January 15, 2014 • 36 mins
The international community has agreed not to wage war in space, but that hasn't stopped the nations of Earth from cramming outer space with spy satellites, orbital junk and classified spacecraft. So what's up there, exactly? Could there really be a war in space? Tune in to learn more.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to. Now, Hey, everybody,
welcome back. My name is Matt and I am Ben
and today we've got a fascinating subject for you, something
(00:23):
that you've probably been thinking about since you were a kid,
even if you weren't maybe thinking about the particulars of
the weaponization of this thing. But space is something that, man,
it just captures the mind, the young mind especially and
uh perhaps the young mind that's within all of us.
Um when you think about the vastness that's out there
(00:44):
when we're just floating around on this tiny little planet,
And what are the implications of of bringing our human
warlike you know, uh, our ego and uh pushing it
out to those outer reaches? Like what is that? Yeah, right,
the in the vast inconceivable space of the universe. Are
(01:07):
we the dicks at the party? I mean, well, that's
it's a weird thing to think about, and it's just
part of our nature that we kind of have to
at some point look in the face. Now, let me
ask you by way of segue, Matt, are you a
Star Wars or Star Trek fan. If you had to
pick one, I would wholeheartedly throw myself into the Star
(01:30):
Trek Star Trek. Huh yeah, world there any particular reason
my dad and I. I guess my dad mostly he
got me into the Next Generation. UM, I was really
hardcore into that. Remember how everybody flipped out on the
first episode of the Next Generation when there was a
clean on as part of the crew. Actually, no, I
(01:50):
don't remember that. I don't remember that, but I did
read about that later. I'm dating myself. I've flipped out
as a kid. Um. Well, the the reason that I
asked this is that these are two of the most
well known science fiction UM. I guess the right word
would be universes, right, science fiction universes in human history
(02:15):
and um. Both of these are heavily centered on the
idea that we're going to talk about today in some respect,
which is war in space space space space space. Yeah,
we have some high class special effects here. UM. But
(02:36):
this this brings up some really important questions because you
and I have been exploring this in a bunch of
different ways for a very long time. We talked, most
recently about the intelligence gathering satellite programs, And please go
(02:58):
back and watch that episode of You Haven't Yet. That's
one of our it's one of my favorite latest episodes
that we've done, just talking about the importance of having
a wide view, the wider your view of the Earth
in the world, to be able to look at, say,
if there's a nuclear test going on somewhere, or you know,
really just to observe people are observed, countries and other
(03:24):
powers that you may see as an adversary. Yes, And
what we'll be doing in this podcast today, you and
I are going to talk about what makes outer space
valuable as a as a frontier right for nation states.
We're going to talk about what legal things might exist
or already exist to stop it from becoming a war zone. Um.
(03:48):
And then we'll also talk about some of the conspiracy
theories regarding militarization or weaponization of space. Uh, and how
much or how little truth is found within these ideas
and how much or how little we actually know about
the latest tech. Ah. Yes, that's a very good point
(04:09):
because a lot of this, as we'll find, is classified.
So first up, we know that the immediate area surrounding
Earth in space is just lousy with space junk and satellites.
We are the UM. We are the galactic equivalent of
that really trashy neighbor with a bunch of stuff in
(04:34):
their front yard and a bunch of non working machines
that nobody bothered to clean up. Old satellites just floating around. Yeah. Well,
and it's funny because the reason that all of that
is up there is because we've really been in this
race for such a long time to have that wide view,
the control, and the ability to see and sense things
(04:55):
from that level. Because having a satellite in orbit is
a huge, huge deal for a country. Yeah, that's one
of the big three things that space offers any nation
state capable of making the trip right, UM the and
it's number one on our list. Actually, uh satellites for
intelligence gathering, the ability to see in something close to
(05:19):
real time what what your opponents, your rivals are doing,
presents a tremendous advantage and in fact, UM may have
saved us from war a couple of times. I know
it looks like it sounds as though this might UM
drive us into a war, but we do know that
the satellite info during the Cold War that Lyndon Johnson
(05:42):
received made him realize that the Soviet Union was not
building near as many bombs as we thought, and he
famously said, we're building stuff we don't need to build,
which must have been a huge, you know, um, a
huge turnoff for some some of our friends in the
defense industry at well. And another thing that it provides
is the ability to see and know in real time
(06:05):
what your troops are doing and to communicate from say, oh,
you know, halfway around the world too, and let your
other troops know or your other installation know exactly what's
going on at all times. Uh. The communication alone is
a huge deal for the military. And that just means
exactly what it describes. Some of the biggest innovations, some
(06:25):
of the most uh ambitious R and D programs in
the world right now are focused on improving communications. So
not so much building a better bomb as building a
better way to know where the bombs are yours and
the other game. And the reason that um, we see
this as such a priority is well, it's kind of
(06:49):
disturbing if you think about it, but you know, Matt,
for much of human history, empires have fallen and risen
based on this weird lack of communication, like the old
theory about UM. Now, I've never been able to figure
out if this is true, but you know people who
think that the Rothchild family runs the world, and it
(07:11):
is true that no one really can calculate how much
money the Rothchild family is an aggregate has It's his
story for another day. Yes, they don't let me digress.
But that old story about UM about how the Rothchild
family was able to figure out what was actually happening
UM during Napoleonic Uh. I can't remember the exact battle,
(07:36):
but apparently was able to get information before the other
folks and play the market with it, and that became
a huge financial windfall. That sort of stuff is, you know,
not necessarily anomalous. Traders have been making money off that
for centuries, and now this is sort of closing the gap.
(07:57):
And that's not even the last thing. We know what
the last thing is on our list of three reasons. Well, yeah,
it's being able to intercept the communications of those other
countries with your technology that you have up in space
and which leads us. I mean, you could just put
it right into the n s A. You could. We
could talk about so many things here, we could branch off. Wow,
(08:19):
this is a. This is a great podcast that we
can probably in the future say, hey, go back and
listen to our Militarization of Space podcast, because we're gonna
be talking about a branch of that. For instance, as
we're recording this, this is the very beginning of two
thousand fourteen, I forgot to say Happy New Year. Oh yeah,
Happy New Year everyone. Yeah, Happy New Year everybody as
(08:41):
we're recording. They still probably hear it later. Um. But
one of the big pieces of news that hit recently
as we were coming into the studio is that France
and I believe the United Arab Emirates may have just
had their intelligent satellite deal scuttled. France was selling a
belief to intelligence out lights to the u a E.
(09:02):
And then with the NASA or n s A revelations
excuse me, uh, come to find out that the U
a E has a pretty i'm gonna say a pretty
fair suspicion that some of the technology in these satellites
may have a built in US government run back door.
