Lost Wanderer 9/7/25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time for this nation to take a clearly leading role
in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the
key to our future on Earth. M h on all

(00:21):
fair promram on Fia. Today is a day from morning
and remember Nancy and I are gained the cores, but
the tragedy of the shuttle challenge. The following program may

(00:44):
contain close language, adult teams.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
And bad attempts as human.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Listen, a discretion and avice.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
What is President Trump's goal?

Speaker 4 (01:07):
What is his vision?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
He wants to put an American flag on mark.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Within anguality days Here the ankle landed.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Good Sunday Evening. I am your host Jef also known
as a cosmic bard over on X and this is
the Lost Wonderer podcast for September seventh, twenty twenty five.
Welcome aboard the ACS Serenade. Now Tonight's top story, as

(01:53):
it usually starts as too many you know. Unfortunately, space
stories do not with a countdown, but with a MIDI room,
a microphone, a couple of flags, and probably a name
plate and a senator who most likely knows how to
work the camera. Now, Ted Cruz doesn't invite invent nicknames.

(02:14):
He sort of harvests them. He pulls the ripcord on
a phrase the spacecraft has used in years in private
and on message boards in public. The Senate launch System.
Now it lands with a resounding boom, because it's true
enough to sting. That's l less. A machine of heat

(02:35):
and thrust in math also happens to be a machine
of districts and payrolls and appropriation writers. A cathedral built
not just by engineers but by zip codes. Now that's
the contradiction at the heart of American spaceflight. We wrap
stainless steel in poetry, then wrap that poetry often and

(03:00):
an omnibus. We tell school kids about Armstrong and Aldron,
then hand thecurement paper to people who've never washed the
soot out of a flame trench. And still, somehow, somehow,
engines light and people end up flying. It's both maddening

(03:21):
and beautiful the way this country does the impossible things
with went one hand while patting itself on the back
with the other. The buried under hearing room, theatrics and
sound bites, there's a pulse. It feels a little bit
like the future. NASA isn't just arguing line items, it's

(03:43):
sketching infrastructure. We have a plan to put a fish
and power plant on the moon. No, not just an
artist concept, not a press conference hologram, but one hundred
kilowatts of steady electricity etched into the regolith. Picture the
lunar night, fourteen earth days of black glass and cold

(04:06):
solar arrays. Well, they tend to sleep in those conditions.
Batteries will yawn and probably shiver a little. They habitat
homes only if it has a heart, and on the
Moon that heart can't skip a beat for what is
essentially half a month at a time. So you have
to start thinking like settlers, not visitors. You talk about

(04:29):
shielding and heat exchangers, radiators unfurling like silver ferns. You
run numbers on water extraction, on oxygen crackling free from rock,
on drills that eat dust and spit out the chemical
beginnings of civilization. One hundred kilowatts is not a city,
but it is a village. It is lights that will

(04:54):
stay on, it is air that will keep moving, and
it is a promise that when the sun dips behind
the horizon, your world, world will not No. Yes, we
get lost sometimes because most of us are men. In
the age of thirteen, arguing whose rocket is taller, maybe

(05:15):
whose pad is a little bit saltier, whose integration flow
is least cursed, But we forget perhaps the real race,
the one adults allegedly run, that is a race to stay,
to plant something that outlives a budget cycle in a
midterm election. A nuclear plant on the moon is a

(05:38):
sentence written in the language of permanence. It says we
intend to be here next month, and the month after that,
and through the long night when the tourists go home.
And if you listened closely, victory laps are not what
you've heard from necessarily the front office. You've heard a

(06:01):
voice crackle with frustration. The acting chief didn't dress it
up for the press. He didn't file the edges off.
He said bluntly that he's sick of the storyline where
America gets beat back to the moon. Not a policy paper,
a raw emotion. It kind of leaks through when your

(06:25):
inbox is full of hot takes and your engineers are
doing math at midnight and the headlines refused to match
the work you know is actually occurring. That matter, that
moment actually matters, because space isn't just hardware and delta
V and guidance loops. It's uncomfortable truth. It's about prestige.

(06:48):
It's the theater of who leads and who follows. No,
of course we'll pretend we're all above that, but we aren't.
Ask any pilot who's ever taxi passed a rival squadron
on a tarmac. Ask any kid whoever glued together a
model Saturn V, and imagine the world watching. There is

(07:09):
pride at stake here, and pride isn't some ornamental thing
tacked onto the nose cone. It's more of the fuel
that keeps a program from slipping quietly into just good
enough to hold those three images in your head at once.
A senator smirking as he says the quiet part out
loud about a rocket built by committee, a blueprint for

(07:34):
a lunar reactor, the kind of unsexy essential gear that
turns exploration into residency. And the leader who for a
moment drops the varnation, lets the country hear the edge
in his voice. That's actually America space story this week,
not one thing, but a tangle politics that's slow, engineering

(07:58):
that accelerates, and pride that reviews. To let the narrative
calcify into second place. We are, as it always seems
a paradox. We invent the wheel and then debate the road.
We've fund the orchestra, and then argue over the chairs.
Somehow in that mess, the music still gets played. Now,

(08:24):
if you're thinking why now, why that tone, why the
sudden display of urgency, well you already know the answer,
even if we won't say it in this leads story,
because the world is watching the scoreboard again, just like
they all do on Sunday, like the day it is today,

(08:46):
opening season of NFL. They are watching scoreboard, sees who's winning,
who's leading it, if their guys are, their guys are
scoring points for their team or not, hoping the other
team doesn't. And as we watch, we see others practice

(09:10):
their choreograph. Because the myth that we can coast on
history meets the mass of orbital mechanics, and it loses
every time. Here's the truth we can say, without a
committee vote, we go. We go because it's ugly and

(09:32):
complicated and worth it. We go because a village on
the moon without a hummingcore and warm air at midnight
is the kind of sentence that this country still knows
how to write. We go because it bothers us deeply
that anyone would think otherwise. So take a breath with me.

