Retrospect
Retrospect
Artemis II: Back to the Moon (feat. Bill Moragne) | Retrospect Ep.224
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In this week’s episode we discussed NASA’s Artemis II rocket launching next month, with our returning guest Bill Moragne. This marks the next giant leap toward the Moon! We break down what this historic crewed mission means, who’s on board, and why its launch this year is a critical step toward humanity’s return to lunar exploration.
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Keywords
Artemis II, Space Launch System, Orion heat shield, deep space exploration, human space flight, lunar mission, SpaceX, Elon Musk, AI technology, quantum computing, space suit, Kennedy Space Center, space communication, space exploration challenges, future of space travel., Artemis II, moon landing, US Navy, San Antonio class, spacecraft recovery, NASA, SpaceX, AI, long-term thinking, engineering test, leadership, future generations, space suit, budget cuts, space exploration.Jason
For the first time in more than half a century, NASA is getting ready to put human beings back on a trajectory toward the moon, not landing yet, but crossing the threshold. Artemis two is the moment we stop talking about returning to deep space, but actually doing it. This mission matters because it's not a stunt. It's a systems test with people on board or astronauts strapped into Orion riding the most powerful rocket ever flown, the Space Launch System, looping around the moon and coming home. No lunar landing, no flags, just physics, engineering and nerve. The technology powering Artemis two is old school ambition fused with modern paranoia, redundancy everywhere, every system assumes something will fail and plans for it. Orion's heat shield has to survive re entry at nearly 25,000 miles per hour, hotter than lava, hotter than reentry during Apollo, its life support systems are designed for weeks in deep space, not hours in low Earth orbit. This isn't a space station Joy rod. This is the real vacuum rocket itself is a Frankenstein in the best sense, space shuttle engines reborn, solid rocket boosters, refined software written with decades of lessons baked in, many of them paid for in disasters we'd rather not repeat. Artemis two is flying on the accumulated scar tissue of human space flight, and here's the quiet truth beneath all the hype, this mission isn't about the moon. It's about proving we can still do hard things, that we can build machines that work where mistakes mean death, that we can leave Earth's gravity well, not for clicks or symbolism, but to relearn how to explore. If Artemis two succeeds, it won't just carry astronauts around the moon, it will carry us, politically, technologically, culturally, into the next era of human exploration.
Ian
welcome to the Retrospect podcast, a show where people come together from different walks of life and discuss a topic from their generation's perspective. My name is Ian, and as always, I'm joined by Stoney,
Stoney
hello
Ian
and Jason.
Jason
Hello everyone.
Ian
It has been a long time since we've had this guest on the podcast, but he's back. He's
Bill M
I'm back.
Ian
No problem. We got Mr. Bill on the on the podcast again. Do you guys remember what episode he was on? It was episode 9696 96 what episode we're on right now? 124 is today? 224, wow.
Stoney
It's been a little while. So that was that around the time I had my accident. I believe so,
Ian
because I think Miranda joined us for that one instead of Stoney. So that's exactly what it was. Okay. Well, anyway, just wanted to say that. Welcome to the show. I appreciate it. No problem.
Stoney
Hey, um, just for the record. Has anybody here or our listeners, have you ever said I'll do that when hell freezes over. Just for the record, you're scheduled to do that this week.
Jason
Yeah, yeah. I saw the news. It's supposed to, like, like, really cold and maybe some ice. I don't
Stoney
know if it's gonna get that far down to us, but it's close.
Ian
Yeah, it's gonna probably be just enough to cause everything to disrupt for, you know, maybe 12 hours. If it's below 55 it's cold. If it's enough for water to freeze, it's cold enough.
Jason
I've been watching the news. I just saw the governor had a governor had an announcement, and right everybody's talking about it. But, you know, I don't think you know. If you recall about this time last year is when we had the big I mean, I don't think anybody expected that either.
Stoney
Well, here's the problems. You know, Doge comes in and fires 200 scientists that nobody knows while they're getting paid, and all of the sudden, for the first time in recorded history, in recorded since we have been recording these things, right? No hurricane came into the Gulf of Mexico, nor hit the continental United States of America. That's amazing. For the first time ever, and we wonder if there's weather control.
Ian
I've said it before. Well, I don't believe it, but he likes to play around with it so
Stoney
well, we know we can see well, we can see clouds.
Jason
No, I would agree rain. I would agree with Stoney that I do believe that governments have been trying to manipulate weather for for some time now. I believe that's pretty much been documented, that there have been. Efforts at cloud seeding and and stuff like that. Now, what they've learned and what they've been able to manipulate, I don't know, but, you know, there's something to what he said that, you know,
Stoney
getting ready for this event coming in a couple of days, Miranda and I, we went to a grocery store to try to do some prep work for this. And there's a new grocery store in our area, and it opened up by the house. And as we were walking around, we found when in the vegetable aisle there is this automatic water mister in the vegetable aisle that sprays the water down to keep the vegetables fresh and just just before it kicks in, in the background, you hear some light, distant thunder and the smell of fresh rain. And I'm like, oh my god, baby, look at this. This is kind of crazy. They're controlling the weather. And so no, when you get a little further down and you get to the milk section, you hear cows mooing, and you smell fresh cut hay, no? And I'm like, Oh my god. Well, they're, you know, this is, this is, this is trying to get you to buy their stuff, right, right? And so when you walk by the eggs, you hear the hens clucking, and the air fills with the smell of bacon and eggs frying, okay? And you're like, holy cow, this is amazing. I will, however, never shop for toilet paper in that store again. I'm just putting that out there. I will never do that again. But the rest of the stuff was great. Love it.
