Podcast appearances and mentions of Apollo program

Send me a DM here (it doesn't let me respond), OR email me: imagineabetterworld2020@gmail.comFeb. 22, 1998 Gene "Chip" Tatum was a Vietnam Special Forces Air Combat Controller, Defense Intelligence Asset, and US Army special operations pilot flying classified missions during the US invasion of Grenada, Tatum was also involved in the Nixon Administrations relations with China, NASA's Apollo Program, the Iran Contra Affair, and several other classified intelligence operations dating through 1992 . Tatum was a member of the ultra-secret, international G7 run Pegasus "Hit Team" working directly for the sitting President. From sensitive and highly secret - and hitherto largely unknown - Special Forces covert operations in Cambodia, to wandering CIA asset, through to "black ops" activities in Grenada and Oliver North's Iran-Contra "Enterprise," and on to membership in an international "hit team," Gene "Chip" Tatum has seen it all, done it all and is now telling it all. Tatum knows where the skeletons are buried. Above all he is aware that his testimony implicates serving and former US Presidents, plus a whole list of high government officials, and others, in a welter of nefarious activities - including assassination, blackmail, coercion, gun-running, money-laundering and Cocaine trafficking. Tatum, a lanky Floridian, turned whistle-blower following his arrest on a treason charge in 1995. The charge was both astonishing and patently ludicrous and resulted in a flurry of press interest with an article appearing in the Tampa Tribune on 4 May 1996. Incredibly, the charge was later dropped to be replaced by a fraud charge - a drastic step-down. Found guilty after his government appointed attorney refused to call any defense witnesses, he was sentenced to serve a 15-month sentence. www.chiptatum.com Theodore L. Gunderson (November 7, 1928 – July 31, 2011) was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent In Charge and head of the Los Angeles FBI. According to his son, he worked the case of Marilyn Monroe and the John F. Kennedy cases. He was the author of the best-selling book How to Locate Anyone Anywhere.CONNECT WITH THE IMAGINATION:EMAIL: imagineabetterworld2020@gmail.comMy Substack: https://emmakatherine.substack.com/BUY ME A COFFEE: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theimaginationAll links: https://direct.me/theimaginationpodcastRIFE TECHNOLOGIES:https://realrifetechnology.com/15% Code: 420CZTL METHELENE BLUE:https://cztl.bz?ref=2BzG1Free Shipping Code: IMAGINATIONSupport the show

