Off To The Moon

Jonathan McDowell is an astrophysicist and astronomer for Harvard and we finally get to ask someone of his caliber all of the big space questions we've been saving up. Why are we headed back to the moon? What does failure mean? And is Shawn right about Space photos?

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Sabrina and the ceiliing be on yourbest behavior here, trying not to make
us look dumb. Why, okay, we never do that. How about
you do the same I didn't sayI wasn't going to do the same thing.
I already am prepared for this.I've taken my smart pills. I'm
ready to go. I don't wantto make us look like a fool.
We're getting somebody with a brain onthe show for once. You got it,
No problem? Okay? So andlike went in doubt, just kind

(00:26):
of like nod and go along becausethe guy knows what he's talking about.
Checked this out in front of meceiling. His name is Jonathan McDowell,
and he is in a truck.He's got a Wikipedia page. I know,
man, he's the real deal.He's an astronomer at astrophysicist at the
Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whichis the best place to do it.

(00:46):
He does. He's a staff memberat the Chandra X ray Observatory. McDowell
is the author and editor of Jonathan'sSpace Report, Very influential in the industry,
an email distributed newsletter documenting satellite launches, and he joins US right now
on the Hey, thanks for havingme. Hey Jonathan, how are things
going in your world today? Well? Pretty well, yeah, we're We're

(01:11):
it's actually a sunny day for oncehere in Boston. Yeah. Well,
you are a guy who knows allthe things that we could possibly ask about
space. And I noticed on theshow even the other day we flubbed some
things when it comes to this latestmoon landing. And let's start there all
right, now, is who putthis thing on the moon? I know
it landed all topsy turvy, butwho put this thing on the moon?

(01:34):
Was it NASA? Is it SpaceX? Now I'm hearing about this Intuitive Machines
company, Like, right, wherewhere did all this come from? So
it came from a NASA program tomake private industry able to send spaceships to
the Moon. Okay, And sothis company called Intuitive Machines, it's a
startup in Houston, good Space City, And they built this lander and then

(01:59):
they pay aid SpaceX to put iton a rocket and boost it towards the
Moon. So SpaceX shoved the OdysseusLander on the way to the Moon,
and then Intuitive Machines took over andused the rocket engines on the lander to
course correct and aim and get intolunar orbit and finally, by the skin

(02:20):
of its teeth, land on thesurface of the Moon and send some data
back. Okay, we have toget into we have to get into what
the word success means it just alittle bit, because that can actually be
a deeper conversation than one might think. But what's a ride into space like
that cost for intuitive machines? Youthink? You know, I try and
avoid the money aim because I suckat that. But it's you know,

(02:44):
something in one hundred million dollars.Okay, all right, so there's a
lot of All I know is it'sout of my pocket money, right,
I can't cover it. It's kindof stunning how so much has happened in
the world of space exploration. Andnow what I said, we have to
talk about what the word success means. Here I saw a lot of people

(03:05):
trying to dunk on intuitive machines andthey go, oh, congrats, you
landed on the moon, but youknow you got no signal, but your
your rover is it tipped over likea turtle on a shell and in you
and some other people I think saidlike, hey, depends on what we
consider a success. They landed thedamn thing on the moon, right,
like they got to the Moon.Did it go perfectly? No? So
are we in an area of successhere for this newer moon landing or not?

(03:30):
Yeah? I really think we are, and I think the people are
criticizing it. You know, clwywhen you've landed something on the Moon,
Okay. But you know, itactually got more successful as time went on
in the sense that, yeah,they had a lot of communications problems early
on, they managed to resolve someof those, and they managed to get
data back from pretty much all ofthe science experiments that they had on board.

(03:53):
Maybe not quite as much data asthey would have liked, but overall,
I think it was a stunning successand they learned a lot apart from
NASA's point of view, right,NASA gave him a bunch of money to
go. Okay, go build amoon lander. We're not going to tell
you how to do it. Justgive us the data, the science data
we want from the Moon. Andwhat they're they're expecting a lot of these

(04:14):
early attempts to fail, but whatthey're doing is giving industry the practice and
the experience so that down the roadNASA won't have to do the trucking part
of getting to the moon. Theycan just contract that out really to the
trucking companies, of which Intuitive Machinesis going to be one. And I
think they did, you know,for a first try. It's darn impressive.
They put something a little bit aroundthe moon. They landed it even

(04:39):
you know, a bit embarrassing thatthey forgot to take flip the safety switch
that turns the lasers on. Butthey managed to dig themselves out of that
self dug hole and and and getit on the surface. Tell me there
wasn't an actual switch that somebody forgotto flip, and that that screwed this
thing over to tell you there wasan actual switch person this switch before launch.

