Most important value of spaceflight is: inspiration

The Houston conflict with a death to one. Touchdown. And we're live. This is the Space Cowboys podcast. Do you remember which episode, Thijs? No, I said I was going to lose count, and now I've lost count. It must be episode 14 or 15 or something. Yeah, I think 14 sounds good. We'll put that in the show notes. Hopefully it's in the title somewhere as well. But this is a special episode. The past three episodes, we've had some really great conversations. This time, it's kind of like a technical... Yeah, how do you say it? An achievement that this podcast exists. Yeah, it's a feat. A feat, yeah, that it exists at all. Because you are in the B&R studios right now in Amsterdam, right? I'm in B&R's podcasting studio, that's right. Yes, I am in the Mont Vent in France. I'm overlooking a whole bunch of farms and fields and some cows. Good for you. Very good. And our guest, Michel. Michel van Baal. He's in Delft, indeed. In Delft, yes. Because he is not only a space engineer, but he's also the PR guy and spokesman of the Technical University in Delft. That's correct. Yes. Welcome, Michel, to our podcast. Pleasure to be here. Yeah. And we're going to talk to you... We're going to talk to you about the role which can be underestimated of PR in space. Yeah. In spaceflight. PR in space. Yeah. And it's an interesting topic because it's super hard. So I've noticed. It's a... Well, it's not that hard to sell space. Come on. No. I mean... No. But there are so many challenges. Everybody loves spaceflight. Yeah, there are challenges, of course. Yeah. Everybody loves spaceflight. Yet. But it is not part of, I would say, public discourse all the time. Maybe over the past few years it has increased. No. But it's hard to get it on the front page. And people can be critical of it because it's expensive. Yeah. Is that something you feel as well, Michel? Does that happen a lot? No, actually. I completely disagree with you. So... Great. We got a lot of talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why you didn't know. It would be cool to know. I have to think... Yeah. I have to think back of one particular case. I once wrote this opinion piece for a Dutch national newspaper because it was around New Horizons visiting Pluto. Yeah. And it was just sending back these pictures of the heart and just the first close up pictures of Pluto ever. And then this newspaper, De Volkskrant, it's called, decided for two days in a row not to put Pluto on the front page, but go for the Tour de France on the front page. And I was just like, what? We're rediscovering this object in our solar system. It's a really significant moment. Why is it so hard to put that on the front page? Yeah. To put it in perspective. I mean, I'm now indeed working at Delft University, but I was working for ESA for 10 years and did communications there. And I mean, the first thing I did in my sort of professional life on that end was that I, one of the, not so much the first, but one of the main things I did was the PR campaign for the first flight of André Kuipers. And... Dutch astronaut? Dutch astronaut, yes. And by the way, various other astronauts that are completely unknown here in the Netherlands, but nevertheless, the big one was the Dutch one, at least for me. And that was quite spectacular from a PR point of view and also from a general interest point of view and still to the moment, to this specific moment, if I visit schools and occasionally I meet Andre there. The funny thing is that here in Dutch schools, there is one thing bigger, one person bigger than André Kuipers and that is Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas. St. Nicholas, the Dutch version of Santa Claus for anybody who doesn't know. Yeah, it will be difficult to explain to non-Dutch listeners, but first you have Sinterklaas and then you have a gap for a little while. Then you have André Kuipers, then you have a huge gap. Yeah, it's true. And then you have the rest of the world. So, and that's also the reason why communications, especially about space, is so fascinating because it does, it's one of the things that appeal to young children together with dinosaurs, for instance. Dinosaurs and astronauts are the two top topics for every kid in the range, let's say six to ten years old, more or less. It appeals to the fascination of very young children, which says something about the power of communications in space. Sure. Yeah. And hey, so we have plenty to talk about. So we have plenty to talk about for a whole hour, I think, right? Yeah. But let's do the stories of the week first, right? Exactly. Let's first go through the stories of the week. Herbert, you want to kick this off? Yeah. Well, I have one modest thing to report, and that's the fact that SpaceX has got a test location and I'm trying to go there on my laptop right now. It's at Boca Chica in Texas. And they offer via YouTube a live view of their Starship Hopper test launches. What is the Starship Hopper? Starship Hopper. It's a test spacecraft. And it will run a series of tests, the first of which will not even bring the spacecraft from the ground, but at some time in the future they will. So they have... I mean, they will have this view of the test site 24-7. And as long as nothing happens there, they may also turn the camera around and bring beaches into view, which is nice also. But I'm watching the test location right now and nothing is happening there. But in the coming weeks and months, there will be test launches there. And some of those will be spectacular. I mean, you may remember the first test of the Falcon, the first of which didn't even get off the ground. Then it did some modest hops. And in the end, they even got to space and brought the spacecraft back and have it land on its tail. Yeah. Right. So this time it's about the Starship that SpaceX is building to get to Mars. That's right. It's a prototype Mars craft. So there's really something. And I would recommend that everybody takes a look there once in a while and well, be on the lookout for the video clips that they will no doubt release as soon as something of importance happens. As soon as something finally hops. That's right. Yeah. Because that's what they're good at at SpaceX. You know, use video as a PR tool. We'll talk about that with Michel later on in this podcast. That's their way of communicating with the public and present themselves as an important company with important things to do. Yeah, I think it might be important to update some people on what the Starship is. Right. It's this huge, it's going to be this huge rocket, very retro looking, very, very much like the Tintin rocket, but then made out of steel completely in order to get to Mars. And like all the other rockets that SpaceX is building, it needs to have some sort of reusable elements. So it needs to be this particular spacecraft, I think, needs to be able to launch and then land on Mars and then lift off again and come back and land again. And land again on Earth. So it's a crazy it's going to be a crazy machine. And I saw that Elon Musk tweeted that there were some problems with frost forming. It's apparently cold in Texas. Yep. There was frost forming. People saw some steam coming from here and there. And we remember frost as a deal breaker in the space shuttle launches. Right. Because it was the cause of the Challenger accident. I don't think it's the temperature. Take care. If I can interrupt for a moment. I don't think so much of the temperature of Texas itself is the problem. But these are they're using fuels that are cool to extreme low temperatures. So which at some point can get problems like frozen falls or other equipment that isn't functioning anymore due to the low temperature of the fuel. So it's not so much the low temperature of the Texas, the Texas night. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. Yeah, the temperature of the especially no frost in Texas. OK, yeah, I was already bad. So it's a lot more reasonable than frost in Texas. It's true. Yeah. Which to which I may add, if I if I can, that that's I'm a bit skeptical to this to this project. And the reason for that is. I mean, I think it's a very good business model, but I'm sure we'll get to that later. No, no, no. Please, please elaborate right now. What's up? Yeah. What's your problem with it? I have mixed feelings, to be honest with you on the on the topic of of the ambitions of SpaceX in a sense that what they do with Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy is really impressive to be very sure. But it's also accompanied by a business model of of launching satellites and earning money by simply putting commercial and mostly, by the way, government projects into space, which they like looks at the moment can do cheaper than the competition can do it. But it's a completely different ballgame when you build a rocket to go to Mars, which originally by way spaceship was was called BFR, the big and F. I'm not going to pronounce on radio the big thing. Yeah, on the SpaceX floor. The big freaking rocket. Yeah, that's OK. Which is a joke that refers, by the way, to the good old game of Doom, because. Yeah, of course. Yeah, but in the BFG, you have to admit that that at least Elon Musk is a proper nerd in that respect, but that building rocket. You had to get the big BFG, the big the big freaking guy. Yeah, that was. Yeah. And it was great. Yeah. You could slaughter a lot of zombies with that. For those who are who lived in the 90s. Yeah, indeed. Yeah. But the problem with with with this specific spaceship is that there is no business model in the sense that even if he would manage to get the thing to Mars, which is quite an achievement because half out of all the Mars mission fail so far historically have failed. So it would already be a huge achievement. But getting the business business model to work now, well, just do the calculations. I have no idea how that's going to work. And the personal pockets are not that deep. And I think that's the problem. No, and you're not going to do any mining on Mars, at least not for the purpose of getting stuff back to Earth that would be far too expensive to do. And even if you can get 200 people to pay a million dollars for a trip, then you're still not in the green numbers. That's right. Yeah, that's true. This is an excellent reason to be skeptical. OK, Thijs, go ahead. 250 million dollars, I believe, is what you need. It's at first just to get it off the ground. And so it's a lot. But is it not possible that he just puts all his profit in in in that sort of like a pet project? Yeah, to do it once, maybe. Yeah, but but it could be. But again, I mean, the thing that you have to admire in Elon Musk is that his ambitions are on some level over and over the top of ridiculous. But what he achieves is really admirable. So so in that. But that makes communications also. And we have to go to the topic at some point in this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Communication is really difficult to read because, yeah, what what is real and what is what is hard marketing, it's very difficult to say. Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, I guess I have I have a story that's also about PR, I guess, because it's only an announcement. Uh, uh, it's. It's an announcement of a press conference that's coming up. If I can just pull it up, it's well, actually, no, Michelle, we're first going to yours. No, I got it. I got it. Yeah, sorry. I'm out in France trying to get this all working and it's working. So all this beautiful and the National Science Foundation will hold a press conference to announce a groundbreaking result. This is going to happen next week on the 10th of April. And something's going to happen. So there's something's going to be apparently this Event Horizon telescope has found has made a picture of a black hole. That's that's probably the idea. And it's supposedly going to be huge. And we're going to have one of the team members actually on the show in two or three weeks, I think three weeks from now, Herbert. Who's the team member? And so what they've been trying to do is trying to take a picture of a black hole, which is really hard because the whole idea of a black hole is that you can't see it. So you can see things around it pop up everywhere. Now, one of my friends said that he thought it was going to be a portal to a different dimension that they. Sure. I'm not sure. But it seems like they built this gigantic telescope. It's more like a collection of different telescopes all over the all over the Earth and that they all peered at this one black hole and it's coming up. That's that's all I have. Like, I don't know what it is. Sarah also told us that it's going to be huge. And I'm just saying there's going to be something about black holes next week and people have to be on the lookout. I can jump in right now to tell you that Sarah Markoff will be in our podcast, the one we record on the 24th of April. So that's three weeks from now. That will be Space Cowboys number 18. And that means I wasn't sure when we started this one, that this one is number 15. Oh, this one's number 15. OK, this one is number 15. So let's set the record straight. Let's set the record straight. So then we can dive into, like, not only what she found, but also how she found it. So that's right. Michel, do you have. Any more. OK, you don't have any more stories of the week. No. Like I said, like sometimes it's good and sometimes it's down. Sometimes it's beautiful. There's a lot of news and suddenly there's not that much news. That's just how it goes. Well, well, well, there was something. Well, there was quite a lot of fuss about SLS in America last week. OK, what happened? Well, so that's your story of the week. Yeah, yeah. I'm completely unprepared, but yes. OK, OK, come on. I did notice that there was quite a lot of discussion in the United States. On