Bill M
Yeah, yeah. I think you give the government a little too much credit there. Stoney, I think so.
Stoney
No, I'm just talking about a grocery store, if everything else smells like it's supposed to the toilet paper smelling like what you go, yeah, I and I'm not giving the government credit for this, but I am giving the ultra elite credit for doing these things big. And I think the government is just a tool of the ultra elite, the Black Rock State Streets and Vanguards
Bill M
talk about your hat too. Well, a hat,
Jason
yeah, your hat that I wore every statement you're making,
Stoney
my hat said, Think, while it's still legal, was the hat I wore every episode. Yeah, and now
Ian
we'll have to bleep this hat. We'll have to bleep this if you want to keep it as not as not explicit. What's it say? Well, you know, I'm not gonna
Stoney
what does it say? Go ahead, read it. 100%
Ian
bitter old. You know, efforts club member on it. So yeah, didn't you have you had a comment from somebody, Jason, about the episode?
Jason
Yeah? You know, whenever the opportunity presents itself, I try to share the podcast. Yeah, but I love reading this. But I love this little comment I got, and she mentioned after I tuned, you know, turned along to it. She she texted me back, and I'm trying to find it right now. He goes because I'm listening to your latest podcast, and the older guy is funny.
Stoney
What's her name? Samantha. Thank you, Samantha. I appreciate you recognizing and appreciating my sense of humor sometimes.
Jason
Samantha, thank you for tuning in and joining the retrospect family. We very much appreciate it.
Ian
All right, so we're talking about some fun stuff. Yeah, I
Jason
think the whole point was to try to get away from the real serious stuff, and maybe talk about some things that
Stoney
well, before we get started in this one here, is there anyone sitting at the fancy retrospect podcast table that does not believe we went to the moon in 1969
Ian
I believe we did. I believe we did. I believe we did.
Stoney
Okay, so do I? There you go. Okay, good. I'm the only one cold enough to actually remember it,
Jason
but he'd be surprised as a lesser, growing segment of people out there who do not believe we, we actually and you know what, on the surface of their argument, I can understand their their reason, because they're saying, if we can go to the moon in 1960 whatever it was, and we're in 2026 and have never been able to go back there, you know what's going on here. I mean, because you would think the technology would have advanced enough, oh yeah, make multiple trips.
Ian
We've all heard the comments about how we hold computers that are like, 20 times more powerful in our 10,000 whatever in our pockets, compared to the computers that brought us to the moon. So everyone's like, well, we should be when you say that, it's like, we should be flying in space. And it's like, well, priorities,
Jason
I just think, at that time in the country, with. With President Kennedy, I think with that was, you know, kind of really the beginnings of the Cold War. I think there was a true national race against the Soviet Union. I agree. And I think as a country, we were more homogeneous. You know, homogeneous, however you want to say it, I don't think, I don't think we have the wherewithal right now, as far as the government in NASA and doing it by itself right as it was then. So you now have actors now, they've come in that are now, they've kind of taken that mantle over. So you got people like Elon Musk now with SpaceX, and in all these, you know, some of these people that are companies, private companies, which I think is the future. I think, think it's going to be a government, private partnerships, and how we do this stuff now. Because I just, I think with so many people pulling out what they want the government to do for them, oh yeah, I just, I just don't think there's enough room at the table for everybody to kind of put that aside to say, What about going back to the moon? Yeah, where does that stand on the priority list of important things I would love to be able to break the bonds of Earth and, yeah, to expand our presence out in the cosmos. I kind of find that fascinating. I always have. And, you know, I of course, we won't be around, but, I mean, I often wonder about the future, hundreds of years in the future, if, if we don't, if we don't have our great filter that, you know, we're able to break those bonds and be able to actually have lunar colonies and regular trips to Mars and and being able to just navigate our own solar system, I think that's,
Stoney
well, that's the first step in avoiding the fourth turning. If you think about it, if we ever want to get to Mars, we're going to have to do it via the moon. If we ever want to get anywhere, we're going to have to do it via the moon. And we don't know what type of precious metals and elements and things like that that are on the moon, because the moon is not part of the earth, the moon came from somewhere else. And until we find out what's really buried in there, and the gold, the different things that are there, what can we use to benefit mankind? And we're going to have to get there and have a lot of people there to be able to start figuring those things out. I would think y'all are welcome to disagree with me, but the moon is the next door.
Bill M
I love it. But can we, can we fix the interstates first and then move to the moon? I'm cool with that. Yeah.
