less fuel. Yeah. So, it's a way more possible mission. And I think that's the only reason it existed is someone realized, well, sure, we've never gone that deep. Why not fling a couple people around Mars, in fact? But, you know, it's not the plant of flag. And then, like you said, now what? Yeah. Are either of you up on the latest developments with Mars one? No. So, I haven't done my homework. You know, I do like following what they do because no, it certainly is. I know I think it was either this week, which is not the week people are listening to this. But... Three weeks ago. Yeah. Recent weeks, I saw something about they went public, apparently. And so, that's their latest scheme to fund the company. I have no idea how that works. But I think they've changed their structure and some of their plans to get funding. And obviously, their timetable has shifted substantially. Significantly. I think they were initially planning the first launch stage for 2020. No, that's in 2018. Was the initial first unmanned launch date to actually land the first tabs. Yeah. And they still plan to do two launches to put stuff on the surface, have the robots put stuff in place, and then launch the cruise. But that's all changed. And I guess they took the company public, which is weird. And I feel like we should just go through, for people who aren't familiar with Mars one, that their model of funding is through reality television. We've all been a part of. I know. That's the worst part right now. But yeah, the idea is to broadcast astronauts training to go to Mars and the whole thing. And then the journey to Mars, somehow magically with like getting the footage back from Mars and processing it in nuggets for a weekly show. That would be the way that like selling ads on that show would fund the mission, which is deeply flawed to me because like, I don't know if you guys, I mean, I have because this is what I do for a living. But like, if you guys have ever looked through the old archive footage of the astronauts training for the Mercury program, which involves them sitting in classrooms looking really concerned and nodding and like maybe jotting down things and putting up hands. It's very boring. Like would you watch TV about kids playing chess quietly? Because that's what astronaut training looks like. You know, they would make it interesting though because it would be like big brother or something and they'd all be having sex with each other. So this was actually, I met a whole bunch of Mars like current Mars scientists JPL who were now good friends of mine. I met them through this very weird exchange on Twitter when Mars 1 first came out because all I could think of was that Mars 1 would very quickly become like survivor Mars where it's like when they start to run out of food and they realize like, because by the way, this is the one way mission, right? Like they're not coming home. But when they start to go crazy and run out of supplies and like a ship crashes because space is hard that like you could have some pretty epic promos being like, you know, Bob loves Sarah. But will Sarah's love for Bob Trump for need for food or will she kill Bob? Like is it going to become like cannibals on Mars? We're going to watch people just kill each other. So like, and when you need your funding for a mission like this, if we look at Apollo as the model, Apollo, so Apollo 11 landed in 69, right? The peak funding for Apollo was 66. So you need that funding like three or four years out to develop all of your rockets and your technology and stuff. So like what we're aiming for is like really awesome TV of classrooms to fund a mission to Mars. It's so flawed in so many ways but could also be super hilarious. I love about Mars one though. I mean, I like the concept of, you know, launching your stuff, launching your habitats, launching your resources, having rovers set everything up for the crews to arrive. That's kind of fun. But you know, it's an interesting thing, interesting comment on humanity. Just pointing out how many, and I don't remember the number, but how many people they got to sign up for this one way mission. Like people are willing to go to Mars and you know, essentially signing up to die. Yeah, well, you know, I wouldn't just... Oh, hold on. Grayson, close the door, please. Grayson, close the door. Sorry. My, uh... He can come in too. Quiet, really. Close, close. You can join the show. Oh, hey Grayson, you want to come say hi? He's an explorer. Grayson, come sit. Come sit. Oh, they can't see you right now, so you come up. This is my five world son. Hi. Hi. Hi, Grayson. An astronaut pajamas. That's awesome. He does all his shirts. Love it. Hi, it's cool. Cool, buddy. That's very cool. It's just very cool. Can you say hi? Hi. Okay, all right. Now, give us a little, give us a little privacy here, buddy. Okay, taken? High five. All right. Awesome. So, interlude. Mars one, I just wouldn't... There's a danger here, which is what you just described would be the most successful television show ever made. And everyone would want to watch that because actual stakes were on the line, just like the world turned into Apollo 13. Right. Now, imagine if NASA were making money off the number of viewers. Yeah. So, you know, getting there, yes, I don't disagree that it's, the first part