(09:55):
Hear the rattle of the hearing room fade here, the
soft electric thrumb of a reactor that does not sleep
here under both the human voice that refuses to Tucket's
pride away. And that is the beat we're going to
try to ride tonight a little bit, the beat that
carries us from politics to power, from paperwork to permanence.

(10:17):
Although there will be some politics. We just can't get
around that. And now, with the stage set and the
pulse steady, let's turn the cameras fully and without apology.
Let's face it to the rogues gallery that you kind
of all come here anyway and really really enjoy, because

(10:39):
if our leaders are bristling, it's not in a vacuum. Now.

(11:11):
Every space agency likes to publish beautiful, wonderful road maps.
Most are optimistic, some are highly delusional. And if you
are written less for engineers and more for propaganda offices.
Take for incidence, China's new polished plan to land tacoonauts

(11:34):
on the Moon by twenty thirty, and well, it checks
all three boxes at once, and thank you already for
pointing that out that normally works all I had to
investigate that after the show. Sorry that you didn't hear
the amazing, beautiful, wonderful assholes in space steam song, but
those watching got to see the graphics. So I'll take

(11:57):
fifty percent now with China on paper, it looks impressive.
A two stage long March ten rocket tested piece by piece,
feeding into an architecture that mirrors Apollo in broad strokes,
two launches for crude mission, one for the lander and
one for the crew docking in lunar orbit boots in

(12:20):
Regulis before the decade is even out. Now it's not
science fiction. Chang eas, Landers and rovers have already hit
their marks. China has quietly racked up a string of
lunar winds while the world was distracted by Falcon boosters
doing flip landings on drone ships and those that's all

(12:45):
the graphic have noticed. The cal fatality number has not
increased for some time. If that tells you the progress
China is making. And yet behind the glossy diagrams the
twenty thirty it feels less like a clock ticking tour
triumph than a megaphone blasting for domestic years, because the

(13:06):
reality is this, lunar programs are hard, expensive, brutal. They
choose through budgets and reputations alike. The United States has
been trying to restart its lunar cadence for what twenty years,
and it still hasn't put a crew on the pad.

(13:26):
So when China circles a date on the calendar, the
question isn't can they do it? It's will they still
want to? Will the Communist Party keep cutting checks after
another economic hiccup or maybe another launch delay, or twenty
more cows disappear somehow off the farmland, or the first
time a lunar module explodes on a scent. And here's

(13:50):
the part where the asshole factor comes in. Instead of
presenting this goal humbly as the next step in human exploration,
I mean it is absolutely framing it as a race
against US, a chest thumping contest, a way to embarrass America.
Their state media leans hard on the comparison, selling the

(14:12):
moond not as a destination for all humanity, but as
a trophy to wave in Washington's face. That's what makes
it less inspiring and more well irritating. Now, not the
engineers get me don't don't get me wrong. They're very talented,
they're astronauts, they're flying Chinese meade stuff, they're they're brave.

(14:38):
I will not ever suggest that they're not. But the
politicians who see every creator as a stage more for
scientific gain is just pure theater in my opinion. And
there's also, you know, the inconvenient fact that space has

(14:59):
a very long memor. China may crow about twenty thirty landing,
but ask Russia what happens when your reach exceeds your budget?
Asks NASA how a single Challenger or Columbia can reset
decades of momentum overnight ambition is easy, but staying the

(15:21):
power to do it, well, that's hard. Still, we have
to take them seriously because even if the you know,
twenty thirty dates slips, they do have a clear intent.
China wants the moon not just for rocks or science,
but for influence, prestige, and perhaps even more importantly, leverage.

(15:45):
They want to plan a flag and beam at homes,
prove that their system, top down, centralized authoritarian can outpace
the messy democracies. And if history teaches us anything it's
that symbols can be just as dangerous as rockets. So yes,
we do treat this story with respect, because even even

(16:08):
assholes can sometimes pull out the victory. And if they do,
it won't just bruise American pie pride. It will reshape
the narrative of who leads in space, which is exactly
why NASA's acting chief sounded rattled and as pissed as
he did. And it's honestly why we keep this segment

(16:29):
right here where it belongs with another asshole in space segment.
For if you want to understand how China does their theater,
look no further than the parade grounds. Nothing says we're
a superpower like you wheeling your toys, Donny Boulevard lined
with cameras. All of us do it. Last week, Beijing

(16:55):
wrote out an arsenal of hypersonic missiles, drones and ICBMs,
dressed up as if the Moon for just another military
district waiting to be conquered. On the surface, it looked impressive.
Hypersonics are the holy grail of missile technology, vehicles that
can fly fiber more times faster than sound, skip through

(17:17):
the upper atmosphere, and out maneuver defenses. Every major power
wants them. Some probably have it, but won't tell us.
The US allegedly has programs in development. Russia claims to
feel them. I'm not sure I buy that one. And
China loves to put them on flatbed trucks so everyone
can see them. But there is a difference between a

(17:41):
test range and a parade route. Hypersonics are notoriously difficult
to guide to cool into power. Some of those glittering
missiles maybe shells prototypes rolled out more for photographers than pilots.
It's a pageant designed to say look at us, We're untouchable,

(18:03):
and a classic fashion. It's more more about chest thumping
than capability. So why talk about this in a space show. Well,
because the line between rockets and missiles have always been
ten Von Brauns vy too became Saturn five ancestor. The

(18:26):
same engines that lift satellites can with a different payload,
deliverab warheads. And let's face it, China knows this. By
parading hypersonics alongside their lunar ambitions all within the same week,
they're deliberately blending this message we didn't just reach for space,

(18:47):
we can also threaten space and more importantly Earth. It's
kind of the equivalent of bringing brass knuckles to a
science fair. But I think perhaps the bigger problem with
all of this is the theater, the theatrics of it all.