Ian
I think the big thing, too, like, right now is that, like, I It's like you talked, we keep talking about the great filter, the for turning stuff. I think it's like we had to probably get through that right on the other side of it, like, to get to that, we have to probably break down at least a little bit in some capacity to
Stoney
get through the to, yeah, $4.1 billion per launch is what this one is going to take. It's 4.1 point 1 billion. Yeah, that's a lot of
Jason
money, and that's what I'm saying. It's like, okay, what do you what are you getting for that $4.1 billion you know, expenditure. So, I mean, look, I am very much. People like Elon Musk that are what I call revolution. You know, you know revolutionaries, however you want to describe these people. I write, I personally think he's the modern day Nikola Tesla of our generation. People said he's, I said, No, he knows he's Nikola Tesla of our, of
Stoney
our but you also have to think about NASA has not talked about anything like this, until Elon Musk said exactly, almost the same thing that I did, that he wants to get to the moon so that he can get to Mars, right? And now, all of a sudden, NASA can't have a private person beating them to the moon and then beating them to Mars, of course. So now all of a sudden, we have to find all this money. And I say, personally, this is just me. All we have to do is shut down Minnesota and take all of that money and port it toward NASA. I would be a lot happier with it going to NASA and go instead of just going to the terrorist organizations around the world. How about we go to the moon, use the Minnesota money. I feel
Bill M
like, Did y'all discuss this? Maybe last week? It might have been,
Ian
remember that? Or the, yeah, well, I think it was two weeks ago. I think Venezuela. Yeah, yeah.
Jason
That's what I'm saying. The amount of money that it's, you know, it's we spend on a variety of different things. I mean. I think I saw the latest number of just what does fraud cost the US? I think it was over $1.2 trillion I mean, it's an enormous amount of money that, if say that, and there's always going to be that in anything, but just say, if you can minimize that and redirect that money to other things. How like
Bill M
your interstates? Yeah, I do think space exploration is very good it. I like it. The The problem is you have people on the other side who will say, Well, what does that do for us? Yeah, what does it actually do that we send people to the moon?
Stoney
Well, I actually covered that. I said, what if we're if the Earth has a finite amount of resources, gold, silver, platinum, all of these things that we need, what does the moon hold? Instead of destroying our planet, instead of digging these big holes and cutting down trees on the earth. How about we go cut some holes, and the moon is already filled with holes. How about we go to the moon and take those resources from the moon and leave our planet whole and stop cutting down trees?
Ian
Suppose I think I could be wrong, but I don't think they have a whole bunch of supposed I don't think resources on the moon. Oh, they do, I know. But like, not, like, a diverse I think I could be wrong, but I thought could have swore it was like it was a,
Jason
I know they want to, I know they want to, you know, they want to mine asteroids. And there's some talk of that, and,
Stoney
well, it's the same, it's the same thing, yeah, is what I'm talking about. What can we find there, if we could get what we need from up there and find a semi cost effective, way back and forth, right? We could leave our trees here on the planet, but
Ian
I think possibly what Bill's probably talking about is, like, the average person, I mean, or like, you know, like, what is that going to do for me?
Stoney
Well, the average person is worried about cutting trees. Well, average person is worried about digging holes on our planet. The average person is worried about, what water do you destroy in the mining process?
Ian
I think even lower than that, I think the average person is worried about, like, my utility bill, my rent, right? Yeah, how my car is going to get filled up with gas, like that kind of stuff. So I'm talking about possibly, but I think you're right there.
Bill M
You're exactly right, right?
Jason
This is interesting. Here is that this is the first time that you're going to have a mission to carry humans since 1972 was the last time they humans were kind of involved in this sort of deal. It's a 10 day mission. Yeah, he said. Now Artemis one actually successfully flew Orion around the moon without astronauts in 2022 okay, and they said this will be the first time that humans will will travel aboard that spacecraft and venture beyond low Earth orbit in more than 50 years. Wow. They said during the mission, astronauts will travel 1000s of miles beyond the moon, experience, Deep Space, radiation test, life support, navigation and communication systems in real flight conditions. I don't
Bill M
want you guys, but I get nervous driving to a new place. Yeah, yeah. Guys are flying out of the
Ian
Yeah, yeah. That's scary stuff. That's also like, I feel like a, there's a whole like branch of, like, of horror. It's like, like deep space horror stuff. And just like the like, the fear of just, obviously, people are afraid of, like the open ocean and like in deep open water. And I think the same kind of thing happens with, like, just deep out in space. And I feel like I would have that same like existential crisis to go beyond the moon and just that, like I'm in the vast emptiness of space right now. That's got to be terrifying.
Jason
Yeah, the four astronauts are Reid Wiseman, he's the commander, Victor Glover, he's pilot, Christina coach or cock Mission Specialist, and Jeremy Hansen. He's actually from the Canadian Space. So he's the Canadian owner.
Stoney
I'm like, why are we taking the Canadian diversity? All they do is take, you know, what is it? How many $200 billion a year out of our economy? Anyway? Why? We got to take one of them with us.
Bill M
Refer to your hat, please. Yeah.
Jason
Artemis, it's, they say the launch date is tentatively set for no earlier than February 5. Oh, that's quick. Okay, so it's coming up, and they're gonna launch from the Kennedy Space Center, which I got to see finally, for the first time. Yeah, I forgot about that. I did. I went to go see NASA. That was interesting to go actually drive around and watch, see all the different just how they wheel those rockets to those launch pads, which is absolutely incredible. Just the amount of concrete, oh yeah, it's at that facility, is just unbelievable.