In his famous 1962 address to Rice University, President Kennedy declared,We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard . . .The current administration has chosen, among other things, to go to Mars. Some, Elon Musk included, are looking for a backup planet to Earth. For others, like Robert Zubrin, Mars is an opportunity for scientific discovery, pure challenge, and a revitalized human civilization.Today on Faster, Please — The Podcast, Zubrin and I discuss how to reorient NASA, what our earliest Mars missions can and should look like, and why we should go to Mars at all.Zubrin is the president of aerospace R&D company Pioneer Astronautics, as well as the founder and president of the Mars Society. He was also formerly a staff engineer at Lockheed Martin. He has authored over 200 published papers and is the author of seven books, including the most recent, The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet.For more, check out Zubrin's article in The New Atlantis, “The Mars Dream is Back — Here's How to Make It Actually Happen.”In This Episode* Colonization vs. exploration (1:38)* A purpose-driven mission (5:01)* Cultural diversity on Mars (12:07)* An alternative to the SpaceX strategy (16:02)* Artemis program reform (20:42)* The myth of an independent Mars (24:17)* Our current timeline (27:21)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Colonization vs. exploration (1:38)I do think that it is important that the first human mission to ours be a round-trip mission. I want to have those people back, not just because it's nice to have them back, but I want to hear from them. I want to get the full report.Pethokoukis: Just before we started chatting, I went and I checked an online prediction market — one I check for various things, the Metaculus online prediction market — and the consensus forecast from all the people in that community for when will the first humans land successfully on Mars was October 2042. Does that sound realistic, too soon, or should it be much further away?I think it is potentially realistic, but I think we could beat it. Right now we have a chance to get a Humans to Mars program launched. This current administration has announced that they intend to do so. They're making a claim they're going to land people on Mars in 2028. I do not think that is realistic, but I do believe that it is realistic for them to get the program well started and, if it is handled correctly — and we'll have to talk a lot more about that in this talk — that we could potentially land humans on Mars circa 2033.When I gave you that prediction and then you mentioned the 2020s goal, those are about landing on Mars. Should we assume when people say, “We're going to land on Mars,” they also mean people returning from Mars or are they talking about one-way trips?Musk has frequently talked about a colonization effort, and colonization is a one-way trip, but I don't think that's in the cards for 2028 or 2033. I think what is in the cards for this time period on our immediate horizon is exploration missions. I do think that we could potentially have a one-way mission with robots in 2028. That would take a lot of work and it's a bit optimistic, but I think it could be done with determination, and I think that should be done, actually.To be clear, when people are talking about the first human mission to Mars, the assumption is it's not a one way trip for that astronaut, or those two astronauts, that we intend on bringing them back. Maybe the answer is obvious, but I'm not sure it's obvious to me.From time to time, people have proposed scenarios where the first human mission to Mars is a one-way mission, you send maybe not two but five people. Then two years later you send five more people, and then you send 10 people, and then you send 20 people, and you build it up. In other words, it's not a one-way mission in the sense of you're going to be left there and your food will then run out and you will die. No, I don't think that is a credible or attractive mission plan, but the idea that you're going to go with a few people and then reinforce them and grow it into a base, and then a settlement. That is something that can be reasonably argued. But I still think even that is a bit premature. I do think that it is important that the first human mission to ours be a round-trip mission. I want to have those people back, not just because it's nice to have them back, but I want to hear from them. I want to get the full report.A purpose-driven mission (5:01)In the purpose-driven mode, the purpose comes first, you spend money to do things. In the vendor-driven mode, you do things in order to spend money. And we've seen both of these.So should we just default to [the idea] that this mission will be done with government funding on SpaceX rockets, and this will be a SpaceX trip? That's by far the most likely scenario? This is going to need to be a public-private partnership. SpaceX is rapidly developing the single most important element of the technology, but it's not all the technology. We need surface systems. We need the system for making rocket fuel on Mars because the SpaceX mission architecture is the one that I outlined in my book, The Case for Mars, where you make your return propellant on Mars: You take carbon dioxide and water, which are both available on Mars, and turn them into methane and oxygen, which is an excellent rocket fuel combination and which, in fact, is the rocket fuel combination that the Starship uses for that reason. So that's the plan, but you need the system that makes itWe're going to need surface power, which really should be a nuclear power source and which is difficult to develop outside of the government because we're talking about controlled material. Space nuclear reactors will need to use highly enriched uranium, so it should be a partnership between NASA and SpaceX, but we're going to have to reform NASA if this is going to work. I think, though, that this mission could be the vehicle by which we reform NASA. That is, that NASA Artemis moon program, for example, is an example of how not to do something.That's the current government plan to get us back to the moon.Right. But you see, NASA has two distinct modes of operation, and one I call the purpose-driven mode and the other is the vendor-driven mode. In the purpose-driven mode, the purpose comes first, you spend money to do things. In the vendor-driven mode, you do things in order to spend money. And we've seen both of these. To be fair, there's been times when NASA has operated with extreme efficiency to accomplish great things in very short amounts of time, of which, of course, the Apollo Program is the most well-known example where we got to the moon and eight years from program start. The difference between Apollo and Artemis was it wasn't human nature — and there were plenty of greedy people in the 1960s that, when the government's spending money, they want a piece of the action, they were all there.There's no shortage of people who, when you've got a lot of money to spend, are willing to show up and say, “Hi, you got a great idea, but you can't do it until you fund me.” And there were plenty of them then, but they were shown the door because it was clear that if we did all these side projects that people were trying to claim were necessary (“you can't do your program until you do my program”) we would not make it to the moon by 1969. So actually, the forcing function was the schedule. That's what forced the nonsense out of the room.Artemis, on the other hand, has been undertaken as a project whose leadership thought that they could secure a lot of support for the program if they gave a lot of people money. So Artemis has five different flight systems which are incompatible with each other. It's a ridiculous program. That's not the way to do things. We have to have a program leadership which is committed to humans-to-Mars not as a way to get pet technology programs funded, or pet constituencies funded, or pet vendors funded, or any of that stuff. It's got to be: the mission comes first. And if you have that kind of emphasis on this, this can be done and it can be the way to reform NASA.I liken NASA today to a peacetime military, but then it gets thrown into battle, and you get rid of your McClellans and you bring in your Grants. In other words, you have a certain period of chaos and disorganization because you've got deadwood running the place, but under the stress of actually beginning a decisive mission and not being tolerant of anything less than real performance, you actually get the army you need.So that sounds like that's a presidential decision, to give that agency a very specific goal, and perhaps a timeline, to create that kind of purpose-driven culture.Yes. Now that's one necessity. There's another necessity as well, which is that the conceptual base of this program, the political base, if you will, which is derived from its intellectual base, has got to be expanded. This cannot be seen as a Trump-Musk boondoggle because Trump and Musk have both defined themselves in extremely partisan terms, and if this is seen as their program and not America's program, it will be gone as soon as the political fortunes of war shift, which they always do. Musk has this concept that he's been promoting, which is the reason why we have to go to Mars is so that there'll be survivors on Mars after the Earth is destroyed, and I don't think this is particularly —You don't find that a compelling reason, given that there's not currently an obvious threat of us being destroyed, to run a program that could necessarily exist over multiple administrations and be quite expensive.That idea is derived from Isaac Asimov's Foundation novel: The scientists go to the planet Terminus so they can reestablish civilization after the Galactic Empire collapsed. It may please science-fiction fans, but I don't think it's attractive to the general public, and also, frankly, I don't think it's practical. I don't think a Mars colony could have a million people on Mars that will survive as an autarchy. There's no nation on earth that survives as an autarchy. The ones that try are extremely poor as a result for trying.The correct reason to go to Mars is, immediately, for the science, to find out the truth about the prevalence of diversity of life in the universe; for the challenge, to challenge our youth, learn your science and you can be an explorer and maker of new worlds; and for the future, but for the future, it's not for a few survivors to be hiding away after the earth is destroyed, it's to create a new branch, or perhaps several new branches, of human civilization which will add their creative inventiveness to human progress as a whole, as America did for Western civilization. By establishing America, you had a new branch of Western civilization which experimented in everything from democracy to light bulbs and airplanes and greatly enhanced human progress as a result.And the Martians, you are going to have a group of technologically adept people in a frontier environment that's going to challenge them. They're going to come up with lots of inventions that they need for their own progress, but which will benefit human as a whole. And that is why you should colonize Mars.Cultural diversity on Mars (12:07)I believe that there will . . . be many colonies on Mars established by different people with different ideas on what the ideal civilization should be, and the ones with the best ideas will attract the most immigrants and therefore outgrow the rest.It very much reminds me of the scenario laid out in The Expanse book and TV series where mankind has spread throughout the solar system. They're all branches of human civilization, but being out there has changed people, and Mars is different than Earth. Mars has a different society. The culture is different. I think that's a very interesting reason that I had not heard Elon Musk discuss.I have a book called The New World on Mars, which you might want to check out because I discuss this very thing. I believe that there will, once it's possible to colonize Mars, there'll be many colonies on Mars established by different people with different ideas on what the ideal civilization should be, and the ones with the best ideas will attract the most immigrants and therefore outgrow the rest. So, for example, the one thing I disagree with about The Expanse is they have this militaristic Spartan civilization on Mars.There's just one sort of universal culture.Yeah, and I don't think that that civilization would attract many immigrants. The reason why the American North outgrew the South is because the North was free. That's why all the immigrants went to the North. That's why the North won the Civil War, actually. It had a larger population of more industry because all the immigrants went there and became far more creative. This is a very good thing, that the form of civilization that ultimately prevails on Mars will be one, I think, that will offer human freedom and be the most attractive in as many other respects as possible. That's why it will prevail, because it will attract immigrants.But I want to get back to this program. If it is possible not to land humans on Mars in 2028, but to land — if you can land Starship on Mars, you can land not a robot, but a robotic expedition.Starship, Musk claims it could land 100 tons on Mars. Let's say it could land 30. That's 30 times as much as we can currently land. The JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)-led Mars science community, they're still thinking about Mars exploration in the terms it's been done since the '60s, which is single spacecraft on single rockets. Imagine you can now land an entire expedition. You land 30 rovers on Mars along with 30 helicopters that are well instrumented and a well instrumented science lab in it. So now you are bringing not only heavy lift, but heavy lander capability to the Mars science program, and now you have a robotic expedition on Mars. For every instrument that made it onto perseverance, there were 10 that were proposed because they could only take six, and like 100 teams wanted to get their instruments on the rover. So imagine now we can actually land 30 rovers and 30 helicopters, not little ones like Ingenuity, but ones that can carry five or six instruments each themselves.So now you have 100 science teams, you've got life-detection experiments, you've got ground penetrating radar, you've got all sorts of things that we haven't done on Mars all being done. You're expanding Mars science by two orders of magnitude by bringing into existence the kind of transportation capability that is necessary to enable humans to Mars. So now you bring on board the science community and the science-interested public, which includes all parts of the political spectrum, but frankly it leans somewhat left, overall — university scientists, people like this.So now this isn't just about Elon Musk, the Bond villain. This is about what we as America and we as a culture which is committed to pushing the boundaries of science. This is what we are doing. It's not what SpaceX is doing, it's not what Musk is doing, it's not what Trump is doing, it's what America is doing, and celebrating the highest values of Western civilization, which is the search for truth.An alternative to the SpaceX strategy (16:02)Starship plus Starboat is the flight hardware combination that can do both the moon and Mars.That said — and we're talking about this being a public-private partnership —should we just default into thinking that the private part is SpaceX?Well, SpaceX is one part of it. There's no question, to me anyway —There's other companies that are building rockets, there's other rocket companies, maybe they aren't talking about Mars, but Blue Origin's building rockets.I think it should be fairly competed, but SpaceX is well ahead of anyone else in terms of a booster capability. That said, I think that the mission architecture that Musk has proposed, while workable, is not optimal, that there needs to be another vehicle here. He's got the Starship, I want to have a Starboat. I've written an article about this, which was just published in The New Atlantis.Basically, the problem with Musk's architecture is that the direct return from Mars using a Starship, which is a 100-ton vehicle, would require manufacturing 600 tons of methane oxygen on the surface of Mars, and if that's to be done in a reasonable amount of time, requires 600 kilowatts, which is about 13 football fields of solar panels, which means we're not doing it with solar panels, which means it has to be done with a nuke, and that then adds a lot to the development.If we had a Starboat, which is something 10 to 20 percent the size of Starship, but it would go from Mars orbit to the surface and we refuel it, and then it is what takes the crew down to the surface — although the crew could go one way to the surface in a Starship, that's okay, but whether they go down in a Starship or down in a Starboat, they come up in a Starboat, and now you're reducing the propellant requirement by an order of magnitude. It makes this whole thing work much better. And furthermore, Starship plus Starboat also enables the moon.We've forgotten about the moon in this conversation.Starship plus Starboat is the flight hardware combination that can do both the moon and Mars. If you take the Starship version of the Artemis thing, it takes 10 to 14 Starship launches to land a single crew on Mars refueling Starship on orbit, then refueling it in lunar orbit, and with tankers that have to be refueled in earth orbit, and doing all this, it's crazy. But if you positioned one Starship tanker in lunar orbit and then used that to refuel Starboats going up and down, you could do many missions to the lunar surface from a single Starship positioned in lunar orbit. Once again, Starship is suboptimal as an ascent vehicle to come back from the moon or Mars because it's so heavy. It's a hundred tons. The lunar excursion module we used in Apollo was two tons. So we make the Starboat — Starship plus Starboat gives you both the moon and Mars.Here's the thing: With rockets, you measure propulsion requirements in units we call delta V, velocity changes. That's what rockets actually do, they change your velocity, they accelerate you, they decelerate you. To go down from lunar orbit to the lunar surface is two kilometers a second. Delta V to come back up is two kilometers a second. Roundtrip is four. To go down from Mars orbit to the Martian surface is practically nothing because there's an atmosphere that'll slow you down without using your rocket. To come up is four. So the round trip on Mars and the round trip from orbit to the surface on the moon are the same, and therefore the same combination of the Starship plus the Starboat as a landing craft and, in particular, ascent vehicle (because ascent is where small is beautiful), this will give us both. So we don't have to wreck the moon program in order to do Mars. On the contrary, we can rationalize it.I mentioned one group of potential enemies this program has been the anti-Musk Democrats. The other group of enemies that this program has are the moon people who are very upset that their moon program is about to be wrecked because Musk says the moon is a diversion. Now, if it was a choice between the moon and Mars, then I would choose Mars. But we can do both. We can do both and without it being a diversion, because we can do both with the same ships.Artemis program reform (20:42)SLS was worth a lot in its time, but its time was the '90s, not now.There's been some talk about canceling — I'm not sure how serious it is — the Artemis program. If we want the next person on the moon to be an American rather than a Chinese, do we need to keep Artemis to make sure that happens?We need to reform Artemis and this is the way to do it: Starship plus Starboat will give you the moon.Aren't we under a time constraint, given that if we are competing and if we think for whatever national pride reasons we want the next person on the moon to be an American, do we just kind of have to continue with the Artemis program as sort of a wasteful boondoggle as it is?No, because there are things in the Artemis program that don't even make any sense whatsoever, like the lunar orbit gateway, which is simply not necessary. The SLS (Space Launch System) as a launch vehicle is not necessary now that we have Starship. SLS made a lot of sense when it was first proposed in the late 1980s under a different name. I happen to know that because, as a young engineer, I was on the design team that did the preliminary design for what we now call SLS at Martin Marietta in 1988. And it was really just a simplification of the Space Shuttle, and if it had been developed in flying by the mid-'90s, as was entirely reasonable, it could have had a great role in giving us massively improved space capabilities over the past quarter-century. But they let this thing go so slowly that by the time it has appeared, it's obsolescent, and it's as if someone had stalled the development of the P-51 fighter plane so it wasn't available during World War I, but it's just showing up now in a world of jet fighters — this is worthless. Well, it was worth a lot in its time. SLS was worth a lot in its time, but its time was the '90s, not now.Orion doesn't really make that much sense, and the National Team lander would make sense if it was modified to be Starboat. What happened was NASA gave the contract to SpaceX to use Starship as a lunar lander, and it can be, but it's suboptimal. In any case, the National Team, which was Lockheed, and Boeing, and Blue Origin, they complained, but basically their complaint was, “We want a contract too or we won't be your friends.” And so they had sufficient political heft to get themselves a contract. The least NASA could have done is insist that the lander they were getting a contract for run on methane-oxygen, the same propellant as Starship, so Starship could service it as a tanker. Instead, they let them do their own thing and they've got a hydrogen-oxygen rocket, which makes no sense! It's like someone going to the Air Force and proposing a fighter plane that runs on propane and saying, “Well, I can make a fighter run on propane, but my tankers use jet fuel.” Air Force, being sensible, insists that all their planes run on the same fuels. They don't just let someone come along and use whatever fuel they like. So the National Team contract should be changed to a Starboat contract, and the requirements should be interoperability with Starship.The myth of an independent Mars (24:17)We go to Mars not out of despair, we go to Mars out of hope, and by establishing new branches of human civilization, they'll be able to do all sorts of things.As we finish up, I just want to quickly jump back to something you mentioned earlier about autarchy. Do you think it's possible to have a thriving, successful, sustainable Mars colony that's on its own?No. I don't think it's possible to have a thriving, successful nation on earth that's on its own. This is why I think Trump's trade war is a big mistake. It will damage our economy. Now, obviously, we can survive a trade war better than a Mars —That's what Musk is also suggesting in its whole light of consciousness that we need to be able to establish sustainable, permanent colonies elsewhere that can be just fine without a relationship with Earth.I think that's incorrect, and as you know, since you are an expert in economics, it's nonsensical. I don't think a colony of one million people would have the division of labor to build anything like an iPhone or even an iPhone battery if you think of the complexity of what is involved.There's this famous essay, “I, Pencil,” which I'm sure you're acquainted with. An economist went through all the different things that went into —Yes, Milton Friedman used that example famously. I think I get your point.iPhones are more complex than pencils. I mean, you probably could build a pencil with a million-person city, but we need to build things more complicated than that. But that's not the point here, that's not why we're going on. And I object to this. It's the Masque of the Red Death theory of how you're going to survive a plague: We'll have our castle and we can go into it and we'll be fine. No, it's extremely unattractive and it's false. The people in that castle in the Masque of the Red Death, the Edgar Allen Poe story, did not survive the plague, and it's not why we should go to Mars. We go to Mars not out of despair, we go to Mars out of hope, and by establishing new branches of human civilization, they'll be able to do all sorts of things.America developed steamboats because we needed inland transportation because the only highways we had were rivers, and so forth, and so we've been an engine of invention. Mars is going to be an engine of invention. Mars is going to want to have not just nuclear reactors, but breeder reactors, and they're going to want to have fusion power because deuterium is five times as common on Mars as it is on earth, and they're going to be electrolyzing water all the time as part of their life-support system, which means releasing hydrogen, making deuterium separation very cheap, and one could go down this kind of thing. There's all sorts of things that a Martian civilization would develop, to say nothing of the fact that a spacefaring civilization will have the capability to divert asteroids so that they don't impact the earth. So that's why we're going to Mars. We increase the creative capacity of humanity to deal with all challenges raging from asteroid impacts to epidemics.Our current timeline (27:21). . . if you have your first humans on Mars in early 2030s, I think we can have a permanent Mars base by the end of that decade . . .So let me just finish up with this, and I think as far as a justification for going to Mars, that's about the most persuasive I know, and maybe I'm an easy audience, but I'm persuaded.Let's set aside just putting an astronaut or a few astronauts on the moon and bringing them home, and let's set aside the permanent, sustainable, solo, doesn't-need-Earth colony. Just as far as having a sort of a permanent outpost, what do you think is the reasonable timeframe, both technologically and given the politics?I do think, if we do what I am arguing for, which is to make it the mission of this administration to not only just land a Starship on Mars, but land a Starship on Mars bringing a massive robotic expedition to Mars, and then following that up with several more robotic landings to Mars that prepare a base, set up the power system, et cetera, then yes, I think landing the first humans on Mars in 2033 is entirely reasonable. What the Trump administration needs to do is get this program going to the point where people look at this and say, “This is working, this is going to be great, it's already great, let's follow through.”And then, if you have your first humans on Mars in early 2030s, I think we can have a permanent Mars base by the end of that decade, by 2040, a base with 20–30 people on it. A human expedition to Mars doesn't need to grow food. You can just bring your food for a two-year expedition, and you should. You establish a base of 10 or 20 to 30, 50 people, you want to set up greenhouses, you want to be growing food. Then you start developing the technologies to make things like glass, plastic, steel, aluminum on Mars so you can build greenhouses on Mars, and you start establishing an agricultural base, and now you can support 500 people on Mars, and then now the amount of things you can do on Mars greatly expands, and as you build up your industrial and agricultural base, and of course your technologies for actually implementing things on Mars become ever more advanced, now it becomes possible to start thinking about establishing colonies.So that's another thing. Musk's idea that we're going to colonize Mars by landing 1,000 Starships on Mars, each with a hundred people, and now you've got a hundred thousand people on Mars, kind of like D-Day, we landed 130,000 men on the Normandy Beach on D-Day, and then another 100,000 the next day, and so forth. You could do that because you had Liberty Ships that could cross the English Channel in six hours with 10,000 tons of cargo each. The Starship takes eight months to get to Mars, or six, and it takes a 100 tons. You can't supply Mars from Earth. You have to supply Mars from Mars, beyond very small numbers, and that means that the colonization of Mars is not going to be like the D-Day landing, it's going to be more like the colonization of America, which started with tiny colonies, which as they developed, created the crafts and the farms, and ultimately the industries that could support, ultimately, a nation of 300 million people.On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were PromisedMicro Reads▶ Economics* Why the Fed's Job May Get a Lot More Difficult - NYT* America's Economic Exceptionalism Is on Thin Ice - Bberg Opinion* Trump Is Undermining What Made the American Economy Great - NYT Opinion* Don't Look to the Fed for the Answer to Stagflation - Bberg Opinion▶ Business* Inside Google's Two-Year Frenzy to Catch Up With OpenAI - Wired* Some Nvidia Customers Are OK With Older Chips - WSJ* SoftBank to Buy Ampere, a Silicon Valley Chip Start-Up, for $6.5 Billion - NYT* Nvidia CEO Says He Was Surprised That Publicly Held Quantum Firms Exist - Bberg* The promise of the fifth estate is being squeezed - FT* Boeing Beats Lockheed for Next-Gen US Fighter Jet Contract - Bberg▶ Policy/Politics* Six Ways to Understand DOGE and Predict Its Future Behavior - Cato* Government Science Data May Soon Be Hidden. They're Racing to Copy It. - NYT* Stopping Child Porn Online Is a Worthy Goal. But Beware the Proposed Cure - WSJ▶ AI/Digital* Mini-satellite paves the way for quantum messaging anywhere on Earth - Nature* The Impact of GenAI on Content Creation – Evidence from Music Videos - SSRN* AI weather forecast project eyes access through desktop computers - FT▶ Biotech/Health* Why a weight-loss drug could become a geopolitical bargaining chip - FT* We've entered a forever war with bird flu - The Verge* Doctors Told Him He Was Going to Die. Then A.I. Saved His Life. - NYT▶ Clean Energy/Climate* Inside a new quest to save the “doomsday glacier” - MIT* Glaciers are melting at record speed, says UN - Semafor▶ Robotics/AVs* Disney's Robotic Droids Are the Toast of Silicon Valley - WSJ* The fantasy of humanoid robots misses the point - FT▶ Space/Transportation* The ax has become an important part of the Space Force's arsenal - Ars* NASA Won't Let Starliner Die Just Yet, Even After Boeing's Space Fiasco - Gizmodo* How Warp Drives Don't Break Relativity - Universe Today▶ Up Wing/Down Wing* Japan Urgently Needs an AI Vibe Shift - Bberg Opinion* What left-wing critics don't get about abundance - Niskanen Center▶ Substacks/NewslettersWhat is Vibe Coding? - AI SupremacyFaster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. 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On episode 150 of This Week in Space, it's our Listener Special edition! Not only do we answer your questions and respond to your comments, but we lined up a number of your most tummy-tickling space jokes in the humor shooting gallery. This one is more fun than wearing new shoes! Join us as we talk about asteroid 2024YR4, the Space Launch System's prospects, Katy Perry in space, the newest lunar missions, the X-37B "secret shuttle," Apollo-era flight director Gene Kranz and astronaut Buzz Aldrin, solar sails, the cage match between Elon and astronaut Andreas Morgenson, and the best meteor shower of the year! Headlines Asteroid 2024 YR4 no longer a threat - The Earth-shattering asteroid that briefly had a record high 3.2% chance of impact has been downgraded to a 1 in 20,000 risk after pre-discovery data was analyzed, sparing Barstow and the rest of Earth. SLS faces uncertain future - Even long-time supporters like Scott Pace (former National Space Council secretary) are suggesting an "off-ramp" from the SLS rocket to commercial providers, signaling a potential shift in NASA's approach to lunar missions. Lunar Trailblazer mission communication issues - The recently launched lunar orbiter briefly lost contact after launch on a Falcon 9 but has since established a heartbeat. Blue Origin announces all-female crew for NS-31 - The upcoming mission will feature singer Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, and four other accomplished women, marking the first all-female crew since Valentina Tereshkova's solo flight in the 1960s. Blue Ghost lunar landing imminent - Firefly Aerospace's first moon lander is scheduled to touch down on March 2nd, joining two other private landers (from Intuitive Machines and ispace) headed to the moon in the coming weeks. Listener Questions X-37B space plane purpose - The hosts discussed the secretive Space Force vehicle that's been in orbit for 908 days, likely testing technologies like hall thrusters and conducting reconnaissance. Elon Musk vs. astronauts controversy - The hosts addressed the Twitter/X confrontation between Elon Musk and astronauts (including Andreas Morgensen) regarding claims that astronauts were "stranded" on the ISS for political reasons. Gene Kranz's impact during Apollo - Rod shared his experience interviewing the legendary flight director, highlighting Kranz's "dictum" speech after the Apollo 1 fire and his transition to a more reflective persona later in life. Meeting Buzz Aldrin - The hosts described Aldrin as passionate, technically brilliant, and candid about his personal struggles, with Tariq sharing how Aldrin was the subject of his first professional space article in 1999. Solar sail technology potential - They discussed the success of Planetary Society's LightSail 2 and other solar sail missions, lamenting that the technology hasn't been utilized more extensively for deep space missions. Best meteor showers to observe - The hosts recommended the Perseids (August), Geminids (December), and Leonids (November) as the most impressive annual meteor showers, emphasizing the importance of dark skies for optimal viewing. Convincing moon landing deniers - They discussed the challenge of persuading conspiracy theorists, citing evidence including Soviet tracking confirmation and modern lunar reconnaissance photos showing Apollo landing sites. Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Download or subscribe to This Week in Space at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

