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October 20, 2025 55 mins

Ars Technica space journalist Eric Berger joins Chuck Todd to unpack the new global race to the moon — and why it’s about power as much as science. With China poised to beat the U.S. back to the lunar surface, NASA’s Artemis program faces both technological and geopolitical pressure. Berger and Todd explore how space has become the next great stage for competition, where the first shots of a future war could be fired — not on Earth, but in orbit. From SpaceX’s dominance and Elon Musk’s influence, to Blue Origin’s lagging efforts and Boeing’s uncertain role, the conversation digs into who will actually shape humanity’s future beyond Earth.

They also discuss the growing role of private companies in both space exploration and weather forecasting, how AI is reshaping meteorology, and whether we’ll ever see space-based energy or asteroid mining become viable. It’s a sweeping look at how politics, technology, and ambition are colliding — in a sky that’s getting more crowded by the day.

Timeline:

00:00 Eric Berger joins the Chuck ToddCast

01:00 China is on track to beat the U.S. back to the moon

02:30 NASA is still pursuing the Artemis program

03:45 Both the U.S. and China are targeting the moon’s south pole

06:00 If you want to be a superpower, needs a presence on the moon

06:30 SpaceX’s Starship is best equipped for Mars mission

07:15 Best methods of propulsion for long distance space missions

08:30 The biggest reason for lunar landing is geopolitics/flexing

09:15 Treaty says that no country can claim ownership of the moon

10:15 How would a private company stake a resource claim on the moon?

11:45 Has low earth orbit gotten too crowded with man made satellites?

12:45 In the next big war, the first shots will likely be fired into space

14:30 Cooperation in space has diminished, become more nationalistic

16:30 Most countries forced to rely on US, Russia and China for space launches

17:30 UAE is developing space capabilities with NASA’s help

18:15 NASA can’t get to space without private contractors/SpaceX

18:45 Elon Musk is the most important person to spacefight globally

20:15 Blue Origin is far behind SpaceX in capabilities for lunar lander

21:00 Will Boeing’s space program ever deliver?

22:00 Will the first space hotel be in orbit or on the moon?

23:00 There’s very little demand for orbital tourism, very expensive

24:30 Mars missions are incredibly different, will likely be one-way to start

26:00 There are no resources on Mars worth the cost of mining and shipping back

26:45 The only reason to go to Mars is to make humans a space-faring species

27:45 Robots are far superior to humans for scientific research missions

29:00 There’s more water on Europa than Earth, life could be there

30:30 Best places in solar system for humans to possibly create bases

32:15 Is Bezos’s idea of heavy manufacturing on the moon a pipe dream?

33:30 Mining asteroids could provide all the metals we’d ever need

34:15 SpaceX’s Falcon9 rocket made cost of accessing space far lower

35:30 Are energy production advances the best way to sell space costs to taxpayers?

37:15 Space based energy production is far from being commercially viable

38:30 The Europeans surpassed the U.S. at meteorology 

39:30 Can AI tools help fill the gaps after U.S. cut funding for NOAA?

40:15 AI hurricane modeling seems to be just as good as physics based models 

41:15 Private sector still relies on the government for weather forecasting

42:30 We need better data collection for our weather forecasting

44:45 Private companies are hiring their own meteorologists

47:30 Microforecasting has gotten much better due to the internet

48:38 What does Ars Technica cover and what is its mission?

50:45 Do we know more about the solar system or the oceans?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Well, joining me now to talk a little bit about
the space race and maybe a little bit of politics
behind our space policy is Eric Berger of Ours Technica.
He's been a space and weather and reporter for decades.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Houston Chronicle back in the day.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
He's got a degree in astronomy and a master's in journalism,
and he's a certified meteorologist, but he writes quite a
bit these days on the privatization of space policy.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
You name it. Eric, Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Thanks very much, Chuck. Great to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Hopefully I said enough of your resume there. Do you
feel like I covered it all? Anything I miss?

Speaker 3 (00:48):
I like space and I like to write about it.
So that's about all you need to know.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Excellent, Well, I do too, I just don't know as
much and I always want to know more. But what
triggered me wanting to book you was a report you
did in about mid August where it was we're essentially
China's on track to beat us back to the moon.

(01:12):
And it felt almost like the culmination of the pivot
that I think Elon Musk convinced Trump of, which is
move away from the Moon and move towards Mars Am.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
I oversimplifying it, I mean somewhat. Yeah, it's a pretty
complicated story. But the bottom line is that China has decided,
for geopolitical reasons, much like the United States did in
the nineteen sixties, that demonstrating a lunar landing would be
really important to bolstering their credibility as you know, a
superpower at least on par with the United States, if

(01:44):
not exceeding it. And so there has been set up
this so called space race between the United States and China,
and the US has played along our space leaders, our
political leaders have kind of played along into it, such
as now we're in this competition to put humans on
the moon and you know, buyer before the end of
this decade. And at this point China seems to be

(02:05):
pulled have pulled ahead in terms of the hardware and planning.
It has. Look.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
I was down at Kennedy's Space Center in Theory to
interview Bill Nelson. This is back when I was at
Meet the Press before the Artemist launch, and of course
we set up the interview and finish the interview, and
the Artemist launch gets postponed. But it is it did

(02:29):
seem to be more of a priority is it Is
it less of a priority now on the NASA side
of things when it comes to Artemis and comes to
getting back to the Moon.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
No, it's still the same. I mean, they're still pursuing
the Artomist program. We're gonna have the Artomist two launch
probably next February or March, with with actual humans going
around the Moon. The problem is that there's a huge
leap from the Artemist one and two missions to Artemist three,
which is actually the Lunar landing. And you know, Nelson,
who I liked and obviously you know, was qualified for

(03:04):
the position as NASA administer, they didn't ever really tell
the whole truth about the complexity of the Artomist program,
the challenges that NASA was having, and you don't really
hear that truth from the new appointee to lead NASA,
Sean Duffy. And the reality is that that that we
just are not developing our program quickly enough to match

(03:25):
what China's doing.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
They're always there's a there's a geographical location that they
want to get to, and so do we want to
get to? And so do we know where the Chinese
want to go on the Moon? And are we be
concerned that if they get there, essentially they're going to
claim it.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
Yeah, so China and both China United States are interested
in the soft Pole of the Moon. That's where it
believed that most of the water ice exists in these
permanently shadowed craters. It's not clear whether the first Chinese
human landings is going to take place at the soft Pole.
I suspect since it's easier to land in the equatorial
regions of the Moon, right, they won't go to the poles.