(05:08):
The rest are a classic problem inspecial which is the test equipment that
they were testing on didn't have thisswitch. Because this switch was like,
okay, you're not allowed to havea laser on a thing in the rocket
without a safety switch on it,and on the test equipment on the ground,
they didn't bother putting that in andso they didn't remember to flip this

(05:30):
switch. And I think that's there'sa long standing rule in space test as
you fly right means it means,you know, have your test equipment be
exactly the same as the equipment you'reactually going to fly. And this is
a classic example of why you needto do that. Yeah, I mean,
you've already illuminated one thing for mehere and we're talking to Jonathan McDowell,
who's an astronomer, an astrophysicist.He knows his stuff here and you've

(05:54):
highlighted something for me already, whichis that NASA is willing to fund stuff
like this because we've got some privateindustry that's able to launch rockets. We
got private industry now with SpaceX andothers that are able to get through the
International Space Station, but further tothe Moon and beyond, we haven't really
had a lot of private interests thathave done that. And in funding these

(06:15):
companies like we're seeing here with intuitivemachines, like you said, they did
get to the moon, they gotin orbit, they landed on the Moon.
They made a mistake, they'll learnfrom that mistake. But NASA is
trying to edge these folks into goinga bit further, it seems is that
what you're saying, that's exactly right, And just to bike a point,
you know, this lander landed ata higher latitude on the Moon than any

(06:38):
lander previously. They got closer tothe South Pole than has ever been done
before. And this near when youget through the South Pole rights, that's
you know, it's very rocky terrain, very mountainous. It's it's actually quite
challenging to do both from a landingpoint of view from an orbit point of
view. So so this wasn't justoh, let's pick the easiest moon landing

(06:59):
you can do and make and newBees do it. Why wouldn't you be
the easiest moon landing. Part Well, one of the things we want to
do right is there's a lot ofscientific interest in the South Pole and a
lot of interest in it from thepoint of view of future lunar settlements,
because we think there might be iceembedded in the rocks at the South Pole
that we could use. And sothis is sort of the challenge that all

(07:20):
the different space agencies are trying todo, is to eventually do a South
Pole moon landing. And so youknow, the Russians and the Japanese,
so we're all trying to the Chineseare all trying to get closer and closer
to the pole, and this isthe closest that's being done. But yeah,
I might have started them off onan easier one, to be honest.

(07:42):
Right, all right, So Iwant to ask you a question.
You mentioned Russia there and we gotmaybe like some kind of renewed space race
going on here? What was withthis insane moment we had a week or
so ago when a lot of peoplein government started panicking and there were talks
of Russia may be launching some sortof satellite and the satellite's going to be
able to attack other satellite and like, now we're talking about space wars,

(08:05):
like actual space wars. Were youfollowing this way? Where did you live?
Yeah? I mean we've been talkingabout space wars for a long time
actually, and fortunately we've kind ofavoided them so far. The first attempts
to blow up other people's satellites,but they've only ever done it actually with
you know, your own target satellite, because that would start a war if

(08:26):
you didn't. But you know,they go back to the early sixties and
so so it's not new in thatsense. What's new about this? It
has been a while since people talkedabout actually using nukes to do it.
So the rumor is that they Russiahas a system that they're designing, maybe
building, maybe just talking about inorder to scare the Americans to launch a

(08:52):
missile with a nucon it and blowit up in orbit to take out a
whole bunch of satellite and great,this is a stupid thing to do.
It's frightening the prospect of it.But obviously that would escalate things drastically.
Now I have what seems like asimple question to ask you, but I
just truly do not know the answerto it. Does Space Force actually do

