A small hop for a starship...

Hi everybody, this is Space Cowboys and we're having another of our bi-weekly episodes. With me in the studio is Joeri Nortier. Hi. Hi Herbert. And at a distance we have Thijs. Thijs, where are you? Hey, in Bangkok. I'm on the other side of the planet. That's very good. Compared to Bangkok. Yes. I'm on the same side of Bangkok. Yeah. Yeah. So you're just finding out what's on the other side of the planet. Yeah. And actually, I love always traveling closer to the equator because you can see the Milky Way so much better. You can look into the core of the Milky Way so much better than when you're in the northern hemisphere. Yeah. So I've been really doing a lot of night photography here. And it's... It's been great. I always love it. In order to see some serious stars, do you have to go outside Bangkok or is the sky... Yeah. Is the air clean enough within Bangkok to see the stars really? Oh, no. It's a metropolis, all right? So... Yeah. Jupiter is shining really brightly and I can see Saturn not really. Like I know where it is. I was at a rooftop bar and I could see it. But luckily I've been traveling around a lot. So I've also been on... I took a week of vacation. I'm here for work. But I took a week of vacation as well to one of the islands. And that was just stunning. So... And I've been to the jungle in Cambodia. And over there, yeah, there's basically no light. So perfect dark skies all around. Yeah. It is rainy season though. So... A lot of clouds. Here in Southeast Asia. So yeah, a lot of clouds. I had to be lucky for a few nights. It wasn't like I could party with my phone. I had to have a photo camera every night. But yeah, at least when I do see it, when I do see the night sky, it's definitely a different night sky than home. Yeah, yeah. I'll tell you guys a little story. Back in about 1990, I think, I interviewed Kees de Jager, a famous Dutch astronomer. He's still alive. He should be about 90, maybe close to 100 years right now. But... Back then, de Jager told me that during the Second World War, he used to travel by bike from the city of The Hague in the Netherlands to Utrecht, another big city in the Netherlands. And he could see each city had its own separate dome of light around it. All right? And during the years, he has seen these domes of light of the Dutch cities grow. And they grew toward one another until they melted together. And right now, myself, I live in the Dutch countryside, which should have no dome of light at all. But nowadays, on summer nights, when I look up and when it starts to get dark, I can see, well, maybe 10 or 20 stars at most. That's where you live. And I know you live two hours outside of Amsterdam. Yeah. On the freaking countryside. I mean, it should be dark there. But we hardly see any stars ever anymore. Okay? Looking at stars in the Netherlands is history. Yeah. And it's so sad. Yeah. It's... Especially in the Netherlands and Belgium, it's really bad. It's like as bad as basically the big metropolises anywhere. I mean, it's very bad. It's not like you're in the Netherlands, it's like the biggest metropolis in the world. But I believe we are some of the most light polluted... We are the most light polluted part of Europe. I do think so, yeah. And yeah, I think... Mm-hmm. If you... Sometimes you can look outside of the ISS, they have this high definition camera aimed towards the earth. And sometimes you see it passing over the Netherlands and Belgium at night. And then you can clearly see where the Netherlands, where the border starts and where the border ends because there's so much light coming from the ground. And when you mount up into space, it's so easily discernible. Yeah. People having artificial light in their gardens and whatnot. It's everywhere. And especially the Western part of the Netherlands where you have all the greenhouses. I mean, it just lights up like a... They do. It's like a second sun. I lived between them for some time. Okay. Let's get to it, guys. One thing about that. Yeah. One thing about that though, for those who are getting too depressed, there is nowadays there are official international dark sky parks. There is the International Dark Sky Association even, who designates certain parks as dark sky parks. And they have a website and they're all on there. But if you ever get the chance and you do want to do some stargazing, there are some organizations now working on getting skies dark again. Okay. Because it is an actual issue, especially for people who love the... Sounds like a subject to devote a whole Space Cowboys episode to, right? Of course. Yes. Yeah. I visited one once. I could not believe my eyes. Yeah. I couldn't believe my eyes. I didn't know there were that many stars. Looking around ourselves from the Netherlands, where would the closest dark sky park be? Well, if you introduce the next topic, then I will... Because in Europe, it's not dark. It's not dark. It's not dark. In Europe, I think actually it might be in Romania. Well, no, that's where I visited one. I think somewhere up north there should be some. In Europe, I'm not sure. It's going to take us some travel time. I'm not going to leave you alone right now because I wanted to start our Space News item with you because you're far away. You're in a foreign country. I suppose you have some interesting space news. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. What would you like space stuff to tell us about from where you are? I do, actually. Actually, we're going to devote a whole episode on this in two weeks, I think. About the company Satelligence. That's right. Let me give a short introduction. I'm currently working on a book about a completely unrelated topic. topic it's about the drug war and um i knew that in a uh in a certain jungle in cambodia criminal organizations were working to find the ingredients for mdma and um this part of my book that i'm writing is sort of about the uh the environment environmental damages uh that the um illegalization of drugs the fact that they're unregulated uh and uncontrollable which environmental damage this causes and i knew this this story um in the cambodian jungle because there were two ingredients sometimes they go in and they they find several oil and another thing is yellow vine and i just wanted to see those