(04:07):
But eventually, yes, we would like to get to the poles.
And you know, the reality is that it's kind of
a sweet spot where you can get lots of daytime
sunshine to drive solar energy, but then also have relative
close access to these permanently shadowed regions. Basically go into
the crater and it's kind of behind these walls where
you never really get sun, so it's super cold and

(04:28):
it trapped moisture and ice over time. And that's not
a big area we're talking about, you know, you know,
dozens of kilometers across, so it's not so like you
could stake a claim to really the the coveted areas
of the Moon and it's not like a Texas sized area.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
What's the.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Is it Are there minerals on the Moon that we
want or do we want to base the moon or
is it both.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
It's really not entirely clear, right. So there's some companies
that will say there's helium three, which is valuable for
cooling and for superconducting cooling and potentially for energy. That's
not at all clear to me that the business case
closes for that. There's water ice at the Moon, and
if you could harvest that and process it, you could

(05:17):
turn that into rocket fuel. It's got liquid hydrogen and oxygen,
which is useful, but again it's not clear economically whether
that's the base case. Other potential applications are space tourism,
like if you could actually build some kind of a
hotel or resort on the Moon. I think that that

(05:38):
would be pretty popular. There are military applications the Moon,
and certainly cyslinar space is a very convenient high ground
looking back at Earth. And so there's all these potential applications.
It's not clear to me whether there's any killer one,
but you know, it is the next step for humans

(05:58):
as a species going out there, and so if you
want to say that you are the predominant space faring
species on planet Earth or nation. You need to really
have a presence, a strong presence of the Moon over
the next decade or two.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Is there a it is is basing? I mean do
in order to get to Mars more conveniently, would it
make more sense to launch from the Moon?

Speaker 2 (06:24):
No?

Speaker 3 (06:24):
Not really. The starship vehicle that SpaceX is building Elon
Musk is building is really the only credible Mars vehicle
on the horizon. And their plan is to refuel and
lower th orbit and not go to the Moon at all.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
So they think they can do it that way.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
It's not you know, look, I for all mankind was
it was a junkie on that and that one of
my you know what, when they get to Mars they
use a essentially a solar I don't know if you
what I call it. I guess almost like a sale, right,
a solar sale. And I was fast with it. Then

(07:00):
they were always really good about what's the science behind this?
Is this possible? And that that it came across it,
that it's more possible than maybe it appeared? Is what
are the different ways to feel?

Speaker 2 (07:15):
It? Is? Solar power a realistic way to do it.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
For propulsion, not really, but potentially nuclear electric propulsion is possible.
The problem with solar electric propulsion is that it's very
fuel efficient. It SIPs fuel, but it takes a long time.
So if you're sending cargo to Mars, that's a great solution.
But if you're a human and you want to get
there in you know, four to six months and not

(07:40):
four to six years, and you've really got to go
chemical propulsion or nuclear electric propulsion or something like that.
And there are certainly architectures where you can go to
the Moon and sort of build basically as spacecraft in
lunar orbit for fuel it there, and then go from
the Moon to Mars. But you know, those are all
theoretical right now. And so, as I said, the only

(08:02):
company really building hardware that could go to Mars is
the Starship Vehicle and that has that has plenty of flaws,
but they're actually building things, which is refresht.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
So in sort of in our first ten minutes of
this conversation, is there is there a real reason to
be on the Moon other than flexing.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
I think in the near term, flexing is the reason
to be there. Okay, that It goes back to like
it was in the sixties with the first space races.
It's all about geopolitics, right it was we were trying
to demonstrate the world that we were superior, and the
lunar landing was a very dramatic way to do that.
So it's kind of back to that. And there are
potential reasons for lunar activity, but we're not really going

(08:49):
to know until we go there, put boots on the
ground and do stuff with robots and humans and really
figure things out.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Is there a space treaty that has any sort of
jurisdiction over how countries have and I guess did China
sign on to it? I mean, what is there anything
that governs the Moon at this point between countries?

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Yeah, so there's the Outer Space Treaty signed in nineteen
sixty seven by all the major players, including the United
States and China, which basically says no country can own
the Moon. It's kind of analogous to Antarctica here on Earth.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
But we're questioning that right now, aren't we? A little?

Speaker 3 (09:31):
Well? I mean, who knows right what this what this
administration is going to do, But there is nominally no
one who's planning to like stake ownership of on the Moon. Now,
the United States did several years ago basically create legislation
allowing it. So if you're a private company and you
want to go harvest or resource on the Moon, you

(09:53):
can do that. But you can't like say, we own
these six hundred acres and you know we're going to builders.
It's that all is a little bit fuzzy. But yeah,
there is a treaty and it is nominally respected by
all of the players.

Speaker 1 (10:08):
So Waite, I want to go back to what you
just said that if a private space company finds a
mineral that they want to harvest, how how do they
stake the claim on it?

Speaker 3 (10:18):
They go there, they build their factory, and they start
harvesting the resources. They just can't say that this is
you know, this land is owned in perpetuity by you know,
the solar harvesting company you know, or whatever.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
But who are they getting their license?

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Who are they getting their permission to do this in
this casement? Yeah, and and this is acceptable within the
terms of the treaty.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
I mean, if China was going to go to the
Moon and harvest ice from the poles, like we would
not or could not stop them, like the treaty allows
that it's a little bit fuzzy. I mean this is
bear in mind, this was written six decades ago, right right.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Is there any movement to revisit it or does nobody
want to touch it?