(09:16):
anything? Oh? Absolutely? So. The thing to understand about Space Force
is not only does it do alot of things, but it's doing a
lot of things that the same peoplehave been doing for a long time when
they were called the space bit ofthe Air Force. Oh gotcha, And
so they just rebranded, right,and so they write, have you ever
used GPS to get home? That'sthe Space Force, nice providing that for

(09:41):
you. And so they run satellitesfor the military. They don't do the
spy satellites, that's a different agencycalled the National Reconnaissance Office, but they
do the GPS satellites, They dothe military communications satellites, and they do
some of the missile warning satellites andso on and and so basically they set

(10:03):
in various droven operator room kind ofthings and mission controls in California and Colorado
and command all the satellites. Andthey're also the folks who are doing the
military part of running the rocket rangesat Cape Canaveral and Vandenburg. So so

(10:26):
there's there's a lot of stuff thatthe Space Force do that that isn't you
know. It isn't like space fighterpilots, space marines going and attacking people
and stuff like that. It's it'sit's just the regular military space operations that
we've had since the sixties. That'sokay, that's refreshing it here, because
last we heard they were just playinga lot of call of duty and center

(10:48):
around. Guys, we should takethis. There's a whole documentary on it,
right, didn't you see the Netflixthing? Basical for sure, So
guys, we should take this opportunitynow that we have Jonathan McDowell here,
he's the guy who knows space,all right. And as if we were
around a campfire and we're all maybewe got a little stoned or something,

(11:11):
we have to ask the questions tothe big brain guy that we wouldn't be
able to otherwise because we have themnow, Jonathan in your brain. I
mean, you're a guy. There'smany folders behind you. It looks like
they're I don't know what's going onin the room that you're in, but
you do big brain stuff. Doyou have anything that's happening that you're looking
at in the world of space andspace exploration that is like blowing your mind,

(11:35):
Like the thing that people are workingon next beyond this attempted moonlighting,
the thing that you see happening.You're like, ooh, this is exciting,
right. Well, I mean,you know, I'm an astronomer by
trade, and of course we've gota number of really exciting astronomical observatories that
are coming down the line, theRoman Space Observatories going up in a couple
of years that's going to map millionsand millions of galaxies for us, so

(11:58):
that that'll get some really great datawe've got. Uh, you know,
I think what I think, youknow what I think about what's happening in
space right now. There's a coupleof things that I want to want to
people understand. One is the incrediblespeed of industrialization of Earth orbit. That
ten years ago it was like,well, space was sort of NASA and

(12:22):
the Russian government, you know,very mostly governments and some commercial and now
it's mostly commercial. It's startups,you know, it's it's big companies like
SpaceX, but smaller companies like IntuitiveMachines. But also in China, finally,
China has liberalized its space economy andinstead of it all being Chinese government,

(12:43):
there's every every Chinese aerospace engineer isis making their own space startup and
wants to be the next you know, the Chinese elon right, Yeah,
and so so incredible amount of commercialactivity. Also, the frontier is moving
outwards. It used to be thatEarth orbit foot of the frontier and only
big you know, superpowers operated there, and that kind of changed and now

(13:05):
it's just you know, basically anycompany can can do part of his business
in Earth orbit, and the frontiermoved out to the Moon and Mars.
But now you know, we've gota United Arab Emirates Mars orbiter, we've
got a South Korean lunar orbiter,we've got commercial companies going to the Moon.
The frontier is moving out again tothe asteroid belt and beyond. And

(13:30):
that's you know where where you stillneed to be a superpower to operate.
So I think that's a kind ofchange in the tide of space activities that
people aren't aware enough about. Now, considering your knowledge of space and all
things space, would you ever goif given the opportunity. Yeah, I'm
getting a bit old now. Healthisn't what it used to be. I

(13:54):
applied, I applied to be anastronaut back in the day. But somebody
have a realistic job. They won'tlet him be an astronaut. We are
done for we could have no,no, no, it's not you know,
you're you're you're probably because you needyou need. It's not enough,
you know, to have the academicdegrees, right, You've got to actually
be practical. And I'm a totalklutz, same same, But I'm not