plants and understand what was going on over there um but i knew that there was a lot going on over there um deforestation is a is a gigantic problem over there and it's not only about these two ingredients um it's mostly has to do with just a super complex um situation where maybe the cambodian government gave away some land to build dams to chinese companies then also uh gave some grants to uh cambodian companies to get wood out of like special rare types of wood yeah out of the um out of the jungle this caused a whole lot of uh land workers to move there and after the job was done they didn't want to go anywhere they just kind of wanted to stay combine that with endemic corruption in the area as well or in in cambodia in general and you have this toxic mix in which large part of this one of the last wildernesses of southeast asia is being quickly deforested so um i knew i was gonna encounter some and that it would not all fall into the canter teammates and i was determined to figure out how i wanted to do it in the future so that i was able to come in and take that work and i talked to a בש florist who is aFX entsprech pri Erst shaped proposals and waterfront ق内 flies and i went to some so called Lebесқطmpes always be safe for me to travel around there. So I knew that Satelligence, yeah, I knew that Satelligence had a way to, basically what they do is they scan public data, public satellite imagery. And I don't know, they wrote a couple of really smart algorithms for this. Yeah, algorithms that would then scan almost on a daily basis where deforestation was taking place. So I contacted Niels Wielaert from Satelligence to ask him, actually right before I went in, it's like, hey, so do I understand correctly that you can now tell me where this is taking place and where I need to go to look for any sort of like environmental damage and also to know, where these groups would be active or where these companies actually would be active. And literally within a couple of hours, it was amazing. He sent me these maps. He said, well, basically just give me a couple of locations and I'll take a look. Within a few hours, he sent me these maps of the places I was going. And he had almost like color-coded pixels, more or less. I think each pixel was like, well, maybe it's so small, like maybe like 10 by 10 meters, like it was, or maybe 50 by 60 meters, like so specific. And basically I could see this whole jungle being color-coded by when it was deforested. So some parts were two years ago, large part, this is when these companies moved in, all in black. And then last year was red and orangey. And then he basically said, really recent was yellow. And so there were a bunch of like a lot of yellow spots on there. You know, a lot of white spots on there. And he'd began to blur track, filled by edges. And so, you know, Yeah and he saw this wonderfuluent that he was very inspired by, because it's like, it's a fair amount of white and the things told me that these places were different. It's just the trees could be quite wide or strawberries, baby. And yeah, but most of the places는지 that I where staying his house. It was a little big, very small, 가�caan and just to walk pass, there you go. But it seemed like it was nearly just he'd been waiting. Probably next, I guess come up to walking past it would be a great place. Now, the bad news was that I saw like a destroyed forest. Sure. It was so sad to see. Yeah. In the end, I encountered some – I had a really great translator with me. And we did encounter some forest police who are patrolling there to counter it. But I never really grasped – I mean, they have good intentions. But it seemed like they would always go anywhere like after the fact. Instead of being able to actively fight it as it happened or before it happened. So we asked around and there's a couple of NGOs also active in the area. None of which who want to speak on the record actually because they're all afraid that they will be kicked out. So they can do something with the local population. But going on the record about corruption over there is dangerous for them. What happens nowadays? I mean, let's first say. What I saw. You would – I would come – because of Neil's – Realize Satelligence's maps, I would be able to know like, hey, right behind here, something's going on. So we would scan basically off the road. We would scan for like these little trails going into the woods and would peek in. And then indeed, maybe 100 meters into the jungle. By the way, you have to really look out for leeches everywhere. There's a ton. And they did get me at a certain point. My whole shirt was covered in blood. It was nasty. There was this gigantic – just this gigantic heartbreaking area of just destroyed – freshly destroyed forest. Some of it had burn marks. Some trees were cut down but sort of like cut open. And then our theory was probably seeing what the quality of the wood was. And then like, let's not even care about it. And just destroyed sort of. And we didn't understand why. Like it seemed so random almost. Yeah. And so I found a Ukrainian wildlife ranger. He was there with an NGO and he wanted to talk about it. He said that companies – I mean. It can either be a Chinese company or a Cambodian company. They will come in with bulldozers, raise the land and then say – then go to the governor and say, hey, this land is unusable. Somebody destroyed it. Can we now just plant bananas here or something else? Can we use this? And then a couple of local guys will get some of the wood out of it. So they basically destroy the jungle in order to be able to grab it. And then the money is paid left and right and then they can do it. So, yeah. It's a huge problem and heartbreaking and terrible to see. And deforestation in Cambodia is one of the fastest in the world. Okay. Okay. But at least thanks to this satellite imagery, it's – yeah, you can almost watch it live so to speak. So at least the data is now there. And you can see where it happens just like so quickly after it happened. Sure. Sure. And one part of good news then. It should be the data that Satelligence puts out is correct. That's what you verified. Yeah. Exactly. The good news is at least I verified if it worked. It's correct. Yeah. And it's correct. And that color coding system also works. I mean, I could clearly see when something was cut down like a week ago because there were no real new plants. Or when it was cut down half a year ago because, you know, the jungle wants to recover itself. But very often. You would see that some people would have already planted some new crops in there to start using the land so to speak. Yeah. But it was fascinating. Sometimes I could see an entire valley and just check it on the map and it's like, yeah, the map is perfect that they sent. All right. Now, do you have more to report or shall we move to Joeri for his space news? Well, we can. I have a lot to report, but at least this part was done. And actually, if people are interested, then they should stay tuned in two weeks. We will have an episode with Niels. We will discuss Niels Wieler. We will talk. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Fine. You will tell us. Yeah. Joeri, space news. Yeah. What do you have? I have a lot. I mean, in the last episode, I was kind of doubting if enough would happen in the next few weeks. Well, I can admit my touch. You ought to know better. Yeah. I ought to know better. Right. But it was an interesting two, three weeks. A lot of things happened. And let's just run down the most important stories. Shall we start with Galileo? I mean, let's stick to the awful news. Yeah. You mean considering more bad news? Yeah. Let's start while we're still in the negative side of things. Let's move over to Galileo. Because two weeks ago, some engineers noticed that there was something. Something awfully going wrong with Galileo. The satellites were still operating, but all the communication from the Galileo satellites was wrong. There was a bug somewhere. They noticed that Galileo satellites were receiving and sending the wrong timestamps. And of course, timestamps are an important part of satellite navigation. Yeah. If you got the wrong time, you had got the wrong location. Yeah. So Galileo was basically unusable for a few days. And all the... All the... All the machines that were using Galileo had to fall back to GPS. But this isn't... There was a really weird situation where just an entire satellite navigation constellation was just out of the air for a few days. Yeah. And it's ironic because the whole point of Galileo is to no longer need GPS. Exactly. Exactly. It being American and all that. Yeah. Yeah. So what happened is that after a few days, there was this official statement from the engineers. They said, the technical incident originated by an equipment malfunction in the Galileo control centers that calculate time and orbit predictions. So it was a technical malfunction, but they didn't go into any other details on what exactly happened. I mean, everything is restored right now. Everything works now, but we're still dealing with the aftermath of a complete outage of the whole Galileo system, a 10 billion Euro system. And Thijs has a question. Yeah. It has GPS. Has GPS ever gone down? Not that I know of. I mean, I think it's been one of the... Not in our life. No. No. And it's been out there since the seventies. So it's never been done, I think. No. And I thought, but I mean, I am clearly mistaken that it could not go down. That it was like something that your phone or your GPS receiver calculates according to GPS satellites. And not that it was a satellite. No. And not that it was something... Yeah. Some active communication going on, but maybe I'm completely mistaken. I remember I once tried to Wikipedia understand it and then I failed, I guess. Well, it's a difficult matter. But yeah, what is worrisome to me is that one equipment malfunction in the ground stations can basically pull down the entire Galileo system. I mean... That's weird. That's weird. What a disaster project. What a disaster project. Like how long has Galileo been... Yeah. I mean, it's been touted as the next GPS for a very long time and more specific. I don't know. Do you know anybody who actually really uses it on a mass scale? I have no idea. I do not know anyone. No. I think the most recent smartphones are able to decode Galileo signals. But from my... I thought most of the systems still use GPS as a... Yeah, I think so. And just Galileo as a backup. Of course. Of course. To answer your question, Thijs, I did a quick Google search on GPS malfunction and I'm getting some results. One is GPS malfunction caused 12 hours of chaos on Earth. 2016 should the date be. But so some things have happened, but I'm not sure if they were very, very serious. Yes. On Tinder, people didn't know like who they could date and who was close to them. That's... That's... Yeah, you have this total meltdown in the society, but no. Never mind. That's what was going on. Yeah. So that's Galileo. And I Googled really quick. Yeah. And I Googled really quick, Galileo. For 400 million Galileo enabled phones sold globally. Oh, wow. One million more are sold every day. Yeah. But they don't use Galileo. They don't only use Galileo. They also use GPS, I think. And... Yeah. And for an episode, Thijs, how far has Galileo come so far and who uses it anyway? Exactly. And this is one year ago. So we'll see. This is great stuff. We're coming up with all these new ideas. Yeah. So much to talk about. I want to use Galileo. How can I? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right. So that's the Galileo item, Juri. Thank you. Is that finished now? Yeah. Shall we move to the next one? Sure. Go ahead. Well, something very interesting. Yeah. I'm not sure if you ever heard of Argonaut, Arconaut. Well, in a different context, yes. But that's not what you mean, I think. Two weeks ago, Made in Space, which is a company that specializes in 3D printing of satellite components or objects in space, they unveiled their newest satellite concept, which is called Arconaut. And basically, it's a satellite that can assemble itself in space. What? So you launch a 3D printer. It is basically a 3D printer into space. And then once it's up there circling the Earth, it can just assemble itself. Okay. I'm looking this up now. And it's R-K-A-R-C-H-I-naut. I was thinking Argonaut. That's a very well-known name. Inspired, of course. Yeah. Yes. Arconaut. Okay. But go ahead. It's like an architect's name. Yeah. It's like an architect's name. Yeah. It's like an architect's name. Yeah. It's