Speaker 3 (11:04):
There is movement to revisit it, but there are more
pressing matters in sort of global space diplomacy that kind
of the top. One of them is debris and lowerth orbit.
You know space ax Elon Musk has eight thousand, seven
thousand satellites and lowerth orbit flying around. China's starting to
launch a lot more satellites. Jeff Bezos is now launching,
has launched more than one hundred satellites this year, and

(11:26):
in want group, so like, there's all these objects flying around,
so we want to make sure we're communicating. I think
that's the top priority right now in terms of space.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
And that I mean, how how crowded is it up there?
And is there a point where it's getting too crowded?

Speaker 3 (11:43):
It really depends on who you ask, Chuck, because some
space environments will say it's already two crowded, and.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Space environmentalists that's an interesting phrase.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
They exist, okay, and they do look at things like
global debris and worry about sort of runaway collisions called
the Kessler syndrome. But what you see when you look
at the data is that the number of collision avoidance
maneuvers over time has gone up quite a bit. And

(12:13):
the real concern is that as the United States and
China get more and more satellites up there, are they
talking to one another and Russia has assets up there too,
are the governments talking to one another and making sure
that everyone has the best data about these objects to
avoid collisions. So space is very big, and it can
accommodate a lot of satellites, but you need increasingly sophisticated

(12:34):
traffic management up there.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Well there's traffic management, but there's also I mean, I did.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
A magazine story sort of a TV magazine show that
we had at meet the press on the next war,
and it was the next war starts in space.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Was the conclusion that that's.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
The most likely first shots would be fired at satellites
in space, not necessarily shots fired here on Earth. So
it is it's one of the rationales for the Space Force.
It was my understanding. But what is the vulnerability up there?
And how concerned should we be about it.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
First of all, I think that premise is exactly right.
We have seen certainly the war in Ukraine has opened
the eyes of all the major governments, including the United
States and China, about the value of space assets. And
in fact, Chinese government saw the value of starlink, like
how well that worked and how useful it was, and

(13:36):
like they immediately sort of redoubled their plans to build
a similar type of constellation. And we've seen it through
commercial synthetic capture radar and other things. So that's exactly right.
These space assets that are increased, you know, very vulnerable,
and over the last twelve months we've seen active maneuvering
by Russian and Chinese satellites to fly up two US

(13:57):
vehicles and like make close.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Just almost like the way you would like take a
fighter jet and say hiyah, yeah, like you know, we're here.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
Two submarines passing like you know in the deep. It's
exact same kind of thing. Although maneuvering in space in
terms of the energy required is much much more difficult
to change orbits, but we've seen those kinds of maneuvers
in the United States has talked a lot more about
offensive capabilities in space up until a few years ago,
it was much more about protecting our assets through defensive

(14:28):
mechanisms and proliferation. So for them now it's more like
they're talking about putting offensive capabilities in space. So we
are clearly moving to a much more contested environment in space.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
It seemed like fifteen years ago we were we were
it was more likely that we were going to behave
jointly with other nations. You know, the relationship with the
Russians had was pretty mature. When it came to our
space partnership, we certainly had the EU partnership. Yet all

(14:58):
these nations sort of all kind of working together on
this is this just sort of China breaking off and
then everybody becoming nationalistic again. I mean we were we
not on that path for a while.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
Yeah, things were, things were kind of Yeah, if that's
a very astute observation, I think.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
Star Trek e almost right like we were on our
way to being you know, the vision of what Star
Trek is the show. I mean, all the nations work together,
you know, I don't know if.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
We're on a way to Star Trek that that would
be sort of a really a glass half full view
of areas. But but you are you are a stute
that that certainly we were in a much more peaceful posture.
A couple of things have changed. First of all, the
US Russian relationship has deteriorated a lot over the last
ten or fifteen years for obvious reasons. And then and
then the rise of China as a real space power

(15:47):
has changed things dramatically. They they are doing things on
both the civil and military side. They are very impressive
and have lots of capabilities, and that has really changed
the game. So you've got three main powers. But then
you've also got you know, India shooting down satellites of
demonstrating anti satellite capability. Japan has an increasingly sophisticated space program.

(16:09):
Turkey is starting to get going. Got the European Space Agency,
which is sort of the European If you want to
look for a Star Trek like player in space, it's
the European Space Agency. They're trying to do good things
and have a holistic approach, but it's it's it's new
players coming in and demonstrating serious capabilities that have up

(16:30):
the temperature.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Who can get up there on their own? Though? Is
it just the three countries or in terms of humans.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, so Russia still has its Soyu's system, which is
now fifty five sixty years old. Okay, China has a
capability that's two decades old, and the United States can
get up there because of SpaceX and Dragon. But that's
you know, Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Everybody else has to sort of lease, right, has to
sort of buy a seat or contract with. Maybe it's SpaceX,
maybe it's with the Right, like the European Space Agency
has to go up with somebody else.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
Right, Absolutely, and they're at least a decade away from
having a human capability.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
Who I was just going to say, are there other
countries trying to develop their own abilities to get up there?

Speaker 2 (17:13):
I assume India is. India is.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
They've had a program called gagan Yon, and they've been
making some progress. But initially I think they wanted to
get up there by twenty twenty two, and it became
twenty twenty four. Now I think it's probably closer to
twenty twenty eight, So they've had some teething pains that
they've developed this capability.

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Speaker 3 (18:40):
The UAE is seeking UA and other countries in the
Middle East but certainly uae IS is most prominent among them.
They're spending a lot of money to develop capabilities, and
right now they're in the phase where they're partnering with NASA.
They're partnering with US companies and research institution.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Should almost like having a private equity firm help out financially.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
I mean, to be totally cynical.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
I think so. But I think they do have a
long term vision of building some kind of spaceport capability
in the UA itself, but it's really hard to spin
that up from the ground. So they're in the partnership
phase at this point.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Can America get up into space without private contractors right now?