Bill M
That's. Wild, but yeah, sustained abundance. Okay, that is Elon's term. Okay.
Ian
Is that, like his, like, catchphrase or something? Catchphrase, sustained abundance.
Bill M
Everything we do will be scalable and meant to be towards the future of humans and mankind?
Ian
Yeah. I even though he's divisive and people don't like him for a number of reasons, politically or otherwise, I have a feeling that, whether you whether anybody likes to admit it or not, I think he's gonna be, like, one of those people that's like, gonna be a changer of history in some way, man, is a visionary, yeah, yeah. Maybe not, maybe not, like, hands on stuff, but like, the fact that he can, like, get companies together, get people together, and come with ideas, crazy stuff like, those are the kind of, like, you said, visionaries, leaders, in some way, that can, like, make things happen.
Jason
Yeah, what's some of the tech powering this stuff? I mean,
Bill M
so you've got a few things. He's really big on his hardware for his essentially, his GPUs, right? So it was originally called hardware three and two and one in this Tesla's. Well, now it's been upgraded to AI five. Okay, AI five is this new chip that's coming out later this year to power most of the Tesla's. I don't know if you saw just today. I know this. This episode is coming out next week, but he is going to start with vehicles that will be unsupervised right in Austin, that was announced today with no more safety riders. Oh, so that's a new one. It's for a long time it's been going where you have some safety riders. Well, now it's nobody in the car. Yeah, that's the first step. And this is under hardware for now. You have aI five coming out that's going to power the cars. It's going to power some of the Optimus robots coming out. He's building these giant Colossus farms with 1000s of GPUs in them. And now you're going to have aI six coming out, which he claims will be nine months, but it'll probably be a couple years, then AI seven, and they're scalable. And he sees AI seven as being interdisciplinary, so he wants to see this as all over the place, maybe the moon, maybe on satellites. Oh, and it's just gonna expand. I said interdisciplinary, I meant inter planetary. Oh, okay,
Stoney
but, but I've said this before, and I'll say it again now, please refer to my hat. I'll have one word for y'all Skynet.
Bill M
Okay, oh yes, I have Skynet visions all the time on this Skynet.
Jason
Well, I mentioned it in our episode on AI data centers. I said I truly believe that right now, we are laying the groundwork for a world that we're not going to recognize in the in the next 25 years or so. We don't realize it now, because we're it's kind of at the ground level, building up, but people at that at that time, if we're still alive, we'll look back on it and go, Yes, I remember when that got started and power, that's what's going to power our economy, absolutely.
Stoney
But how many times have we talked about the CIA and the other alphabets using Hollywood to get us ready for things coming out? See, we say Skynet because of the Terminator movies. What was the original?
Bill M
I've never heard of Terminator. What is that?
Stoney
Okay, I have no original. What was the original sky net, Whopper. Yeah, back in war games. War Games, they've been telling 82 something like that. They've been telling us this for a while, that it's coming, because most people don't realize that. Ai, we did this in our AI episode. AI has been around since the mid 60s. Okay, yeah, they've found that they've only presented it to us in the last couple of years, but they've been preparing us with the movies and the television shows from Hollywood because of that little demonic, you know, work together that I believe has been happening for a very, very long time. They've been preparing us for this.
Bill M
Well, that movie with Tom Cruise, what Minority Report? That's another one. What's the one coming out Friday. I don't know Chris Pratt, the guy from, oh yeah, yeah.
Ian
Is it mercy? I think so.
Bill M
It's retail. It's based on a, I believe it's a police officer, and he comes up with this AI, you're right. It's mercy, mercy vision. And, long story short, he gets basically framed, and you have to go in front of an AI judge. Oh, wow. It looks it looks good. I want to see.
Ian
Oh, wow. It's a big, it's a big AI focused kind of movie. I think it's going to be like a interesting thriller action type.
Stoney
May have to tell a hobby doctor about that.
Bill M
When I go leave your hat at home, though, like my hat man, because it says your
Stoney
old name. I am old as
Jason
of the he is a
Ian
boomer as of the release of this episode, the movie has already come out, but for us recording it, it actually comes out tomorrow. Okay, so
Stoney
there you go. All right. But yeah. One thing, I don't know how or why, but I was curious about the space suits. Oh, yeah. Okay. And the old space suits cost between 15 and $22 million range back then, which inflated dollars would be 80 million to 100 and $50 million today. Crazy. The new space suit is only $12 million in production costs today. Wow, but it's more flexible. It's modular, right? It's, it's, it's, it's upgraded. Yeah, it's very upgraded. I was very curious about that. But, you know, that includes the support backpack, everything to keep them alive during that time, and that includes landing on the moon. Yeah, that's walking around the moon too.
Ian
I wonder how cool it looks. But does it look cool?
Stoney
Well, the other one did not. Well, I mean, it did
Bill M
protect them. Yeah, was it a picture one? I don't know. Have they released?