the space launch system. Let's say the the the NASA the very big rockets that that NASA is building for for space exploration, which is a nightmare project, by the way, for various reasons, reasons. And now apparently that in America it was on the table that they might consider moving the Orion launches to to to the moon and to Mars that NASA is doing. But to move that to other rockets, because the SLS rocket is is delayed so much now it's almost become political unacceptable, which would even put it on the table to see if you can get Orion on the SpaceX rockets, which is which they were announcing to to actually go and explore. I think it's impossible, by the way. But but it's it tells you something about the slight panic that there is in the United States about their their pretty hopeless exploration program. Yeah, and it's been going on for years, right? As the whole delays with SLS and the questions about SLS, especially after Falcon Heavy launch. Yeah, it is. It's a very difficult project. It has been mostly set up to to make sure quite quite often. This is the main reason in the United States that there would not be loss of jobs after the they quit the space shuttle program. So they sort of went on with the project. They had to develop something new out of the space shuttle infrastructure, which is SLS. But but actually by doing doing so, why, in my opinion, while not having a program to actually to actually use the rocket for so you're developing a rocket, which is which doesn't have a real purpose. And that's always well, yeah, it's no worries. But yes, and it's the only it to me, it brings memories back to the to the famous Russian program. Which had a very similar problem in the sense. Was that the space that was the Russian space shuttle that flew twice? Which was a very bad idea because the original approach of of the Russians of separating people and freight is a very good idea. And then suddenly they copied the shuttle, which is a really bad idea. So because the shuttle was a bad idea to begin with. It was definitely a bad idea to begin with. Yeah. And the at least it was to it was to to. To early. It's a little bit like the what was the supersonic airplane. Concord. Concord. Thank you very much. Also, wonderful technology, but too early in the in the in the stage of development. And now SLS feels a little bit like the same that they're copying. Are they creating a rocket? Well, they don't have really a purpose to to to to that your rocket can be used for. Yeah. And so. Now, again, they are in doubt if they should actually continue the whole project. It is delayed and delayed and delayed. And at some point, your whole exploration program, which which, by the way, always is canceled by the president and then put back on the agenda by the same president, canceled by the next president, which is only happening for 20 years. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see where that goes. I mean, it's the whole it's the whole sort of private industry slowly taking over. And the government not knowing what its role is. Right. Even though SLS is developed by Boeing. Yeah, it's I disagree a bit to the to the frame of the private government taking over because people don't understand is that companies like SpaceX, they run on government money, it's not it's not that it's it's SpaceX or Elon Musk's money, but it's government money for coming from NASA. And the only the only difference between SpaceX and Boeing is that project management and how to develop the rocket is completely with SpaceX. So NASA tells them, I give you a lot of money if you give me a decent rocket and it's your job to figure out how to do it. Well, in the early days, in the previous time, they were very much on top of the project management, which so but it's still the money. It's still government money. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Michelle, shall we now give you a proper introduction? Yeah, we've done so at the beginning. But so you have worked for as a spokesperson for ESA. But nowadays you work at the TU Delft, the Technical University at Delft. University of Technology in English, officially. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, they all got the official English names now. Right. Well, we have both. But we use TU Delft also internationally. And so how long have you then been in the in the business of promoting space? Well, when I was in with ESA, I've done that for about 10 years. And then I still occasionally do things with space because also in Delft University, it's part of the various activities that we have and quite logically, that kind of thing always ends up with me. So communications and space is in my backyard for about 20 years, I think. And it's a very sort of like a grateful field. You said it's great for kids. And I think last week, Herbert, we talked about how it also cuts across the political aisles, so whether you're conservative or liberal, there's also broad support for space. Yes, there is. But also there's always conservatism as far as budgets are concerned. Yeah. And there's well, there are some differences there from one political party to another. Yeah. OK. OK, so how how I can't find the right word right now, but people can be can be fussy with money and not all political parties are the same in that respect. Yeah. Yeah. And how do you look at that, Michel? Do you get the same sort of support from all sides? Yeah, I know what you can see with the politicians and this is this is not only so in the Netherlands, but in basically every country is that space is very much seen as an an instrument for employment or for technology development as such. And not so much as or less, let me put it that way, as a tool which is useful for society or inspiration. Or if you're talking about man space, which in my opinion is a relatively small part of space. But if you talk about man space, the main the main purpose of that is inspiration. This is the Andre Kuypers effect at schools, which which I think is highly valuable, but it's very difficult to price while the amount of people that have a job is something that that is economically quite easy to to to judge. Let me put it that way. The other thing that I noticed, which is difficult for politicians, is that space in the end also gives you something useful. For instance, satellite navigation, although that's military space, but also Earth observation. And the whole discussion that we're having about our climate is very much depending on satellite observations. And but the value of that is very difficult to yeah, to to to indicate what is it worth to us that we know how our climate is developing. Yes, but still ESA has done its very best to do just that. ESA has more than once presented reports in which they try to calculate the contribution of ESA to I'm not quite sure the Dutch or the European economy and show, well, how much budget goes in and how much value comes out for society, for companies and