Speaker 3 (19:22):
Nope? And and you know they NASA warded two contracts
a decade ago to Boeing in SpaceX and Boeing so
hasn't demonstrated a reliable capability. So like it's it's all
space X for at least the next few years to
the United States and probably beyond that.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
I mean, this is what you know. Not to delve
too much into politics. I'm not asking you to be
a political pundit, but Elon Musk has a lot of
I mean he he individually holds a lot of keys
to the access to low orbit satellite systems and getting
up there, doesn't he he's.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
The most important person in spaceflight globally, and it's not
even close. And it's not just like our getting our
assauts to and from the space station, like he has
the contract to safely bring the space station back down
to Earth. He, as you say, you know, controls the
Starlink network, which is increasingly valuable to our allies and
to our national defense in addition to all of its

(20:18):
commercial applications. And then of course SpaceX launches now the
most military satellites for the Department of Defense.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Has he shifted policy goals yet or not? Because it
did seem as if that that was the assumption of
why he wanted to be so involved with the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
See, I don't think he would have got involved with
the Trump administration because of space politics. He had other
priorities such as they were, and he but he's always
been interested in Mars and always been pushing every administration
to focus on Mars. So I don't think that was different.
He found a willing audience for a few months in
Donald Trump, but they've sort of backed off that and

(20:59):
it's really the politics actually of the Artomist program are
interesting because SpaceX has the contract to land, actually land
humans on the Moon, take them from lunar orbit down
to the surface and back up and starship. But at
the same time, like that lunar lander program is not
a priority at all from Musk, so like they are
not putting a tremendous amount of resources into it.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Then they issue to contract in Blue Origin get one too.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
They did, and this is where it gets even more interesting.
Blue Origin, of course owned by Jeff Bezos, now their lander.
They're behind SpaceX in terms of development, so like their
initial their capability right now will not be ready in
the twenty twenties. But I just reported last week that
there is a plan inside Blue Origin to use their

(21:47):
their existing lunar lander, which is going to watch for
the first time early next year, and to try to
put humans on that, which could potentially allow NASA to
get to the Moon this decade on a Blue Origin vehicle.
And so so we have to see if the NASA
administration takes that up.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Seriously, let me just sort of put a I want
to go back to the Boeing situation, because this is
I mean it is.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
I mean, this feels like a company that isn't getting
anything right, whether it's deliveries of airplanes or these space contracts.
Given the shakeup that happened there, I mean, do we
expect Boeing to ever deliver on this.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
Not in a meaningful way. I think you might get
a few human missions on Boeing Starliner spacecraft of the
National Space Station, But after twenty thirty, the future, at
least in the Western world, is going to be private
space stations in lower thorbit. And I just don't expect
Boeing to be able to compete on price with Dragon,
you know, because NASA is not going to be paying

(22:47):
for a lot of those missions. It's going to be
you know, if you know Chuck Todd wants to take
a two week visit to a private space station, he's
footing the bill, And so are you going to pay
an extra fifty million to fly in a Boeing vehicle
which is not as is dragging because it's not flying
as often?

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Right, I know, I feel like I'm hodgepodging here, But
you've brought up space sort of tourism a couple of times.
Is the first sort of hotel going to be floating
or going to be on the moon.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
You know, that's a great question because we've finally been
the last five years with with Virgin Galactic and Blue
Origin seen real actual space tourism. So you, as a
private statist, you can go buy a ticket and actually
have some expectation of going to space pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
It's a lot of bitcoin, but yeah, it's a lot.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
Of bitcoin, but it's you can actually do it now
like you couldn't really do it before. And but on
the on the other hand, like there has it's been
pretty high demand for this star War world space tourism
where basically you go up and come down and like,
you know, a few minutes.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
Kind of what what Bezos has been doing with the celebrities.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yeah, yeah, and those are I mean, what a what
a fantastic ride that would be.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
He kind of partially finances those lunch.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Finances all of it. Yeah, I mean yeah, with other
people buying a seat, right, Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
So but what we have not seen is great demand
for orbital missions. So like you can also book a dragon.
Now it's not going to be a million dollar ticket,
it's going to be at least probably sixty million dollars
to go to orbit for a few days, and you
have to train a lot more and it's more dangerous
and more rigorous. There hasn't been a lot of demand

(24:27):
for that, and I think the story is really to
be told on whether these private space stations, when there's
several companies in the United States working toward that building
successors to the International Space Station, don't I have not
seen enough for an economic site to show there's a
huge demand for that outside of like government astronauts, so
like UAE would pay for some of its people to

(24:48):
go there, or Turkey or Brazil, but whether private citizens
are paying money to go to these as hotels, I'm
not so sure. I do think there is potential for
a lunar space touris yeah, just I think that's more appealing,
Like you can go you can be in a gravity,
well you can go outside, and I think there's more
of a market there. But that's also you know, much

(25:09):
more difficult to bring into fruition.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
It is this twenty forty, twenty eighty.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
So for I think, you know, we'll have pretty good
lunar activity in twenty thirties by governments, and so I
could see private I could see some kind of private
station or accommodation at the hotel by twenty forty. It's
not out of the realm.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
So within you know, within our lifetimes, we're likely to
It's that it's within the realm of possibility.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
Yeah, absolutely, it's.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Not as zero. Now what about Mars.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
Oh, Mars, So Mars, I'm not sure. What I love
for your listeners to appreciate is that it's really, really,
really hard to go to Mars, a lot lot harder
than the Moon.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
So but I thought Arnold Schwarzenegger was already there, you know.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
And as hard as it is to get to Mars safely,
it's even harder to come back. So like SpaceX has
the starship vehicle, but but refueling that on Mars is
extremely difficult. So I think the first missions we see
to Mars are going to be one way missions. And
you know, it's very difficult for me to see a
human on Mars before twenty forty, but after twenty forty,

(26:25):
it's certainly possible. I mean, we are, for the first
time in history, we're actually building a transportation system that
can get people there. It's all been theoretical up until
this point.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
What do we I mean, look, I know why you
do these things. You don't know what you're going to find,
but you know you're better off exploring than not. Right,
It's sort of the same explorer mentality that the Europeans
had in the fourteen hundreds and the fifteen hundred. But
what have we learned so far from our these robotic missions?
And is there is there is there even more reason

(26:58):
to get there sooner? Is there is this going to
be a a There's going to be richer minerals, richer
resources there than we realize.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
You're talking about Mars. Yes, no, there are, there are,
there are At this point, there are no known resources
on Mars that you could send back to Earth that
would have any kind of value, certainly have the value
that would justify the extraordinary cost and energy of shipping
them back.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
So it feels like we may be spending a lot
of money to build an outpost in a desert like
environment that really is not that appealing to live in,
unless there's no place else to live in the universe.