like an architect's name. Yeah. It's like an architect's name. Yeah. It's like an architect's name. Yeah. It's like an architect's name. Yeah. It's like an architect's name. Yeah. It's like an architect's name. Yeah. It's like an architect's name. Yeah. It's like an architect's name. Yeah. It's like an architect's name. Yeah. That's right. Like architect. But this is a very interesting concept because one of the big problems with launching spacecraft is, of course, the fact that you're bound by these rocket fairings. They're five meters in diameter at the most. So that also means that you either have to create small satellites or you have to unfurl large antennas in space. Blow things up like balloons or unfold. Blow things up. Unfurl. Yeah. Unfurl. But there's always this added risk of something not unfurling, something not blowing up in space. And it happened. Yes. And it happens from time to time, but then your whole mission is over basically. So this is interesting because with this technique, you can basically print all you want in space. You can print a solar screen. You can print these struts that come out of a satellite. You can print an unfurlable antenna. You can basically print everything in space, when you want it, how you want it. So this concept for a new satellite called ArcNode, basically a 3D printer in space, I think it's going to be really interesting. It's an interesting concept. I would like to see it work. Yeah. We have to wait a few years because it's going to be launched in 2022. Made in Space is already active in the ISS, so they already have a 3D printer up in the ISS. Which is printing components for the ISS. ISS and we've seen the same concept of satellites that can be assembled in space or in the ISS for the past few years but this is really something new that we're looking into but you're you're mentioning this objection yeah if you want to blow up a balloon or unfurl a solar sail or unfold solar you're um you have this process that can go wrong but now you're launching just a different process which of course can also go wrong sure of course yeah but with this process complexity because if you want to if you want to print a spoon you can well one material is enough if you want to print a solar panel you have to do something very very complex it's not one material that you're using no i think for a solar panel that is of course a very complex uh procedure but maybe for a solar seal that would be interesting okay so we'll you can't yeah i i i i'm just free thinking here so if we can maybe send something out into space that will mine astronaut uh asteroids and then we'll use that material to print new spaceships we can colonize the entire galaxy yeah we've we've seen okay that's it then we've seen these concepts for a printer that uses lunar regolith to create habitats on on the moon uh see we're getting somewhere amazing yeah so i think it's an interesting concept to 3d print to 3d print things in space yeah i cannot we'll put a link in the show notes yeah right let's move over to asia asia what's going on well thais is there thais is there yes yeah the biggest country over there china uh let's move over to china because uh two weeks ago uh tiangong2 re-entered the atmosphere and of course you will know about tiangong2 not too much tiangong2 was their was their most recent um space station yeah that's the thing that nobody knows about yeah so china china is of course uh very busy in space not only with sending uh interplanetary probes or uh discovering the solar system they're also moon landers they also have this active uh manned space program so they're sending us astronauts into space but they're also working on a space station a bit like mirror it's a modular space station and they're also working on a space station they plan to launch the um pre- judgments videos of that uh first modules into space somewhere next year depending on how their chang zhang five rockets is progressing they had some problems with that yeah you reported on that um four weeks ago yeah yeah exactly and um before they were able to create these modules for their uh chinese modular space station they did some tests with smaller space stations so back in 2011 they launched tiangong 1 which was the most popular swiss driven squadron in space i'm only just making sure it Ichiko said it was the most not harvesting um size and light weight of its uh overall existence either other robots in the space There are four components called AirJohns thathouse do weights , mboth of which are micro 없aeappestines and Guill meditate emitted parts of the earth's subject —m seems to be the world's largest mass of mass so forty or perspective Yangon-1, which was basically a very small space station, not bigger than a bus or something. A bit like the Russian Salyut space stations that were launched in the 70s. They're basically copying the Russian space station program. They launched Yangon-1 to perform some tests, dock into space for the first time with their Shenzhou capsule. And then after a few years, they lost contact with Yangon-1 and they couldn't control it anymore. And it's actually quite a big space station. I mean, it's a bus. It's still up there? No. So they lost contact with it, but it was coming back to Earth. So it was about to re-enter and they couldn't control it. So they couldn't control where it would actually re-enter in the atmosphere. So it might have well been that it would re-enter right above Africa. Or Asia or something. And that some parts of the Yangon-1 space station would fall back to Earth and actually hit someone. I mean, the chances of it were very small, one in a million or something. So it was possible. And never zero, yeah. And it was a bit of a shameful period for the Chinese manned space program because they lost control of one of their... Yeah, it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to lose control over one of your most important projects, the Yangon-1 space station. And they were lucky. It re-entered right above the Pacific Ocean where actually no one was. So they escaped some small air disaster. But two years after that, or back in 2016, they launched Tiangong-2, which was an upgraded version of the space station. And they also did it to experiment with long duration crews. So they sent