We Answer Your Questions—Possibly Correctly! Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik For full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space/episodes/150

On episode 150 of This Week in Space, it's our Listener Special edition! Not only do we answer your questions and respond to your comments, but we lined up a number of your most tummy-tickling space jokes in the humor shooting gallery. This one is more fun than wearing new shoes! Join us as we talk about asteroid 2024YR4, the Space Launch System's prospects, Katy Perry in space, the newest lunar missions, the X-37B "secret shuttle," Apollo-era flight director Gene Kranz and astronaut Buzz Aldrin, solar sails, the cage match between Elon and astronaut Andreas Morgenson, and the best meteor shower of the year! Headlines Asteroid 2024 YR4 no longer a threat - The Earth-shattering asteroid that briefly had a record high 3.2% chance of impact has been downgraded to a 1 in 20,000 risk after pre-discovery data was analyzed, sparing Barstow and the rest of Earth. SLS faces uncertain future - Even long-time supporters like Scott Pace (former National Space Council secretary) are suggesting an "off-ramp" from the SLS rocket to commercial providers, signaling a potential shift in NASA's approach to lunar missions. Lunar Trailblazer mission communication issues - The recently launched lunar orbiter briefly lost contact after launch on a Falcon 9 but has since established a heartbeat. Blue Origin announces all-female crew for NS-31 - The upcoming mission will feature singer Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez, and four other accomplished women, marking the first all-female crew since Valentina Tereshkova's solo flight in the 1960s. Blue Ghost lunar landing imminent - Firefly Aerospace's first moon lander is scheduled to touch down on March 2nd, joining two other private landers (from Intuitive Machines and ispace) headed to the moon in the coming weeks. Listener Questions X-37B space plane purpose - The hosts discussed the secretive Space Force vehicle that's been in orbit for 908 days, likely testing technologies like hall thrusters and conducting reconnaissance. Elon Musk vs. astronauts controversy - The hosts addressed the Twitter/X confrontation between Elon Musk and astronauts (including Andreas Morgensen) regarding claims that astronauts were "stranded" on the ISS for political reasons. Gene Kranz's impact during Apollo - Rod shared his experience interviewing the legendary flight director, highlighting Kranz's "dictum" speech after the Apollo 1 fire and his transition to a more reflective persona later in life. Meeting Buzz Aldrin - The hosts described Aldrin as passionate, technically brilliant, and candid about his personal struggles, with Tariq sharing how Aldrin was the subject of his first professional space article in 1999. Solar sail technology potential - They discussed the success of Planetary Society's LightSail 2 and other solar sail missions, lamenting that the technology hasn't been utilized more extensively for deep space missions. Best meteor showers to observe - The hosts recommended the Perseids (August), Geminids (December), and Leonids (November) as the most impressive annual meteor showers, emphasizing the importance of dark skies for optimal viewing. Convincing moon landing deniers - They discussed the challenge of persuading conspiracy theorists, citing evidence including Soviet tracking confirmation and modern lunar reconnaissance photos showing Apollo landing sites. Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Download or subscribe to This Week in Space at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

We Answer Your Questions—Possibly Correctly! Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik For full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space/episodes/150

After everything learned through Mercury and Gemini culminated in the seventeen Apollo missions. The first ten were all testing and rehearsals, but the whole program, and a whole era was characterised by Apollo 11, the first time humans set foot on the moon. Along with the triumph, there was tragedy and a very near miss, and one of the most underrated aspects of NASA's space program - the lunar roving vehicles that let the astronauts explore more than seven kilometres from the Lunar Module.This really was one of the most remarkable endeavours of science, engineering and teamwork. Let's dive in.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on X for some special content      X.com/CosmicCoffTimeEmail us!cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.comYou can request a topic for the show! Or even just say hi!We'd love to hear from you.