(19:11):
It works. Neighbors in the region see the spectacle and recalibrate.
US defense planners scrivel notes. Analysts argue over whether a
weapon that can fly MAK five is actually controllable or
just an expensive way to miss faster. Meanwhile, the image
sticks a column of sleek weapons trundling past the reviewing

(19:32):
stand broadcast around the world. A nation that truly believes
in exploration wouldn't need to park its rockets next to
its missiles. It would separate science from saber rattling. But
China has this habit of blending them because prestige is

(19:53):
the real payload. They want to be seen as the
country that can do everything at once. Launch their tycho
knots and remind rivals that this dog has teeth. But
technology paraded for intimidation often ends up exposed. The US

(20:14):
military has been watching every frame of that broadcast. Engineers
are probably freezing screenshots, analyzing nozzle designs, counting ribbits, and
probably a couple of satellites trained on to see what
chemicals are inside and what Beijing sells as invincible. Others
quietly file under reverse engineer me. And that's the bit

(20:34):
of irony about parading some secrets, about the more you flaunt,
the less mysterious you are. So yeah, this hypersonic parade
gets its mention here not because it changes the trajectory
of exploration, but because it shows us how fragile prestige
can be. You can parade your way to the stars,

(20:57):
but you can also waste a lot of fuel just trying.
Now China is taking the place of Russia that once
was a glorious if you will allow me that little
platitude toward them space bearing country. For once upon a time,

(21:20):
Russia space program was the second heartbeat of humanity's adventure
off Earth. Cosmonauts roads so used capsules with the same
regularity Americans drove to the grocery store. It seemed the
iss which was stitched together piece by piece with Russian
modules at its core. There was an era when Moscow
could point at Bakanor and say truthfully that they carried

(21:42):
half the burden of human spaceflight. That era is crumbling.
For the latest reports out of Russia painted picture that
feels more like bankruptcy court than a mission control. The
country state run human spaceflight company, the entity that manages
soy Use launches cosmonaut training, and the very architecture of

(22:04):
their CRUD program is teetering on the edge of financial collapse.
Years of sanctions, brain drain, neglected infrastructure. And I'm going
to give Elon credit here because with SpaceX now carrying

(22:24):
a lot of American individuals in cargo to space, we
don't need the Russian soy Use anymore. So everything's been
sort of hollowed out with once was a symbol of
national pride. Yeah, Souse still flies, I mean hell, for
the most part. It's very reliable, but reliability without investment

(22:50):
becomes stagnation. Their next generation capsule Oral has been promised, delayed,
promised again, and delayed again. Factories that once turned out
spacecraft that Cold War tempo are now just limpering along, slowly,
understaffed and way underfunded. But instead of admitting the decay

(23:11):
and seeking partnerships to rebuild, Russia is just gonna double
down on bluster. They've been threatening to withdraw from the ISS,
only to backpedal when you know the math doesn't work.
They announced grandiose plans for their own orbital station, then
quietly get its postponed until the twenty thirties. Every announcement

(23:35):
sounds like bravado shout out over the sound of empty
cash registers. Now, let's face it, the contrast is very stark.
SpaceX is landing boosters like it's a freaking boring tennis match.
NASA is testing nuclear power plants for lunar nights. Hell,
even India is landing rovers on the moon. Meanwhile, Russia

(24:01):
once you could easily consider the backbone of human spaceflight
as passing the hat hoping someone still believes their promises.
And there's tragedy in it too. Once again, the engineers
are not the villains. The Russian space workers are some
of the most creative, resilient minds in the business. They

(24:21):
kept Mirror alive years longer than it had any right
to be. They've patched the iss with some special space
duct tape. I would love to get my hands on
and genius when things went wrong, but no amount of
brilliance can paper over an empty budget. Just look at
your host. Talent without funding is a stranded cosmonaut waiting

(24:45):
for a ride that never comes. So yeah, Russia has
earned its rightful spot in tonight's assholes in space, not
because their engineers are foolish, but because their leadership has
turned in an amazing legacy into a liability. Bankruptcy doesn't

(25:06):
just empty bank accounts in emptyes futures, and unless something
dramatic changes the notion or the nation that once raced
America to the moon may not even have the rubles
left to buy a ticket for the next ride. Now,

(25:27):
for all the bluster and bankruptcy we kind of waded through,
let's remind ourselves what doing it right looks like, and
for better or worse, that story keeps circling back to
a beach in South Texas where a gleaming stack of
stainless still thundered off the pad on its tenth trial. Now,

(25:48):
let's face it, Star Starship Flight ten was not just
another test. It was a line in the sand. The
early flights man, they gave us some firework, mid air flips,
explosions big enough through rattle windows in Mexico, spectacular failures
replayed in slow motion across way too many YouTube channels.

(26:11):
You know they were funny, If you know you weren't
the one signing the checks. They were a bit more
embarrassing if you were, even though they did learn things
because the data, every belly flop, every shattered tank was
a step toward this moment. In flight ten, light ten

(26:33):
worked booster and the ship separated cleanly, both pieces of
execute maneuvers that used to exist only in computer models.
The upper stage reached orbit, proving the hardware it can do.
The job that was built for re entry was controlled,
not catastrophic. Heat shields largely held where they were supposed to,
and for the first time, it felt less like an

(26:54):
experiment and more like an honest to God's system. Now,
this is the difference between theater and progress. While China
is operating missiles, Russia is issuing you know, press releases,
SpaceX is lighting rockets like it smokes three packs a day,

(27:17):
over and over and over again, and the cadence matters
more than the spectacle. Let's face it, Falcon nine just
not just thirty flight of the year. That doesn't seem right.
I think it was the single booster. I might have
written that wrong. My apologies, but here's the thing with

(27:40):
Falcon nine and all its records and starship. With its
Flight ten, we have a rhythm. We have the future changing,
and NASA knows it because whatever SLS gives us Artemis

(28:03):
will depend on it. The Human Landing System contract is
strapped directly just our ship's side. If it flies reliably,
astronauts step onto the lunar soil within you know, American
hardware under the boots and if it does in America weights.
It's really as simple as that. And Mars right now,

(28:24):
Mars technically is still a bit of a fever dream.
You know, must what is sketching domes and greenhouses by
engineers count the weld seems required. But every milestone like
Flight ten inches that fever dream toward a reality. For critics,
it's exhausting. For dreamers, it's intoxicating. For the rest of us.

(28:46):
It's proof of the difference between two dumb to work
and changing the game can be done in just ten flights.
So when we ask who is doing it right, it's
not the ones parade. Those missiles are the ones. Don't
look at our payroll, don't look at our payroll. It's
the ones that are stacking prototype win after prototype win,

(29:07):
occasionally blowing them up and trying again until the physics
finally is submitted. And yes, Flight ten wasn't perfect. They
actually built things to fail. They're like, oh, hey, let's
see if this will fail. Oh it didn't. Oh okay.
But it was proof that even in industry addicted to
all the showmanship, there are still players obsessed with results,

(29:34):
and that obsession may just be the reason humanity gets
to stay out here in space a little longer. But
Starship isn't the only game in town. If it is,
If say, Starship is a loud teenager of modern rocketry,
and it kind of is all stainless steel, swagger and

(29:57):
explosive growth spurts, we have another piece of space machinery
that is kind of the opposite, and that is the
X thirty seven B. It's more of that quiet professional,
a black and white space plane that slips in the
orbit without much fanfare, stays aloft for months or even years,

(30:19):
and then glides back to Earth as if oh, hey, guys,
you miss me. It looks small, almost toilet compared to
the space shuttles of old. And there's no press conferences,
no grand unveilings, just usually classified missions launched on barrored
rockets and a silence that drives conspiracy theorist wild. But

(30:40):
every once in a while a sliver of detail leaks through,
and this time it's something I think is genuinely fascinating,
because the X thirty seven B is testing xylon, a
material that might one day help people and cargo survive Mars. Now,

(31:01):
xilon is not some marble villain, because we know it
would suck and fail, but it is a synthetic polymer
later than aluminum, stronger than steel. In fact, currently it's
considered the strongest man made fiber on Earth, woven into
fabrics or composites. It's resist heats, pressures, and radiation that

(31:24):
makes it perfect for one of the hardest problems in spaceflight,
protecting fradule human bodies and delicate equipment during fiery reentries.
So imagine this. A colony ship leaves Earth or its
headed from Mars. Months later, it arrives not as a monolith,
but as a series of pods, each designed to hit

(31:44):
the Martian atmosphere at incredible speed. What stands between the
payload and a catastrophic burn up isn't bravado, it's material science.
It's xylon. Tiles and blankets woven shields observing and deflecting
the energy. Without that, the dream of delivering settlers or
greenhouses to the Red planet is just a dream. But

(32:08):
here's why this all matters. Unlike the parade missiles or
the hollow budget promises we've heard and have mocked, this
xylon testing is the quiet and glamorous work that actually
does build the future. I mean, let's face it, not
really too many people out here cheering for polymer stress test.
No one is going to pack a stadium to watch

(32:29):
fabric samples smolder in plasma streams. But without breakthroughs like this,
you don't get to go to Mars or beyond. You
may not even get back to the Moon again, at
least not with the grand plans that we have. And
it's easy to forget that the X thirty seven B

(32:50):
has already logged more than a decade of clandestine's service,
flying higher and longer than almost anything, and it's a
weight class and if it comes back with zylon proving
its worth, that's one more piece of a puzzle saw
for everyone who will ride the next generation of spacecraft.
That's kind of kind of crazy to think that the

(33:11):
astronauts may actually never see the polymer up close, you'll
just know that when the castle hits the atmosphere, the
ship holds together, and there's there's something admirable in that
progress that isn't loud, isn't flashy, but definitely essential. And yes,

(33:31):
Starship will hog the headlines. It's a beautiful piece of machinery.
The Artemis mission may claim the spotlight, but this little
small space plane testing these exotic fibers in silence might
just be the quiet hero of future exploration because out

(33:54):
out here in space, victory isn't parades or posturing. Really
is material science and engineering that just simply quietly work.
And that's the thing. Real progress in space doesn't always
look like fireworks. Sometimes it is a fabric simply riding

(34:14):
quietly on a Black Ops space plane. But of course
it does leave out one subject humanity hasn't really tested
yet that and I know I've mentioned it at least
four times in past episodes, And yes, it gets way
way more personal than fiber because we've studied rockets, we've

(34:40):
studied reactors, but what we seemingly have not studied is
reproduction in space. So on that we're going to take
a short break and here is a track inspired by
the idea of reproduction in space. Proof that love. Like everything,

(35:06):
it's complicated and zero g.

Speaker 4 (35:27):
We can't build our rocket's tall, that's the moon and
there to fall dream of basics on our shack grown,
but that's one true we haven't found. We can't launch
a satellite high, we can't mute the asteroids dry. But

(35:52):
before we pack and move over, we need.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
To figure out how to make.

Speaker 5 (36:01):
Zero cheese.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
And we arrested the test. Hot still beet when they
row from.

Speaker 5 (36:08):
The chest light needs more air and light.

Speaker 3 (36:13):
Can't even make babies on a long stop in a lab.

Speaker 6 (36:25):
The mice s cape cools tiny swimmers in a cosmic cruise.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
They spun around and away. Lazy still a laugh in microache,
not just.

Speaker 6 (36:41):
A joke to need wee face If we're going to
see the human race beyond the Earth in the void of.

Speaker 4 (36:53):
Science, fel.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Love zero cheese.

Speaker 5 (37:00):
Can we rush through the chest hard still beef when
living from the chest live needs more than air and
like can we make babies on the long start.

Speaker 6 (37:57):
Set?

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Can we face to carry our.

Speaker 4 (38:02):
Sparks time and space before we claim starts full?

Speaker 6 (38:10):
We got a master zero Jean.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
Hot still be Nick Foo from The Slight needs more.

Speaker 4 (38:23):
Like can we make babies on a long stars like?

Speaker 3 (38:27):
Jet still be Life? Needs more.

Speaker 4 (38:38):
Like can we make babies on a lotus?

Speaker 2 (39:01):
And welcome back aboard Lost Wonder, But he started to
go to a different musical style just felt right for
this upcoming story because we've talked politics, parades, and polymers,
but now it is time to tackle one of the
strangest gaps and our knowledge. Yes, we've studied rockets and radiation,

(39:22):
we've mat that reactors and even mastered reusability of launching
those rockets. But the most basic human question in space
that's still mostly and largely unanswered. What happens when you
try to make life beyond Earth. And we hear it

(39:45):
all the time about colonies on the Moon and cities
on the Mars, But there's a quiet truth that seems
to make even the weirdest biologists squirrem We still don't
know if mammals can actually reproduce in Spain. Now it
sounds absurd. Humanity has sent probes past Pluto, the planet,

(40:09):
land rovers on Mars, and designed nuclear power plants for
a lunar night, but we haven't studied the act that
makes humanity possible in the first place, at least not
in earnest and the subject seems to be so awkward,
so wrapped in taboos and giggles, that serious funding has

(40:30):
lagged decades behind every other branch of space science. And
that's why a recent mouse study matters, perhaps more than
it might actually seem. Researchers have launched frozen mouse sperm
into orbit, stored it aboard the ISS, and later compared

(40:50):
its health to control samples back on Earth. Now, yes,
I don't want to know who retrieved the semen that said,
the results surprisingly encouraging. Even after fluating in microgravity bombard
it by radiation, this ferm still fertilized eggs successfully once

(41:14):
they returned life, it turns out, finds away. But sperm
and a vial isn't the same, as you know, the
whole process. New mammals have ever conceived, gestated, and birthed
entirely off world. We actually have done fish, frogs, and insects.

(41:39):
We watch fruitflies buzz through microgravity, but mice, cats, dogs,
humans still question marks. And the problem isn't just the gravity,
it's radiation, fluid dynamics. Let's face it, Fluid dynamics are
important when doing certain things and cellular development embryo rely

(42:00):
on gravity to orient themselves on Earth's shielding to keep
DNA stable. Take those away and suddenly a simple process
becomes an experiment in evolutionary limits. And yeah, I know,
the awkward part is if we want permanent, permanent settlements
beyond Earth, we can't avoid the question. We know how

(42:28):
certain rockets work, but how about we concern ourselves with
the real rockets? If you catch my meaning, mister frodo
we need to know if families can even happen. Colonies
aren't built on single generations, They're built on birth. And
if ma million reproduction stumbles in microgravity, the whole notion

(42:49):
of self sustaining offorld community collapses. Unless it's just not
even forget about microgravity less gravity, then we're you, you know,
instead of the one units, maybe it's a point eight?
Will things behave differently there? And this is why, in
my opinion, mouse sperm experiments actually matter. They're the tiniest

(43:18):
motentative step toward answering a question that underpins everything else.
If life can't renew itself beyond Earth, then our species
will forever just be taurist and not the settlers we
dream of. I mean, yeah, look, I'm thirteen. The EP
is older than me. Okay, despite Aggie's insistence that he's eleven.

(43:42):
There is plenty of humor in this. Of course, NASA
funded sex in space is kind of a headlined tabloid's
dream about but beneath the snickers, it is really something serious.
Biology is destiny, and our destiny that lies among the
stars depending on finding out whether love and life can

(44:04):
thrive and the ground is gone. So yeah, we're gonna
laugh about it when we can, because there are moments
of this that are hilarious to me. But one day
some astronaut couple is going to become the Adam and
Eve of a new world. And I don't mean in
a religious sort of way, but you know what I mean,

(44:25):
and they'll perhaps oh their chance in part to a
batch of very brave mouse sperm. Now, another aspect of
all of this. You know, when people imagine colonies on
the Moon or Mars, they picture, you know, gleaming domes

(44:48):
and starry horizons. But the reality may look a lot
more like Antarctica, cold, isolated and deeply human in ways
we don't like to admit. There was a recent report
on harassment and misconduct at Antarctica Research Base that hits
like a warning flare for space exploration. Its details cases

(45:12):
of bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment among small crews wintering
over in the ice. Now these aren't just statistics. There
are reminders that when you lock humans into an isolated
extreme environment, the challenges don't stop at frost bite and
fuel shortages. They hit closer to the bone, how we

(45:34):
treat each other when there's nowhere else to go. Now,
for all of this, space planners know this. NASA and
its international party study the Antarctica precisely because it's the
closest Earth as to living off world once of darkness,
brutal cold, then resupply lines. It's basically a lab for isolism.

(45:58):
And what the lab shows isn't well doesn't always present
the human race in a flattering way. Even highly trained,
highly motivated people can crack under confinement. Power dynamics can warp,
clicks will form, safety can erode not from the environment,
but ending up from each other. I'll translate that forward

(46:22):
to a Moon base or a Mars outpost. Picture a
dozen astronauts far from home with no quick escape. Now
add stress, fatigue, and maybe a commander with too much authority.
The lessons from Antarctica suggested we don't plan for human
behavior as carefully as we plan for radiation shielding. We
could find ourselves repeating the same ugly mistakes under a

(46:43):
different sky. Now, what's really striking to me is just
how predictable it all is. Psychologists have long warned that
isolation magnifies small slites in major conflicts, that leadership style
matters more when the crew can't leave. That diversity isn't

(47:04):
just nice for you know, press release. It's a pressure
valve against groupthink and abuse. And yet Antarctica shows us
we still stumble and a bit of uncomfortable truth. Space
won't make us better people. It just makes our flaws