up two astronauts and stayed there for 30 days, which is quite a long time. The first time they did something like this. They launched... They launched a resupply vessel as a test to see if they could dock with the space station. And if they could transfer oxygen, water, propellants, things like that from one module to another module. And then they just left it in space to see how it would wear in space. And it was up there for two years. Not much happened. Empty. Empty. No new crews. And then they decided to re-enter it. And this time, controlled re-entry. Of course, they wanted to... They wanted to prove that they could do that. So the time was there a few weeks ago. And they re-entered it right above the Pacific Ocean, where no one is, of course. And everything went fine. And they also were able to gather some knowledge on re-entry physics and how their space station would wear and tear when it was entering the outermost parts of the atmosphere. So next up is Tianhe, which is the first module for the space station. Tianhe. And they're a mirror-like space station. And I think we have to wait two years before it's launched. And that's going to be an interesting project because they're also inviting international astronauts to join them. They do. Yeah. Wow. I thought they were so secretive. No, no, no, no, no. They are actively working along with ESA. Do you hear that, Thijs? We can apply now. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I'm so blown away by this. You call it secretive. And I'm just like, am I not paying attention or anything? It's like... Have I not been paying attention? To be honest, to be honest, I mean, the Chinese space program is quite secretive, but they're really open for Chinese, from a Chinese point of view, for Chinese standards, into their manned space program. So, yeah, they are really actively working on this new modular space station. They are inviting international astronauts to join them in missions to this space station. Yeah. And it's basically... And it's going to be up there for about 10 years, starting in 2021, 2000. 2022. And it's going to be enhanced with more modules. So, you have this big space station up there. It's not like the ISS. It is smaller, but it is going to be something worth looking out for. And Thijs, in your voice, I hear the same surprise that I'm experiencing. Why don't we ever hear about this? Except from you, right? Is that what you mean? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I'm really... I was reading along to one of the articles, and it says that they announced this whole descent in July 2019. Yeah, that's basically... This month. Just now. Yeah. And so, they announced something, and two weeks later, it happened. Yeah. And to me, that's just like, wow, you know, other space organizations would have a farewell party or at least do a little bit more. But, yeah. And that... And that an unmanned space station was also circling the Earth for so many years. Also, I mean, short, but still, like, I had no clue. I had no clue. Yeah. It's kind of... This kind of ties into one of the topics I also want to talk about today. So... Yeah, don't underestimate the Chinese. Their space program is progressing blazingly fast. Yeah. All right. So, it is happening. So, okay. That's happening. Well, Yui, I'm so grateful. Thank you. Okay. So, Thijs, anything you want to add or ask right now on this topic? Yeah. Yeah. This is a great introduction for what I wanted to talk about. Because SpaceX, they had their launch of another Falcon 9 just run down the mill. Yui, you know which mission number it was, right? Yeah. Dragon Cirrus. 18. So, the 18th resupply mission to the ISS. And I believe the 40th landing of a Falcon 9 or something like that. Yeah. And I was blown away by... Because it shows up in my YouTube feed, you know, if something like that happens. I can even... On my phone, I get like, hey, there's a launch going on. And I looked at it and I saw that it garnered 1.2 million views. And I was just so amazed. I was amazed by why does actually the 40th launch of just the Falcon 9... Like, I was becoming so blasé about it. Why does it get so many views? Like, 1.2. And then I saw that Elon Musk tweeted something about more like close-up shots. And the fact that when it re-entered, it went through the sound barrier twice, which was quite spectacular. And that got 3 million views. And so, I watched the launch. I watched it. I watched the launch a day after it happened. And it's just... It's still mind-blowing. I get it. I get it. Like, it's so fascinating to watch. And they have just engineers from SpaceX, like internal engineers. I think they just select them by how well they can explain things, talking you through the whole process. And it's just... It's really good television. It's just such an exciting thing. And I watched it even after the 40th time. You're still sort of like, will anything happen? You know, will it be weird? And if nothing happens, then it's still like this spectacular sight. Even better, yeah. And you know, every tiny step is being explained by these guys. And it's just so... It's entertaining, inspiring, all these things at the same time. And I think any space company can learn so much from just watching it. Like how you can... Yeah. Yeah. If you just have two engaging people explaining what happens in a way that people, you know, simple guys like us can understand it. It's something that you can change the world, so to speak. And I mean, not to be sappy about it, but it's like... I was so happy that even after 40 launches, it can still be so good. It's still interesting, yeah. And that's what everybody was saying in the comments as well. It's like, this never gets old. It never gets... It's old. It doesn't. It's great. And I saw you nodding, Joeri, when... Sorry, Thijs. Go on. Yeah, no, the Chinese can learn a lot. That's all I wanted to say. The Chinese can learn. Oh, they... I'm sure they do. I'm sure they also are following everything that SpaceX does, just to learn from it and copy it. But I saw you nodding, Joeri, when Thijs said, these guys, these engineers, SpaceX engineers, probably get selected by their ability to explain. They are. Yes. I think they are. I'm not entirely sure, but I mean, it is in SpaceX's... I mean, it is important for