Speaker 3 (27:36):
So any location on Earth is far superior to Mars
on its best day. Yeah, there's no question about that.
And and in reality, the United States government has not
been spending a lot of money on Mars. In terms
of humans to Mars. We really haven't.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
You're making the case never to send a human to Mars.

Speaker 3 (27:53):
So there is Chuck. There is only one reason really
for humans to go to Mars, and it's this, like
it do you want humanity to be a space varing species?

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Like?

Speaker 3 (28:05):
Do you want us to live elsewhere in the Source System?
And Mars is not great, but it is better than
almost anywhere else in the Solar System other than the
planet Earth. And so if we're going to take our
first step toward living on other planets, it's probably got
to be on Mars. And then you know, then eventually,
when we develop technology to go to other stars and

(28:25):
find more habitable world, we'll have all of these lessons learned.
But if you want humanity to live beyond Earth, and
some people think that's crazy, and I understand that, but
I happen to believe in the starchbreak vision you gotlined earlier.
I mean, I think humans should go off and live
elsewhere in the universe. And that's really the first step.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
No, I'm all for we got to find you know,
I think we you know, that's what it's all about
right is I think frankly it's part of the whole
search for meaning.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Right, Why are we here? Is there something else? Right?

Speaker 1 (28:56):
There's a lot of reasons why you want to keep exploring,
But it seems to me that that we'd be better
off doing all of this for robotics. I mean, we've
made such advancements on.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
This that that that we shouldn't be risking human It
doesn't seem as if we need to risk human lives yet.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
If your goal is to do scientific exploration of the
Solar system, robots are superior in almost every case, certainly
for the cost of the of the mission. So yes,
I would agree that if if we just want to
make discoveries about this fascinating solar system we live in,
and it is truly fascinating, said robots.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
If you could pick more places to go to see
if there are better habitable places in our solar system?
Is it moons of Jupiter and Saturn that are worth searching?

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Where?

Speaker 1 (29:47):
Where where is it that that that the that those
that have that have some hypotheses about the rest of
the Solar system and what and what we've learned so
far from from all the all the the long term
satellites we've been sending up there, and the and the
incredible the Web, the web telescope and all of that.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
Where else would it be Europa? Is that that's the
name of one of the moons.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
Europa's hell Man. Europa is bathed constantly in this deadly
radiation from the planet Jupiter. Like Europa is the last
place you would want to go.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Why is there always this fantasy about Europa?

Speaker 3 (30:23):
Because there's this there's this huge ocean. There's more water
on Europa than there is on the planet Earth. Beneath
the ice shell, there's internal heating and so if you
look at the black smokers on Earth where life is
thought to have originated there, it's it's it's entirely conceivable.
There's life in that ocean on Europa.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
And that's why there's this fascination of getting there.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
It's like, let's just let's get some eyes on it,
let's see, and we absolutely.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
Should because it's a fascinating, fascinating place. Now, if you
were asking me, and I think you were to sort
of rank places in the source and.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Live, where do you go next?

Speaker 1 (30:56):
And you know, after Mars, obviously, because it's closest, but
the Moon is the Moon is closest, sure.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
Right, and so that's it's that's a good place to
go as well, because you can get back within three
days that there's some kind of emergency, and you could
probably there are probably caves on the Moon or you
could dig tunnels on the Moon and live there, and
there's plenty of solar energy. H Mars is probably the
best planetary body surface. It's got a very thin atmosphere,

(31:22):
but it does have resources water, carbon dioxide, other sort
of things that you kind of needs as humans. Other
potentially interesting places are like the clouds of Venus because
there's a certain elevation at Venus where the atmosphere is
not breathable, but it is one standard atmosphere, so you

(31:42):
could walk around.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
What does that mean? I've heard this the clouds of Venus?
I mean is this a is is it putting a
space station in Venus's orbits or is it actual?

Speaker 2 (31:52):
Like explain that big Zeppelins.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
Maybe yeah, you know, you could you could sell as
a science fiction person. You could kind of go wi.
But you know, there is a there is an elevation
in Venus's atmosphere where there's the basically the pressure air
pressure is similar to this here on Earth. Like on
the surface that absolutely hell right, super hot and you
would be crushed instantly. But at a certain altitude of

(32:15):
Venus you could get Earth like pressure and temperatures wouldn't
be crazy either, So that's interesting. But like there's nothing hard,
there's no firm surface right to build upon. You'd have
to float. And then you could look at a moon
maybe like Ganymede around Jupiter, which might have some potential.
But but you know, when Jeff Bezos says Earth is

(32:37):
the best planet, he's right. I mean, Earth is far
far more suited to humans in any other place in
our known solar system. But you know, fortunately the last
ten or fifteen years, we started to find exoplanets around
other stars and we see that that there's there's billions
and billions of planets in our galaxy and some of
them are going to be very earth like, and some
of them, I don't know if it's like a tiny

(32:59):
tiny fraction, but there will be some that could easily
support in life.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Right, Look, you know.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
And what one of these civilizations may be developing faster
than us or vice versa. So we could find out
on that. But let's go back to developing the Moon.
And that is because I remember Bezos saying something once
that I thought was made a lot of sense that
he thought our heaviest industrial manufacturing should be outsourced to

(33:26):
the Moon. That it was actually, you know, could be
the best if you if you care about climate change
in this on this planet and trying to mitigate the
warming of the planet some that that would be a
big idea that could have a big impact.