(09:22):
So they don't want this to happen because if they
pay the exorbitant amount of money to buy these satellites
have them up in space, then what's just constantly sending
information back to the US. And it doesn't really make
what they're doing that that important, I guess right. And
it's not to say that the U A E or
(09:43):
the U S are necessarily antagonistic toward each other something no, no, no.
And it's not to say that you A has any
nefarious means by sending the satellites up. It's just that
kind of that strategic advantage that the U S would
have over whatever they're doing. It's unsettling at best. So
(10:03):
another question is if this stuff has been going on
for so long, which it has, then what if any
laws exist or govern the way Earth handles space. Well,
there's one very important document with a super sexy name.
Oh yeah, Well it does have one sexy name, which
is the Outer Space Treaty. That's yeah, it does. But
(10:25):
if you read the entire thing, the formal title, the
Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States and the
Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and
other celestial bodies. Oh wow, be still my beating heart.
But sexy or non sexy name aside, this is a
very important treaty. It's one of the only kind of
(10:49):
its sort in in human history, of course, because it's
the first time we managed to get the space so
often that we had to sit down and you know,
have a town hall meeting about it, um it. And
it does some really important things. Now, this was brought
into law in nineteen sixty seven, right, and it brings
a lot of the heavy hitters in the space game
(11:11):
to the table. And at this point in time, we're
talking about the Soviet Union, the US, the United Kingdom
and some others. And one of the things that it
does that's hugely important is that it says no one
can just own space. You know, it's not like a
territorial water claim where which we still haven't figured out
(11:35):
in much of the world today. You know, China and
Japan and a couple of other countries are in the
Philippines are fighting over who owns how much of the
water around their countries. Um But this treaty makes space
a little bit like the South Pole, like no one
can own Antarctica. You can build research stations there, yeah, exactly.
(11:56):
And one of the most important things that it said
was that you can send something up into space because
nobody owns it, just like with the research station and
an ARCA. But and you own that thing that you
sent up. Whatever it is, that satellite, it's yours, it's
your country's. UM. But you can't there are a couple
(12:17):
of things you can't do with it. You can't put
any weapons of mass destruction up there. It's like, no nukes. Yeah, no,
absolutely no nukes, or of some other kind of crazy
space bacterial I don't know attack. You can't put that
sort of h. James Bond esque laser beam, yes, yes, Um,
(12:37):
well see I don't know about a laser beam. I
really want to get down into some of the minutia
about that. Now they classify what is a conventional one, right,
we'll get to that part. So, so, no nukes. This
was a huge part of the agreement because at this time,
if we remember, UM, the idea of nuclear war was
at the forefront of most people's minds. Um. This also
(13:00):
limits the use of the Moon. It's supposed to make
the Moon kind of a new Antarctica. Only peaceful purposes,
and you have to be used for the betterment of
the entire Earth. If you put a station on the Moon,
you can put a station up there, just can't be
militarized in any way, right, can't be a military base,
can't test your Moon weapons, and you also can't conduct
(13:22):
your military moon maneuvers. Um. That's that's the idea. But
there's something really important and we just mentioned, which is
that the treaty does not prohibit bringing conventional weapons into orbit.
And that that's why you and I were a little
bit um, a little bit hesitant to say that a
laser beam had no place in space, because what defines
(13:46):
a conventional weapon. We'll get to that in just a second.
There's another very important part of this treaty, which said
that no one can claim severenity over the Moon by
means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
Whatever the hell that means. I don't know if it's
like putting the Moon on your currency, or so putting
(14:08):
a giant logo on the moon somewhere, maybe dropping a
flag on there. Yeah, but we're gonna return for this um,
this idea because it's important, as we'll find out later.
We talked about the future of this, but one thing's
for sure. When it comes to the laws, one thing
is unambiguously clear. Countries are supposed to own the satellites
(14:29):
they launch. With all that said, let's talk. Let's talk
some tech, right, Yes, Jonathan Strickland would love this part.
Now we mentioned the intelligence and Reconnaissance satellites, right, Yes,
the l r O. The l R O. So the
l RO are essentially film cameras that are set up
in space that are set to take a certain amount
(14:52):
of film that's on the satellite and then launch that
sucker back down so they can be recovered by someone
on Earth. Wait, whoa whoa film film, straight up film man,
exposing it to light and old school wow. So before
digital cameras, we had satellites in the air, in this
in the space air taking taking photos um and dropping
(15:15):
that down to go to some sort of top secret
version of Kodak Eastman. Oh yeah and there. I don't know,
it's it's fascinating to me just the idea that someone
had that idea and was able to get exposure correct
and and get in focus images of any kind. That's
I mean, that was a task man. Yeah. And as
we found when we were looking at at these satellite programs,
(15:39):
they had a huge failure rate, and the problem was
once you shoot it up there, it's such a gamble.
It's not like you can take it back down and
fix it because we didn't have the technology to get
a spaceship there, or at least we didn't have the
publicly known technology on. So these are satellites like the
Velis satellite program. Uh, there's also key Hole or the
Cage series and Grown. And the last thing, the craziest
(16:02):
thing to me is once it runs out of film,
it's just gonna float around and not really do much
of anything unless you can get back up there and
spend the huge amount of money that it would take
to get back there and reload it with film, not
to mention at the time that would have been extremely difficult.
Now there's another and perhaps the most mysterious thing that
we've included under um under tech, but we don't know
(16:27):
too much about it right now. Yeah, we might have
to come back to this and again maybe in ten
years we'll do a follow up to this once we
find out what the heck it actually was, if they
ever declassify any Yes, that's the X thirty seven class
of unmanned space shuttles essentially. Yeah, it's an unmanned reusable spacecraft.
(16:49):
It's currently on its third mission and it's been up
in space for as long as what twelve months before? Yeah? Yeah,
just flying around and no one will say anything about
what it's officially doing. Uh super classified ben Yeah. The
the pr statement from the I think it's the Air
Force on the Lockheed X thirty seven was something along
(17:12):
the lines of, well, this third mission is going to
take lessons learned from the second mission and apply them
to real life applications. Were excited. That was, man, Yeah,
I feel sorry for you whoever had to write that one.
So it's up there, it's unmanned. We don't know what
it's doing with no idea. Um we know that given
(17:32):
the capabilities of shuttles right that it has, it has
some maneuverability that a satellite would not have. Yeah exactly,
But to what end? Yeah? To what end? Indeed? And
is there someone controlling? And this is I really want
to just know more about the technology, even even well,
(17:53):
I'm more fascinated by what the heck it's classified mission is,
but I want to know how it's controlled. Is it
really autonomous? Um? Or is somebody controlling it the way
they would control a predator aircraft a drone? Yeah? And
if so, what's the lag. Yeah, gosh, man, I just
want to know. It's fascinating. So, um, we will probably
have to come back to the X thirty seven at
(18:15):
some other point in time. But there are other conventional
weapons that have been used in space that we included
under technology. Right, Yeah, let's talk about the most simple one. Uh,
straight up handgun. Just a good old fashioned nine millimeter.
I don't even know if it was a nine millimeter
(18:35):
or not all I just know it was a handgun
and it was given to astronauts. But wait, says everybody
who knows about physics and space and the lack of gravity. Uh,
wouldn't a handgun be a cartoonishly stupid thing to have
in space? Well? Look, man, you don't know what you're
gonna find on the Moon, you know, I mean, there
(18:56):
could be some crazy stuff going on up there. Or
if you're a cosmonaut, uh, when you land wherever the
heck you land, if you make it. Um, it's sure
would suck to go to space and to return from
space and to be eaten by a tiger or a bear. Yeah,
a polar BEARA just goes hey, buddy, welcome back. That's
(19:17):
that would be a terrible welcoming party for a nut orbit. Yeah,
the uh so it is true that cosmonauts did have
conventional handguns, but these were not for space use. These
were not four games of Russian Roulette. These were not,
uh for moments when the s hits the f and
things get super real on a space station. Or maybe
(19:40):
you know, I mean, maybe if you're up there and
one guy goes a little nuts and decides he's gonna
erect the entire thing because it's it's a tough mental
state to be in claustrophobic. So I think maybe maybe
there was some some scientists who said, maybe we should
have a plan in place just in case one person
goes eight nuts. There's no way you could shoot a
(20:01):
gun inside have a habitat. Yeah, you're right, You're absolutely right.
I mean, I guess you could go wild with it
and take everybody. I wonder if there wasn't a hunting
knife where some kind of knife involved as well. I
haven't done any research, we don't know. I'm sure there's
something like a survival kid included. Um. Sorry, I didn't
mean to go and don't apologize me. It's a good question.
(20:23):
Maybe one of our listeners, maybe you can write in
and let us know about your time as a cosmonaut
if you are allowed to. UM. Another thing though, that
this is also a Russian thing, mispronouncing this map. But
the Salute three had a cannon on it, a twenty
three millimeter cannon, and it shot satellites. Apparently that's still classified.
(20:48):
And speaking of shooting satellites, one of the other big
technologies we have to talk about is UH satellite killing.
So a weird thing happened in two thousand seven. China
shot down one of their obsolete satellites and they said
we did this as a environmental thing or testing thing,
(21:08):
which didn't really make sense because satellites contained some toxic elements. Um.
It was largely seen as a thinly veiled demonstration of
UM military prowess. And the United States, of course, is
not by any means and innocent in the woods here,
because the US also shot down satellites. Right yeah, back
(21:31):
in the eighties, they used the brand new F fifteen
to UH to shoot down one because it could it
could travel at heights that were insane at the time.
Um that nobody thought an airplane and aircraft like that
would be able to fly. And again just kind of Uh, well,
what's up? Yeah, I could do this. Yeah. Um. Then
they did it again in two thousand and eight, and
(21:53):
many people thought that was kind of an answer to
the two thousand seven China incident. I'm one of the people,
by the way. Well yeah, I mean if you if
you watch the news and you look at things like that,
you notice that it's posturing. There's a ton of posturing
that happens. Posturing is a perfect word. There's a lot
of bro do you even space and going on? Um. Alright,
(22:14):
so this brings us wait, wait, sorry, Ben, I want
to go back just to briefly talk about the Space
Wars program. Where the so called space Wars program, because
that kind of gives us a little background about UM,
especially the satellite killer technology that we put up there.
What is the space Wars program, Well, it's it's the
Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, which was put together will essentially
(22:39):
by a speech that Ronald Reagan gave in March on
March twenty three, nine three, the year in which I
was born, Ben, and he basically was trying to find
a way to get out of the mutual assured destruction
kind of the pattern that we were in UM and
(22:59):
because that was largely based on offense, the idea that
we're gonna have so many nukes. If you knuc us May,
we're gonna crap out of you, and and the Soviet
Union in the United States were both kind of again
posturing in this manner. He thought, well, what if there's
a way, And probably a lot of his advisers thought,
let's just put that there. Uh, what if we could
(23:20):
just shoot down any intercontinental ballistic missile that came our way? Okay,
so what if we could just build some sort of
net for lack of a better word, that could knock
out any I C B M launch toward us. Yeah,
And it made a lot of people angry. Obviously, the
Soviet Union was a little upset about it, um, you know,
(23:43):
and it got a ton of criticism as well because
of the amount of tech and the high tech that
we would need to be able to do something like this,
And it was basically a money pit for a long time. UM.
And it changed names a couple of times. I know,
George H. W. George H. W. Bush changed the name,
(24:05):
and then Bill Clinton again changed the name, and and
really they changed the focus a bunch of different times.
But under this program there were some crazy weaponry that
was at least fought up to go up into space.
What there were there were X ray lasers, there were
chemical lasers again attached the idea would you would be
(24:25):
you would attach it to some kind of satellite that
would then aim, be able to track and aim at
a missile that's flying through the air. Uh. You also
had again like regular projectiles, lead projectiles that would be shot,
targeted and shot just rods. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also
um using rail railgun technology extremely fast, basically using magnets
(24:53):
to shoot shoot projectiles so fast that they would be
able to catch up with an intercontinental ballistic missile. It's
just fascinating stuff to me. Yeah, and it sounds incredibly
difficult to do well. Yeah, And and so much money,
billions of dollars went into trying to come up with
a good way, a good system, and basically it got scrapped,
(25:14):
at least most of it got scrapped. Okay, if I
could interject here, this is the perfect segue, NOL, could
you please toss in a scary music queue, perfect matt
billions of dollars, yea few public results, how much of
(25:37):
it was corruption and waste, certainly a bit. How much
of it could have been building something else, something classified. See,
that's the scary thing when we look at the conspiracy
theories surrounding weapons in space, there's very little that people
actually know or that has occurred. We we know some
(26:01):
of the stuff, and we know a lot of it
way later than it actually happened. If somebody had found
out about the Keyhole satellites when they were up there,
it would have blown their frigging minds. It still blows
my mind. So I'm going to rate the conspiracy theories
about space. I'm going to rate them as potentially plausible
(26:26):
with a big, big, big, big caveat. I didn't even
say possible as a plausible, which is a big leap, right. Um.
That big caveat is simply that not a lot of
information exists. And while it's while it's possible that there's
(26:46):
technology generations and generations further ahead than we actually know,
what is more plausible is that there's stuff kind of
the head of the curve. You know, maybe not thirty
years ahead of the curve, maybe five years ahead of
the curve. And think about how how far ahead of
(27:06):
the curve five years is now exactly exactly, and think
about how possible it is to have an unaccounted satellite.
You know. One of the things that really tripped us
out was when we found out that um, it is
possible to track secret satellites and the group of people
(27:31):
who were doing these as hobbyists had been discovered by
various governments, and those various governments had altered the paths
of the satellites. That's amazing. That's not even a conspiracy theory.
That is a conspiracy story. That is factual. Yeah, and
it's interesting that all it takes is a few interested
(27:54):
people to just do a little bit of observation and
the entire program had to shift. Now, this leads us
to something that we want to ask you guys out
here listening. Do you think that it is Do you
think that it's plausible that there would be some sort
(28:14):
of weapon like Matt and I have described that would
be capable of shooting out an I, C B M
from space? Um. You know, given that there are other
similar programs to the Star Wars initiative that actually have
some degree of success, like the Iron Dome UM, which
protects from rockets in the Middle East? Right, Uh there,
(28:37):
and that's all technology that's shot from the ground, right,
But but it uses satellites to track things, right, and
not very well to be honest. So could there be
something like that? What are the space weapon conspiracies that
you believe are true? That's what we want to hear
about it because we know there are a lot of
(28:57):
countries sticking their fingers up there into the inky darkness
of space, right and uh, what are they fiddling with? Right? So, Matt,
I can't think of a better way for us to
go out than the future. Yes, the future, Uh, this
is we're not trying to see the future in anywhere.
(29:18):
We're just going to talk about the path that we're
currently on. Yeah, the trends um, So the biggest thing
is that it's getting not easier per se, but it's
getting a little bit cheaper with some of the new
ways that we can get up into space. Um. With
the especially with the entrepreneurs that are pursuing this sure,
(29:39):
Richard Branson for example. UM. And there are privately funded
initiatives to even take people to Mars, which we'll see
if that ever materializes. But we do know that private
individuals and corporations. Uh, may well be the torch bearers
for the next space race. We also know that the
(30:01):
space race is picking up. China, of course, landed on
the Moon successfully with the uh I can't remember how
to pronounce it Chung gay three and rover called the
jade rabbit. Yeah, that's this is one of the more
fascinating things that you can do on the internet now
is just search search about that rover and you can
(30:23):
see pictures, brand new higher resolution photos of the Moon. Now,
it's fascinating taking selfies and it is uh. And then
India just created their first cryogenic engine, which originally was
technology relegated to a few Western powers. Um. But now
(30:45):
India has been able to make it domestically. And we
can't over emphasize the importance of something like this. These
these kind of breakthroughs make it quite possible that the
first person to ever speak on Mars, or the next
person to go to the Moon won't be speaking English,
(31:07):
oh gosh. Or maybe they will speak English, it will
just be their third or fourth language, right yeah, uh,
and may not be recognizable um to people who speak
the old fashioned English. Right um. And we're gonna leave
on an interesting note, we're just gonna say this is interesting.
So remember we said we would go back to Article
(31:28):
two of the Outer Space Treaty where they said that
no one can own the moon. Well, it turns out
there's some latitude, there's some wiggle room there, and to
fix that, there was another treaty just for the moon.
And this would be a binding, effective treaty that would
have guaranteed that not just the moon, but all celestial
bodies fall under international jurisdiction. So not just um, the
(31:54):
idea that no one nation can claim the own the moon,
but that they all everybody owns someone, right, And so
it's an interesting, interesting difference. Um. And it was enough
of a difference that no country that can go into
space signed it. No one said that's crazy to me.
(32:15):
It ties into UM, I think it ties into how
much disproportionate power some countries have cough cough United States,
cough in the United Nations, Um, Western countries have a
lot of a disproportionate poll and a lot of this stuff.
I mean, you could say it's not disproportionate given the
(32:35):
you know, percentages of funding and stuff. Um, But geopolitically,
a lot of countries said no, way, am I going
to let the U N own the Moon? Well? Yeah,
and and let's not forget the dish disproportionate amount of
money that exists in the hands of so very few
right now. And just to think about, there are there
are a large number of people now that if they
(32:58):
wanted to, they have the means to get into the
private space sector, at least the monetary means to do so.
And uh, if things continue to get worse environmentally on
this planet, I wonder how many different small private space
companies will be born in the next five to fifty years.
(33:22):
You know what I think that is? That is a
fairly plausible thing that probably the incentive will be to
try to reclaim parts of Earth instead. Um, but I
could definitely see both of them going that way. And
I'll go ahead and say it. I don't know what
you think, Matt, and I don't know what you think, listeners.
What the future of space travel? I think is going
(33:44):
to be driven by the private industry. I mean, corporations
will become the new states. It's um, that's where we're heading.
Fairly inevitable, right, just like states became the new religions.
There's a cycle there, and perhaps we've said too much already.
Oh god, Um, all right, so that's it. What what
do you want people to mail us this week? Matt?
(34:05):
I want to see if any of you are amateur astronomers,
I want to see pictures that you've taken specifically about Jupiter,
because right now Jupiter is extremely close to the Earth
and I'd love to see some of those pictures. If
you're into that. Um, maybe if you've been tracking a satellite,
I'd love to know about that if you can tell us.
(34:26):
Oh yeah, if you're really you're allowed to tell us.
And also, one last thing, let's do a little let's
play a game, just a quick little thought experiment. So
let's say you're on a mission. You're an astronaut or
cosmonaut or whatever not you are. You've been sent on
a mission to go to a planet that's far, that's
in far outside of our Solar System, and we've confirmed
(34:49):
that it contains biological life of some sort. It's in class,
yes and M class. You're on this mission and you
actually have to go and get out and explore us
new planet. What kind of weapon do you want to
have with you? A good question, M. A positive attitude, Yeah,
(35:12):
nobody picked positive attitude. That's a terrible, terrible choice. UM.
All right, so let us know you can always follow
us on Facebook. We'd love it if you did. We
post a lot of stuff that's not crap. We don't
post crap on our Facebook. UM. We also will help
you stay up to date with new and fascinating stories
if you find us on Twitter, and those two places
(35:33):
are some of the best places to ask us for
a shout out on the air, which we just might
give you if the stars are in your favor. And
there's of course one way that you can always contact
us directly. That's our email address, which is conspiracy at
Discovery dot com. From more on this topic, another unexplained phenomena,
(36:00):
visit test tube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can
also get in touch on Twitter at the handle at
conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs two ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to. Now, Hey, everybody,
welcome back. My name is Matt and I am Ben
and today we've got a fascinating subject for you, something
(00:23):
that you've probably been thinking about since you were a kid,
even if you weren't maybe thinking about the particulars of
the weaponization of this thing. But space is something that, man,
it just captures the mind, the young mind especially and
uh perhaps the young mind that's within all of us.
Um when you think about the vastness that's out there
(00:44):
when we're just floating around on this tiny little planet,
And what are the implications of of bringing our human
warlike you know, uh, our ego and uh pushing it
out to those outer reaches? Like what is that? Yeah, right,
the in the vast inconceivable space of the universe. Are
(01:07):
we the dicks at the party? I mean, well, that's
it's a weird thing to think about, and it's just
part of our nature that we kind of have to
at some point look in the face. Now, let me
ask you by way of segue, Matt, are you a
Star Wars or Star Trek fan. If you had to
pick one, I would wholeheartedly throw myself into the Star
(01:30):
Trek Star Trek. Huh yeah, world there any particular reason
my dad and I. I guess my dad mostly he
got me into the Next Generation. UM, I was really
hardcore into that. Remember how everybody flipped out on the
first episode of the Next Generation when there was a
clean on as part of the crew. Actually, no, I
(01:50):
don't remember that. I don't remember that, but I did
read about that later. I'm dating myself. I've flipped out
as a kid. Um. Well, the the reason that I
asked this is that these are two of the most
well known science fiction UM. I guess the right word
would be universes, right, science fiction universes in human history
(02:15):
and um. Both of these are heavily centered on the
idea that we're going to talk about today in some respect,
which is war in space space space space space. Yeah,
we have some high class special effects here. UM. But
(02:36):
this this brings up some really important questions because you
and I have been exploring this in a bunch of
different ways for a very long time. We talked, most
recently about the intelligence gathering satellite programs, And please go
(02:58):
back and watch that episode of You Haven't Yet. That's
one of our it's one of my favorite latest episodes
that we've done, just talking about the importance of having
a wide view, the wider your view of the Earth
in the world, to be able to look at, say,
if there's a nuclear test going on somewhere, or you know,
really just to observe people are observed, countries and other
(03:24):
powers that you may see as an adversary. Yes, And
what we'll be doing in this podcast today, you and
I are going to talk about what makes outer space
valuable as a as a frontier right for nation states.
We're going to talk about what legal things might exist
or already exist to stop it from becoming a war zone. Um.
(03:48):
And then we'll also talk about some of the conspiracy
theories regarding militarization or weaponization of space. Uh, and how
much or how little truth is found within these ideas
and how much or how little we actually know about
the latest tech. Ah. Yes, that's a very good point
(04:09):
because a lot of this, as we'll find, is classified.
So first up, we know that the immediate area surrounding
Earth in space is just lousy with space junk and satellites.
We are the UM. We are the galactic equivalent of
that really trashy neighbor with a bunch of stuff in
(04:34):
their front yard and a bunch of non working machines
that nobody bothered to clean up. Old satellites just floating around. Yeah. Well,
and it's funny because the reason that all of that
is up there is because we've really been in this
race for such a long time to have that wide view,
the control, and the ability to see and sense things
(04:55):
from that level. Because having a satellite in orbit is
a huge, huge deal for a country. Yeah, that's one
of the big three things that space offers any nation
state capable of making the trip right, UM the and
it's number one on our list. Actually, uh satellites for
intelligence gathering, the ability to see in something close to
(05:19):
real time what what your opponents, your rivals are doing,
presents a tremendous advantage and in fact, UM may have
saved us from war a couple of times. I know
it looks like it sounds as though this might UM
drive us into a war, but we do know that
the satellite info during the Cold War that Lyndon Johnson
(05:42):
received made him realize that the Soviet Union was not
building near as many bombs as we thought, and he
famously said, we're building stuff we don't need to build,
which must have been a huge, you know, um, a
huge turnoff for some some of our friends in the
defense industry at well. And another thing that it provides
is the ability to see and know in real time
(06:05):
what your troops are doing and to communicate from say, oh,
you know, halfway around the world too, and let your
other troops know or your other installation know exactly what's
going on at all times. Uh. The communication alone is
a huge deal for the military. And that just means
exactly what it describes. Some of the biggest innovations, some
(06:25):
of the most uh ambitious R and D programs in
the world right now are focused on improving communications. So
not so much building a better bomb as building a
better way to know where the bombs are yours and
the other game. And the reason that um, we see
this as such a priority is well, it's kind of
(06:49):
disturbing if you think about it, but you know, Matt,
for much of human history, empires have fallen and risen
based on this weird lack of communication, like the old
theory about UM. Now, I've never been able to figure
out if this is true, but you know people who
think that the Rothchild family runs the world, and it
(07:11):
is true that no one really can calculate how much
money the Rothchild family is an aggregate has It's his
story for another day. Yes, they don't let me digress.
But that old story about UM about how the Rothchild
family was able to figure out what was actually happening
UM during Napoleonic Uh. I can't remember the exact battle,
(07:36):
but apparently was able to get information before the other
folks and play the market with it, and that became
a huge financial windfall. That sort of stuff is, you know,
not necessarily anomalous. Traders have been making money off that
for centuries, and now this is sort of closing the gap.
(07:57):
And that's not even the last thing. We know what
the last thing is on our list of three reasons. Well, yeah,
it's being able to intercept the communications of those other
countries with your technology that you have up in space
and which leads us. I mean, you could just put
it right into the n s A. You could. We
could talk about so many things here, we could branch off. Wow,
(08:19):
this is a. This is a great podcast that we
can probably in the future say, hey, go back and
listen to our Militarization of Space podcast, because we're gonna
be talking about a branch of that. For instance, as
we're recording this, this is the very beginning of two
thousand fourteen, I forgot to say Happy New Year. Oh yeah,
Happy New Year everyone. Yeah, Happy New Year everybody as
(08:41):
we're recording. They still probably hear it later. Um. But
one of the big pieces of news that hit recently
as we were coming into the studio is that France
and I believe the United Arab Emirates may have just
had their intelligent satellite deal scuttled. France was selling a
belief to intelligence out lights to the u a E.
(09:02):
And then with the NASA or n s A revelations
excuse me, uh, come to find out that the U
a E has a pretty i'm gonna say a pretty
fair suspicion that some of the technology in these satellites
may have a built in US government run back door.
(09:22):
So they don't want this to happen because if they
pay the exorbitant amount of money to buy these satellites
have them up in space, then what's just constantly sending
information back to the US. And it doesn't really make
what they're doing that that important, I guess right. And
it's not to say that the U A E or
(09:43):
the U S are necessarily antagonistic toward each other something no, no, no.
And it's not to say that you A has any
nefarious means by sending the satellites up. It's just that
kind of that strategic advantage that the U S would
have over whatever they're doing. It's unsettling at best. So
(10:03):
another question is if this stuff has been going on
for so long, which it has, then what if any
laws exist or govern the way Earth handles space. Well,
there's one very important document with a super sexy name.
Oh yeah, Well it does have one sexy name, which
is the Outer Space Treaty. That's yeah, it does. But
(10:25):
if you read the entire thing, the formal title, the
Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States and the
Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and
other celestial bodies. Oh wow, be still my beating heart.
But sexy or non sexy name aside, this is a
very important treaty. It's one of the only kind of
(10:49):
its sort in in human history, of course, because it's
the first time we managed to get the space so
often that we had to sit down and you know,
have a town hall meeting about it, um it. And
it does some really important things. Now, this was brought
into law in nineteen sixty seven, right, and it brings
a lot of the heavy hitters in the space game
(11:11):
to the table. And at this point in time, we're
talking about the Soviet Union, the US, the United Kingdom
and some others. And one of the things that it
does that's hugely important is that it says no one
can just own space. You know, it's not like a
territorial water claim where which we still haven't figured out
(11:35):
in much of the world today. You know, China and
Japan and a couple of other countries are in the
Philippines are fighting over who owns how much of the
water around their countries. Um But this treaty makes space
a little bit like the South Pole, like no one
can own Antarctica. You can build research stations there, yeah, exactly.
(11:56):
And one of the most important things that it said
was that you can send something up into space because
nobody owns it, just like with the research station and
an ARCA. But and you own that thing that you
sent up. Whatever it is, that satellite, it's yours, it's
your country's. UM. But you can't there are a couple
(12:17):
of things you can't do with it. You can't put
any weapons of mass destruction up there. It's like, no nukes. Yeah, no,
absolutely no nukes, or of some other kind of crazy
space bacterial I don't know attack. You can't put that
sort of h. James Bond esque laser beam, yes, yes, Um,
(12:37):
well see I don't know about a laser beam. I
really want to get down into some of the minutia
about that. Now they classify what is a conventional one, right,
we'll get to that part. So, so, no nukes. This
was a huge part of the agreement because at this time,
if we remember, UM, the idea of nuclear war was
at the forefront of most people's minds. Um. This also
(13:00):
limits the use of the Moon. It's supposed to make
the Moon kind of a new Antarctica. Only peaceful purposes,
and you have to be used for the betterment of
the entire Earth. If you put a station on the Moon,
you can put a station up there, just can't be
militarized in any way, right, can't be a military base,
can't test your Moon weapons, and you also can't conduct
(13:22):
your military moon maneuvers. Um. That's that's the idea. But
there's something really important and we just mentioned, which is
that the treaty does not prohibit bringing conventional weapons into orbit.
And that that's why you and I were a little
bit um, a little bit hesitant to say that a
laser beam had no place in space, because what defines
(13:46):
a conventional weapon. We'll get to that in just a second.
There's another very important part of this treaty, which said
that no one can claim severenity over the Moon by
means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
Whatever the hell that means. I don't know if it's
like putting the Moon on your currency, or so putting
(14:08):
a giant logo on the moon somewhere, maybe dropping a
flag on there. Yeah, but we're gonna return for this um,
this idea because it's important, as we'll find out later.
We talked about the future of this, but one thing's
for sure. When it comes to the laws, one thing
is unambiguously clear. Countries are supposed to own the satellites
(14:29):
they launch. With all that said, let's talk. Let's talk
some tech, right, Yes, Jonathan Strickland would love this part.
Now we mentioned the intelligence and Reconnaissance satellites, right, Yes,
the l r O. The l R O. So the
l RO are essentially film cameras that are set up
in space that are set to take a certain amount
(14:52):
of film that's on the satellite and then launch that
sucker back down so they can be recovered by someone
on Earth. Wait, whoa whoa film film, straight up film man,
exposing it to light and old school wow. So before
digital cameras, we had satellites in the air, in this
in the space air taking taking photos um and dropping
(15:15):
that down to go to some sort of top secret
version of Kodak Eastman. Oh yeah and there. I don't know,
it's it's fascinating to me just the idea that someone
had that idea and was able to get exposure correct
and and get in focus images of any kind. That's
I mean, that was a task man. Yeah. And as
we found when we were looking at at these satellite programs,
(15:39):
they had a huge failure rate, and the problem was
once you shoot it up there, it's such a gamble.
It's not like you can take it back down and
fix it because we didn't have the technology to get
a spaceship there, or at least we didn't have the
publicly known technology on. So these are satellites like the
Velis satellite program. Uh, there's also key Hole or the
Cage series and Grown. And the last thing, the craziest
(16:02):
thing to me is once it runs out of film,
it's just gonna float around and not really do much
of anything unless you can get back up there and
spend the huge amount of money that it would take
to get back there and reload it with film, not
to mention at the time that would have been extremely difficult.
Now there's another and perhaps the most mysterious thing that
we've included under um under tech, but we don't know
(16:27):
too much about it right now. Yeah, we might have
to come back to this and again maybe in ten
years we'll do a follow up to this once we
find out what the heck it actually was, if they
ever declassify any Yes, that's the X thirty seven class
of unmanned space shuttles essentially. Yeah, it's an unmanned reusable spacecraft.
(16:49):
It's currently on its third mission and it's been up
in space for as long as what twelve months before? Yeah? Yeah,
just flying around and no one will say anything about
what it's officially doing. Uh super classified ben Yeah. The
the pr statement from the I think it's the Air
Force on the Lockheed X thirty seven was something along
(17:12):
the lines of, well, this third mission is going to
take lessons learned from the second mission and apply them
to real life applications. Were excited. That was, man, Yeah,
I feel sorry for you whoever had to write that one.
So it's up there, it's unmanned. We don't know what
it's doing with no idea. Um we know that given
(17:32):
the capabilities of shuttles right that it has, it has
some maneuverability that a satellite would not have. Yeah exactly,
But to what end? Yeah? To what end? Indeed? And
is there someone controlling? And this is I really want
to just know more about the technology, even even well,
(17:53):
I'm more fascinated by what the heck it's classified mission is,
but I want to know how it's controlled. Is it
really autonomous? Um? Or is somebody controlling it the way
they would control a predator aircraft a drone? Yeah? And
if so, what's the lag. Yeah, gosh, man, I just
want to know. It's fascinating. So, um, we will probably
have to come back to the X thirty seven at
(18:15):
some other point in time. But there are other conventional
weapons that have been used in space that we included
under technology. Right, Yeah, let's talk about the most simple one. Uh,
straight up handgun. Just a good old fashioned nine millimeter.
I don't even know if it was a nine millimeter
(18:35):
or not all I just know it was a handgun
and it was given to astronauts. But wait, says everybody
who knows about physics and space and the lack of gravity. Uh,
wouldn't a handgun be a cartoonishly stupid thing to have
in space? Well? Look, man, you don't know what you're
gonna find on the Moon, you know, I mean, there
(18:56):
could be some crazy stuff going on up there. Or
if you're a cosmonaut, uh, when you land wherever the
heck you land, if you make it. Um, it's sure
would suck to go to space and to return from
space and to be eaten by a tiger or a bear. Yeah,
a polar BEARA just goes hey, buddy, welcome back. That's
(19:17):
that would be a terrible welcoming party for a nut orbit. Yeah,
the uh so it is true that cosmonauts did have
conventional handguns, but these were not for space use. These
were not four games of Russian Roulette. These were not,
uh for moments when the s hits the f and
things get super real on a space station. Or maybe
(19:40):
you know, I mean, maybe if you're up there and
one guy goes a little nuts and decides he's gonna
erect the entire thing because it's it's a tough mental
state to be in claustrophobic. So I think maybe maybe
there was some some scientists who said, maybe we should
have a plan in place just in case one person
goes eight nuts. There's no way you could shoot a
(20:01):
gun inside have a habitat. Yeah, you're right, You're absolutely right.
I mean, I guess you could go wild with it
and take everybody. I wonder if there wasn't a hunting
knife where some kind of knife involved as well. I
haven't done any research, we don't know. I'm sure there's
something like a survival kid included. Um. Sorry, I didn't
mean to go and don't apologize me. It's a good question.
(20:23):
Maybe one of our listeners, maybe you can write in
and let us know about your time as a cosmonaut
if you are allowed to. UM. Another thing though, that
this is also a Russian thing, mispronouncing this map. But
the Salute three had a cannon on it, a twenty
three millimeter cannon, and it shot satellites. Apparently that's still classified.
(20:48):
And speaking of shooting satellites, one of the other big
technologies we have to talk about is UH satellite killing.
So a weird thing happened in two thousand seven. China
shot down one of their obsolete satellites and they said
we did this as a environmental thing or testing thing,
(21:08):
which didn't really make sense because satellites contained some toxic elements. Um.
It was largely seen as a thinly veiled demonstration of
UM military prowess. And the United States, of course, is
not by any means and innocent in the woods here,
because the US also shot down satellites. Right yeah, back
(21:31):
in the eighties, they used the brand new F fifteen
to UH to shoot down one because it could it
could travel at heights that were insane at the time.
Um that nobody thought an airplane and aircraft like that
would be able to fly. And again just kind of Uh, well,
what's up? Yeah, I could do this. Yeah. Um. Then
they did it again in two thousand and eight, and
(21:53):
many people thought that was kind of an answer to
the two thousand seven China incident. I'm one of the people,
by the way. Well yeah, I mean if you if
you watch the news and you look at things like that,
you notice that it's posturing. There's a ton of posturing
that happens. Posturing is a perfect word. There's a lot
of bro do you even space and going on? Um. Alright,
(22:14):
so this brings us wait, wait, sorry, Ben, I want
to go back just to briefly talk about the Space
Wars program. Where the so called space Wars program, because
that kind of gives us a little background about UM,
especially the satellite killer technology that we put up there.
What is the space Wars program, Well, it's it's the
Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, which was put together will essentially
(22:39):
by a speech that Ronald Reagan gave in March on
March twenty three, nine three, the year in which I
was born, Ben, and he basically was trying to find
a way to get out of the mutual assured destruction
kind of the pattern that we were in UM and
(22:59):
because that was largely based on offense, the idea that
we're gonna have so many nukes. If you knuc us May,
we're gonna crap out of you, and and the Soviet
Union in the United States were both kind of again
posturing in this manner. He thought, well, what if there's
a way, And probably a lot of his advisers thought,
let's just put that there. Uh, what if we could
(23:20):
just shoot down any intercontinental ballistic missile that came our way? Okay,
so what if we could just build some sort of
net for lack of a better word, that could knock
out any I C B M launch toward us. Yeah,
And it made a lot of people angry. Obviously, the
Soviet Union was a little upset about it, um, you know,
(23:43):
and it got a ton of criticism as well because
of the amount of tech and the high tech that
we would need to be able to do something like this,
And it was basically a money pit for a long time. UM.
And it changed names a couple of times. I know,
George H. W. George H. W. Bush changed the name,
(24:05):
and then Bill Clinton again changed the name, and and
really they changed the focus a bunch of different times.
But under this program there were some crazy weaponry that
was at least fought up to go up into space.
What there were there were X ray lasers, there were
chemical lasers again attached the idea would you would be
(24:25):
you would attach it to some kind of satellite that
would then aim, be able to track and aim at
a missile that's flying through the air. Uh. You also
had again like regular projectiles, lead projectiles that would be shot,
targeted and shot just rods. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also
um using rail railgun technology extremely fast, basically using magnets
(24:53):
to shoot shoot projectiles so fast that they would be
able to catch up with an intercontinental ballistic missile. It's
just fascinating stuff to me. Yeah, and it sounds incredibly
difficult to do well. Yeah, And and so much money,
billions of dollars went into trying to come up with
a good way, a good system, and basically it got scrapped,
(25:14):
at least most of it got scrapped. Okay, if I
could interject here, this is the perfect segue, NOL, could
you please toss in a scary music queue, perfect matt
billions of dollars, yea few public results, how much of
(25:37):
it was corruption and waste, certainly a bit. How much
of it could have been building something else, something classified. See,
that's the scary thing when we look at the conspiracy
theories surrounding weapons in space, there's very little that people
actually know or that has occurred. We we know some
(26:01):
of the stuff, and we know a lot of it
way later than it actually happened. If somebody had found
out about the Keyhole satellites when they were up there,
it would have blown their frigging minds. It still blows
my mind. So I'm going to rate the conspiracy theories
about space. I'm going to rate them as potentially plausible
(26:26):
with a big, big, big, big caveat. I didn't even
say possible as a plausible, which is a big leap, right. Um.
That big caveat is simply that not a lot of
information exists. And while it's while it's possible that there's
(26:46):
technology generations and generations further ahead than we actually know,
what is more plausible is that there's stuff kind of
the head of the curve. You know, maybe not thirty
years ahead of the curve, maybe five years ahead of
the curve. And think about how how far ahead of
(27:06):
the curve five years is now exactly exactly, and think
about how possible it is to have an unaccounted satellite.
You know. One of the things that really tripped us
out was when we found out that um, it is
possible to track secret satellites and the group of people
(27:31):
who were doing these as hobbyists had been discovered by
various governments, and those various governments had altered the paths
of the satellites. That's amazing. That's not even a conspiracy theory.
That is a conspiracy story. That is factual. Yeah, and
it's interesting that all it takes is a few interested
(27:54):
people to just do a little bit of observation and
the entire program had to shift. Now, this leads us
to something that we want to ask you guys out
here listening. Do you think that it is Do you
think that it's plausible that there would be some sort
(28:14):
of weapon like Matt and I have described that would
be capable of shooting out an I, C B M
from space? Um. You know, given that there are other
similar programs to the Star Wars initiative that actually have
some degree of success, like the Iron Dome UM, which
protects from rockets in the Middle East? Right, Uh there,
(28:37):
and that's all technology that's shot from the ground, right,
But but it uses satellites to track things, right, and
not very well to be honest. So could there be
something like that? What are the space weapon conspiracies that
you believe are true? That's what we want to hear
about it because we know there are a lot of
(28:57):
countries sticking their fingers up there into the inky darkness
of space, right and uh, what are they fiddling with? Right? So, Matt,
I can't think of a better way for us to
go out than the future. Yes, the future, Uh, this
is we're not trying to see the future in anywhere.
(29:18):
We're just going to talk about the path that we're
currently on. Yeah, the trends um, So the biggest thing
is that it's getting not easier per se, but it's
getting a little bit cheaper with some of the new
ways that we can get up into space. Um. With
the especially with the entrepreneurs that are pursuing this sure,
(29:39):
Richard Branson for example. UM. And there are privately funded
initiatives to even take people to Mars, which we'll see
if that ever materializes. But we do know that private
individuals and corporations. Uh, may well be the torch bearers
for the next space race. We also know that the
(30:01):
space race is picking up. China, of course, landed on
the Moon successfully with the uh I can't remember how
to pronounce it Chung gay three and rover called the
jade rabbit. Yeah, that's this is one of the more
fascinating things that you can do on the internet now
is just search search about that rover and you can
(30:23):
see pictures, brand new higher resolution photos of the Moon. Now,
it's fascinating taking selfies and it is uh. And then
India just created their first cryogenic engine, which originally was
technology relegated to a few Western powers. Um. But now
(30:45):
India has been able to make it domestically. And we
can't over emphasize the importance of something like this. These
these kind of breakthroughs make it quite possible that the
first person to ever speak on Mars, or the next
person to go to the Moon won't be speaking English,
(31:07):
oh gosh. Or maybe they will speak English, it will
just be their third or fourth language, right yeah, uh,
and may not be recognizable um to people who speak
the old fashioned English. Right um. And we're gonna leave
on an interesting note, we're just gonna say this is interesting.
So remember we said we would go back to Article
(31:28):
two of the Outer Space Treaty where they said that
no one can own the moon. Well, it turns out
there's some latitude, there's some wiggle room there, and to
fix that, there was another treaty just for the moon.
And this would be a binding, effective treaty that would
have guaranteed that not just the moon, but all celestial
bodies fall under international jurisdiction. So not just um, the
(31:54):
idea that no one nation can claim the own the moon,
but that they all everybody owns someone, right, And so
it's an interesting, interesting difference. Um. And it was enough
of a difference that no country that can go into
space signed it. No one said that's crazy to me.
(32:15):
It ties into UM, I think it ties into how
much disproportionate power some countries have cough cough United States,
cough in the United Nations, Um, Western countries have a
lot of a disproportionate poll and a lot of this stuff.
I mean, you could say it's not disproportionate given the
(32:35):
you know, percentages of funding and stuff. Um, But geopolitically,
a lot of countries said no, way, am I going
to let the U N own the Moon? Well? Yeah,
and and let's not forget the dish disproportionate amount of
money that exists in the hands of so very few
right now. And just to think about, there are there
are a large number of people now that if they
(32:58):
wanted to, they have the means to get into the
private space sector, at least the monetary means to do so.
And uh, if things continue to get worse environmentally on
this planet, I wonder how many different small private space
companies will be born in the next five to fifty years.
(33:22):
You know what I think that is? That is a
fairly plausible thing that probably the incentive will be to
try to reclaim parts of Earth instead. Um, but I
could definitely see both of them going that way. And
I'll go ahead and say it. I don't know what
you think, Matt, and I don't know what you think, listeners.
What the future of space travel? I think is going
(33:44):
to be driven by the private industry. I mean, corporations
will become the new states. It's um, that's where we're heading.
Fairly inevitable, right, just like states became the new religions.
There's a cycle there, and perhaps we've said too much already.
Oh god, Um, all right, so that's it. What what
do you want people to mail us this week? Matt?
(34:05):
I want to see if any of you are amateur astronomers,
I want to see pictures that you've taken specifically about Jupiter,
because right now Jupiter is extremely close to the Earth
and I'd love to see some of those pictures. If
you're into that. Um, maybe if you've been tracking a satellite,
I'd love to know about that if you can tell us.
(34:26):
Oh yeah, if you're really you're allowed to tell us.
And also, one last thing, let's do a little let's
play a game, just a quick little thought experiment. So
let's say you're on a mission. You're an astronaut or
cosmonaut or whatever not you are. You've been sent on
a mission to go to a planet that's far, that's
in far outside of our Solar System, and we've confirmed
(34:49):
that it contains biological life of some sort. It's in class,
yes and M class. You're on this mission and you
actually have to go and get out and explore us
new planet. What kind of weapon do you want to
have with you? A good question, M. A positive attitude, Yeah,
(35:12):
nobody picked positive attitude. That's a terrible, terrible choice. UM.
All right, so let us know you can always follow
us on Facebook. We'd love it if you did. We
post a lot of stuff that's not crap. We don't
post crap on our Facebook. UM. We also will help
you stay up to date with new and fascinating stories
if you find us on Twitter, and those two places
(35:33):
are some of the best places to ask us for
a shout out on the air, which we just might
give you if the stars are in your favor. And
there's of course one way that you can always contact
us directly. That's our email address, which is conspiracy at
Discovery dot com. From more on this topic, another unexplained phenomena,
(36:00):
visit test tube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can
also get in touch on Twitter at the handle at
conspiracy stuff.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.