Stoney
I did not see a picture of it yet, so I was just curious about the the costs of it.
Ian
Look it up right now. Let's see if there's actually anything on it.
Bill M
So you said they're launching the launching the ship in South Florida. They're not doing it in Texas.
Jason
No, it's in key it's in Kennedy Space Center with a splash down as right now, planned in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego, a distance of, I think, a total distance of 620,000 miles, round trip. You use a gravity assist that naturally brings Orion back to Earth. Just kind of some basic stats on the actual vehicles itself. The height of the stack is 322 feet tall. Thrust at liftoff, 8.8 million pounds of thrust and Orion. Gross liftoff weight is 78,000 pounds. I mentioned it in my intro. Re entry velocity at 25,000 miles per hour, the parachute sequence slows from just incredible, slows from Mach 32 to splash down in over 20 minutes.
Ian
That's crazy. Geez. I will say that the new suits do look pretty cool. I think they look pretty nice. They're like a bright orange, and they have like blue, like straps across them with, like a nice white helmet with the black visor. Pretty cool, I'm not gonna lie. So it
Stoney
looks like that. These are private suits. This is a private company. NASA will be renting proprietary and it cost the company almost $2 billion to develop to get to this point.
Jason
Yeah, just R and D, yeah, you know. But we'll be the
Stoney
NASA will rent the suits and the services. Hopefully that wasn't the lowest bidder.
Bill M
I hope not. I've got a friend that works for SpaceX, and he said, You have got to make a trip to South Texas, because to see an 11 story rocket take. Oh, wow, I can only imagine. Pictures do not do it justice. The problem is there's no easy way to get there. It's like an 18 hour drive, and it's way in the middle of nowhere. Okay, you fly to Houston, you still have to drive 10 hours to the site, so no easy way to get there. So I have to bucket with bucket list that one day. But yeah, that's, uh, that's, that's impressive, because I think about how my day went and what these people are able to accomplish is very impressive.
Ian
I will never forget watching the video when it released, of the of the rocket falling back to the surface and then correcting and, like, in, in, like, auto, like, uh, adjusting itself, and then landing on a base, like SpaceX or whatever, like the big tower, how it, like, it lands back. And I was like, that, that's crazy. We all thought it was AI, yeah, yeah. Until I was like, anyways, I've watched that movie probably 100 that clip, 100 times now. Of it just like landing back and pitching and getting itself all situated, and then just like a landing back down. I was like, there are moments when I'm like, we're not quite in the future, and there's moments like that that were like, that that we're like, Ooh, man, but we're like, we're getting there.
Bill M
I came back to the nerdiest episode that you guys have ever recorded. This is great, perfect.
Ian
Well, if ever you want to come back on for another nerdy episode,
Jason
well, they're done yet. They're actually talking about doing the actual landing on the moon in 2027 according to Elon timetable. But, as usual, NASA is course saying, No, well, that's not probably going to happen because there's delays. You know, typical, you have the visionary saying, Yes, we're doing and then you have a government. Agency say, well, he's getting secured all the permits, and you know, though, they're gonna find a way.
Bill M
As much as I love Elon and what he's doing, his timetables are pretty bad, right?
Stoney
Well, He's ambitious, so if you don't have those time timetables, it's gonna take even longer I have to set the bar, and then to try to achieve that bar, I
Ian
worked with a man who was, I would say, a visionary like that, who was a big person. He was, it was a big ideas guy. He came up with some really big concepts and some stuff. He's a macro guy. He knew, and he knew how to get people around a table and get people hyped about something. And said, great, you do this, you do this, and you do this. And before I can even say no or start to question things, I'm knee deep in a project, and I'm like, Man, how did I get involved in all this? But I'm having a great time doing it, and I feel like we're doing a lot of good work and that kind of stuff, right? And I would imagine that probably working alongside and again. But I say this because he also had that kind of problem where he's like, I want this in a few months. And I'm the guy who has to be like, Okay, boss, that's a bit quick, but we can, I can try to make it work if we do such and such, and then, in any ways, what I'm trying to say is, I feel like if I was to work around Elon enough, it'd be the same process of like, you know, there are some there are some real there are some realists at the table that have to say, Hey, boss, I'm sorry, but like you, want us to do it by next year, and it's going to be a bit difficult to
Stoney
make that but you have to think about too. Like our leadership episode, you described him as somebody that you could follow. Yeah, you enjoyed following. You enjoyed working for us. So what he did was, was he gave you his vision. You bought into it, and then he allows you to help dictate how we're going to get there, yeah. And so he has better faith in that. And I have Elon is kind of probably the same way, yeah, even though they say he is kind of eccentric, yeah, but he's he can still be a good leader. Set a goal, and then let's everybody work together on how we're going to get there, right? And you sound you, you described him to a T and that, that you bought into it, yeah. How can we get there? And don't set that bar. There's no, there's no reason to get there.
Jason
Bill, when you telling me about how Elon published his the code for x, or tell me, but what I'm trying to remember, what did you tell me.