stuff. So this this intrinsic inspirational value of space is one thing. But the space business itself has always tried to prove the other the economic value of space. That's true. But it's also a little bit of a trap in a sense that you might say, OK, for every euro that we spent in on space industry, we get two euros back. I know these lines are I remember them well, but it is also a vulnerable discussion because if you go that route, then one might say, yeah, but if we if we put this one euro into a completely different area of the economy and we get back three euros, then that's the better choice. But yeah. But can you explain then to me why does ESA go that route? Because they've done so. And what you're actually explaining to us is this is a bad idea. It's OK. I don't know why ESA is doing it. Well, what I do know is that politicians are sensitive to it, which might be the reason that they do it. Yeah. OK. But but I. It's to me, it feels like the wrong argument in the sense that we need meteorological information. We want satnav. We also don't want to have our satnav depending on on the strictly American military force, because currently GPS is controlled by American military. Slightly uncomfortable with that. And we want to know our climate. We want to do science. And sorry, public, it's going to cost you money. But like this is sort of infrastructure. Infrastructure is an investment on the same thing. We also have to be fair and square to the public. That space space is expensive thing to do. But if we do it with many people together, which we do for you, it's relatively cheap. And look, this is what you're getting back for your buck. And just the economic route for me, I find it very busy. It's it's it's. Yeah, that's what's our mood. If you can come up with it, then it's poor. Just poor. Poor. Yeah, it's poor. So you're saying it's not it's not the right argument also because it's it's yeah. Yeah, it's it's. It seems to me now that we have three arguments. One was it's inspirational. That was actually what you said, Michel, is the real value of space. Then we have a useful value of satnav and all that. And the third one is economic. So it's not the real value. But whereas you started off with calling the inspirational one the most important one, you also tell us that the useful value is something that's very important. True. And there is I would like to even add a fourth one, which is international political political stability, because the one thing that is undervalued, in my opinion, is how space actually contributes to the economic development of the United States. And that is the fact that the United States is a very powerful country. And the United States is a very powerful country in the sense that even now the United States and Russia can can be on very grim terms towards each other. But it's still together have to keep a few people alive of both their nationalities, which which from a from a symbolic point of view is very powerful. And also, I mean, keep in mind that the first thing that the United States did in the 1960s, the United States and Russia, which was the first one to do that in the 1960s, started to talk to each other, to to create these symbolic linkings of of their spacecraft in space. I mean, from some point you could say that the cold that the de-icing the Cold War actually started in space. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a great. What I constantly have to think about is I think the Carl Sagan remark that we went to the moon and discovered Earth because of the overview effect. And I think that's a very inspirational. I think it's not only astronauts going somewhere, but also just ourselves finding our place in the universe. So it's not only shooting rockets up and monitoring the Earth, but also just looking out into space and seeing what our place. That's very romantic. And I do agree to some. I love that. Much with the cynical part of me actually also says, yeah, we went to the moon and we stopped building atomic bombs. Yeah. Going to the moon was also part of of a weapon race which became completely nonsense. And at some point the powers at that point went over from building more and more and even more powerful atomic bombs to building rockets to go to the moon. So I don't care how much it costs. It had cost. It's worth it because it didn't go into nuclear bombs. Yeah, no, exactly. Exactly. So but that also means that you don't have to be cynical about it. I believe. I believe Carl Sagan. Actually, that was the reason why he said because it was actually a military mission to go to the moon. Yet eventually when they look back, it's like, oh, wait a minute. We are all together on this very, very small mode of dust in the middle of nowhere. Isn't it? Maybe we should look at ourselves as humans on planet Earth instead of divide ourselves by all these, well, arbitrary. Yeah, I wish we shared the same problems. And that's why. And that's a a strongly symbolic thing, because you share the same problems with with a fairly amount of people and the basic problem is not going to die. And that is very symbolic. I think I'm one of the people that think that the International Space Station should have had the Nobel Prize for Peace. For that specific reason. That's it's a good one. Yeah. Can you can you submit it? I think you can. You're free to submit. I think the International Space Station has been done. I think it has been done several times already. Oh, yeah. OK, well, we should. We should start a campaign on that. Yeah. And but why? But when I when I go back to my my newspaper example, right, I've I as a kid, I was inspired by space. But at a certain point, I felt that it's not part of our public discourse. It's not enough or it's not. It's very easy to ignore space news, so to speak. Yeah. I mean, I think that the newspaper example, to be honest with you, is a wrong example. Don't mean it in any nasty way. But the reason why a newspaper isn't putting that on the front page is because in the current world of social media, everybody has seen that photo five times already. And so if you come the next day with a photo on the front page, you're one day late. And so a newspaper doesn't want to be late. So so they need to. That's true. So it's not so much that they don't find it important. They're just too slow for that level of information. So on the other hand, I mean, as I just said before you even started this complaint, everybody had seen this in your mind. I mean, everybody had seen the picture five times. Hopefully I am I am in all honesty, usually pretty astounded. By how out of tune people around me are to anything space related. People know Hubble pictures in general. They don't know what they're looking at. They have no clue. They just look at pretty pictures. Yeah. But to some level, I mean, people are ignorant to the fact that our transistors in their mobile phone work and you know, they're very ignorant of how much space actually comes into their mobile phone. Yeah. Yeah. And the problem is the question is, is that is it necessarily a problem that people use space as soon as you touch your phone, you use space by mostly that's enough. And they have no idea. Is that a bad? Is that a bad? Is that a problem? I'm not so sure because they also know how their car works. Yes or what? Now, if they like the pictures from Hubble, that's OK. I mean, that's better than that. They would not like it. Then, of course, of course. And I don't want to be the complainant. It's just very, very often when I when I talk about these things with friends or something, I ask them if they know what the sun is like. Just what's the sun? I think it's very sort of like a nice little question to start off a conversation about space. And I'm and I'm pretty astounded that people who have had PhDs in other fields, history or literature or whatnot, are in general completely ignorant as to what the sun is. Yes, it is very astounded. I think it's very astounded. I think it's very astounded. I think it's very astounded. And I think that it's a bit more astounded than it is. And I think that it's, you know, it's a bit more astounded, I think, than it was as well. I was for the first, I think, 25 years of my life ignorant to certain things like that. And and I feel that that that that that your job, Michel, is is made harder by that because the general knowledge about outer space, about the earth being a planet. This is how it feels. No, I agree. Yeah. And so that space, in order to get it to the people, you always see that people are fascinated about it because you're sort of showing them a world or a realm that they know nothing about. But there's fascination on the level of pictures, I guess, and fascination on the level of people who are there. You know, manned spaceflight is much more interesting to the public than unmanned spaceflight, which is a problem, by the way, because in terms of scientific results, Michel, please say something about this. Manned spaceflight is more of a problem than a solution because unmanned spaceflight yields much better results. It's the correct answer. For the buck. Doing science on space stations is a very, very difficult thing to do. I was going to be even more outspoken, but let me phrase it. I said carefully not to get in a fight with people, but it's very difficult to do. And the reason for it is quite simple to understand because it just takes a very, very long time to prepare a space experiment. And by the time that your space experiment is up and launched, it will be delayed and then delayed again and then delayed another time. And then it's up and the space station are running. And by that time, the scientific field that you're working in has progressed another five years. And you're... At that point, trying to find the answer to the wrong question because the question has evolved. The field has evolved. So from that point... So you're actually saying space experiments are useless. Manned space experiments are very difficult to do. And let me put the value... I do feel the value of space station is very large, but the scientific value of space station, we shouldn't oversell. And what topics is the public most interested in? What do you think? What do you feel from your... Well, that most... And that's funny enough. The space itself, so planets and exoplanets, that type of topic is always quite close to people's heart. I mean, I do remember a few years ago, I was on the campsite in France and it turned out that the campsite owner actually had a telescope. So I asked him, can I use it? Because... And then he said, no, yeah, it was lying on the shelf somewhere. He said, yeah, but this one is crappy. And at home, I have a much better one. So I'll bring it over. And what then happens is that during that evening, you have the whole campsite around the telescope, so doing observations of Jupiter and that sort of thing. So everybody loves it. And then, oh, by the way, now if we stay around for another 10 minutes, then we can see space station coming over. The whole campsite is on your... on your lips. So in that size, the fascination is still there. People are, however, swamped with so much information that they're not always listening to you, which makes sense. Yeah, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but the fascination for space is on this specific level of planets. And the other one, big one, by the way, is how astronauts go to the toilet. On that level... That's right. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah. I was waiting for an opportunity to talk about this because I love your answer about the campsite, and it's no doubt true. But if you look at what has been the most successful thing publicity-wise from the space station, then it's all those videos from this Canadian astronaut that I'm forgetting the name of. Chris Hedfield. That's right, Chris Hedfield, who played guitar in space and he even played with... The band that I'm forgetting the name of. Ground Control Major Tom, you mean? You mean David Bowie? He played that, but he also played with some band. Maybe I'll remember it. But anyhow, he made videos about brushing your teeth in space and eating in space and all that stuff. And those simple human things, I don't think there's a lot wrong with that. But of course, it's not about science and it's not about discovery. It's not about discovering new things about physics or the world or space itself, but it's about people living in space. And that's the level that most members of the public are interested in. Yeah, exactly. I believe. Michel, if I can give you an example. What I always find amazing is, for example, Exoplanets is a really good one. These discoveries are made... The band, by the way, was Bare Naked Ladies. Oh, Bare Naked Ladies. Okay. Thanks, Herbert. Carry on. Love that band. So when an exoplanet is discovered, it's like a dip in a graph, right? Visually, you have to really know what you're looking at and it's just raw data almost plotted out in a graph. If you put that in a newspaper, then of course everybody will be puzzled by it. But so you see that with the discovery of exoplanets, you need this extra layer of visualizations and press releases and a lot of exploration. So you need to have a good explanation before the general public can even start to understand what the discovery is. This must make your work really hard if you have like a gigantic discovery but no visuals. How do you work with that? Well, actually, over the last few years, the thing that I've been more busy with was quantum mechanics. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you give from that point of view, space is very easy. Because it is there. With quantum, the problem is that you have to explain that something that might be there might... at the same time, it's not there and that people are really confused. So that in a certain way, you have... you need... first of all, you need some freedom. You need to give each other some freedom in how to interpret it, these little dips, and to allow sort of imagination into the game. However, you do have to realize that communication is always about people. It's not about technology. People don't... apart from us engineers and nerds, we do care how something works. But the rest of the world really don't care about how something works. They either want to be fascinated by it, or you want to know what it is good for. So the big question of journalists is always, okay, nice discovery, but what is it good for? And the good scientific answer is, we have no idea yet. Yeah, and there are two exceptions, and that's the fun bit about it. There are two exceptions to this rule. I mentioned them earlier. One of them is dinosaurs. We have discovered a new kind of dinosaurs. No journalist ever asked that question. And the same thing with space. What is it good for that we have discovered this wonderful exoplanet? It's still news without the what's it good for question. So in that sense, it's actually a walk in a park from a communication point of view. Yeah, I like this part because I remember some professor in the United States once decided to teach physics by using superheroes. Superheroes, well, superheroes and throwing stuff. Superheroes and building something. Whereas if you teach physics the usual way, students will ask, what is it good for? And all that. And if you use superheroes, they don't. It's the same physics, but they stop asking the what is it good for question. Well, superheroes don't matter very much in practical words. So it's very interesting the way you present your stuff, whether or not this what's it good for question comes. The fun thing about communications in more general terms is that you need to understand that communications is about emotions. It's also about people's emotions. Emotion of space is normally wow. Which is, as I said, a walk in the park at some level. But you also have to keep in mind that when you communicate with people, you always basically communicate to the prehistoric core in people. Because we have been developed for millions and millions and millions of years to live in prehistoric conditions, which is genetically imprinted in us. And for about 20,000 years or something like that, we've added civilization to it. Civilization is not in your DNA. It's something that you have been teached by your parents, but it's not in your DNA. If you want to connect to people, you need to connect to the core of their prehistoric being. And that's about I don't want to die. It's also about what is on the other side of the hill. And that is the fascination from space. It's very much what could be, which wonderful opportunity might there be for us, a new cattle that we can hunt on the other side of this hill. So that we don't die. Let's go there and make some extra children. That is... I need to go to the toilet. See what's over the hill. Maybe we can make more children and not die. Maybe we can eat it. That's also why journalism is so focused on bad news. If you communicate, if we would discuss about a wonderful flower that is outside our little cave, you could completely ignore the wonderful flower and continue with your thoughts. But if I would point you at some bush and say, am I spotting a bear there? You need to react. Otherwise we will die. Because there is danger. And journalism and PR very much work by triggering these emotions that we are prehistoric sensitive to. Otherwise we don't pay attention. So is that why you then talk more about say asteroids that might hit the earth or things like that? Is that what you mean? I don't, but quite often when I see this news, coming up about asteroids going to be very dangerous for the earth and things like that, I always check something and normally I'm right. Ah, we are two weeks ahead from budget discussions in congress in the United States. So I mean in that sense these kind of emotions are always used, played with to create a certain amount of attention to NASA is very important so don't cut our budget. That is what communication means. Yeah. Herbert, I'm not sure if you have a question because I got a question about NASA versus ESA. So if I can pop that one in. That's a good idea. Me, I'd like to talk about NASA versus SpaceX but let's do your one first. Okay, let's go first from Europe. So Michel, I worked in the States for quite a bit and one of the things that I always found remarkable between ESA and NASA is NASA is pretty ubiquitous in their PR. They're everywhere. They very often in their press releases talk about the biggest, the greatest, the newest, the largest, etc. And I found ESA to be a lot more muted. I have to well maybe around Philae and the whole the landing on Rosetta that was all really big and really huge. But usually I found I find NASA to be a bit more ambitious in their PR. Is that something that you see as well? Yeah, that's true. It's explainable via you have to understand a few things. One of them is that ESA is mainly a highly political organization in the sense that it is a project management organization that has to make sure that we launch something that works out of let's say contracts to a few thousand companies distributed over all Europe because everybody needs to share. And in the end everything needs to fit together. And by the way we have to make sure that we don't end up in a fight and in a blame game. So this makes the communication normally very careful. In my opinion, by the way, a bit too careful. And also very... That's my opinion too. Very much politically focused. You just mentioned the Philae lander event which is a very nice example because what you saw there was not one event, there were two events. First you had the official landing moment which was pretty clear went slightly wrong, let me put it that way. It didn't go the way it was foreseen. Now I do remember from the time that I was working there because Rosetta was actually launched when I was still working there. I went to SpaceX Bo for the launch event at least three nights I remember before the thing actually went into space. But nevertheless it was in that time already foreseen that this landing process might be very difficult because you have no idea what you're landing on. And they had a few... They had a harpoon and some screws and whether it would work nobody knew which is understandable because you can't test it. The fun thing is that during the... Not really fun, but during the official landing event there was a lot of hooray and we landed on a comet and I'm never looking at the bobos in front of the screen also not on the first row of ground controllers because they have been ordered to cheer and applaud. I'm always looking one row deeper into the... And I saw... The screen is pretty puzzled and then I realized this is not good. This is at least not what I expected that would happen and indeed it turned out it was actually bouncing two times