SpaceX to really explain what they're doing to make their progress sexy. I mean... Yeah. They are doing the same thing over and over again. So it could quickly get boring. I have to say that I was watching this launch, and it didn't quite catch my interest that much anymore. I mean, I still remember the first time a Falcon 9 booster landed back on Earth. Yeah. I mean, I still remember the excitement I felt then. But now I was watching this launch, and it was just like any ordinary launch. And I mean, it was fun to watch. You were still watching it. I was still watching it. I was one of the 1.2 million. And I'm looking forward to the next one. It's going to be on Saturday, by the way. Saturday, the 3rd of August. So... So... Oh, the 3rd of August. Joeri, check out Elon Musk's Twitter. Feed. Because I had not seen the close-up shot of the... Oh, I know which one you mean. Yeah. Yes. There's this perfect close-up shot of the rocket landing. And you can see the fins just... How do you say it in English? You just see them unfurl. And that was new to me. I was like, hey, they're again showing me something new. Yeah. So... That is very... It is extremely well crafted. How they unveil something new every time. So it does feel like you're learning something new every time. And was this something totally new that happened? Or was it something new they showed? It was more like something new they showed. Yeah. They put a camera on a different place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They had a perfectly tracking camera. So you would have this perfect close-up shot of the rocket landing. So the wide shot, the onboard sort of GoPro action camera that looks... Down, you know. You could see it from four angles at the same time. And one was like an extreme close-up of the rocket itself. And while we're at it, SpaceX, did you also watch the Starship Hopper test? I mean, it was also... Yes. It was a stream live. I mean, the strange thing is, they test this new Starship Hopper, which is a prototype for their big Starship project. They test it with a short hop, a few meters up in the air, and everyone goes berserk when this happens. Yeah. It was a fun video. Because what happened was, they counted down, and there was lots of fire and smoke. Everywhere, yeah. And you couldn't see anything. And then the smoke cleared, and this stupid rocket was standing in a different place. And that's all you could see. But still, everyone was extremely excited about what happened. Yes, I was. But by the way, I turned this into a headline for our show notes. I put... I created the headline, a small hop for a Starship dot dot dot. Really proud of that one. Good one, good one. Yeah. I tried to get excited about it. It was just too much smoke. I was like, I'm not really sure what I'm... But, you know... Smoke and mirrors, Dijs. Smoke and mirrors. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I was really very happy when I saw the smoke clear and saw the rocket standing in a different place. I mean, this just happened by itself, you know. It must have gone through the air. I'm sure. Yeah, you needed a little bit of imagination to really make something up, yeah. Yeah, you have to interpolate mentally somehow. By the way... I'll cheer again when it goes to Mars. Excuse me? Oh, I'll cheer again when it goes to Mars. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure you will. I want to move to something that I would like to bring into the conversation. Because when we were talking about the camera, the camera added by SpaceX to reveal a different part of the process of, well, everything they do, it made me think of a documentary I saw just the other day, a documentary that is not very new. It's called Chasing the Moon. And I believe it appeared this year. It's not on Netflix, but it was broadcast by a Dutch television and it's still on their website. And I'm creating a link in the show notes for everybody. Chasing the Moon. Chasing the Moon. And one of the things I saw in... Well, I saw the first two episodes and no more so far. But in the second episode, I believe, there was this TV guy explaining how during the space project of the 60s, the Apollo project and everything, Mercury, Gemini, they managed to incorporate in their TV work a very interesting... a very interesting... newer TV technology, besides the space technology, of course. So they moved from not having any visuals at all, really, to creating animations and to putting cameras here and there during launches, adding color cameras at a particular point in time. So it was very fascinating to hear somebody talk about the development of TV technology, in parallel to space technology. It was really fun to hear about this and also see the results of that. So this Moon program was also a driver into innovation in TV. Perhaps. But at least they were able to use the innovations that maybe would have come anyway to show ever different and new parts of the space process. Just like... Just like it's happening now with SpaceX. Cool, cool. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, I see. I think... I wonder if you put a link in the show notes, if everybody will be able to see it because of geo-blocking. I see it's... Yes, it's awesome. Maybe not, but in Holland they will. Yeah, exactly. And otherwise you can Google for it. I think PBS has it for our American listeners. Yes, I've been looking, but Netflix doesn't have it. That I'm sure. No. But it's streaming on PBS.org. PBS. PBS.org. Okay, that's fine. Great. So who has another item? You must have Chandrayaan. Chandrayaan 2. I think I also briefly touched upon Chandrayaan in a previous episode. Yeah, four weeks ago you told me they were going too long. Yeah, so Chandrayaan is India's newest Moon probe. It's a Moon orbiter, but it's also a Moon lander and a Moon rover. So a complete stack. It's a Swiss army knife. It's a Swiss army knife. And it also has an enormous amount of scientific equipment on board. So it's going to map the entire Moon. It's going to see what the Moon is actually made of. So the lander and the rover have a spectrometer. They can measure what kind of minerals there are, if there's water ice available. Any cheese. What the radiation is. Anything, really anything they can do with it. And they were going to launch it on