Bill M
So the man is such a visionary. Most people that keep all their proprietary secrets close and tight knit. Well, the X algorithm was kind of struggling and having some issues. So he said, You know what, I'm going to publish the whole thing. So he published the entire algorithm for X on GitHub at midnight the other night, really. And it was everything. So I took the algorithm and threw it in some AI and yeah, tell me how I can make my x account better. Tell me how I can have more followers. And it spits out a variation through the LLM, the large learning model. This is exactly what you need to do to grow your following. So I haven't done it yet, but that's that's where we're going.
Stoney
That's not the first time he's done that. I'm sure he's done he came out with the Tesla car. Everything in Tesla was open to the public. He said other car companies can use this technology. And he let it all out. I keep saying he, he let, he said, anybody that wants to use this is free to do so he
Jason
is, he is Nikola Tesla. Yes, he just Nikola. That's what I'm saying. People need to read up on Nikola. He, he wanted to provide free electricity, yes, for the world. He just didn't have the means and the, you know, the ability.
Stoney
You imagine, if he was alive today, what he could do,
Bill M
oh my gosh, we'd have the best interstates ever. I'd be legit. We'd have wireless power.
Jason
I mean, they his IQ was, was, I don't know if anybody's ever
Stoney
talked with what with technology we have today? Can you imagine him being born 20 years ago and waking up today becoming Nikola Tesla, with his mentality, he would probably be working side by side with Elon Musk, making this whole world better.
Bill M
So we're talking about Artemis two. Yes, yes. Artemis one was 2022 two. What about Artemis three? Is there an Artemis three?
Ian
I know that. I just saw that there's some suits made for it, apparently, yeah, or in development,
Jason
that is Artemis three to go to 27 Oh, okay, that's the plan is, is to land on the moon next.
Ian
So two is just to bring them around.
Jason
In essence, it's a test. So let's go ahead, we're going to put p, actually people in this, this capsule. Yes, we're going to send them around the moon, see how they are, how they they live in that environment, that far from Earth.
Stoney
It's funny, you said it's a test. They actually came out and said, This is not. A victory lap. This is only a test flight. Yeah, this is not
Jason
a victory lap. Ultimately, the goal is with is to be able to do okay. We can get people, they can live comfortably in that environment, the systems work and okay, if we can now put them on the moon. Because the ultimate goal is to start then bringing material to the moon and to start building things there. That's the ultimate goal. Because I'm telling you, that's, that's, that's, that's game breaker if you can start actually constructing. We've talked about this in on our great filter episode regarding the ability to build megalithic structures, you know, these gigantic things that requires literally global effort to really build, because you got to use a ton of resources to accomplish these things. That's why I think ultimately there's going to have to be some coming together in some way for us to break out of the tribalistic way we kind of run our lives. And I think until something happens where we as a species, as human beings, or we kind of have the veil pulled out from our eyes that, you know, like an alien species or something, to say you're not alone, yeah, and we're a lot smarter than you are, and we've mastered interstellar travel, and y'all are still throwing sticks at one another. I mean, I mean, that's, in essence, what, what's going on here. So, and we, we have to somehow get beyond that. And I think it's going to be like people like Elon and whoever else is out there. There probably be some other Elon's out there that that just, you know, they're maybe just as smart as he is. Yeah, you know that, just for whatever reason, have not kept stepped up. But you know what I think his his vision is, is to be able to build structures on the moon. This is going to require, oh, I think within a country doing this. It's going, Yeah, you need the globe doing this
Ian
kind of stuff. Elon's end game is to reside on Mars?
Jason
Yeah, I think he did. I thought that too, which tells me, I don't know if he feels like Earth is a there's a pliable,
Stoney
so smart, what if he's really an alien? Oh, what? That's been put out,
Bill M
right? Yeah, I know if there's
Ian
a, there's a clip online that like that. Someone talks about this where he's like, if you look at all the companies that Elon has, once you start, like, putting it all down, once you start, like, looking at it all together, you're like, oh, it makes sense. Because if we're going to be living on Mars, he has a he has a boring company where he, like, is digging holes and things. He's like, we probably can't live on the surface of Mars, but what if we could live underground? And he's like, obviously, you know, we can't set up that infrastructure up there by ourselves with no atmosphere. So he has robots now that he can build infrastructure and all that kind of stuff and can survive with no gravity. We have cars that can be driven without fossil fuels, because if we are to drive around up there, we're going to probably not have to burn fossil fuel anyway, just all that kind of stuff. When you start looking at it, you're like, Oh, I think he had joked around about his whole goal is to go live on Mars, but
Bill M
Well, now he's gonna go buy Ryanair too. There you go. Have y'all heard that one? So Ryanair is an airline, yeah? And he got into a little spat on X with the CEO, and he basically said, Well, I'm just gonna buy you. And now there's, it's trending on some of these sites that he's gonna buy Ryanair. So now you got space travel, you got air travel, you've got the boring company, you've got cars, you've got robots, you've got Starlink. You've got, yeah, oh, Starlink. That's yeah. Another battery packs. You've got solar roofs, yep.
Stoney
Well, this whole Artemis thing, they're not using radio waves even for communication anymore. Really, it's a whole new communication system, and it's laser based. Oh, that's fun. Remember, how long did they say it would take communication to go to the moon, back and forth to the moon, whatever speed of light is, I'm assuming, yeah, but it would take, but now it's supposedly faster and more secure, and it's a better communication system. I didn't read that article, but that looked really interesting. Better be HIPAA and C just compliant.