(47:24):
harder to escape. If harassment poisons a lab at the
South Pole, you can you can quit, you can fly home.
How do you do that on Mars when there's a
window of opportunity. That's why the Antarctic reports are more

(47:48):
than cautionary tales. They're blueprints. Every protocol that will be
written for Moon and Mars Cruise needs to take human
behavior as seriously as the oxygen supply clear reporting lines,
independent oversight training, not just in geology and robotics, but
in empathy and conflict resolution, because the first crisis on

(48:13):
Mars may not be a dust storm, it may be
an argument that spirals into something worse. And of course
it's very tempting to imagine that the grandeur of space
will lift us above these issues, but history kind of
says otherwise. What keeps us alive isn't the view, it's

(48:34):
the systems we build to protect each other when the
view gets dark. So we need to take studies like
Antarctica seriously because before we can even think about mastering
living on another world, we have to have to master
living with ourselves. And we do spend so much time

(49:03):
looking forward in space flight, the next rock, at the
next base, the next decade, it's kind of easy to
forget that the Cosmos also keeps archives, not in libraries,
but in rocks, and sometimes those rock carry stories that
predate Earth itself, And it's kind of kind of neat

(49:26):
in a way that the scientists have discovered when they
cracked up in samsuls from two asteroids been in where
you go inside where grains of dust older than the
planet that you're currently sitting on. Not billions of years old,
but billions plus change, so yes, older than what you
possibly can dream of. Fragments form before Earth had even

(49:49):
coalesced from a solar nebula. It's humbling stuff. You can
touch your desk or drink your chair, And though those
atoms have been recycled through stars and planets for four
point five billion years. But the dust and bino and
radio goo, that's more of a prologue. It's the raw
material left over from the first fires, untouched by tectonics

(50:10):
or oceans. Holding it is like finding a fossil of
time itself. Now, some of the dust did carry complex
carbon compounds, the kind that make biologists go humeh, what'd
you say? I'm not DNA and not life, but the
lego bricks that can snap together in chemistry worth caring about,

(50:32):
which means the asteroids weren't just orbiting rebel. They were
a little bit of a chemical test to bring recipes
that might have seeded early Earth. In other words, that
bagel you had for breakfast this morning, it's ancestral ingredients
may have been shipped in by space rocks, and we

(50:53):
sometimes forget this when we hear sample return missions, and
why should we care? They're not just practice runs for
bigger grabs like I talked about in last week's i TC.
They are core samples of cosmic history. O Cyrus rex plucked,
thenoos dust with a robotic hand off that looked on
moose casual, and Japan kissed Ryugo so gracefully it felt

(51:16):
like choreography. Now the payoff is sitting in labs now
dust older than continents, older than oceans, and even older
than Andrew. And trust me, that's saying something. Yes, I know, Andrew,
I heard you grown. You're not older than this. This
one wins now umeroside. These findings connect us to something profound,

(51:43):
That the Earth is not a sealed bubble. It's part
of a vast conveyor belt of chemistry. When rained down
and dust and pebbles. You know, when we think about it,
they may have been the catalyst for everything from microbes
to mozart and the fact that we can, you know,
scoop some of it up, bottle it and bring it home.
That humanities writing footnotes in a book. The universe started

(52:06):
long before we were even he thought. So the next
time you hear about an asteroid mission. Don't just think rock,
think time capsule. Think of a courier service delivering ingredients
for life, long before life knew what they could do
with them. And think of the scientists bent over a microscopes,

(52:28):
brushing eternity off their lab codes as they whisper this
is older than Earth and Andrew So in the summer
of nineteen seventy seven, we traveled back to a man

(52:51):
named Jerry Amen, who was coming through radio data at
Ohio State's Big Ear telescope when he saw some odd
and nar a band spike, a burst of radio energy
lasting just seventy two seconds. Wait for that energy burst
a brag about itself. It was so clean, so out
of place, that he circled it in red penancecribbled one

(53:13):
word in the margin. Wow. For nearly fifty years, the
WOW signal has been Setti's crown jewel, the one that
got away? Was it aliens? Hmmm? Was it Earth's own
radio noise bouncing around the atmosphere?

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Hm?

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Truth is nobody knew the signal, never repeat it, We
never called it again. And in science, one off events
are well, they're intoxicating, but quite maddening. They're the cosmic
equivalent of a ghost story, compelling but largely unprovable. But

(53:58):
there is some new analysis that is suggesting a far
less exotic explanations. It seems astronomers have traced the signals
direction back toward a star system nearly one thousand, eight
hundred light years away, home to a Sun like star
and at least one large exo planet. I know you're

(54:20):
getting aroused here a little bit, but it's not extraterrestrials
with antennas, just the unfortunately natural radio signature of a
star doing star system things, a cosmic static burst dressed
up as a mystery. And while yes, for some that's
disappointing that you know, no flying saucers, no interstellar morse code,

(54:41):
just another piece of background. Though he's identified, the WOW
becomes oh that. But here's I think an important part
of this whole thing, because even if it wasn't aliens,
the WOW signal changed how we think about searching. It
proved that extraordinary spikes can't appear, that telescopes need to

(55:02):
be vigilant, and that the sky isn't just a quiet
dome of nothingness. It gave a generation of SETI researchers
a myth to chase.