(14:18):
an astronomer or astrophysicists, you know. So I've got like those two dings
against me right now. Do youtake do you take issue when people refer
to passengers on like a space tourismtrip, you know, like the William
Shatner's the people who have gone oninto almost space. When people on the

(14:39):
news and people in the media referto them as astronauts. Do you kind
of take issue with that? No, absolutely agree with it. I'm happy
to use the word astronaut to mean, oh, we hate someone who's in
space, and it's just, youknow, it's the words evolve. The
words have multiple senses, right,you know you can have you can asked

(15:00):
in several different senses. You canyou can use it in the sense of,
you know, someone who's that professionalspace pilot, or you can use
it in just the more general senseof someone who's been space. And I'm
I'm I'm perfectly comfortable with that,Jonathan. Last question for you before we
let you get back to it.I have a thing that's a pet peeve
of mine that I yell about fromtime to time. Tell me if this

(15:22):
is so, he's going to haveto be more specific. They don't even
know what I'm getting at. Absolutelynot. So. I've got plenty of
pet piece myself. One thing thatI look at for so long growing up
as a kid. You would seethese photographs of like galaxies and all these
different things that will be released bya NASA, and then at one point
I learned and I may be wronghere, so correct me if I am,

(15:43):
But a lot of that is justinterpretations of what those photos should look
like, what the galaxy should looklike, what these planets should look like,
and they color them and they addall kinds of things, So it's
not maybe an exact representation like aphotograph like many people think out of a
tell scope of what space looks like. Do you think that's a dishonest version

(16:04):
of things already? No, Idon't, And we don't add things like
randomly, right. We do adjust. We do have to color it in
sometimes with for very good reasons.And you know, I think you maybe
don't quite understand what an ordinary photographis, right, It's not. It's
not as direct representation of reality asyou might imagine, because the sensors in

(16:30):
your phone and your phone camera aren'tthe same as a human eye, right,
and so what it sees isn't quitewhat you see, and so they
that gets colored in a way thatsort of you might consider somewhat artificial.
When I take a photograph with withwith the Hubble telescope, for example,
usually usually those are represented in real, real colors as good as we can

(16:53):
get them, right, the sameway that your phone represents a photograph as
good as we can get them.But when I take a photograph with my
Chander X ray observatory spacecraft that I'mpart of the team on, you know,
that is we get a photograph thatis in X ray colors. And
if we gave you that as asyou know, if we painted the image

(17:17):
in X ray colors, your eyewouldn't be able to see anything and it'd
give you cancer. And so whatwe do instead is what we do says
we paint them in ordinary colors,but when we do it in a way
that we shift, so X raycolors are basically just a very high pitched
form of light, right, Andif you think of having imagine someone had

(17:40):
composed a symphony in a key that'stoo high for the human ear to hear,
and then someone else played that samesymphony, you know, shifting every
note down a certain number of octavesuntil it was until you could hear it,
and then played that. That wouldbe a fair representation that human ears

(18:03):
could hear of something that that wasintrinsically, you know, unhearable. I've
never had that was well done.What would you like to do for fun
when you're not you know, allup in the space stuff? Well,
well, you know, I Ilike exploring cities around the world. I
like uh, I read a lot. I read a lot of history.

(18:25):
Uh and uh, I mean it'svery good. I like writing computer programs
too, you pot smoker, andscience fiction? Yes, what about the
weed though you smoke weed? No? Sorry, I don't even drink.
I have a substance abuse issue withchocolate. But that's about it. Jan

(18:48):
I'm not about to tell us thathe had a regular abuse issue, and
then we would feel bad about askinghim. All right, Jonathan McDowell,
thank you so much. We reallyappreciate the time. Man, appreciate it.
There he goes. This is aguy who knows about this stuff and
just illuminated it quite decently for allof us here to take in. An

(19:11):
astronomers astronomer, excuse me, anastrophysicist at Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Very very interesting guy. Check himout on Twitter, look for Jonathan McDowell.
Jonathan, Thank you, man,Thank you, bye bye. Now
he goes, all right, verynice him to join us. We're back
in just a moment. We haveto get to a bunch of things,
including your favorite hot dog. Issomething very far away from this intellectual level

(19:34):
of the spectrum and to something wentwrong last night? What was it that
is coming up next on the NewsJunkie