Speaker 3 (33:45):
Pipe dream, not a pipe dream, but it's difficult, but
we could get a lot of resources from space that
we basically we could get energy from space, right, whether
that's a huge farm of solar panels the Moon or
space based solar power, which has its challenges, but you
could certainly being lots of energy back to Earth. You know.

(34:08):
The big thing now is data centers, right, which are
consuming an enormous amount of power and water are environmentally
very you know, very not good for the planet. You
could put data centers in space where you get twenty
four on solar power, you don't need to use water
resources and so that there are some challenges for cooling

(34:28):
those in space, but I think they could be overcome
with radiators. You know, you think about all of the
strip mining we do the planet for valuable metals, not
so much on the Moon, but an asteroid. There are
metal rich asteroids, some of which are in near Earth
orbits that that theoretically we could get mine and bring
all the platinum back and other metals that we could

(34:49):
ever want for our needs here and manufacturing, like it's
just for a lot of applications. Manufacturing and microgravity is
a lot differ, of course than manufacturing on Earth, but
it's in some ways it's much better. Or you could
put manufacturing on the Moon. So you know, best basis
is vision is that you know, we create a garden

(35:10):
here on Earth and offshore or all of our you know,
and and in theory that's all possible, but it's it's
it's extremely challenging to do it. But we're taking we're
taking baby steps to it. I mean, the first step
this is like.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
One hundred year plan like this at best, right.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yeah, But the first step was like lowering the cost
of access to space. And we've seen that like SpaceX
with its Falcon nine rocket is a miracle. It launches
more in a year by a lot. Then you know,
a few years ago, every country in the world, every
company the world. You edit it all up and it
was like half of what the Falcon nine does now
every year on its And so like lowering the cost

(35:48):
of access to space, your reusability is a is an
essential first step, and we're taking.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
It so obviously I let my brain to go to
politics too often. But you know, one of the difficulties
I think, I think one of the reasons I feel

(36:13):
like we sort of stopped space exploration for about twenty
years because of politics, meaning we didn't stop it, but
we weren't as aggressive, like the end of the Cold
War came and we didn't feel the pressure and urgency
to flex.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
So for whatever reason, you know, that seemed to be
the main reason.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
And then of course politically, why are you spending money
on there and not on healthcare?

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Right, and not on childcare?

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Is there a plausible way to sell spending on space
by saying, look, we're going to be able to bring
the cost of power down on this planet and it's
going to be a game changer, I.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Ask it it is.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
It is among the plot points of for all mankind
that you know, the discovery of this incredive helium three
transforms you know, energy consumption on Earth and just totally
transforms the economies of both the Soviets and the United
States in this science obviously this alternative history mindset. But
is that what the assumption is about the Moon that

(37:15):
this could be you know, the best asset besides offshoring
stuff and space tourism, is it could provide a cheaper,
cleaner power source to power Earth essentially.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
Yeah, So, like you're absolutely right. After the Apollo program,
Nixon and then Carter and Ford basically said NASA was
spending way too much money as five percent of the
fiddle budget when.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
You do a massive inflation, right, it was a terrible
economy at the time, right.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
And so like for all these reasons, they said, here's
the budget, you have fit a nice space program into that.
We got the Space Shuttle. It was like thirty years
of that. The big change. What's driving this and it
makes some people uncomfortable, and I understand that is that
a lot of the activity that's happening now is not
being led by NASA or Dart Bow or departments. It's
private companies that are going out there trying to figure

(38:03):
out way to make a buck. In space. They're trying
to follow the space X and and you know, you've
got the billionaire billionaire oligarchs Bezos Musk who are kind
of driving the bus on that. But there's lots of
other companies too, it's not just them.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
And.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
So government programs would help. But but what's really going
to drive us forward in that future, I think is
if private companies figure out a way to deliver that power.
And government contracts certainly would help speed that alone. But
we've got to show it can be commercially viable to
do these things.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
And we don't really have it, does I see what
you're saying. But what you're saying right now, there's not
a It's not as if that's the true mission for NASA, right,
I mean, you could have Congress say your mission is
to figure out what resource on the Moon.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
Is going to help mankind? Yes, what would we do differently?

Speaker 3 (38:57):
The Department Defence mission is to to space dominance. Rights's
mission is to explore, and there's no agency really that's
doing commercial development of space. Things that would help would
be like a directive from the US government that we
want ten percent of our power to come from outer

(39:19):
space by twenty fifty or something like that that would
really drive this kind of activity. But you're right, at
this point there is no overarching federal push to move
all of these activities into space for the benefit of Earth.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
Let me use your meteorological expertise, but more on the
commercial side. Who's got the best info on weather these days?
Is it the private sector? Is it still the government?

Speaker 3 (39:50):
It's the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasting ECMWF.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
How did they become the dominant player?

Speaker 3 (39:57):
Well, they invested in it. They invested both and putting
supercomputing power toward it, but also in the ability to
very quickly take real time data from around the planet
and put it in their their global models. And now
they're modeling is just far superior to what's being done
in the United States.

Speaker 2 (40:12):
And why did we fall behind on this? Just lack
of investment, lack of interest.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
Lack of investment. You know this was this happened. It
wasn't a Republican or Democrat thing. It happened kind of
over a decade or more. And obviously the recent cuts
to NOAH, which which aren't so much affecting day to
day forecasting as much as it is sort of draining
the future of basically forecast improvement. So it's not it

(40:40):
doesn't look like it's going to get better.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
In Tenson, does AI at all provide sort of a
finger in the dike aspect to things like, Okay, we're
not investing, but boy the boy, the acceleration of of
AI tools in the weather forecasting space might Does that
close the gap at all?