the 14th of July. And then they ran into a problem just before countdown. A leak somewhere. And in Apollo 11 style, they tightened some bolts. They fixed the leak. It took a few days. They didn't do it on the launch pad itself, but they tightened some bolts. The leak was fixed. And then a week later they were able to launch it. And everything went flawless. Everything went even better than expected because the rocket had an overperformance. So they were able to ditch one of the extra burns they had to do to reach the Moon. I mean, the rocket overperformed. That's not something that you see quite often. So they have fuel to spare now. They have extra fuel to spare. They have about 40 kilograms of extra fuel to spare. And that will increase the lifetime of the orbiter. So in the following few weeks, they'll change the orbit. They'll increase the orbit until it finally reaches the Moon somewhere in August. And then it'll start a circular orbit around the Moon. And then on September the 7th, noted in your diaries, everyone, then the Vikram lander and the Pragyan lunar rover will land on the Moon. And they'll be active for about 14 days, depending on when exactly they land and how long the lunar day will last. And we will have another moon-faring nation. And we will have the fourth moon-landing nation. I mean, I really hope for India's sake that they... The landing will be soft. The landing will be soft. The landing will be soft. The landing will be soft. The landing will be soft. It won't be the same kind of landing as Israel, but it should earlier this year. I really hope they manage to perfect this landing and send back the first Indian images from the surface of the Moon. Yeah. More content for us to monitor, Thais, for the near future. Yeah, absolutely. We're all rooting for them. So that's cool. Okay. September 7th? September 7th. September 7th. Hayabusa. Alrighty. Yeah. Hayabusa. Another cool mission. Took another bite out of Ryugu. Yeah. So it's been around the asteroid Ryugu for quite a while now. I think a year and a half right now. And earlier this year, it fired an explosive device onto Ryugu. And that created an artificial crater. Basically, unearthing the rocks that haven't been touched by the sun for... Well... Billions of years. Ever since the asteroid was formed, which was basically the beginning of our solar system. And the Ryugu probe touched down on the asteroid two or three weeks ago, then sucked up some of the untouched sediment on there, added it to its capsule, and then backed away from the asteroid. And basically, its mission is finished right now. So it's going to stay around the asteroid for... For a few months. And then at the end of this year, it will leave Ryugu. I was about to say, the mission isn't finished because it has to go back home. And then it has to go back home. And then it'll start a journey back to Earth. It'll ditch the spacecraft itself once it's near the Earth. And then it'll send a capsule back into the Earth. I think it'll land somewhere in the outback of Australia. And then we'll have a capsule full of asteroid dust. Yeah. To analyze. To see whether it was made... To see the organic components that might be there. You know, treadmill. Yeah. I mean, it's such a cool mission. You tried to say something. But they already know it's going to land. Yeah. They already know it's going to land in Australia. Yeah. The thing is still going around the asteroid. And that, I mean, that's just insane to me. But somehow that has to be a suitable landing spot for... Yeah, of course they can't... Whatever it is they're dropping down. They can't pinpoint it into a box of... Yeah. They can't pinpoint it into a box of 100 by 100 kilometers. So they need a place where you can easily land something like this over a thousand kilometers or so. You can't do that in Japan. You can't do that... And have a radio beacon work. And have a radio beacon work. Which it won't in water, for instance. Yeah. And don't have forests or mountains or anything like that. So the Australian outback is a perfect place. Tree cover would be bad. So you have... We also have OSIRIS-REx, which is the American version of Hayabusa 2. It's currently in orbit. It's around asteroid Bennu. Also going to recover some samples from that asteroid. But it's going to take a while. I think it's going back in 2023. That's still a few years away. And it's also going to land somewhere, I think, in New Mexico or Arizona. Where there's a lot of space. Where you won't be in danger of hitting anyone. Yeah. It'll be interesting to compare the two. The two asteroids. Do you know a little bit about Bennu and Bennu? Yeah, they're both. They're the same kind of asteroids. They're C-type asteroids or carbonaceous asteroids. So mainly composed of carbon. And I think we've visited these kinds of asteroids before. But still, we haven't really had the opportunity to bring back any material from these asteroids. Hayabusa 1 tried to do it 10 years ago. But it was a mission that was marred by a lot of technical difficulties. And it was only able to capture a few specks of dust from the asteroid. So they were able to analyze something. But it wasn't enough to really get an idea of what such an asteroid consists of. And from my understanding, I think there aren't any other asteroid missions planned to return back to Earth. Okay. We have a lot of other asteroid missions planned for the future. This will be it for some time. Yeah. But still, it'll be interesting to see what the results are of these two missions. Yeah. Very cool. I believe my bucket of news items is empty now. There's one thing I'd like to discuss with you guys, if you like. Because about last weekend, I saw The Martian for the first time. And that's, well, the film is ancient as far as films go. Did you guys see The Martian? Yeah. Thijs, did you? Of course. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Matt Damon. Yeah, Matt Damon. Matt Damon eating this. I got a science the shit out of this. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Did you like it? No. Oh, why not? I wasn't expecting this answer. No. I had many, many. Well, for instance, this one line, I got a science the shit. Can you imagine a real astronaut saying that? No. That's right. It's not about reality, Herbert. What? What? That's not what this is about. That was like one of the most perfect one-liners celebrating science ever. Oh, no. Yeah. I think it's got 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. You are part of that 9% that just doesn't feel it. It doesn't feel it. That's right. I think if Matt Damon would really be on Mars, he would really have said that. That's my position on this. He would science the shit out of all of it. But Mark, what's his name? Wooden, I think. And, well, there were many more things. For instance, another very clear example is this final scene where he punctures his space suit and goes out flying like a stray balloon and somehow ends up exactly in the right place where somebody can catch him. It's physically. I mean, I'm a physicist. That's my position. And what's the reverse of blessings? My curse, of course. And I know that this couldn't possibly work in so many ways. It's so ridiculous. I'm a simpler guy. I don't see these things. What do you say, Thijs? Well, point one, yeah, that's not why you watch movies, to see like an accurate description of reality, but more, you know, a compelling story. You have to see it in the tradition of all the Mars movies that came. Before it, all the Mars movies that came before it, all the Mars movies that came before it were complete ridiculous nonsense. Are you referring to Mars attacks? Exactly. Planet nine from outer space. Sorry, that one was scientific. I am sorry. That was scientific. But, uh, no, this movie is from 2015 and, uh, just a couple of years ago, together with Interstellar and together with, uh, what's the name of the movie? Yeah, a couple of years ago. Just a couple of years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm, I'm. I, I, I love the movie. But, uh, you know, I, you know, if you're a, you know, maybe you're the, the, the, the, the man of gravity, uh, there was, there, there, there was this sort of, like, a couple of movies that were, uh, at least trying to be as scientific as, as sort of, like, narratively possible. So to speak, Interstellar was like, I believe the most pure, uh, purely, uh, scientific, uh, uh, until the ending. merits but you have to look at movies like that in tradition that they come from which is uh literally independence day uploading uh apple macintosh virus into a spacecraft i mean that's that's how movies 20 years earlier were made so um no i think that when the martian came out it was like oh wow it's not only like a cool mars movie it also tries to at least be mostly accurate you know yeah so now i know this and i i partly agree with you um but still i i also know movies like this nowadays have um science advisors some guy or a couple guys and and ladies from universities um advising them on on what is physically possible and what isn't and in in this scene i just described um i think this could have been this this could have been a lot less ridiculous and it could still have been an exciting movie that's that's my standard all right so i think it could have been a lot better and still be an interesting movie and uh well a lot more scientifically correct yeah but i i believe you do like uh you do like uh mars the series on the geographic right uh i haven't seen it is that is that a fiction series that's a fiction series right it's it's actually it's part uh yeah it's science fiction so it's about the first uh colonizers of mars and then inter cuts with um especially season one i watched only two episodes now i remember i've seen some of that i did yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and then they're cut with like uh some people who know what they're talking about um yes i did like that one i did yeah yeah perfect exactly so uh i i'm currently watching season two so uh okay uh uh i do like it i'll pick it up i like it somehow Yeah Okay Thanks for uh advising me on this Exactly exactly and i hope that a new mars movie will come out I think it's time for another mars movie Yeah yeah and it's it's a problem of these days that you you may start watching some series although not all of them are vaya right uh probably really very good not exactly my favorite is the book again called the good looking fish and then somebody else tells you to watch another series and you start that one and you forget about the first one. That's what happened to me in this case. There's too much. There's way too much. Yeah. Okay, anybody got something else to say, to report? No. Yes, yes. I want to wish all our listeners, yeah, I want to wish all our listeners and you guys a beautiful summer. Yes, we're having that. If you are on the Northern Hemisphere, if you are on the Southern Hemisphere, I hope the winter is treating you well. Very good. And you're in the tropics, so you have both. Yeah, I have both. I always hate that it gets dark so early. Yeah. So when it's like 6.30, we're done. Yeah. One day I hope to spend an entire summer or an entire winter or both in the Arctic to experience 24 hours of daylight, 24 hours of darkness. Will you arrive, George? No, she won't because she hates cold. And she hates extreme cold even more. So she's not going to do that now. Are you thinking of going to Concordia Station? That's on the extreme south pole? No, I was thinking maybe Lapland or Spitsbergen or somewhere, Svalbard, you know, those kind of places where you have a real 24 hours of daylight in the summer and 24 hours of darkness. Both are very special as far as I'm concerned. I'm already very happy with our long summer nights in Holland. That's all right too, yeah. Yeah, I mean, even twilight at close to 11. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Well, Thijs, I hope you have a nice stay in Asia. You're moving from one country to another, aren't you? Yeah, Myanmar tomorrow. Yeah, and then the Philippines. Okay, both must be very exciting. So have a nice trip and have a safe journey home later on. Thank you. And we'll talk to you in four weeks' time, won't we? Absolutely, absolutely. I'll be there. I won't be back, but I'll be at a distance again. I'll be in the Philippines. Okay, we'll talk to you then. Thank you, Joeri. Talk to you. And all our listeners, we'll meet again in two weeks' time when we discuss Satelligence, the company that we're working on right now. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye.