January 6, 2025 • 14 mins
George Noory and Historian Rober Zimmerman discuss the possibility of traveling back to the moon, NASA and Space X.
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 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.
Back with space historian Robert Zimmerman. His website is behind
the Black dot com linked up at Coast tocoastam dot com. Robert,
what's the update with the Artemis program to get us
back to the Moon?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I would strongly expect that the NASA components of that,
that's the SOLS rocket and the Orion capsule are going
to be canceled sometime in the next year. The NASA
spend like sixty billion dollars on these thing about it
and making it like a half a dozen capsules, and
(00:44):
the rockeymond isn't paid something like between twenty five and
thirty billion dollars to make a half another capsules. You yeah, right,
I mean, when you think about it in those terms,
it's absurd. And the same thing with the SLS rocket.
The rocket each launch, depending on who you ask, they
estimate the cost of each launch is somewhere between one
(01:07):
and four billion dollars each launch. And the cumbersome design
of the SOLS rocket means you can do launches more
than at best, and it's really never going to be
this at best once a year, more likely once every
two or three years. You want to have a space
program a program once again, you can't do it with
(01:29):
that kind of turnout. It's just not conceivable. It it's
just not fast enough. Right now, SpaceX is developing Starship
Super Heavy, which is more capable than SLS, is going
to cost a tenth of the money, I mean, maybe
more than that. Like we're talking about only a few
million dollars a launch, three usable million, not billion. And
(01:52):
it's designed to be manned. It is going to be
used as the lunar lander when the NASA eventually gets
to the and so this is definitely the future. And
I really do expect that the problems in the SLS
Orion program in Artomius are significant and were worrisome. NASA
(02:14):
is planning to fly the next mission of Artemis on
SLS using an Orion capsule with a crew on board,
and they want to fly it around the Moon and
back to Earth. However, there are serious questions about the
heat shield that Orion uses on return to Earth. In
(02:35):
the first unmanned flight in twenty two, Ryan came back.
He came back seriously damaged it. Boy had been a
crew on board, they would not have been earth But
the damage was serious with one of my large chunk
sections of that heat shield came off. Never seen damage
like that before, and there are a lot of reasons why,
(02:57):
but NASA has made the decision that the first manned
mission with Orion, they're going to use the same heat shield.
They're not going to introduce the changes until the next mission.
On top of that, the Orion capsule that flew that
unmanned mission did not have an environmental system. In other words,
there were no people on boards, they didn't bother and
stall one. The first time Orion's environmental habitable system to
(03:21):
keep people alive is going to be used is on
the very first time people fly in Orion. These are
the kind of things that FAA does not allow SpaceX
to do, and for good reason, and SpaceX agrees you
should know what you're doing. And so because of the
various issues with the heat shield and with the environmental
system and issues with SLS, NASA decided about a month
(03:43):
ago to delay that first unmanned that first manned mission
around the Moon, delay it from the end of this
this year to the spring of twenty six, about a
three to four months away. I already said on my
website the minute they made that announcement that twenty six
launch date is not realistic. It's not going to happen,
because it's traditionally this program is they were supposed to
(04:08):
be launching by twenty fifteen, establishing a base on the
Moon in twenty fifteen. They didn't get their first launch
up until twenty two, seven years later, and that's now
two years later, three years later, and they still haven't
done a second launch. No man mission, it's for sure,
and so I really am expecting that Jack eisaman In,
Jared Isisamgan who's now in going to be in charge
(04:30):
of NASA. He's a private sector guy, a billionaire. He's
talked about how he just doesn't like how NASA operates
and when it comes to building things. I really think
he's going to take a step in and make some force,
some major changes in the entire program. This does not
mean Artomist will go away, or our goal to go
to the Moon will go away, but it will change.
(04:53):
I have recommended in essays on my website that NASA
stop trying to be China to the Moon. We've already
gotten there. We don't have to prove anything. But what
we should do is be focused on doing whatever we
can to build this aerospace industry in space. Get it
(05:14):
as robust as possible, because if you do, and this
is where the space stations come in. If you do,
then you have the capabilities to do anything you want
in the Solar System much more effectively, much more quickly.
It might start a little slower, but before you're done,
you'll be wiping the floor with the Chinese, the British,
(05:35):
everybody else. So that's what I have suggested they do,
and I think we'll do some variation there. It's going
to be a political decision because canceling sos a lot
of money goes to professional districts. I say he won't
have a problem because because these private rocket companies, they're
sending money to many districts also, and if you get
(05:56):
them going, you kind of won't have anything to play about.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Companies like SpaceX get their brain power. Did they rob
it from NASA?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
No.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Actually, I would say that almost nobody at SpaceX has
come from NASA because NASA teaches the wrong lessons. It
teaches process has to be followed. It teaches you don't
do you don't build, fly fail, build again, fly fail,
build again. You know, actually fly rockets and see how
(06:28):
they work and fix it. NASA follows the philosophy whereby
you have to design it so well that it might
take a decade to design it. But when you fly,
you don't need many test missions. You've done it all
on the computer. Not only do I think that approach
is bad because you really never computer can never cover
you in every aspect. It's much slower and much more expensive.
(06:51):
And that way of working is not something that SpaceX
wants or any of these private companies. What they instead
want is young people coming out of colleges who have
had who in college were given the chance to play
with engineering, to cut metal, to build things, build satellites,
small satellites, build engines, a variety of things, just to
(07:12):
learn how that's done and then get into the roll
up in their shoulders and actually build things for these companies.
Now a NASA has provided a thing relatively few people
to these companies, and I think that's generally been a
good thing.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
But with all the experience that the NASA engineers had
over the years, getting to the moon and vice versa
and everything else. We didn't tap into that.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
He's probably George. Let's put some time on this. The
engineers that got us to the moon and landed in
the nineteen sixties, they're all gone. They're all retired, passed on.
Many of them were in private companies like Grummin, which
is no longer in business and you know, was absorbed
by other companies. The companies that exist now that used
(07:55):
to be the big space companies that did all that
stuff are companies like boe I don't need to talk
at great length about the problem that Boeing has right now.
They have been unable to get anything accomplished with Starline
and their manned capsule. It's just disgraceful the kind of
mistakes they have made. And so I think that that
(08:19):
kind of talent isn't there. One of the things SpaceX
has done and all these startups is it's tapped into
the young generation. There's a story, for example what I covered.
SpaceX wanted to get some new software people who's developing
reusability and landing. They went to a game conference, a
video game conference where there's a lot of software people
(08:40):
and it asked anyone who is working on space. We've
got some software needs to be written, and you guys
can come at this with a different approach and you
know how to write software. And they got some people
from that. Those they look in different places, and of
course everyone would like to work in space, and you
know SpaceX is the top, so they get the people.
No NASA. And when I give talks to colleges, I
(09:03):
can repeatedly tell them why of the students there don't
get a job at NASA, You're going to be in
a dead end. Get jobs in these private companies. You'll
cut metal, you'll build things, you'll fly things, you'll have
a lot more fun, and you'll have a career in space.
Think about sols once again. At Orion, they've been building
that damn rocket and capsule now for twenty years and
(09:26):
it's ugly flown. If you're an engineer, you spent your
whole career and you're now retiring in university. So the
thing take off, the people on board, that's not satisfactory.
So yeah, I NASA what we have this. Unfortunately, there's
still a cultural attitude that NASA is the top, the one,
the gray, they're the ones to talk to. They are not.
(09:47):
And the last thing that should be happening is depending
on NASA to engineer anything, build anything, or design anything.
Where NASA should be doing, which is now doing mostly
is if it wants to get a lure land to
science instruments on the Moon, it hires a private company
to do it, like Blue Ghosts from Fireflight. It's gonna
fly and we got two. They put the NASA instruments
(10:07):
on it. NASA gets to do the research. But this
is a private company that has its Luna land and
it's making money on it because it it rented some
of the payload space to this Japanese private Luna landa
company it can so that they can fly as well.
And so we're gonna have two landers and they're privately
so they're privately owned. And so yeah, NASA is NASA
(10:30):
is not the agency it was in the nineteen sixties
and it hasn't been for probably five decades.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
What's going on with missions to Mars?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
All right? So we have two rovers on Mars right
now that are functioning, Curiosity and Perseverance. I cover them
on a regular basis because especially Curiosity, it is roaming
amid mountains and we've never had a rover really roving
about mid mountains on a mountain side. So the views
(11:00):
of spectacular and I always approached this from a first
point of view. I think my readers will prefer that
as well, you know, so I post pictures to try
to get a sense of that Curiosity's been there for
more than a more than a decade and it's still
functioning and working well. It's climbing mount shop in Gale
Crater and it's doing really good work, and it's once
(11:22):
again the views of spectacular the other over perseverance, it
has finally left the crater to zero that it landed within.
It landed in zero crater because there was this delta
that had flown in through a gap in the Creator's
rim that filled part of the crater floor, and it
was very intriguing to look at from orbite images. While
(11:44):
they spent the last two or three years since landing
exploring that delta and the rim of the crater. They've
now climbed the rim and they've climbed down onto the
other side and they're moving west into a region of
more that is known to have a great deal of
minerals of potential mining value and they're going to be
(12:09):
exploring that area at length. That the area west of
zero Crator is a very high potential mining region and
Pervance is going to explore that over the next few years.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
It's exciting, though, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Oh gosh? You know, when I look at pictures coming
back from Curiosity and I post them, I don't see
other websites doing this that cover space, and I'm surprised.
You know, on almost a weekly basis, I can post
a spectacular image showing the barren, alien environment and landscape
of Mars and from the positions that we've never had
(12:47):
spacecraft in before. You know, all the early rovers landed
in very flat, safe places, so the views were not
particularly interesting. Curiosity and Perseverance are in are in very
interesting terrain, producing very cool visuals. So I posted because yes,
it's exciting. It's it's science fiction but real, you know.
(13:09):
And I am surprised that I seem to be the
only one in the space business who does this on
a regular basis. But I do, and it's really fun
when I do it. It's it's like the last one
for Carrio. People go to my website and do a
search for curiosity. You'll see a lot of those pictures.
The last one was looking out on their future route
(13:29):
along the side of the mountain. That's contoying along the
side of the mountain right now, and in the distance
you could see, of course, the rim of the crater
twenty thirty miles away in the age and the floor
of the crater, and they're like two thousand feet up
from the floor right now, So up there they're climbing.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Are we going to continue to land on asteroids?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Robert, Well, there are no, there are no. Let mean
we phrase that we have right now one mission heading
towards the potentially dangerous asteroid Apolfice. That's the Osiris Rex
mission renamed Osias apex. It it went to Benu, it
got samples, it delivered defense of samples to Earth, and
(14:11):
then they repurposed it to go to to Apolfas now
is potentially dangerous. It will make a close fly by
the Earth in twenty nine. It's not expected to be
able to hit the Earth for at least two hundred
more years, if not many more years after that. Is so,
the dangerous is slim.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Listen to more Coast to Coast am every weeknight at
one am Eastern and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with you.
Back with space historian Robert Zimmerman. His website is behind
the Black dot com linked up at Coast tocoastam dot com. Robert,
what's the update with the Artemis program to get us
back to the Moon?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I would strongly expect that the NASA components of that,
that's the SOLS rocket and the Orion capsule are going
to be canceled sometime in the next year. The NASA
spend like sixty billion dollars on these thing about it
and making it like a half a dozen capsules, and
(00:44):
the rockeymond isn't paid something like between twenty five and
thirty billion dollars to make a half another capsules. You yeah, right,
I mean, when you think about it in those terms,
it's absurd. And the same thing with the SLS rocket.
The rocket each launch, depending on who you ask, they
estimate the cost of each launch is somewhere between one
(01:07):
and four billion dollars each launch. And the cumbersome design
of the SOLS rocket means you can do launches more
than at best, and it's really never going to be
this at best once a year, more likely once every
two or three years. You want to have a space
program a program once again, you can't do it with
(01:29):
that kind of turnout. It's just not conceivable. It it's
just not fast enough. Right now, SpaceX is developing Starship
Super Heavy, which is more capable than SLS, is going
to cost a tenth of the money, I mean, maybe
more than that. Like we're talking about only a few
million dollars a launch, three usable million, not billion. And
(01:52):
it's designed to be manned. It is going to be
used as the lunar lander when the NASA eventually gets
to the and so this is definitely the future. And
I really do expect that the problems in the SLS
Orion program in Artomius are significant and were worrisome. NASA
(02:14):
is planning to fly the next mission of Artemis on
SLS using an Orion capsule with a crew on board,
and they want to fly it around the Moon and
back to Earth. However, there are serious questions about the
heat shield that Orion uses on return to Earth. In
(02:35):
the first unmanned flight in twenty two, Ryan came back.
He came back seriously damaged it. Boy had been a
crew on board, they would not have been earth But
the damage was serious with one of my large chunk
sections of that heat shield came off. Never seen damage
like that before, and there are a lot of reasons why,
(02:57):
but NASA has made the decision that the first manned
mission with Orion, they're going to use the same heat shield.
They're not going to introduce the changes until the next mission.
On top of that, the Orion capsule that flew that
unmanned mission did not have an environmental system. In other words,
there were no people on boards, they didn't bother and
stall one. The first time Orion's environmental habitable system to
(03:21):
keep people alive is going to be used is on
the very first time people fly in Orion. These are
the kind of things that FAA does not allow SpaceX
to do, and for good reason, and SpaceX agrees you
should know what you're doing. And so because of the
various issues with the heat shield and with the environmental
system and issues with SLS, NASA decided about a month
(03:43):
ago to delay that first unmanned that first manned mission
around the Moon, delay it from the end of this
this year to the spring of twenty six, about a
three to four months away. I already said on my
website the minute they made that announcement that twenty six
launch date is not realistic. It's not going to happen,
because it's traditionally this program is they were supposed to
(04:08):
be launching by twenty fifteen, establishing a base on the
Moon in twenty fifteen. They didn't get their first launch
up until twenty two, seven years later, and that's now
two years later, three years later, and they still haven't
done a second launch. No man mission, it's for sure,
and so I really am expecting that Jack eisaman In,
Jared Isisamgan who's now in going to be in charge
(04:30):
of NASA. He's a private sector guy, a billionaire. He's
talked about how he just doesn't like how NASA operates
and when it comes to building things. I really think
he's going to take a step in and make some force,
some major changes in the entire program. This does not
mean Artomist will go away, or our goal to go
to the Moon will go away, but it will change.
(04:53):
I have recommended in essays on my website that NASA
stop trying to be China to the Moon. We've already
gotten there. We don't have to prove anything. But what
we should do is be focused on doing whatever we
can to build this aerospace industry in space. Get it
(05:14):
as robust as possible, because if you do, and this
is where the space stations come in. If you do,
then you have the capabilities to do anything you want
in the Solar System much more effectively, much more quickly.
It might start a little slower, but before you're done,
you'll be wiping the floor with the Chinese, the British,
(05:35):
everybody else. So that's what I have suggested they do,
and I think we'll do some variation there. It's going
to be a political decision because canceling sos a lot
of money goes to professional districts. I say he won't
have a problem because because these private rocket companies, they're
sending money to many districts also, and if you get
(05:56):
them going, you kind of won't have anything to play about.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Companies like SpaceX get their brain power. Did they rob
it from NASA?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
No.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Actually, I would say that almost nobody at SpaceX has
come from NASA because NASA teaches the wrong lessons. It
teaches process has to be followed. It teaches you don't
do you don't build, fly fail, build again, fly fail,
build again. You know, actually fly rockets and see how
(06:28):
they work and fix it. NASA follows the philosophy whereby
you have to design it so well that it might
take a decade to design it. But when you fly,
you don't need many test missions. You've done it all
on the computer. Not only do I think that approach
is bad because you really never computer can never cover
you in every aspect. It's much slower and much more expensive.
(06:51):
And that way of working is not something that SpaceX
wants or any of these private companies. What they instead
want is young people coming out of colleges who have
had who in college were given the chance to play
with engineering, to cut metal, to build things, build satellites,
small satellites, build engines, a variety of things, just to
(07:12):
learn how that's done and then get into the roll
up in their shoulders and actually build things for these companies.
Now a NASA has provided a thing relatively few people
to these companies, and I think that's generally been a
good thing.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
But with all the experience that the NASA engineers had
over the years, getting to the moon and vice versa
and everything else. We didn't tap into that.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
He's probably George. Let's put some time on this. The
engineers that got us to the moon and landed in
the nineteen sixties, they're all gone. They're all retired, passed on.
Many of them were in private companies like Grummin, which
is no longer in business and you know, was absorbed
by other companies. The companies that exist now that used
(07:55):
to be the big space companies that did all that
stuff are companies like boe I don't need to talk
at great length about the problem that Boeing has right now.
They have been unable to get anything accomplished with Starline
and their manned capsule. It's just disgraceful the kind of
mistakes they have made. And so I think that that
(08:19):
kind of talent isn't there. One of the things SpaceX
has done and all these startups is it's tapped into
the young generation. There's a story, for example what I covered.
SpaceX wanted to get some new software people who's developing
reusability and landing. They went to a game conference, a
video game conference where there's a lot of software people
(08:40):
and it asked anyone who is working on space. We've
got some software needs to be written, and you guys
can come at this with a different approach and you
know how to write software. And they got some people
from that. Those they look in different places, and of
course everyone would like to work in space, and you
know SpaceX is the top, so they get the people.
No NASA. And when I give talks to colleges, I
(09:03):
can repeatedly tell them why of the students there don't
get a job at NASA, You're going to be in
a dead end. Get jobs in these private companies. You'll
cut metal, you'll build things, you'll fly things, you'll have
a lot more fun, and you'll have a career in space.
Think about sols once again. At Orion, they've been building
that damn rocket and capsule now for twenty years and
(09:26):
it's ugly flown. If you're an engineer, you spent your
whole career and you're now retiring in university. So the
thing take off, the people on board, that's not satisfactory.
So yeah, I NASA what we have this. Unfortunately, there's
still a cultural attitude that NASA is the top, the one,
the gray, they're the ones to talk to. They are not.
(09:47):
And the last thing that should be happening is depending
on NASA to engineer anything, build anything, or design anything.
Where NASA should be doing, which is now doing mostly
is if it wants to get a lure land to
science instruments on the Moon, it hires a private company
to do it, like Blue Ghosts from Fireflight. It's gonna
fly and we got two. They put the NASA instruments
(10:07):
on it. NASA gets to do the research. But this
is a private company that has its Luna land and
it's making money on it because it it rented some
of the payload space to this Japanese private Luna landa
company it can so that they can fly as well.
And so we're gonna have two landers and they're privately
so they're privately owned. And so yeah, NASA is NASA
(10:30):
is not the agency it was in the nineteen sixties
and it hasn't been for probably five decades.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
What's going on with missions to Mars?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
All right? So we have two rovers on Mars right
now that are functioning, Curiosity and Perseverance. I cover them
on a regular basis because especially Curiosity, it is roaming
amid mountains and we've never had a rover really roving
about mid mountains on a mountain side. So the views
(11:00):
of spectacular and I always approached this from a first
point of view. I think my readers will prefer that
as well, you know, so I post pictures to try
to get a sense of that Curiosity's been there for
more than a more than a decade and it's still
functioning and working well. It's climbing mount shop in Gale
Crater and it's doing really good work, and it's once
(11:22):
again the views of spectacular the other over perseverance, it
has finally left the crater to zero that it landed within.
It landed in zero crater because there was this delta
that had flown in through a gap in the Creator's
rim that filled part of the crater floor, and it
was very intriguing to look at from orbite images. While
(11:44):
they spent the last two or three years since landing
exploring that delta and the rim of the crater. They've
now climbed the rim and they've climbed down onto the
other side and they're moving west into a region of
more that is known to have a great deal of
minerals of potential mining value and they're going to be
(12:09):
exploring that area at length. That the area west of
zero Crator is a very high potential mining region and
Pervance is going to explore that over the next few years.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
It's exciting, though, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Oh gosh? You know, when I look at pictures coming
back from Curiosity and I post them, I don't see
other websites doing this that cover space, and I'm surprised.
You know, on almost a weekly basis, I can post
a spectacular image showing the barren, alien environment and landscape
of Mars and from the positions that we've never had
(12:47):
spacecraft in before. You know, all the early rovers landed
in very flat, safe places, so the views were not
particularly interesting. Curiosity and Perseverance are in are in very
interesting terrain, producing very cool visuals. So I posted because yes,
it's exciting. It's it's science fiction but real, you know.
(13:09):
And I am surprised that I seem to be the
only one in the space business who does this on
a regular basis. But I do, and it's really fun
when I do it. It's it's like the last one
for Carrio. People go to my website and do a
search for curiosity. You'll see a lot of those pictures.
The last one was looking out on their future route
(13:29):
along the side of the mountain. That's contoying along the
side of the mountain right now, and in the distance
you could see, of course, the rim of the crater
twenty thirty miles away in the age and the floor
of the crater, and they're like two thousand feet up
from the floor right now, So up there they're climbing.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Are we going to continue to land on asteroids?
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Robert, Well, there are no, there are no. Let mean
we phrase that we have right now one mission heading
towards the potentially dangerous asteroid Apolfice. That's the Osiris Rex
mission renamed Osias apex. It it went to Benu, it
got samples, it delivered defense of samples to Earth, and
(14:11):
then they repurposed it to go to to Apolfas now
is potentially dangerous. It will make a close fly by
the Earth in twenty nine. It's not expected to be
able to hit the Earth for at least two hundred
more years, if not many more years after that. Is so,
the dangerous is slim.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Listen to more Coast to Coast am every weeknight at
one am Eastern and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
The Best of Coast to Coast AM News
Host
George Noory
Popular 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
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!