Jason
Well, it says Artemis two was originally, and I know this originally designated export Exploration Mission two, or em two, and was initially intended to support the now canceled Asteroid Redirect Mission. Its objectives were revised following the establishment of the Artemis program.
Stoney
So when they're when they're looking at going to the moon and going to Mars, what's the first thing to look for? Know, I don't know what you mean. Aside from aliens, what's the first thing they really look for when they're heading to the moon, when they're thinking about going to the moon, and when they're thinking about going to Mars, what's the first thing they look for on that planet? Resources? Water. Okay, why? Why is water the first thing they look for life? Because they know, number one, you got to breathe it. Got to drink it. But you also need the hydrogen and the oxygen for rocket fuel. So we're not going to be able to bring rocket fuel in any sources from earth to we're gonna have to make it. We're gonna have to make the rocket fuel right using the ice sources at the South Pole. But then when you look at it, you have to think of, they're going to have to, they're going to have to still transport that because the sunlight, because that's where you're going to want your energy with solar panels. Hello, Elon Musk and all his solar stuff is going to have to be on the North Pole. So you're going to have to travel the ice from the South Pole to the North Pole for all the production facilities, so you can turn it into oxygen, drinking water and fuel, because that's going to take you to Mars.
Bill M
You know, shout out to this crew. That's, yeah, just, it's, it's, it's amazing to me that you've got these four or five people involved just to go, but you've also got, we couldn't get a submersible at the bottom of the ocean and exploded. Yeah, now you've got these people that completely foreign territory. I'm going to go out there, and I'd be worried about how I'm going to get home. That's the first thing I'm going to be worried about when I go. But I'm just fascinating that they must not have that, that genetic part of their brain that has fear?
Ian
Maybe, I don't know and that, or unless you have so much faith in the people that are building the ship to get there, you know what I mean? I feel like trust your people
Stoney
with today's technology. Think about in 1969
Ian
right? That's, that's different story.
Jason
Awesome saying. I mean, those were fly boys back then, look, this is the spirit that, yeah, you know, that inspired those, you know, earliest people that sailed, got on ships, and the true explorer, true explorers that they didn't know what was beyond. They thought the Earth was flat, they will fall off the edge of the earth when they were in their ships. I mean, so they didn't know what to expect. But maybe all this will
Bill M
stimulate some growth, meaning, when, when Top Gun came out, who was a surge of pilots, when Apollo 13 came out, there's a surge of people. Maybe you have the military movies. Maybe all this space exploration will encourage.
Stoney
I read an article, there's a game called Fallout 76 and they say every time a new season or episode comes out on the TV, they get more players on the game. Maybe, yeah, aren't you a
Jason
fallout guy? Oh yeah, I love it. Love it.
Ian
You're right. And I think that that could be a big thing that could, I mean, I don't know you're right. I think it could
Stoney
inspire the youth, because it seems like nothing's truly inspiring them. And I'm hoping, because I remember what it was like back in 1969 the pride, the energy that was going on in America, in the space race to beat Russia, to do that, to put those people there, that was a huge energy source, just an American pride and you walked around with your chest boat out. And I just hope that some of that can come back to America. Just Ian, and I missed that
Jason
I was born. I was born in 69 I mean, I don't, I mean, that's what I'm saying. I I go back to, you know, we talk about the, you know, the the you know, the ills of our world today and what's going on. We see it on the news every day, and just the unrest and unhappiness and this and that and everything else, as I'm saying, the United States was a different country at that time. Oh yeah, it just was. We're not the same country that those people that made up that energy I had got accomplished that. I'm not saying we can't do it, yeah, but it's gonna require something to for people to kind of stop and put aside all the pettiness. Yeah, and think big. And I just right now. I don't, I don't see it in us right now to do that. We're right now. We're just kind of playing around with the margins. We're not really moving the needle, so to speak. And, you know, maybe I this, might do it this, who knows?
Ian
I made the I made the joke, I think, on the show, or, if not, I'll say it again. I had gone to Disney World a couple years ago, and I remember I. Going to tomorrow land. And it's like this kind of, I think now the like, the vibe of, it's called retro future. So it's like the future that, like the, like, 50s and 60s kind of thought was going to be the future. Almost like jets Yeah, Jetsons, yeah, yeah, that kind of stuff. And, like, you walk around and there's like, exhibits and all these things about, like, Walt Disney and these ideas that he had, or these, like, what, you know, his ideas or visions for what Epcot was gonna be is gonna be like a city, and anyway, just all these different things. And like, the more and more I walked around, the more I am, more I realized, like, there was this like optimism for the future, this like hope for what could be. This, like, constantly, like looking forward, of like, look at how much we've already done, and look at, like, all the cool things that we're going to do in the future, hopefully. And it was just this constant, like, looking forward and like, what the future is going to be like and how cool it is. And I started realizing I was like, No one. No one talks like that. No one. Nobody talks. No one has ideas for, like, the future. It's like we it feels like, the more and more I was walking around and looking at all those exhibits, I was realizing I was like, we're we're in the future that they're talking about, and we're not sitting here being optimistic or hopeful about what the next fit, 1015, 20 years
Stoney
looks like. What year did the Jetsons live in?