Speaker 5 (55:14):
In.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Myths often lead to dreams, and dreams can become a
reality and become just as valuable as data. They keep
the lights on. The Antenne's pointed up. The graduation students
inspired the new solution doesn't slam the book shut. Pinpointing

(55:35):
the signals likely origin doesn't mean we know everything about it.
Stars and planets do emit radio noise, yes, but what kind,
how stable, how structured? It's those questions that remained, and
let's be honest, until we ruled out everything, that red
pen still might have circled history. There's also something incredible

(56:03):
about the name sticking. Wow isn't scientific, but it's a
human It captures that blend of wonder and confusion we
feel when the universe taps us on the shoulder and whispers,
did you hear that? Even if the whisper turns out
to be mundane, the shiver it sends is real. So

(56:23):
maybe the WOW signal wasn't first contact. Maybe it was
just a cosmos clearing its throat. But in the story
of human curiosity, it earns a place because every time
we tune a telescope to this guy We're hoping, just
maybe for another margin note, another red circle, a moment

(56:45):
that jolts us from boredom to awe. And if one
day we do catch the real thing, an unambiguous, structured signal,
repeated and undeniable, you can bet someone will still grab
a pen, circle the numbers and scraw a word in
that margin. It may not be wild next time, but
it will sure as hell feel the same. Now, our

(57:11):
next story, we borrow a headline from a few decades ago.
The juice is loose and no, no, not that one.
This one doesn't carry you know, a football or court cases,
and definitely doesn't ride around in white broncos This is

(57:31):
more about ESA's Jupiter icy Moon, Explore a better noon.
That's acronym juice, and right now it's stealing a little
gravity from Venus when it's a long road to Jupiter.
No gravity assists are the cosmic equivalent of hitchhiking. You
swing close to a planet, trade a little energy and
stealing shot yourself onward without burning any extra fuel. It's

(57:51):
orbital mechanics as a beautiful, beautiful show, and when it works,
it really does look like magic. For juice. Bye by
A Venus is just one step in a year's long
ballet that will eventually drop the probe into the Jovian
System in hopefully the twenty thirties. Why are we going

(58:11):
through all this trouble because Jupiter's moons Ganymede, Callisto Europa
may actually hold the best chance for life in the
Solar System. Beneath their icy crust lies oceans vast and hidden,
warmed not by sunlights but by tidal flexing, entire alien
seas locked under miles of frozen surface. Juice was built

(58:33):
to sniff them out, radar to robe the ice, spectrometers
to analyze, composition magnometers to read the whispers of buried
salt water. But before it can sip Europe of secrets,
Juice eh needs a little more speed than a white
Bronco can provide, and needs lots and lots of it,
and Venus, in all her cloudy glory, just gave it

(58:57):
a boost. Of course, it wasn't glamorous. There's no unfortunately,
you know, selfie stick extended from the spacecraft, No dramatic
plume of dust, no seventy two cop cars chasing it.
Just instruments ticking trajectory shifting and to probe silently threading
the needle of celestial mechanics. These flybys are reminders that

(59:19):
space travel isn't brute force. It's patients. You don't barrel
straight to Jupiter. You weave a path of planetary encounters,
each one bending your course, shaving propellant and setting up
for the grand finale. And it's Jews represents a different

(59:41):
velocity from the rockets we've been talking about tonight. We
don't have the explosive cadence of space ax. There's no
parades about it. There's no sputtering ancient legacies. This is
more europe, steady, deliberate, scientific and it takes a while
to learn things. Less fireworks but more notebooks. But don't

(01:00:04):
mistake that for dulness in this case. By the time
it arrives at Jupiter, it will be our first dedicated
mission to orbit. Ganny Meat the largest moon in the
Solar System, bigger even than Mercury. Why is Mercury still
a planet of Gany Meat is just a moon. But
just just think about it. Imagine the images will get

(01:00:25):
the data. The possibility of an ocean world humming beneath
ice every kilometer of the Venus flyby was a service
toward that. And if for one thing we've learned about
astronomers over got five years six years of this show.

(01:00:47):
Astronomers love metaphors. They call galaxies whirlpools, nebula, nurseries, and
black holes lizzos I mean hungry. But sometimes the universe
handsome and image so striking. It doesn't need poetry, it
just needs honesty. And that's what has happened with a
young star called HD one six nine one four to two,

(01:01:10):
where scientists just found an exoplanet orbiting inside not one
but two, or not two, but a whole stack of rings.
If you will pitch your saturn for a moment, stretch
it across the Solar system, and then add a planet
carving pathways through those dusty bands, the results look less

(01:01:30):
like a Solar system more like a vinyl record still
being pressed cruise extraed by gravity into cosmic dust. And yes,
I know what you're thinking, so I'm going to say
it too. Yes this system has more rings than j LO.
Now what makes us discovery so remarkable isn't just the

(01:01:50):
beauty of the image, but the fact that astronomers called
a planet in the act of sculping its own neighborhood. Now,
it's been theorized about for decades, young planets carving gaps
in protoplanetary disk like lawnmowers clearing paths. But actually seeing
it directly with telescopes sharp enough to reveal the ripples,
that's something entirely different. It's not just a snapshot of

(01:02:13):
a solar system. It's a time machine. This is what
our own backyard might have looked like four and a
half billion years ago, when Jupiter was busy bulldozing every
mom and every piece of material, carving gaps, shaping the
structure for everything that came the matter. To look at
HD one nine two is to watch creation happening in
real time and buried in the dust. There may be

(01:02:36):
more than just one world. Some of those rings could
be shepherd by unseen planets smaller than our current telescopes
can catch every groove, hints at mass, every ripple, at
gravity's invisible hand. It's like seeing fingerprints left on clay
before the sculpture is finished. Now, for exoplanet hunters, this

(01:02:58):
is quite thrilling. We've cataloged thousands of worlds, most through
indirect tricks, watching starlight dim listening for gravitational wobbles. But this,
this is a rare moment where we get to see
both the world and the workshop, the planet and the
raw material is still swirling around it, and it matters

(01:03:19):
because this like this aren't just eye candy. They're laboratories
of habitability. The chemistry in those rings will decide whether
rocky World's form, whether water molecules bind, and whether someday
and other species might ask their own version of are
we alone? So when you see the images of HD

(01:03:42):
one six nine two rings, don't just laugh at the
j LO comparison. It's I mean, let's be honest, it's
kind of deserves. But look closer, and you're staring at
the earliest chapter of planetary evolution, a chapter that probably
once played out here and is still being written late
years away. And every so often, as we look out,

(01:04:10):
sometimes we get to use telescopes with less power to
see things, because the Solar System occasionally likes to throw
us a visitor, a rock orn iceberg that doesn't belong here,
plunging in from the darkness between the stars, cutting across
our sky like an uninvited guest. Astronomers are calling them
interstellar comets, and we've only ever really confirmed three so far.

(01:04:36):
Now the newest carries a name equal parts of poetic
and bureaucratic, thirty one at lists, and already many telescopes
have swung towards it, like the guys watching the latest
Sidney Sweeney commercial. But the James Webspace telescope decided to
take a peek as well, and it saw something unexpected,

(01:04:57):
a coma rich in carbon dioxide, simmering an infrared like
a gate, ghostly halo. Instruments closer to home are gearing
up for more. Europe's Mars orbiters will watch as the
comet swings past the red planet in just a few weeks,
giving us kind of a front row seat. And of course,

(01:05:19):
you know, the headlines have already written themselves. We've mentioned
one of them before. Interstellar Visitor streaks into our solar system,
to the memes cuede of tabloids cut to the guy
you know with the hair, shouting, shouting up towards the heavens.
It's aliens, except it isn't not this time at least. Yeah,

(01:05:43):
Atlas is ice and dust. It left every shard from
another star system's construction yard. What makes it remarkable isn't
that it carries a message, but that it carries chemistry.
The ice is locked inside its nucleus are sample from
another neighborhood, molecules forged around another sun, probably billions of

(01:06:07):
years ago. When those ices boil off, we get to
read the recipe, and that recipe tells us how planetary
systems cook, or at least the one that this came from.
Every interstellar comment is a lab experiment hurled across the galaxy.

(01:06:28):
Most of them never leave their birth systems. The rare
few get kicked out by giant planets, flung into the
dark and wonderful millions if not billions a year until
by sheer chance, they gaze hours. Really, to catch one
is to catch lightning in a bottle, except the bottle
is older than Earth, and the lightning has been traveling
since before humanity was a whisper. And that's why mission

(01:06:50):
planners are salivating. Concepts are already being floated at small
probes that could chase it interstellar objects, sample its gases,
and even ride alongside once in a lifetime. Isn't necessarily
you know, a misnomer here thirty one atlasts will pass, fade,
and vanish into the interstellar night. Miss it, and you

(01:07:11):
may have to wait centuries for the next one. And
the most disturbing part is every one of the visitors
has surprised us. The first Ommal looked like a cigar, tumbling,
like a lost spear that had abby lob with a
bigger erection than biagra could ever give him. The second

(01:07:34):
boris Off was more conventional, but still carried alien chemistry.
And Atlas is shaping up to be different again, with
its own quirks, its own fingerprints. They're not ships, they're
not signals, but they are if you want to look
at them honestly. Gifts message is written not in binary
but in molecules, and if we're wise enough to catch them,

(01:07:58):
we get to read the story of worlds we may
never ever see. And with that, let's step outside tonight
and look up. The moon is fat and it's glowing
because we just passed the corn moon, the September full

(01:08:19):
moon of harvest. The mohawk call it, says Kiana Ninohana. Taha. Yeah,
ep really hates me, but it means time of much freshness. Now, admittedly,
if I was drinking and seeing it three times fast,
and I probably upset it a little closer to the

(01:08:41):
actual name. But let's not get too cozy with Luna.
Because the moon is on the move as always. Over
the next two weeks. It will slim down to a
third quarter crescent by September fourteenth, perfect for early risers
to catch it low in the dawn sky. That shrinky
moon will finally darken into a new moon on September
twenty first, turning off the cosmic spotlight and letting the

(01:09:02):
stars strut their stuff. And struts they will, because around
the time the Moon takes its bow, Saturn hits opposition.
On the twenty first, who means Earth is parked directly
between the Sun and the rings. Giant translation, Saturn is
up all night, shining brighter than anything other time this year,

(01:09:24):
other than, of course, you know, the moon. Even a
modest backyard telescope will show you the rings tilted like
a cosmic kalo. Meanwhile, Jupiter is climbing higher every night,
rising around midnight, but creeping earlier towards evening skies. By midmonth,
it's hard to miss in the east, big bright, daring,
just daring you. Yes, you the count, it's Galilean moons,

(01:09:51):
and yes, Comet thirty one at least the largest interstellar visitor.
You won't see it with a naked eye, but telescope
from Earth and orbit or watching it very closely. Around
September tenth at last, we'll swing past March. It's close
enough that the europe Mars orbiter will get a ringside seat,
so yes, we will get to see it, at least

(01:10:13):
in a different perspective. So we'll have a chunk of
ice and dust from another star system buzzing our solar neighborhood,
and we'll be watching it live. You know, I'm gonna
say it somewhere Carl Sagan is grinning. So what do

(01:10:33):
we have for the forecast. We got Saturn's blaze at
its brightest all night on the twenty first. You can
catch stupid or climbing earlier each evening, you can say
goodbye to Venus before sunrise, and if you're lucky enough
to have a telescope, maybe raise a glass to Common
Atlas as it swings by Mars. Because the sky for all,
it's precision. If you haven't picked up on the theme

(01:10:56):
of the night, it's all theater the Moon, play Spotlight,
the planets, dance and queue, and once in a while
an interstellar drunk Wanderer stretch across the stage, and you
probably don't want to miss that show. So that's it

(01:11:17):
for tonight's show. Thank you for tuning in whenever and
however you do. Special thanks to NASA Spacexpace dot Com,
Ars Technica, NASA Spaceflight, Popular Mechanics, and more for the
stories and inspiration tonight with me at the helm, the
EP setting course, and the ship's computer in the back
was spring star Maps through the static. This is you
Lost Wanderer podcast until next Orbit. I hope you enjoyed

(01:11:41):
the show, learned a little something, and maybe even had
a laugh or two along the way. The universe is
a pretty big place.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
It's bigger than anything anyone.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
Who's ever dreamed, No more so if it's just us,
it seems like an awful waste of space. Right when
I was young,