is flawed. You'd have to do the only way to make it interesting is to zoom in on people's faces in the centrifuge, then they're getting crushed by 6Gs and going G lock and blacking out and maybe upset recovery and someone gets injured. I mean, there are shows that have done, like maybe SEAL training, you know, they skip over the classroom stuff and they go straight to the survival challenges and things. But there's not a whole lot of meat there and you know that, but everyone else doesn't know that. Jason, you mentioned like manufacturer, real drama. They could zero in on that. The question is whether or not they get enough to actually launch something. Right. And I, well, most people I know write off Mars one. And right when they came out, I actually sent a LinkedIn message to the owner and said, you know, what are you, what are you really doing here? I do radiation modeling in the spaceflight environment. Do you have anybody? Are you looking into it? I mean, I was kind of feeling them out a, from a, you know, purely self-serving standpoint as I love an excuse to work on Mars surface radiation modeling because there's a neutron problem from the top down and from the bottom up when, when they call them, for the audience for, they call them GCRs, but galactic cosmic rays, which is a total misnomer, they're actually interstellar particles. That's the way to think about it. Every supernova, it's ever happened and some galactic cores that are flinging particles out, little bits of stuff are flying near the speed of light all over the place at roughly the same rate from every direction and they're very damaging when they come crashing through your body and they break a bunch of molecules. That's radiation, in this case, ionized. And well, the worst possible case right now, we don't have to worry about I'm sitting here on the surface of the Earth because you got this thick atmosphere and a magnetic field that's slowing them down and then letting them crash into the sky and then we get a few gamma rays down here as a result. But on the Moon, there's nothing. So the GCR just hit you and then neutrons spray up from the surface. Well, on Mars, the atmosphere is there, but just weak enough so that you get a neutron spray from above and a neutron spray from below. And that's a challenge for Mars that's even greater than the Moon for those of us who are working on that sort of thing. But I contacted them, they didn't really have anybody. A buddy of mine also weighed in and I got a sense that they're good enough at generating interest because you see all the media attention they get episodically that they might actually get enough funding to launch something. And if they can kind of eke an existence along long enough to put a crew on the top of a Dragon V2 because Elon Musk is just waiting for an excuse to send Dragon to Mars. I think there is a chance slash risk slash danger if you want to call it that that they'll actually get people to Mars. And I don't doubt that at all. I don't. And I, you know, in that case, should we be dismissing them or should we be trying to help? And I think that's a conversation. I don't necessarily have an opinion yet but I think that's where we should be talking. Like I know a lot of stuff has changed but I don't know if, you know, a lot of their partners they signed up have changed. But, you know, the fact that they did initially have the right partners in place, you know, said a lot. So. So I'm with you that a lot of it's hokey but it has the virtue of not relying on other eccentric billionaires wanting to hitch a ride. At least they're crowdsourcing. So I'll give them that. Well, if they could get reality reality producers on board, you know, that would help fund some of it too. Yeah. They can turn anything into good TV. Get Mark Burnett, you know. You mentioned survivors. So that would that would be perfect, you know. Yeah. Well, I'd like there to be a better reason we get to Mars. But I honestly, I feel like I feel like the moon would answer a lot of questions about Mars. Not just how we survive on because the big pushback is well, the types of life support equipment you know on the moon are different than Mars. OK, point taken, but not so different that it invalidates all your logistics and everything that you were. And I honestly, I just go back to that, you know, spice gold tobacco thing that if we went to the moon, it might suddenly become obvious why we need to go to Mars. But we don't know that yet. So we need to we need to get our asses to Luna. That's the that's what we need to love it. Yeah. Guys, quick drink check. Yeah, I'm very close to done with this. How are you guys doing on your you? I noticed you've switched to beer, Ben. So you must be doing the whiskey. Yeah, I'm I'm pretty close. So we should probably call this close to wrap up. So I'm going to throw out one more question for you guys. Given the technology exists. To travel anywhere within our solar system. Where would your destination be? Hmm. And I think you can think of the technology as like, you know, Star Trek technology in that you can go and orbit any body you want or, you know, stop wherever you want. So you're not limited. You have infinite time to explore whatever you want. So one one place in our solar system. What would you choose? How about you to the guest first? I was going to let the guest go first. Yeah, I I go to Titan. Because it's the one place in the solar system that has a real hydrologic cycle. The way we have on the most earth like place in the solar system is Titan. It's just not using water. I mean, you know, people here listeners don't tend to think of water as a mineral. It is snow. It's a crystalline H2O mineral just like quartz is. So I like to joke that if we went to Titan where water is always as solid as quartz is here on earth, it's a part of that world's crust and mantle. We are lava monsters, right? I mean, we're composed of molten solid rock to them. Maybe if there were other people over there. So I would I would definitely and it has one atmospheric pressure on the surface just as a happy coincidence, much colder. But all you'd have to do is keep yourself warm. And then you could explore what real pre-biological chemistry looks like in a world that's evolving, much like our world is evolving here. There are lakes and there are seas. You've got canyons and channels. I mean, there's there's stuff happening, there's lightning and clouds. And there's so much for the the geologists in me to get excited about. I go to Titan. Awesome. What about you, Amy? I am with you on Titan. I don't know nearly as much about Titan as you do because I'm not a scientist. But yeah, no, I know there's enough going on there that like the fact that it has an environment similar to potentially similar to primordial earth and might be like the right place for life to be popping up and has all this kind of cool stuff going on geologically and like chemically. I want to go to there and also see Saturn on the horizon. But it's it's like I'm like I'm sort of torn. It's like the very close second is I would like to visit Triton, Neptune's moon, Triton to see how similar it really is to Pluto, given that we've discovered that Pluto is way more active and way more interesting than anybody thought it was. Is it I really am curious about the idea that these two bodies Pluto and Triton were actually like twin bodies that were both captured by Neptune in different ways, one orbiting as a moon and one orbiting in residence. Like that would be a really cool thing to figure out. But like Titans number one for sure. For sure. What about you, Jason? Well, you know, guys, as much as I would love to say Enceladus, I love Enceladus, really excited about Enceladus. If I were given one opportunity and one opportunity only, I'm going to say Titan. Titan, we're team Luna, team Titan. I mean, we're like, I think we're on the same page. She's awesome is what we are. Yeah, she's awesome. But yeah, the methane lakes and just just, I mean, visually, like it's kind of stunning. You know, I think Enceladus, yeah, it'd be really cool. And there's lots of stuff there that I'd love to explore. But I mean, it's this big icy body doesn't doesn't look that, you know, visually stunning, but Titan paired with Saturn. Yeah, no, it was definitely number one. I mean, Pluto became a lot more interesting, but Enceladus is, you know, top on my list for a mission for sure of some type, but Titan is where I'd want to go. Nice. I don't know, guys, we align so many ways. That's kind of creepy. Oh, good. It's good. Creepy awesome. It's good. Creepy awesome. Well, yeah, I am out of drinks, so I think that means we're out of show. That's my podcast. Yeah, sadly. So we should throw this to you first, Ben. Where can people find out more about you or follow your adventures? I guess I'm embarrassingly for me. I've got a I've got a website at benwmcgee.com. And you can I've got a blog that I have sort of abandoned recently, but I'm going to get back into because I'm not the least of which young kids, which tend to take up a lot of time. But yeah, you can get to my blog through there. And I show up on little TV specials as a flapping head every once in a while, talking about giant volcanoes exploding or things like that. And so yeah, if anybody listening has any questions about space or science, philosophy of science, we covered a lot of stuff today. Just fear there's a contact me a little button there and fire me an email and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Awesome. And thank you guys for having me. Are you kidding me? This is a kick in the pants. So hopefully I can. Well, we'll twist your arm, but you'll be back for sure. Yeah, we've got we've got other topics that we're sure we could just ramble about you with more over more beer. So yeah, count me in. It's fun. It's fun. And Jason, where can people find you? I am Twitter is the best place and I am at a centric a C E C E N T R I C. All right. And you can find me on Twitter at A S T vintage space. If you are watching the YouTube version of this, then you have found my personal channel. Hello. And if not, it's you can find me on YouTube, but either Amy, Shira title or vintage space, vintage space being the main space history channel that I run. All the nerdery all around. For sure. So much nerdery. So much. Thanks everybody for checking us out and hanging out with us for this episode. We do this every other week at this point. So thank you, Ben, for hanging out with us. Thank you for listening everyone and watching. And we'll do it again soon. Cheers. See you guys next time.