before on the surface. But then you get eight or nine speeches of completely boring people because there are so many countries and so many companies involved that everybody needs its two minutes of fame which normally is not two minutes but fifteen minutes so it is completely boring. And then the next day I think it was on a Friday I remember they were trying to actually get this lander to work but there was no event but there was a lot of... in the same control room there was a lot of excitement and fuss to get at least before the battery would die and drop down the three-fold minimum type of thing to squeeze as much science out of the little machine as they could. That was actually covered online by multimedia people and by good communication people while all the VIPs were gone and they were now free to do a good job. And then suddenly it turned out it became an amazing night I think I went back at three o'clock or something like that when it finally died. I miss France because everybody including André Kuipers was on Twitter online cheering to a little box on a far away comet keep on going. Yeah, rightfully so. Yeah, there was a lot of emotion in it. Where NASA would have probably I don't know, would have created multiple of these moments and used those moments in later after movies to promote their game. There's one thing I remember from... I think it was NASA and the huge difference is that NASA owns the complete machine in a sense that they own all the cameras they own all the instruments and that means they own all the PR. In European missions ESA does not. That means that the instruments and I remember this when you put one of the Mars landings I think that the instruments and so also the pictures are not owned by the European Space Agency but by local government organizations or companies, etc. which have their own agenda and sometimes not so much feeling for PR like we're not going to distribute a picture but we'll keep it in our pocket for a few months. Yeah, which is like amazing to me because NASA's stuff is all in the public domain so everybody can use it. And ESA's pictures are restricted. Yeah, I think the organization has learned over time. So in the past it was worse than it is now I think that with upcoming missions you might see that it's different because they have now they have just you need to arrange this in the contract phase very very early in the process and then PR is totally not in sight yet nobody thinks about PR and then when you go to the PR then you figure out that you're not in charge of distributing the pictures because another party is and this other party has another agenda. So by now they have I think they, I'm not sure because I'm not working there anymore but I think they have much better incorporated PR in the early phase into the, so that helps. The other thing that NASA does very well I need to compliment them on that is that they make all their graphics or videos all completely public domain. Yeah, exactly. If you want to do a commercial then you're completely free to use it except for the logo, which you can't. But if you want to make a Heineken commercial of landing on Mars now the Dutch now it's up to the Dutch or something like that a few years ago and as it turned out the lander folds itself into a bar where you can come up and have some Heineken. So see if that's now on Mars. If there is life the Dutch can find it. I think that was the slogan. And it was all done with NASA animations that you can completely freely use. Yeah, I use them very often for all kinds of communications material and it's wonderful that it's free and it's really weird that some of the very big ESA, for example telescopes or projects like that that they're not in the public domain. But ESA doesn't own the instruments in its telescope and also in the past at least therefore doesn't own the science that comes out of it which creates an uphill struggle which I know from experience. Yeah, I even heard the story and I'm not sure if maybe you know it around that whole Rosetta lander there was this fantastic animation a cartoon basically of about I think six parts that showed the whole journey and I think it showed Rosetta and Philae as a as a as a couple venturing out into the world and my five year old cousin was completely mad about this. She was a complete fan. And then I heard it was this animation studio in France I think who had suggested it to ESA it wasn't even commissioned by ESA it was just an animation studio that out of sheer enthusiasm for the mission had made this and then after a while ESA said well okay sure we'll actually buy it. I'm not sure if you can confirm this story. I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. Yeah, and it's one of the most it's one of the best PR things ESA has ever done and I believe it wasn't even initiated by them. Yeah, but on the other hand it's the same thing for NASA but they're much more easy going on it in the sense that most of their PR of course is done by blockbusters like Apollo 13 which they quite happily work with. On the other hand it makes a huge difference from a fascination point of view whether you have put a man on the moon or not. Let's be honest about that. Yeah, that's true of course. Herbert, you wanted to ask your question about SpaceX. SpaceX, that's right. Because it seems to me that as far as publicity PR is concerned that NASA is losing the battle with SpaceX right? SpaceX is stealing the show all over the place. Not only with their launches and landings but also with videos, with tweets by Elon Musk etc. How do you feel about that Michel? Is that a right observation by me? I'm not so sure. I mean, at this specific moment you're right and I don't think that, by the way, it's necessarily a bad thing although I do think that we are seeing a few things I would call space marketing and I hope we have a few minutes to talk about it which I'm not very happy with. The fact that SpaceX is doing its communication properly, by the way, by learning from other parties who have done it before so they're standing on the on the shoulders of giants in that sense but they're doing it well and yeah, Elon Musk has a good feeling for PR. However, what happens now is that you see many many other parties and sometimes even SpaceX that launch stories which are, yeah, let's say on the edge of unbelievable or untrustworthy let's put it that way and a lot of these stories like hotels in space or one-way tickets to Mars are usually picked up by the media because they're fascinating while there isn't really any beef behind it and this I think is worrying because in the end it will degrade the trust that people have in space organizations for delivery. You mean like plans that are being put forward that never materialize? Yeah, and I mean even ESA also puts forward a lot of plans and so does NASA that don't materialize or at least always delay but that is fine, the reason why it doesn't materialize but sometimes plans are put forward for strategics or straightforward sometimes even pretty let's say questionable commercial reasons that are put forward and then you already know from the beginning that it will never materialize. Okay, but can you give me an example of a plan that's being put forward for commercial reasons? Well, Mars One is a tricky one but more there was recently in also in the Netherlands a more, a better example even of a company that would actually want to create the first space baby. I'm sure you know. Yeah, we had the last show. That makes me very sad in a way because if you look at what happens there is that they in the end I think for various ethical reasons and also purely practical things will of course never happen but the business model behind it is quite interesting because if you really look on the website the business model is actually to convince people to freeze eggs and sperm and save space for when the space baby can be delivered. Yep, that's right. Which is of course never. But it's a wonderful business development because you're, this freezing your sperm and eggs is already possible it's not even that expensive. You just make it twice as expensive by adding this space story to it and you make yourself a lot of money. So, okay, we had them in Space Cowboys podcast number eight by the way so people who become curious can go and satisfy their curiosity and listen to it. And now I might be too cynical here but I see a lot of these let's say PR stories in marketing where space is used. That's alright. Where quite often in the end I'm pretty sure that the space baby, I hope at least it will never materialize because it's completely unethical. There will be no government that will allow a company at least not in the western world to allow a space company to launch something like that. It's not from a financial point of view but the business model to make money is very viable. But on the other way if I'm not sure, maybe you just really want to have the ambition to do it but maybe not. I believe he didn't even want to talk about the space baby too much. He wanted to talk about the business model. That makes sense but then But the media only wanted to talk about the space baby of course because it's spectacular. Yeah and you get a lot of uproar so you get a lot of attention so from a PR point of view it's very clever but it also degrades Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. How about one final question slash answer because we've one hour's worth of podcast right now and we're going to move to close. So what's left to be asked, Thijs? Oh, okay. What's left to be asked. Well, I had a bunch of things so let me just run through my list in here. Just the most important one that's left. Yeah, the most important one. Well, I Yeah, I keep on coming back to that point of how you can sell space the best way. So if you have some advice for us or anybody listening you're basically saying well space sells itself very easily but if you got some tips or hints then I'm all for it. Yeah, well I would actually turn it around. I mean the advice is don't oversell it and I have always a question that the fundamental question is very Dutch way. Okay, if this is the plan where is the money coming from? So Yeah, that's super practical. Yeah, and it really helps because if somebody comes up with a space hotel or wants to ferry people or industry. Yeah, or do mining in space which doesn't is viable for much or even ship people to Mars and back then just do the maths of how is this is going to be paid and optimistic scenarios which are ludicrously optimistic by the way of how to do it. It just doesn't add up. So Yeah, so the new man on the moon for example, the new man on the moon by the United States. Yeah, but there's Which by the way, it's also interesting Herbert. We talked about it last week. Of course, it's if Trump gets reelected. It's it's right in the last year of his presidency. So that's yeah, that's that's also when I don't believe in that stuff. Even the moon doesn't have a viable business model as far as I'm concerned. This is this is a dream wishing in the sense that that is completely impossible from the point where they stand now to go to the moon in what was it two or three years that is five years five years and I think they want to do it on a fog and heavy. Yeah, but even then, but you have to do fit and retrofit and a capsule to a rocket that that isn't designed for it. It's not man rated it. It's this sounds great and it's so going not to work that Yeah, but we'll write you down as a skeptic. Yeah, but in a way somebody has to do them very sorry, but the point is where's the money coming from and NASA at this point. Yeah, it does not have money to to to go to the moon. They have money to build an SLS Walker to have money to build why in but there is no budget to do the space mission. Yeah, and these space missions are always put forward by presidents for political purposes and have no beef behind them whatever hardly hardly ever there's a budget to do it and the so the big question that you have to ask yourself. Okay, what's the budget and you have to decide whether you run the story. Because if you if you got enough money, then you can go to the moon in five years if you if you are you need to probably what is it at least 10 billion? Yeah, well, they always say that Mars is 100 billion if you do it if you do it the government way. Yeah, I mean if you do it one way and are willing to take the risk is even maybe maybe it's cheaper, but that is quite often the the bull park mark mark of going to the moon. Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, 100 billion or 10 billion is quite a quite a difference. Yeah. Well, we'll see. We'll see we got you down on the list of skeptic and we'll talk again to 2026. I mean, I'm not just skeptic. Well, we noticed that. Yeah, certainly. That's fine. Hey, so thanks a lot Michelle for being on the show and we made it technically happen. Yeah, that's also very cool. Yeah. Okay. Who do we have next week? Herbert good question. Let me go to our schedule. Yeah, next week. We are going to have Lisa Kaltenegger Lisa Kaltenegger from the Carl Sagan Institute. Yeah to talk about we're going to have one more conversation at a distance. Yeah, she is. Yeah, definitely. She is in at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York and she's on the hunt for Earth 2.0 and she's really waiting for the James Webb telescope to go up actually. But in order to do that. You have to wait for some more time then. Yeah, exactly. But she can tell us a lot about TESS which already went up. Okay, that's beautiful. She already took a peek at some of the data that came from there. So we're going to talk about exoplanets and the hunt for a second Earth. Good. Okay. Yeah. Thank you guys. Thank everybody who listened in and see you next time on Space Cowboys. Thank you Herbert. Thank you Michelle. Thank you Thijs. Thanks Michelle. Bye bye everybody.