The podcast “The Other Moonshot” explores the stories of three Black engineers and their contributions to the Apollo program. Plus, a look ahead at three missions that are launching this year that will help us understand and study our universe like never before.

This week, we're talking to the authors of a new book about spaceflight called "Star Bound: A Beginner's Guide to the American Space Program, from Goddard's Rockets to Goldilocks Planets and Everything in Between," Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III. Emily started the popular Facebook group Space Hipsters, now 66,000 members strong, and Bruce is a retired lawyer and space enthusiast who also happens to be the son of Bruce McCandless II, the NASA astronaut who flew on the shuttle and pioneered the use of the Manned Maneuvering Unit. We're going to cover a lot of territory in this one, so take your hand off the eject lever and strap in! Get "Star Bound" (Amazon Affiliate): https://amzn.to/4hvHtXo Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Guests: Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III Download or subscribe to This Week in Space at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

This week, we're talking to the authors of a new book about spaceflight called "Star Bound: A Beginner's Guide to the American Space Program, from Goddard's Rockets to Goldilocks Planets and Everything in Between," Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III. Emily started the popular Facebook group Space Hipsters, now 66,000 members strong, and Bruce is a retired lawyer and space enthusiast who also happens to be the son of Bruce McCandless II, the NASA astronaut who flew on the shuttle and pioneered the use of the Manned Maneuvering Unit. We're going to cover a lot of territory in this one, so take your hand off the eject lever and strap in! Get "Star Bound" (Amazon Affiliate): https://amzn.to/4hvHtXo Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Guests: Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III Download or subscribe to This Week in Space at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

This week, we're talking to the authors of a new book about spaceflight called "Star Bound: A Beginner's Guide to the American Space Program, from Goddard's Rockets to Goldilocks Planets and Everything in Between," Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III. Emily started the popular Facebook group Space Hipsters, now 66,000 members strong, and Bruce is a retired lawyer and space enthusiast who also happens to be the son of Bruce McCandless II, the NASA astronaut who flew on the shuttle and pioneered the use of the Manned Maneuvering Unit. We're going to cover a lot of territory in this one, so take your hand off the eject lever and strap in! Get "Star Bound" (Amazon Affiliate): https://amzn.to/4hvHtXo Headlines - Trump's Mars Vision: The administration's push for a crewed Mars mission by 2029 sparks debate. Tariq notes Elon Musk's visible enthusiasm, while Rod highlights the technical and political hurdles. - NASA Leadership Shuffle: Janet Petro named interim NASA administrator, bypassing Jim Free. The move might signal potential shifts in Artemis priorities. - DEI Rollbacks: Executive orders halt NASA's diversity initiatives, sparking workforce concerns. - SpaceX Milestones: 400th Falcon 9 landing celebrated, with 60 Starlink satellites launched in a week. ULA's Vulcan launch remains delayed. - Meteorite Doorbell Footage: A meteorite impact in Canada, captured on camera, stuns scientists and homeowners. - Quirky Moon Naming: IAU dubs a quasi-moon "Cardea" after the Roman goddess of door hinges. Main Topic: Star Bound - Book Overview: A cultural history of the U.S. space program, connecting missions like Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab to societal shifts (e.g., civil rights movements). Authors Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III emphasized accessibility, avoiding "engineer-speak." - Skylab's Legacy: Emily's passion shines as she details Skylab's role as a bridge between Apollo and the Shuttle, citing the groundbreaking science performed and how it may help us send humans to Mars. - MMU & Bruce McCandless II: Bruce shares stories of his father's iconic untethered flight with the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), suggesting that future missions may revive jetpack tech for tourism and repairs. - Shuttle Era Love/Hate: Both guests defend the Shuttle's cultural impact (e.g., Judy Resnik's inspiring legacy) while acknowledging its flaws. - Conspiracy Corner: The duo laughs over wild theories (STS-1 being flown by clones; Neil Armstrong being a robot) and praises Rod's 2016 book "Amazing Stories of the Space Age" for documenting Project Orion's nuclear explosive propulsion tech. - Future of Space: The book ends at today's "precipice"—Artemis delays, Mars hype, and private ventures. Bruce predicts jetpacks and hotels; Emily urges newcomers to embrace space history's messy, human side. Don't Miss: - Emily's Space Hipsters Facebook group for lively space discussions. - Bruce's website (brucemccandless.com) with book sources and WWII project teasers. Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Guests: Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III Download or subscribe to This Week in Space at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

This week, we're talking to the authors of a new book about spaceflight called "Star Bound: A Beginner's Guide to the American Space Program, from Goddard's Rockets to Goldilocks Planets and Everything in Between," Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III. Emily started the popular Facebook group Space Hipsters, now 66,000 members strong, and Bruce is a retired lawyer and space enthusiast who also happens to be the son of Bruce McCandless II, the NASA astronaut who flew on the shuttle and pioneered the use of the Manned Maneuvering Unit. We're going to cover a lot of territory in this one, so take your hand off the eject lever and strap in! Get "Star Bound" (Amazon Affiliate): https://amzn.to/4hvHtXo Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Guests: Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III Download or subscribe to This Week in Space at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Andy: https://twitter.com/andymalafarina https://www.instagram.com/andymalafarina/ https://www.twitch.tv/andymalafarina Pat: https://x.com/GatPeorge https://www.instagram.com/gatpeorge/ https://www.youtube.com/user/AceMcloud86

The boys breakdown the beginning of the Apollo Program up until Apollo 11.

Moiya and Tribble take a relaxing soak while talking about NASA's Apollo Program. Tribble wants to learn why the name doesn't make sense and why they did so many missions. Moiya wants to see Tribble react to the Apollo 11 flight path.     Guest Star Tribble is a comedian and podcast producer. Check out her website tribbzthecool.com and follow her at @tribbzthecool Messages Use code PALEBLUE at catanshop.com for 10% off CATAN – Starfarers Get your Pale Blue Pod Merch to stay warm this cozy season Listen to Big Game Hunger every Monday  Become a star and support us on patreon at patreon.com/palebluepod!   Find Us Online Website: palebluepod.com Patreon: patreon.com/palebluepod Twitter: twitter.com/PaleBluePod Instagram: instagram.com/palebluepod Credits Host Dr. Moiya McTier. Twitter: @GoAstroMo, Website: moiyamctier.com Editor Mischa Stanton. Twitter: @mischaetc, Website: mischastanton.com Cover artist Shae McMullin. Twitter: @thereshaegoes, Website: shaemcmullin.com Theme musician Evan Johnston. Website: evanjohnstonmusic.com About Us Pale Blue Pod is an astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe but want to be its friend. Astrophysicist Dr. Moiya McTier and comedian Corinne Caputo demystify space one topic at a time with open eyes, open arms, and open mouths (from so much laughing and jaw-dropping). By the end of each episode, the cosmos will feel a little less “ahhh too scary” and a lot more “ohhh, so cool!” New episodes every Monday. Pale Blue Pod is a member of the Multitude Collective.

This romantic comedy starring Scarlett Johanson and Channing Tatum has quite the conspiratorial twist! Set against the backdrop of the 1960's NASA's Apollo Program is something we NEVER expected to see in a big budget Hollywood film. Namely, the faking of the moon landing footage!That's right! This movie is about NASA faking the moon landing footage at the behest of a shady, government agent played by Woody Harrelson. Is he part of the Men In Black? Is this movie hinting at the truth or poking fun of those who don't trust the mainstream narrative?  Guest:Megan Nager - https://www.instagram.com/meganmakescomedy/  Follow REEL CONSPIRACIES Rumble - https://rumble.com/c/ReelConspiraciesYouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@ReelConspiraciesInstagram -  https://www.instagram.com/reelconspiraciespod/  Don't miss CONSPIRACY PILLED every Wednesday night at 7pm est - https://rumble.com/conspiracypilled  Music by: Drake Campos  #moonlanding #stanleykubric #nasaBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/conspiracy-pilled--6248227/support.

This romantic comedy starring Scarlett Johanson and Channing Tatum has quite the conspiratorial twist! Set against the backdrop of the 1960's NASA's Apollo Program is something we NEVER expected to see in a big budget Hollywood film. Namely, the faking of the moon landing footage!That's right! This movie is about NASA faking the moon landing footage at the behest of a shady, government agent played by Woody Harrelson. Is he part of the Men In Black? Is this movie hinting at the truth or poking fun of those who don't trust the mainstream narrative?  Guests:Abby Libby -  https://x.com/abbythelibb_Megan Nager - https://www.instagram.com/meganmakescomedy/  Follow REEL CONSPIRACIES Rumble - https://rumble.com/c/ReelConspiraciesYouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@ReelConspiraciesInstagram -  https://www.instagram.com/reelconspiraciespod/  Don't miss CONSPIRACY PILLED every Wednesday night at 7pm est - https://rumble.com/conspiracypilled  Music by: Drake Campos  #moonlanding #stanleykubric #nasaBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/conspiracy-pilled--6248227/support.

In the Shadow of Dora: A Novel of the Holocaust and the Apollo Program (Stephen F. Austin UP, 2020) spans two very different decades from the Nazi concentration camp of Dora-Mittelbau to the coast of central Florida in the late 1960s; the book tells the story of the real life intersections between the horror of the Third Reich's V-2 rocket program and the wonderment of the Apollo missions. Eli Hessel, a brilliant young Jewish mathematician, finds himself deep beneath a mountain where he is forced to build Nazi rockets. When he is finally freed from this secret underground concentration camp, he immigrates to New York, studies astrophysics, and is recruited by NASA to help build the largest rocket ever to rise above a launch pad: the Saturn V. To his shock, though, he will be under the command of former Nazi scientists Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph, both of who were at Dora. As America turns to the moon and cheers for rockets that lance the sky, Eli is swallowed up by the past and must cope with memories he thought were safely buried. This is a novel that asks questions about memory, morality, technology, and how the past influences the present. If we clamp down images of horror, will they always ignite and rise up on us? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In the Shadow of Dora: A Novel of the Holocaust and the Apollo Program (Stephen F. Austin UP, 2020) spans two very different decades from the Nazi concentration camp of Dora-Mittelbau to the coast of central Florida in the late 1960s; the book tells the story of the real life intersections between the horror of the Third Reich's V-2 rocket program and the wonderment of the Apollo missions. Eli Hessel, a brilliant young Jewish mathematician, finds himself deep beneath a mountain where he is forced to build Nazi rockets. When he is finally freed from this secret underground concentration camp, he immigrates to New York, studies astrophysics, and is recruited by NASA to help build the largest rocket ever to rise above a launch pad: the Saturn V. To his shock, though, he will be under the command of former Nazi scientists Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph, both of who were at Dora. As America turns to the moon and cheers for rockets that lance the sky, Eli is swallowed up by the past and must cope with memories he thought were safely buried. This is a novel that asks questions about memory, morality, technology, and how the past influences the present. If we clamp down images of horror, will they always ignite and rise up on us? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In the Shadow of Dora: A Novel of the Holocaust and the Apollo Program (Stephen F. Austin UP, 2020) spans two very different decades from the Nazi concentration camp of Dora-Mittelbau to the coast of central Florida in the late 1960s; the book tells the story of the real life intersections between the horror of the Third Reich's V-2 rocket program and the wonderment of the Apollo missions. Eli Hessel, a brilliant young Jewish mathematician, finds himself deep beneath a mountain where he is forced to build Nazi rockets. When he is finally freed from this secret underground concentration camp, he immigrates to New York, studies astrophysics, and is recruited by NASA to help build the largest rocket ever to rise above a launch pad: the Saturn V. To his shock, though, he will be under the command of former Nazi scientists Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph, both of who were at Dora. As America turns to the moon and cheers for rockets that lance the sky, Eli is swallowed up by the past and must cope with memories he thought were safely buried. This is a novel that asks questions about memory, morality, technology, and how the past influences the present. If we clamp down images of horror, will they always ignite and rise up on us? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/historical-fiction

Reaching the moon is arguably humanity's greatest accomplishment. When Kennedy promised we would reach the moon by the end of the decade, it sounded like a big commitment considering we had only just got a man into orbit some 3 days earlier. NASA used programs Mercury and Gemini to build towards the Apollo Program. The promise would be fulfilled in 1969 by the trio of Michael Collins (we got ya here Mike), Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin. Neil's footsteps were propelled to the moon off of the effort of each and every ground crew member that made the dream a reality. Join us we get Historically High on Apollo 11. 

In this episode we look at my father's career in NASA in the heroic era, and some fascinating lessons we can learn from them. We also look at my father's early steps in Yiddishkeit, and how inspiration can come from the most unlikely sources.  This is a link to related documents and pictures: Apollo 8 Nach Yomi: Join R' Wittenstein's Nach Yomi on WhatsApp. We learn a perek a day five days a week, with a nine minute shiur covering the key issues. Click here to join!  For tours, speaking engagements, or sponsorships contact us at jewishhistoryuncensored@gmail.com PRODUCED BY: CEDAR MEDIA STUDIOS  

This week Kevin Rusnak, Tyler Peterson, and Michael Bazemore drop into talk about the Cold War, daredevils, and the birth of the Space Program.  We have a lot of fun talking about the men and women who made NASA and maybe the coolest movie poster of all time. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts - send me a text hereWe recently lost another pioneer of the space race so the episode begins with a eulogy for astronaut Bill Anders, who took one of the most famous photographs in history, and ends with the life of Isaac Akinawa, arguably the most respected medic in the 100th Infantry Battalion.This week's Ghosts of the Pacific are:Ambassador & Air Force Major General William Anders - burial information TBDArmy Technician Fourth Grade Isaac Akinaka - Section E, Grave 133-AYaiko Gwen Yamaki Akinawa - Section E, Grave 133-AThe Ghosts of the Pacific Theme is Ukulele and Love Birds by emjaydabayou, with a few Waves of Hawaii added for ambiance.The Ghosts of the Pacific Transition music are some Uke Chords by turkitron.As always, a very special thanks to Mountain Up Cap Company for its continued help to spread the word about the podcast on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/MountainUpCapCompany Climb to Glory!For more information about the podcast visit: ·       The GoA website: https://www.ghostsofarlingtonpodcast.com    ·       Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ghostsofarlingtonpodcast·       Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArlingtonGhosts·       Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ghostsofarlington/

Project Apollo was a feat of human achievement akin to, and arguably greater than, the discovery of the New World. From 1962 to 1972, NASA conducted 17 crewed missions, six of which placed men on the surface of the moon. Since the Nixon administration put an end to Project Apollo, our extraterrestrial ambitions seem to have stalled along with our sense of national optimism. But is the American spirit of adventure, heroism, and willingness to take extraordinary risk a thing of the pastToday on the podcast, I talk with Charles Murray about what made Apollo extraordinary and whether we in the 21st century have the will to do extraordinary things. Murray is the co-author with Catherine Bly Cox of Apollo: The Race to the Moon, first published in 1989 and republished in 2004. He is also my colleague here at AEI.In This Episode* Going to the moon (1:35)* Support for the program (7:40)* Gene Kranz (9:31)* An Apollo 12 story (12:06)* An Apollo 11 story (17:58)* Apollo in the media (21:36)* Perspectives on space flight (24:50)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversationGoing to the moon (1:35)Pethokoukis: When I look at the delays with the new NASA go-to-the-moon rocket, and even if you look at the history of SpaceX and their current Starship project, these are not easy machines for mankind to build. And it seems to me that, going back to the 1960s, Apollo must have been at absolutely the far frontier of what humanity was capable of back then, and sometimes I cannot almost believe it worked. Were the Apollo people—the engineers—were they surprised it worked?Murray: There were a lot of people who, they first heard the Kennedy speech saying, “We want to go to the moon and bring a man safely back by the end of the decade,” they were aghast. I mean, come on! In 1961, when Kennedy made that speech, we had a grand total of 15 minutes of manned space flight under our belt with a red stone rocket with 78,000 pounds of thrust. Eight years and eight weeks later, about the same amount of time since Donald Trump was elected to now, we had landed on the moon with a rocket that had 7.6 million pounds of thrust, compared to the 78,000, and using technology that had had to be invented essentially from scratch, all in eight years. All of Cape Canaveral, those huge buildings down there, all that goes up during that time.Well, I'm not going to go through the whole list of things, but if you want to realize how incredibly hard to believe it is now that we did it, consider the computer system that we used to go to the moon. Jerry Bostick, who was one of the flight dynamics officers, was telling me a few months ago about how excited they were just before the first landing when they got an upgrade to their computer system for the whole Houston Center. It had one megabyte of memory, and this was, to them, all the memory they could ever possibly want. One megabyte.We'll never use it all! We'll never use all this, it's a luxury!So Jim, I guess I'm saying a couple of things. One is, to the young'ins out there today, you have no idea what we used to be able to do. We used to be able to work miracles, and it was those guys who did it.Was the Kennedy speech, was it at Rice University?No, “go to the moon” was before Congress.He gave another speech at Rice where he was started to list all the things that they needed to do to get to the moon. And it wasn't just, “We have these rockets and we need to make a bigger one,” but there was so many technologies that needed to be developed over the course of the decade, I can't help but think a president today saying, “We're going to do this and we have a laundry list of things we don't know how to do, but we're going to figure them out…” It would've been called pie-in-the-sky, or something like that.By the way, in order to do this, we did things which today would be unthinkable. You would have contracts for important equipment; the whole cycle for the contract acquisition process would be a matter of weeks. The request for proposals would go out; six weeks later, they would've gotten the proposals in, they would've made a decision, and they'd be spending the money on what they were going to do. That kind of thing doesn't get done.But I'll tell you though, the ballsiest thing that happened in the program, among the people on the ground — I mean the ballsiest thing of all was getting on top of that rocket and being blasted into space — but on the ground it was called the “all up” decision. “All up” refers to the testing of the Saturn V, the launch vehicle, this monstrous thing, which basically is standing a Navy destroyer on end and blasting it into space. And usually, historically, when you test those things, you test Stage One, and if that works, then you add the second stage and then you add the third stage. And the man who was running the Apollo program at that time, a guy named Miller, made the decision they were going to do All Up on the first test. They were going to have all three stages, and they were going to go with it, and it worked, which nobody believed was possible. And then after only a few more launches, they put a man on that thing and it went. Decisions were made during that program that were like wartime decisions in terms of the risk that people were willing to take.One thing that surprises me is just how much that Kennedy timeline seemed to drive things. Apollo seven, I think it was October '68, and that was the first manned flight? And then like two months later, Apollo 8, we are whipping those guys around the moon! That seems like a rather accelerated timeline to me!The decision to go to the moon on Apollo 8 was very scary to the people who first heard about it. And, by the way, if they'd had the same problem on Apollo 8 that they'd had on Apollo 13, the astronauts would've died, because on Apollo 8 you did not have the lunar module with them, which is how they got back. So they pulled it off, but it was genuinely, authentically risky. But, on the other hand, if they wanted to get to the moon by the end of 1969, that's the kind of chance you had to take.Support for the Program (7:40)How enthusiastic was the public that the program could have withstood another accident? Another accident before 11 that would've cost lives, or even been as scary as Apollo 13 — would we have said, let's not do it, or we're rushing this too much? I think about that a lot now because we talk about this new space age, I'm wondering how people today would react.In January, 1967, three astronauts were killed on the pad at Cape Canaveral when the spacecraft burned up on the ground. And the support for the program continued. But what's astonishing there is that they were flying again with manned vehicles in September 1967. . . No, it was a year and 10 months, basically, between this fire, this devastating fire, a complete redesign of the spacecraft, and they got up again.I think that it's fair to say that, through Apollo 11, the public was enthusiastic about the program. It's amazingly how quickly the interest fell off after the successful landing; so that by the time Apollo 13 was launched, the news programs were no longer covering it very carefully, until the accident occurred. And by the time of Apollo 16, 17, everybody was bored with the program.Speaking of Apollo 13, to what extent did that play a role in Nixon's decision to basically end the Apollo program, to cut its budget, to treat it like it was another program, ultimately, which led to its end? Did that affect Nixon's decision making, that close call, do you think?No. The public support for the program had waned, political support had waned. The Apollo 13 story energized people for a while in terms of interest, but it didn't play a role. Gene Kranz (9:31)500 years after Columbus discovering the New World, we talk about Columbus. And I would think that 500 years from now, we'll talk about Neil Armstrong. But will we also talk about Gene Kranz? Who is Gene Kranz and why should we talk about him 500 years from now?Gene Kranz, also known as General Savage within NASA, was a flight director and he was the man who was on the flight director's console when the accident on 13 occurred, by the way. But his main claim to fame is that he was one of — well, he was also on the flight director's desk when we landed. And what you have to understand, Jim, is the astronauts did not run these missions. I'm not dissing the astronauts, but all of the decisions . . . they couldn't make those decisions because they didn't have the information to make the decisions. These life-and-death decisions had to be made on the ground, and the flight director was the autocrat of the mission control, and not just the autocrat in terms of his power, he was also the guy who was going to get stuck with all the responsibility if there was a mistake. If they made a mistake that killed the astronauts, that flight director could count on testifying before Congressional committees and going down in history as an idiot.Somebody like Gene Kranz, and the other flight director, Glynn Lunney during that era, who was also on the controls during the Apollo 13 problems, they were in their mid-thirties, and they were running the show for one of the historic events in human civilization. They deserve to be remembered, and they have a chance to be, because I have written one thing in my life that people will still be reading 500 years from now — not very many people, but some will — and that's the book about Apollo that Catherine, my wife, and I wrote. And the reason I'm absolutely confident that they're going to be reading about it is because — historians, anyway, historians will — because of what you just said. There are wars that get forgotten, there are all sorts of events that get forgotten, but we remember the Trojan War, we remember Hastings, we remember Columbus discovering America. . . We will remember for a thousand years to come, let alone 500, the century in which we first left Earth. An Apollo 12 story (12:06)If you just give me a story or two that you'd like to tell about Apollo that maybe the average person may have never heard of, but you find . . . I'm sure there's a hundred of these. Is there one or two that you think the audience might find interesting?The only thing is it gets a little bit nerdy, but a lot about Apollo gets nerdy. On Apollo 12, the second mission, the launch vehicle lifts off and into the launch phase, about a minute in, it gets hit by lightning — twice. Huge bolts of lightning run through the entire spacecraft. This is not something it was designed for. And so they get up to orbit. All of the alarms are going off at once inside the cabin of the spacecraft. Nobody has the least idea what's happened because they don't know that they got hit by lightning, all they know is nothing is working.A man named John Aaron is sitting in the control room at the EECOM's desk, which is the acronym for the systems guide who monitored all the systems, including electrical systems, and he's looking at his console and he's seeing a weird pattern of numbers that makes no sense at all, and then he remembers 15 months earlier, he'd just been watching the monitor during a test at Cape Canaveral, he wasn't even supposed to be following this launch test, he was just doing it to keep his hand in, and so forth, and something happened whereby there was a strange pattern of numbers that appeared on John Aaron's screen then. And so he called Cape Canaveral and said, what happened? Because I've never seen that before. And finally the Cape admitted that somebody had accidentally turned a switch called the SCE switch off.Okay, so here is John Aaron. Apollo 12 has gone completely haywire. The spacecraft is not under the control of the astronauts, they don't know what's happened. Everybody's trying to figure out what to do.John Aaron remembers . . . I'm starting to get choked up just because that he could do that at a moment of such incredible stress. And he just says to the flight director, “Try turning SCE to auxiliary.” And the flight director had never even heard of SCE, but he just . . . Trust made that whole system run. He passes that on to the crew. The crew turns that switch, and, all at once, they get interpretable data back again.That's the first part of the story. That was an absolutely heroic call of extraordinary ability for him to do that. The second thing that happens at that point is they have completely lost their guidance platform, so they have to get that backup from scratch, and they've also had this gigantic volts of electricity that's run through every system in the spacecraft and they have three orbits of the earth before they have to have what was called trans lunar injection: go onto the moon. That's a couple of hours' worth.Well, what is the safe thing to do? The safe thing to do is: “This is not the right time to go to the moon with a spacecraft that's been damaged this way.” These guys at mission control run through a whole series of checks that they're sort of making up on the fly because they've never encountered this situation before, and everything seems to check out. And so, at the end of a couple of orbits, they just say, “We're going to go to the moon.” And the flight director can make that decision. Catherine and I spent a lot of time trying to track down the anguished calls going back and forth from Washington to Houston, and by the higher ups, “Should we do this?” There were none. The flight director said, “We're going,” and they went. To me, that is an example of a kind of spirit of adventure, for lack of a better word, that was extraordinary. Decisions made by guys in their thirties that were just accepted as, “This is what we're going to do.”By the way, Gene Kranz, I was interviewing him for the book, and I was raising this story with him. (This will conclude my monologue.) I was raising this story with him and I was saying, “Just extraordinary that you could make that decision.” And he said, “No, not really. We checked it out. The spacecraft looked like it was good.” This was only a year or two after the Challenger disaster that I was conducting this interview. And I said to Gene, “Gene, if we had a similar kind of thing happen today, would NASA ever permit that decision to be made?” And Gene glared at me. And believe me, when Gene Kranz glares at you, you quail at your seat. And then he broke into laughter because there was not a chance in hell that the NASA of 1988 would do what the NASA of 1969 did.An Apollo 11 story (17:58)If all you know about Apollo 11 is what you learned in high school, or maybe you saw a documentary somewhere, and — just because I've heard you speak before, and I've heard Gene Kranz speak—what don't people know about Apollo 11? There were — I imagine with all these flights — a lot of decisions that needed to be made probably with not a lot of time, encountering new situations — after all, no one had done this before. Whereas, I think if you just watch a news report, you think that once the rocket's up in the air, the next thing that happens is Neil Armstrong lands it on the moon and everyone's just kind of on cruise control for the next couple of days, and boy, it certainly doesn't seem like that.For those of us who were listening to the landing, and I'm old enough to have done that, there was a little thing called—because you could listen to the last few minutes, you could listen to what was going on between the spacecraft and mission control, and you hear Buzz Aldrin say, “Program Alarm 1301 . . .  Program Alarm 1301 . . .” and you can't…   well, you can reconstruct it later, and there's about a seven-second delay between him saying that and a voice saying, “We're a go on that.” That seven seconds, you had a person in the back room that was supporting, who then informed this 26-year-old flight controller that they had looked at that possibility and they could still land despite it. The 26-year-old had to trust the guy in the back room because the 26-year-old didn't know, himself, that that was the case. He trusts him, he tells the flight director Gene Kranz, and they say, “Go.” Again: Decision made in seven seconds. Life and death. Taking a risk instead of taking the safe way out.Sometimes I think that that risk-taking ethos didn't end with Apollo, but maybe, in some ways, it hasn't been as strong since. Is there a scenario where we fly those canceled Apollo flights that we never flew, and then, I know there were other plans of what to do after Apollo, which we didn't do. Is there a scenario where the space race doesn't end, we keep racing? Even if we're only really racing against ourselves.I mean we've got . . . it's Artemis, right? That's the new launch vehicle that we're going to go back to the moon in, and there are these plans that somehow seem to never get done at the time they're supposed to get done, but I imagine we will have some similar kind of flights going on. It's very hard to see a sustained effort at this point. It's very hard to see grandiose effort at this point. The argument of, “Why are we spending all this money on manned space flight?” in one sense, I sympathize with because it is true that most of the things we do could be done by instruments, could be done by drones, we don't actually have to be there. On the other hand, unless we're willing to spread our wings and raise our aspirations again, we're just going to be stuck for a long time without making much more progress. So I guess what I'm edging around to is, in this era, in this ethos, I don't see much happening done by the government. The Elon Musks of the world may get us to places that the government wouldn't ever go. That's my most realistic hope.Apollo in the Media (21:36)If I could just give you a couple of films about the space program and you just… thought you liked it, you thought it captured something, or you thought it was way off, just let just shoot a couple at you. The obvious one is The Right Stuff—based on the Tom Wolfe book, of course.The Right Stuff was very accurate about the astronauts' mentality. It was very inaccurate about the relationship between the engineers and the astronauts. It presents the engineers as constantly getting the astronauts way, and being kind of doofuses. That was unfair. But if you want to understand how the astronauts worked, great movieApollo 13, perhaps the most well-known.Extremely accurate. Extremely accurate portrayal of the events. There are certain things I wish they could include, but it's just a movie, so they couldn't include everything. The only real inaccuracy that bothered me was it showed the consoles of the flight controllers with colored graphics on them. They didn't have colored graphics during Apollo! They had columns of white numbers on a black background that were just kind of scrolling through and changing all the time, and that's all. But apparently, when their technical advisor pointed that out to Ron Howard, Ron said, “There are some things that an audience just won't accept, but they would not accept.”That was the leap! First Man with Ryan Gosling portraying Neil Armstrong.I'll tell you: First place, good movie—Excellent, I think.Yeah, and the people who knew Armstrong say to me, it's pretty good at capturing Armstrong, who himself was a very impressive guy. This conceit in the movie that he has this little trinket he drops on the moon, that was completely made up and it's not true to life. But I'll tell you what they tell me was true to life that surprised me was how violently they were shaken up during the launch phase. And I said, “Is that the way it was, routinely?” And they said, yeah, it was a very rough ride that those guys had. And the movie does an excellent job of conveying something that somebody who'd spent a lot of time studying the Apollo program didn't know.I don't know if you've seen the Apple series For All Mankind by Ronald D. Moore, which is based on the premise I raised earlier that Apollo didn't end, we just kept up the Space Race and we kept advancing off to building moon colonies and off to Mars. Have you seen that? And what do you think about it if you have? I don't know that you have.I did not watch it. I have a problem with a lot of these things because I have my own image of the Apollo Program, and it drives me nuts if somebody does something that is egregiously wrong. I went to see Apollo 13 and I'm glad I did it because it was so accurate, but I probably should look at For All Mankind.Very reverential. A very pro-space show, to be sure. Have you seen the Apollo 11 documentary that's come out in the past five years? It was on the big screen, it was at theaters, it was a lot of footage they had people had not seen before, they found some old canisters somewhere of film. I don't know if you've seen this. I think it's just called Apollo 11.No, I haven't seen that. That sounds like something that I ought to look at.Perspectives on space flight (24:50)My listeners love when I read . . . Because you mentioned the idea of: Why do we go to space? If it's merely about exploration, I suppose we could just send robots and maybe eventually the robots will get better. So I want to just briefly read two different views of why we go to space.Why should human beings explore space? Because space offers transcendence from which only human beings can benefit. The James Webb Space Telescope cannot articulate awe. A robot cannot go into the deep and come back with soulful renewal. To fully appreciate space, we need people to go there and embrace it for what it fully is. Space is not merely for humans, nor is space merely for space. Space is for divine communion.That's one view.The second one is from Ayn Rand, who attended the Apollo 11 moon launch. This is what Ayn Rand wrote in 1969:The next four days were torn out of the world's usual context, like a breathing spell with a sweep of clean air piercing mankind's lethargic suffocation. For thirty years or longer, the newspapers had featured nothing but disasters, catastrophes, betrayals, the shrinking stature of man, the sordid mess of a collapsing civilization; their voice had become a long, sustained whine, the megaphone a failure, like the sound of the Oriental bazaar where leprous beggars, of spirit or matter, compete for attention by displaying their sores. Now, for once, the newspapers were announcing a human achievement, were reporting on a human triumph, were reminding us that man still exists and functions as a man. Those four days conveyed the sense that we were watching a magnificent work of art—a play dramatizing a single theme: the efficacy of man's mind.Is the answer for why we go to space, can it be found in either of those readings?They're going to be found in both. I am a sucker for heroism, whether it's in war or in any other arena, and space offers a kind of celebration of the human spirit that is only found in endeavors that involve both great effort and also great risk. And the other aspect of transcendence, I'm also a sucker for saying the world is not only more complicated than we know, but more complicated than we can imagine. The universe is more complicated than we can imagine. And I resonate to the sentiment in the first quote.Faster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

On Wednesday's show: In a recent ruling, the Texas Supreme Court said it's up to doctors to decide if an abortion is medically necessary under Texas law. Doctors say that exception is too vague. And Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee announced she is running for her seat in Congress again, after losing the race for Houston mayor. We discuss those and other developments in the news in our weekly political roundup. Also this hour: Ahead of the anniversary of the last Apollo mission moonwalk, we revisit a conversation with Poppy Northcutt, the first female engineer to work in NASA's Mission Control during the Apollo program. And we explore why a new generation has embraced the game of mahjong.

He's the guy pointing to a NASA launch behind him, in the most legendary shot in television history. He's a science historian and Apollo Program correspondent. He's the creator, host, and writer of the long-running program “Connections.” He is a science communication hero to millions and a global treasure. He is James Burke, and he chats about how connected historical events are, and how connection between humans is vital. We also talk about Napoleon's toothpick, dog pee, shipworms, writer's block, TV shoots, and his new Connections season on Curiosity Stream. Also: (surprise!) they gave me a spinoff called “Quick Connections.” Watch Connections with James Burke on Curiosity Stream and Alie's spinoff, Quick Connections with Alie WardBrowse books by James Burke including Connections and American Connections: The Founding Fathers. Networked.A donation went to National Energy ActionMore episode sources and linksSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesOther episodes you may enjoy: Pedagogy (SCIENCE COMMUNICATION) with Bill Nye, TikTokology (SCICOMM) with Hank Green, Molecular Biology (PROTEINS & SCICOMM) with Dr. Raven Baxter, Futurology (THE FUTURE), Eudemonology (HAPPINESS), Cosmology (THE UNIVERSE) Encore, Astrobiology (ALIENS), Maritime Archeology (SHIPWRECKS), Classical Archaeology (ANCIENT ROME), Egyptology (ANCIENT EGYPT), Delphinology (DOLPHINS), Mythology (STORYTELLING), Geology (ROCKS), Curiology (EMOJI)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio ProductionsManaging Director: Susan HaleScheduling Producer: Noel DilworthTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Imagine embarking on a personal 'Apollo Program', a mission filled with commitment, dedication, and one that shapes your priorities. Join us as we draw inspirational parallels from JFK's 1962 speech at Rice University and Jesus' teachings in John 17. We delve into the global and local mission of Jesus, highlighting how everyone can play a pivotal role in spreading the gospel. Equipped with the powerful tool of salvation, we're tasked with the mission to represent Jesus in our own backyards, just as Jesus wants everyone to hear and respond positively to his good news.Matt Armstrong, a transformative British YouTube star, teaches us to see potential and value in the things that others deem worthless. Just as he breathes new life into old, discarded cars, we ought to see the worth and beauty in people amidst their brokenness. The church carries the gospel message and represents Christ, even in a world that's often dismissive. As we explore this profound notion, we're inspired to consider how our lives can contribute to a mission greater than we could ever conceive on our own. So, buckle up and join us on this spiritual journey, as we discuss the global and local mission of Jesus, the beauty hidden in brokenness, and the incredible opportunity to represent Jesus in our everyday lives.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A Golden Age of Building? Excerpts and lessons from Empire State, Pentagon, Skunk Works and SpaceX, published by jacobjacob on September 1, 2023 on LessWrong. Patrick Collison has a fantastic list of examples of people quickly accomplishing ambitious things together since the 19th Century. It does make you yearn for a time that feels... different, when the lethargic behemoths of government departments could move at the speed of a racing startup: [...] last century, [the Department of Defense] innovated at a speed that puts modern Silicon Valley startups to shame: the Pentagon was built in only 16 months (1941-1943), the Manhattan Project ran for just over 3 years (1942-1946), and the Apollo Program put a man on the moon in under a decade (1961-1969). In the 1950s alone, the United States built five generations of fighter jets, three generations of manned bombers, two classes of aircraft carriers, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and nuclear-powered attack submarines. [Note: that paragraph is from a different post.] Inspired by partly by Patrick's list, I spent some of my vacation reading and learning about various projects from this Lost Age. I then wrote up a memo to share highlights and excerpts with my colleagues at Lightcone. After that, some people encouraged me to share the memo more widely -- and I do think it's of interest to anyone who harbors an ambition for greatness and a curiosity about operating effectively. How do you build the world's tallest building in only a year? The world's largest building in the same amount of time? Or America's first fighter jet in just 6 months? How?? Writing this post felt like it helped me gain at least some pieces of this puzzle. If anyone has additional pieces, I'd love to hear them in the comments. Empire State Building The Empire State was the tallest building in the world upon completion in April 1931. Over my vacation I read a rediscovered 1930s notebook, written by the general contractors themselves. It details the construction process and the organisation of the project. I will share some excerpts, but to contextualize them, consider first some other skyscrapers built more recently: Design startConstruction endTotal timeBurj Khalifa200420106 yearsShanghai Tower200820157 yearsAbraj Al-Balt2002201210 yearsOne World Trade Center200520149 yearsNordstrom Tower2010202010 yearsTaipei 101199720047 years (list from skyscrapercenter.com) Now, from the Empire State book's foreword: The most astonishing statistics of the Empire State was the extraordinary speed with which it was planned and constructed. [...] There are different ways to describe this feat. Six months after the setting of the first structural columns on April 7, 1930, the steel frame topped off on the eighty-sixth floor. The fully enclosed building, including the mooring mast that raised its height to the equivalent of 102 stories, was finished in eleven months, in March 1931. Most amazing though, is the fact that within just twenty months -- from the first signed contractors with the architects in September 1929 to opening-day ceremonies on May 1, 1931 -- the Empire State was designed, engineered, erected, and ready for tenants. Within this time, the architectural drawings and plans were prepared, the Vicitorian pile of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel was demolished [demolition started only two days after the initial agreement was signed], the foundations and grillages were dug and set, the steel columns and beams, some 57,000 tons, were fabricated and milled to precise specifications, ten million common bricks were laid, more than 62,000 cubic yards of concrete were poured, 6,400 windows were set, and sixty-seven elevators were installed in seven miles of shafts. At peak activity, 3,500 workers were employed on site, and the frame rose more than a story a day,...

Electric vehicle startup Canoo's first shipment to Space Travel and the Immigrant Experience from “Scientists Without Borders: Immigrants in NASA and the Apollo Program” by Rosanna Perotti from the book After Apollo: Cultural Legacies of the Race to the Moon.   

Izzy is star-struck as one of her marketing heroes is a guest on the Space Marketing Podcast. Mark Schaefer is a marketing guru with 10 best-selling books, a prominent speaker, podcaster, blogger, and more. They chat about some of the powerful books that he has written that have impacted Izzy's career and helped define her point-of-view for her marketing perspective that she shares with the world. Mark also talks about his love of space and the importance of being human.  ABOUT MARK SCHAEFER Author, speaker, futurist, and business consultant https://businessesgrow.com/ Community - RISE https://businessesgrow.com/rise-community/ Podcast - Marketing Companion https://businessesgrow.com/podcast-the-marketing-companion-2/ Blog - Grow https://businessesgrow.com/blog/ Book list: https://businessesgrow.com/social-media-marketing-books/ Books mentioned: Known Marketing Rebellion Belonging to the Brand Cumulative Advantage CHAPTERS 01:17 Introduction 02:43 Story of Mark's impact on Izzy 04:48 Known book 08:06 Marketing Rebellion book 11:42 Cumulative Advantage book 17:05 ActiveCampaign 19:12 Belonging to the Brand book 23:29 Narrating your books on Audible 26:22 David Meerman Scott - Marketing the Moon 27:18 Mark's space journey 30:29 Apollo Program as a marketing case study 31:53 SkyView and NASA Brand 33:53 Apollo program woven with marketing 35:19 Podcast anniversary 38:54 Jason Falls 40:10 Sneak peek - RISE Community 41:25 Marketing Retreat - Uprising 43:32 Global Community 45:11 Space for Kentucky 44:45 Blog {Grow} 46:14 Final Thoughts - Be human 49:44 Ending remarks SHOW NOTES David Meerman Scott  Apollo artifacts with two collections: https://www.apolloartifacts.com https://www.apollopresskits.com Marketing the Moon book https://www.davidmeermanscott.com/books/marketing-the-moon Marketing Podcast Network https://marketingpodcasts.net/ SkyView App Apollo Program https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/index.html ABOUT IZZY Izzy's website - https://izzy.house Author of Space Marketing: Competing in the new commercial space industry AND Space Marketing: Spaceports on Amazon and Audible - https://bit.ly/Space-Marketing Podcast host for Space Marketing Podcast - https://spacemarketingpodcast.com Organizer for Space for Kentucky Roundtable - https://spaceforkentucky.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time to reach for the stars. Well, the moon, at least.  Hey crew, I'm your host, Brian Rollins, and this is episode 227 of the Dorky Geeky Nerdy Trivia Podcast. This week, we've got Apollo Program trivia. Thirty questions about the NASA program to a man on the Moon and safely return him to the Earth.  If this is your cup of Tang, be sure to check out the Astronomy trivia episode way back in Season One that we did in honor of the 50th anniversary of the 1st Moon landing. You can find it (and all our past episodes) at DorkyGeekyNerdy.com.  That covers our usual business, so let's launch this show.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dorkygeekynerdy/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dorkygeekynerdy/support

It's time to reach for the stars. Well, the moon, at least.  Hey crew, I'm your host, Brian Rollins, and this is episode 227 of the Dorky Geeky Nerdy Trivia Podcast. This week, we've got Apollo Program trivia. Thirty questions about the NASA program to a man on the Moon and safely return him to the Earth.  If this is your cup of Tang, be sure to check out the Astronomy trivia episode way back in Season One that we did in honor of the 50th anniversary of the 1st Moon landing. You can find it (and all our past episodes) at DorkyGeekyNerdy.com.  That covers our usual business, so let's launch this show.  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dorkygeekynerdy/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dorkygeekynerdy/support

Guest: Dr. Edwin Fasanella, Senior Research Fellow at NASA Langley Research Center [@NASA_Langley]______________________Host: Charlie Camarda Ph.DOn ITSPmagazine  

There are many examples of technology and beliefs appearing decades--even centuries before they supposedly originated. The Apollo Program was outlined a century before it happened. A painting from the Middle Ages shows a flying toy helicopter. We've found ancient Greek computers and heard stories of Roman death rays. The Pacific Front of World War II was described 16 years before the war started.The existence and documentation of these and many other events and anomalies impossibly ahead of their time are beyond dispute. Out of Place in Time and Space delves deeply into these impossibilities, showcasing objects, beliefs, and practices, from the present that show up in the past, long before they were supposedly invented. personal careers that appear to have been founded on knowlege of the future, Roman-era machines that were hundreds of years ahead of their time and UFOs, never officially documented in any time period, yet still showing up in medieval paintings.

Guest: Dr. Stephen J. Scotti, Distinguished Research Associate at NASA [@NASA] Langley Research Center [@NASA_Langley] and STEM Education Advisor for Brilliant Star MagazineOn LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-scotti-12a2056/On Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/stephen.j.scotti______________________Host: Charlie Camarda Ph.DOn ITSPmagazine  

This week we are joined by Historian, Presenter and 50% of the excellent History Tellers, Stephen “Abs” Wisdom who joins us to rage JUST SHUT UP ABOUT FAKE MOON LANDINGS.We'll be talking conspiracies, Kubrick, and all the nonsense as well as highlighting the massive achievements of men and women in the Apollo Program who didn't go to the moon but made it happen.If you'd like to see Abs in action then you can see the History Tellers at History Festivals all across the country and you can check their website and calendar here, and you can, and should, also them on Twitter @Hist_TellSupport the showYou can follow History Rage on Twitter @HistoryRage and let us know what you wish people would just stop believing using the Hashtag #HistoryRage. You can join our 'Angry Mob' on Patreon as well. £5 per month gets you episodes 3 months early, the invite to choose questions, entry into our prize draws and the coveted History Rage mug. Subscribe at www.patreon.com/historyrage

Guest: Dr. Michael Nemeth, Senior Research Engineer, NASA [@NASA] Langley Research Center [@NASA_Langley], Ret.______________________Host: Charlie Camarda Ph.DOn ITSPmagazine  

SKIP TO 00:29:31 TO GET TO THIS WEEK'S STORY Welcome to Episode 137 of Let's Get Haunted! On July 20, 1969, the United States Apollo 11 Mission made history when two of its astronauts - Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin - became the first humans to ever set foot on the moon. Though Apollo 11 is perhaps the most well-known of the Apollo Program's missions, it never would've been possible without its predecessors. Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were the three brave astronauts assigned to the first of these historic spaceflights: Apollo 1. A critical moment along the Space Race timeline, Apollo 1 represented the first phase of NASA's project to put men on the moon before the Soviets. When all 3 of these astronauts shockingly perished in a fire during a mock launch exercise, rumors and conspiracy theories began to swirl. Were their brutal deaths an accident? Or were Grissom, White, and Chaffee murdered? When a whistleblower mysteriously ended up dead after testifying in front of Congress, suspicions only deepened. Join us as we explore the winding unsolved mystery known as the Apollo 1 Conspiracy! TIME STAMPS 00:00:00 - INTRO/PERSONAL HAUNTINGS 00:21:04 - MANSCAPED AD 00:28:42 - DONOR SHOUTOUTS 00:29:31 - THE APOLLO 1 CONSPIRACY This episode is sponsored! Buy Manscaped products: https://www.manscaped.com & use code “LETSGETHAUNTED” for 20% off + free shipping. YouTube Videos Referenced during this episode: - Liberty Bell 7 splashdown & rescue footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zybhDAkAzls - Audio from the Apollo 1 pre-launch test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=274lQSbpkRg - CBS News Interviews with Apollo 1 astronauts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM4ufEeOkXY - Apollo 1 Crew Announcement - Complete, two camera edit - March 1966: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5WA-X4kunE - Apollo 1 Tragedy CBS News Coverage (1967): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSWUnWOMdTk - Liberty Bell 7 Recovery in 1999: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0M4Op5_Q8 - Apollo 11 footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwZb2mqId0A — Other Important Stuff: Become a donor by subscribing to our BRAND NEW PATREON: http://patreon.com/letsgethaunted Buy Our Merch: https://www.letsgethaunted.com Check out the photo dump for this week's episode: https://www.instagram.com/letsgethaunted Send us fan mail: PO BOX 1658 Camarillo, CA 93011 Send us your listener stories: LetsGetHauntedPod@gmail.com — BACKGROUND MUSIC Song: Casa Bossa Nova by Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.com/ Creative Commons — CC BY 3.0 I https://goo.gl/Yibru5 Song: Triumph (No Copyright Music) Music and Production by Pepe Pérez TRIUMPH. Music Orchestral Instrumental EPIC Motivational. No copyright LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JsdHHYUmeg Song: Ambient Horror Sci-Fi MIX - Inside the Alien Hive // Royalty Free No Copyright Background Music Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F1XVbSlsaA Song: “Aftermath” by Kevin MacLeod found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJApqlWZTHo https://incompetech.com/ Creative Commons — CC BY 3.0 I https://goo.gl/Yibru5

When the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 rolled around, we were awash in documentaries, books, and more. One of the best documentaries was National Geographic's "Apollo: Missions to the Moon," produced by Tom Jennings. Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik for a conversation with the Peabody and Emmy Award-winning producer about the challenges of finding truly unique, unseen materials to make a must-see documentary! Image credit: NASA Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Guest: Tom Jennings Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT bitwarden.com/twit

When the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 rolled around, we were awash in documentaries, books, and more. One of the best documentaries was National Geographic's "Apollo: Missions to the Moon," produced by Tom Jennings. Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik for a conversation with the Peabody and Emmy Award-winning producer about the challenges of finding truly unique, unseen materials to make a must-see documentary! Image credit: NASA Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Guest: Tom Jennings Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT bitwarden.com/twit

The Trainwreck sits down with Ted Talk Speaker and Chief Scientific Officer from Redwire Company, Ken Savin, to discuss his work on the International Space Station, projects at Redwire and the life of a scientist. So climb aboard the Monthly Trainwreck and take a trip into deep space!!.... Rated as a Top 200 Comedic Interview Podcast!

Guest: Dr. Michael Nemeth, Senior Research Engineer, NASA [@NASA] Langley Research Center [@NASA_Langley], Ret.______________________Host: Charlie Camarda Ph.DOn ITSPmagazine  

Apollo Program matures with a lunar rover on the moon and longer stays. Hear more: https://www.spaceracehistorypodcast.com/post/episode-74-apollo-15

On today's episode, we have a very special conversation with Frances “Poppy” Northcutt – the first woman engineer to work in NASA's mission control and early trailblazer for representation in the space industry – having worked on several NASA missions including both Apollo 8 and Apollo 13.  We'll discuss her time at NASA, how gender equity in space careers has changed over time, and her inspiring women's rights advocacy work.Frances "Poppy" Northcutt is a Texas attorney who began her career as a "computer" and then an engineer for the technical staff on NASA's Apollo Program during the space race.  During the Apollo 8 mission, she became the first female engineer to work in NASA's Mission Control.  Later in her career, Northcutt became an attorney specializing in women's rights.  In the early 1970s, she served on the national board of directors of the National Organization for Women.  Today, she works and volunteers for several organizations in Houston advocating for abortion rights.We also want to extend a big thank you to our sponsors this year for supporting our show!Learn more about our Gold Sponsor Multiverse Media, an integrated media company focusing on space exploration, science, and technology, and check out the Cislunar Market Opportunities report produced by NewSpace Global, a Multiverse Media property, for a snapshot and user guide to the players and opportunities ahead for the cislunar economy.  To get your own copy please go to cislunar.report and use coupon code citizen10 for 10% off a single user license.Learn more about our Silver Sponsor the Colorado School of Mines Space Resources Program, a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary program that offers Certificate, Master of Science, and Ph.D. degrees for professionals around the world interested in the emerging field of extraterrestrial resources here.Support the showSubscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media!Instagram: @thecelestialcitizenTwitter: @celestialcitznLinkedIn: Celestial CitizenYouTube: @thecelestialcitizen

Even before the end of the Apollo Program ended, work on the next generation space vehicle began. The result was the Space Shuttle, NASA's workhorse that would serve for 30 years, but was not able to completely live up to its pre-production hype.The Space Race series introduction music is Lift Off by kennysvoice.As always, a very special thanks to Mountain Up Cap Company for its continued help to spread the word about the podcast on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/MountainUpCapCompany Climb to Glory!For more information about the podcast visit: ·       The GoA website: https://www.ghostsofarlingtonpodcast.com    ·       Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ghostsofarlingtonpodcast·       Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArlingtonGhosts·       Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ghostsofarlington/

We're deep into the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17, the final moon mission of the Apollo Program, so we decided we wanted to have a discussion about what it all means with Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator of the Apollo Collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.More on Dr Muir-Harmony: https://airandspace.si.edu/people/staff/teasel-muir-harmonyTwitter: https://twitter.com/teaselmuirInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/teaselmuir/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teasel-muir-harmony-3a67519/ 'Full show notes: https://spaceandthingspodcast.com/Show notes include links to all articles mentioned and full details of our guests and links to what caught our eye this week.Image Credits: NASASpace and Things:Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/spaceandthings1Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spaceandthingspodcastFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/spaceandthingspodcast/Merch and Info: https://www.spaceandthingspodcast.comPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/SpaceandthingsBusiness Enquiries: info@andthingsproductions.comSpace and Things is brought to you And Things Productions https://www.andthingsproductions.comSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/spaceandthings. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I've fallen into a bit of a data rabbit hole, and you get to join me. In this episode I'm starting my journey to understand where databases came from, and how they started to evolve. This will serve as a foundation for next episode, when we will dive into one of the most popular databases from the 1970s: SQL. Along the way we wrestle with GE, the realities of the Apollo Program, and try to figure out what a database really is.   Selected Sources:   https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/MAHC.2009.110 - A history of IDS   https://archive.org/details/TNM_Integrated_Data_Store_introduction_-_General__20171014_0141 - Learn IDS for yourself!   https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_ibm360imsRGuide1969_8480205/page/n6/mode/2up - Educational guide to IBM's IMS

In 1984, author Andy Chaikin published a groundbreaking book about the Apollo program called A Man on the Moon. It became an instant bestseller and continues to move briskly. What was so special? It was the first comprehensive look at the Apollo program as told by the astronauts to a writer who could weave a dynamic, compelling narrative. We talk to Andy about this amazing book, his other works, and what the future holds for space books. Hosts: Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik Guest: Andy Chaikin Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsor: expressvpn.com/twis

This week, NASA has announced that they are moving towards the first launch attempt for the Artemis I mission with the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft currently in the Vehicle Assembly Building at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA is currently targeting launch for no earlier than Monday, Aug. 29, at 8:33 a.m. EDT during a 2 hour window!!!!! So, Dean and Beth dig right in to the who, what, where, when, why and how of NASA's Space Launch System on this week's episode of the Casual Space Podcast!  NASA's SLS (Space Launch System) is the world's most powerful rocket and the backbone of NASA's human lunar exploration program (check out this reference guide ASAP: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/sls_reference_guide_2022_v2_508_0.pdf). No other rocket can send astronauts and the Orion spacecraft directly to the Moon for the Artemis missions. SLS provides an unmatched capability to deliver greater mass and volume than any current launch vehicle for both human and robotic exploration of the Moon, Mars, and the outer planets. SLS was established by the NASA Authorization Act of 2010. The program was created at Marshall in 2011 and received funding in FY2012. SLS is the world's first exploration-class launch vehicle since the Apollo Program's Saturn V. Along with SLS, NASA's Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate in the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate is developing the EGS and the Orion spacecraft for crew. Orion, managed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, is a spacecraft designed to carry astronauts on exploration missions into deep space. EGS has converted facilities at Kennedy into a next-generation spaceport capable of supporting launches by multiple types of vehicles.  More about NASA's SLS: https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/index.html