Speaker 3 (40:59):
So that's a great question. And one of the really
powerful applications of AI that I've seen has been in modeling.
You know, to run a traditional physics based model, where
basically you're trying to emulate all the activity of the
physical processes around the world, and you need these vast
supercomputers and take some hours to run through these complicated

(41:21):
models to produce point by point forecasts. AI models don't
use physics like that. They basically learn from past forecast
conditions and to see what happened. And and those models,
some of which can be run on a desktop computer,
are shockingly good. Had hurricane forecasting already it that's to

(41:42):
be determined, but the early returns are that they are
almost as good as or as good as the best
physics based models in hurricane forecasting and other kinds of
forecasting as well. It's really early innings, right, It's not
like these are not mature products like the physics based
models we've been working on for decades. These are months
and years. So I do think AI has as a

(42:03):
really opportunity to change the game. It remains to be
seen to be me like by how much, but absolutely
it's an important component of forecasting going forward.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
How good is the private sector in weather forecasting, meaning
are they throwing real money at it? Is it it's
similar to what we've seen with SpaceX and Elon or
is it not quite that mature of an industry if
you will.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
The difference is that SpaceX could be its own space
agency and in a lot of ways would be superior
to NASS in the things it does. It does not
need NASA anymore for a lot of lots of things.
That's not true in the weather enterprise. Forecasters private companies
still rely on the federal government to collect data, to

(42:51):
store data, to run these large models, to run regional models.
So there's this whole foundation that the governments in Europe,
the United States, Japan, China have built, and the private
apparatus is kind of built upon that. If you were
to remove that foundation, the private companies would suffer significantly.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
So the private companies don't like these cuts, to know.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
No, I don't think they do. Now you could see
like someone from ACI Weather being made the no administrator
who was like trying to hollow out some of the
public facing products the National Weather Service does. They can
come in and sell those, but the basic work that
the federal government does, Yes, that's not good for anyone.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
If you could waive a magic wand and eliminate politics
out of this. What investments do you think we need
to be making in weather data collection that we're not
doing right now or that we're too slow in doing so.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
The things that we need to do are improving our
ability to collect real time data around the planet, but
especially in the oceans and atmosphere near the United States.
And then we need to get much better systems to
assimilate that data. But that I mean is just you
take that data and get it into the computer models

(44:09):
as quickly as possible, so you're starting with the best
set of initial conditions you have. And one way where
we're like we could really improve that is if you
think about all the airplanes that are taking off today
from airports around the world.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
It should be weather balloons.

Speaker 3 (44:23):
A lot of them are A lot of them are
They have like a sensor on them that collect that
data as it goes up and now you get a
very nice profile of the atmosphere up to about thirty
five thousand feet. The problem is a lot of that
data is proprietary, or it's not shared quickly enough like
I would. I would try to make that much more
efficient and those kinds of things that we have the
best possible information about our planet now, so that the

(44:46):
five day forecast is improved.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
I have to say, why is that proprietary data?

Speaker 3 (44:52):
Well, I mean, if you're a company that has paid,
you know, a million dollars to get your sensors or
one hundred million dollars to get your sensors on United
air Lines planes, then you probably want to sell that
to the government at a high price, and the government
maybe willing to pay for some of it but not
all of it, or you know, it's just that kind
of thing.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
The airplane can't get in the air without the government.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
I mean, I don't mean to sound like you know,
but it seems as if the government shouldn't have to
have to pay for data collection that is sort of
piggingbacking off of essentially government.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Getting that airplane into the air well.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
I'm happy to talk space policy all day, but do
you get pretty quickly into politics those kind of regulations.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
Oh, I hear you.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
But it's like that does seem it seems odd that
the government would then have to pay for something that. Yeah,
that it that, frankly is a This feels like a
good that benefits everybody. Yeah, that it's not necessarily you know,
I mean I get the look, I get the private
sector motivation and that specific thing, but everybody would benefit

(45:54):
from that data.

Speaker 3 (45:54):
The airlines are certainly benefit from where I could forecast.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
Right, which me to something that you know, did you
think thirty years ago that being a meteorologist, Because it
seems as if private companies all over the world want
to hire their own meteorologists. Now different, you know, sports
leagues now do it. And I say this with a
little bit of personal ambition here. My daughter is a

(46:20):
senior majoring in oceanography and minoring and meteorology and learning
marine biology. And you know, there was a time twenty
years ago, I don't there was really only the government
as a as a place to go. This does seem
as if that the job market for people with this
type of expertise has never been better.

Speaker 3 (46:42):
It is a great time to be a meteorologist, you know,
with skills Like I'll just give you a very basic
example the kind of information the government does provide, but
where the private company can step been. So let's say
your Target corporation and you've got shopping carts in the
parking lot, and say if the wind speeds get above
twenty three miles per hour, then those cards start blowing

(47:06):
around and you get lost, they could blow into cars,
they become a hazard issues, right, Yeah, So us target
would love to know when it's forecast the winds or
forces to give about twenty three miles per hour at
every store you operate, and then you can communicate that
to bring in the cars or carts or do whatever.

(47:28):
And so ten years ago, its fifteen years ago. That's
kind of where the private weather industry was like like
sort of helping those kinds of use cases. And it's
just grown, especially as with climate change, weather becomes more
uncertain and it's becomes more impactful. So's it's just you know,
it's every business has their own specific you know, information

(47:49):
they need about weather, and so it makes sense that
this is happening, especially since the government provides it's a
generalized product. You know, they provide the warnings for hurricanes
and tornadoes, things like that, they don't provide specific forecast
to target.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
Look the I think one of the more remarkable developments
over the last fifteen years has been micro forecasting. You know,
I sit here and I think, frankly, it's a it's
it's something every local I'm trying desperately to come up,
you know, work in this space of how do we
expand more local news again, how do we revitalize it?
And micro forecasting is something everybody wants. I mean, I

(48:26):
live in the the Washington metro area. I don't want
Washington DC weather. I want Arlington County weather, right, And
I'm you know, for the most part, you can get
that in Capital Weather Gang, which is one of the
few local products that the Post does that is really
really good and almost like reason alone when you live
in this community to be a subscriber this, this micro

(48:49):
forecasting just wasn't possible. It seemed like fifteen years ago
that this part of weather forecasting has really improved.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
No, So Capitol Weather Gang folks are good friends of mine,
and I operate a site in hue And called Spacicity.
Whether that's similar in scope to that, So I'm very
well familiar with what you're talking about. I think the
big change, Chuck, is the Internet. Like I worked at
a newspaper before, and forecasting was Your forecast was twelve

(49:15):
to eighteen hours late.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
By the time it automated it to print, right.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
So the Internet was a great equalizer because you could
put as much information out there. You could share all
kinds of graphics and things like that, and so it
became a better medium than television for communicating that kind
of information. So, yes, the forecasting tools have improved, but
also the means of communication the medium.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Well, let me add so the data itself was probably
there fifteen years ago. We just didn't have a good
way of sharing it.

Speaker 3 (49:41):
The data has certainly improved in terms of amount and
accessibility online, but the ability to share it has also
been a big piece of what's changed.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
Before I let you go tell me about arts technica
and tell me the mission and sort of I'm curious
you've thought of the transition from the you know, Houston
Chronicle to this.

Speaker 3 (50:06):
Yeah, So our Technical is a digital publication. It's been
around for about twenty five years, bought by Conde Nasts
about a decade ago or a little bit longer. And
it's just a news, technology, science, space news website where
we try to, you know, provide rational information in increasingly
irrational world.

Speaker 2 (50:26):
I hear there the transition.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Do do you feel as if you're in the independent
space or how do you describe it?

Speaker 2 (50:33):
I'll tell you what.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
I wrote a lot about NASA when I was at
the Houston Chronicle cover Johnson Space Center. I did feel
like I was more restrained writing for the traditional publication,
Like there were times I wanted to take the gloves
off a little bit and be a little more critical.
And so moving online has been more freeing in that
sense of being able to write more of what I
want to write and what I think is most important

(50:56):
to cover.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
What is your balance in writing for experts versus writing
for lay people versus writing for the general public?

Speaker 3 (51:04):
Right?

Speaker 1 (51:04):
I think to me that's the real challenge. And maybe
AI is going to be a great tool for this. Hey,
you know, take this and help me translate it to
an audience that doesn't have you know that maybe hasn't
read up on this, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
But how do you think about it when you're writing?
Who are you writing for? In your head?

Speaker 3 (51:21):
Yeah, so that's a great question. So at the Chronicle
it was very much a general lay audience. Ours Technica,
as the name suggests, is a little bit more of
a technical oriented site. So it's it's more for like
a more informed audience. But still, I mean, you know,
with with space and other topics, you get pretty niche
pretty quickly, and so I think I would say it's

(51:43):
it's written for an intellectually curious audience.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
I'd like to think that that's where I qualify because
I don't know any of the technicolo the technology that well.
But but I'm just enough to be dangerous enough to
ask questions which is which is?

Speaker 2 (51:58):
I guess that's a start.

Speaker 3 (52:00):
You've got to be curious about the natural world and
want to learn more.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah, it is one more for you, because it's something
I've said to my daughter, since you're both you're into
science on this planet and in outer space. Do we
know more about our solar system or our oceans? There's
been this idea that we actually may not know as
much about our oceans as we think we do.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Yeah. No, I think that's a tough one for me
to answer. There's certainly a lot of undiscovered country in
our oceans as well as the Solar system. I do
think we're more actively exploring the Solar system and have
some pretty interesting missions that are in the works, are
just flying to interesting places. So I think we've probably
explored more of the Solar System than the oceans. But

(52:48):
I also think there's probably more things to be discovered.
As we talked about beneath the ice on Europa, we're
sending a really cool mission to fly across the Saturn Titans.
There's lots of things to discover, whereas I don't think
we're going to discover you know, super large new species
as the part of the ocean, although I mean I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
No, But is there is there ocean exploration that would
help with you know, sort of weather history, which then
in turn would help with weather forecasting.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
So it's a great field called paleo tem pestology, which looks.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
My daughter's favorite professor at Miami is a palaeontologist weather climate.
I forget what he called himself. But yes, in this field,
it's fascinating.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
It is fascinating what you can learn by going out
and studying the planet, and it just it's it's all beneficial.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Yeah, uh, Eric, this is great. It was really great
to get to know you as as you see, I'm
sort of a junkie who doesn't know very much about it,
but but it's desperate to want to know more.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
And and uh, am.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
I do you hate the for all mankind references? And
when people like me ask you those questions or do
you find that that show is exal healthy for your beat?
Because I say this in that I hate the West Wing. Okay,
I can't stand when people say to me, how come
this is it like the West Way?

Speaker 2 (54:09):
God damn it. That's not the way it works.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
And yet here I am taking a fantasy TV show
and trying to apply it to the real world.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
So I'm curious your reaction on that.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
So first of all, I say, what about VP? Does
that more accurately portray.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Well, VIEP is more accurate?

Speaker 1 (54:22):
Yes, that is the more correct version of how our
share really works.

Speaker 3 (54:26):
Yes, my favorite show about to White House Politics. So
I would say I like it because I think for
all mankind does. One of the technical consultants is Garrett Reesman,
a former astronauts friend of mine. He does a great
job sort of trying to keep it real. And I
think anything that increases public interest and exploration. I mean space,

(54:47):
At the end of the day, everyone's kind of interested,
but it's kind of like a mile wide and an
inch deep, and so anything that sort of deepens that
interest is valuable to me.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Well, look, I'm glad to hear that on the space side,
because I was really impressed at how they handled the politics,
the alternative history there they were. They made some they
made turns of who would win, who would lose, and
all this stuff, and they were very clever about it
that wasn't unrealistic based on different forks in the road.
So I'm glad to know that that as a as

(55:16):
on the on the space side and the technical side,
that they they tried to stay.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
I guess within within the possible they did.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
I think it was an attempt to make a realistic
fictional show.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Yeah, and no, it did, and it made a lot
of sense if if you know, if we had lost
to the Soviets, I do believe we would have acted, well,
we're not going to lose anything else.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
Let's throw a bit more resources.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
That is that is uh the American way anyway, Eric Berger,
this was terrific.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Thanks for your time.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
Thank you you got it.
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