Ian
I don't know. 20 something out 2020,
Stoney
6220 62 okay,
Bill M
that's crazy. A long way to go. Yeah, not that far, though there's a great, big,
Ian
beautiful tomorrow, yeah, oh, I love that. I love that. That was my favorite, was looking at the whole material of progress. Yeah, we're sitting.
Bill M
Yeah, their vision was in the 50s, right? And we're not where we thought we would be.
Ian
And not only that, but we're not, we're not talking, we're again. We're not optimistic. I don't hear anybody talking optimistically about what the next 20 years holds next the 40 years holds.
Bill M
No, you're right. It does seem like more issues are social based than they are science based. And, yeah, and having hope for the future. It seems more right, here, now, today,
Ian
yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, I thought was interesting. Like, we're the fact
Jason
that a super computer predicted in 1973 that the seeds of our unraveling would be witnessed in the in the in the 2020s and I'm beginning to kind of wonder, and maybe there's some truth to that. Maybe it's just picking up on something and something by the 2040s so I don't know, I said we are you got, you got Musk out there that's trying. I don't really see anything beyond him,
Stoney
virtually, kind of doing,
Jason
Richard, is that Sir Richard
Stoney
Branson still kind of into this, too. He's Richard Branson has, he's done some space flight virgin, yeah, as far as Elon Musk is, I
Jason
don't think he's got the money. No, that Elon Musk
Stoney
capital, Oh, yeah. But back then they were pretty close,
Jason
yeah, as I'm saying, I you know maybe, maybe it's going to take that one mission that's going to just capture the imagination of the youth and go, you know, wow, you know, maybe I'm hoping imagine. I think
Stoney
that's what drives the lip tards more crazy than anything is they're the ones who made Elon Musk rich. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Imagine themselves.
Ian
Now, imagine those four people launching out and getting as far away from Earth as we have been in the past, you know, 50 or whatever, years or something, coming back down and landing and being like and it'd be a successful mission like those people are going to, I think, be pretty important to talk to about their experience. And again, the because I feel like the same thing happens with Buzz, Aldrin and and all the people that came back from that, you know, some of them still being around and talking about that. And it's just a, I
Bill M
don't know, those men were heroes. Oh yeah, and they were looked at very highly by people. Yes, we don't have a lot of heroes now. Are celebrities?
Stoney
Yes, I was gonna say exactly the same thing, who, back in my day, influencers who we revered and who were important were police officers, astronauts, true politicians, true leaders of the government, instead of, you know what we have now, but now it's influencers. Now it's some guy you know, shooting a basketball or whatever. It's not the same thing. People aren't the same
Ian
well, because they don't, people don't goals. Yeah, people's goals now are about money and fame. And, you know, it's not, I don't think, I mean, I'm not saying this is everybody. I'm not blanking it, you know. But a lot of, I think there was a point in time where intelligence and certain fields was looked at it very highly. And, you know,
Jason
and well, if you, if you go back during Kennedy, and when they, when the Russians put that, that that module up in space, around the around the Earth, unfortunately, put that poor dog in there. I was reading the story of that, that dog that was, that was put in, that in that deal, it just upsets me. Of no end, no one that dog burned. Turned up on the way in, was probably alive when it happened. Matter of fact, they have a statue of that dog in Russia, of if what he contributed to, which then subsequently led to a man. But I remember when the when Kennedy and the Americans saw this, they're like, Wow, they're a lot further along than where we need to be. And there was a national cry, that's what I'm saying. It was a it was a rallying cry. There was some common enemy that we had, which, in today's world, we don't have that anymore. We are the superpower. I mean, the America is the superpower. I mean, you could talk about Russia and China. We are the superpower in the
Stoney
last episode. It's what we were talking about earlier. Somebody with vision, somebody had to pull people together, and they had to put a deadline on it. Oh, yeah. And that's what JFK did. He came out and he said some crazy stuff. And remember, this is the whole time that the Bay of Pigs was happening. This was the whole all of this craziness was going on. And he gave America, and really the world, a deadline to reach the moon. He said, We will be there by this time. And he even let Russia know. He let everybody know we're going to do it. Russia could have stepped up, but they didn't.
Jason
There was a push nationwide, with schools pushing math and sciences and stuff like that. So people to go into the STEM fields. And you know,
Stoney
back then, we had an education. It took Richard Nixon coming in and bringing in the Rockefeller blueprint to destroy the American school system and make us stupid.
Jason
I'm a firm believer. Even before Richard Nixon, the more and more I look at our what we're seeing now, something happened after the Kennedy was assassinated. Oh, yeah, some other force took over the United States government at that point in time, and I don't think it's ever let go. And that's why you saw the huge pushback when Trump first got elected. I truly believe that a world order was set up with Lyndon Johnson when he came in with, you know, with the Vietnam War, and then subsequently, we've been doing this stuff now, since then, and I think we've kind of lost the awe, the mystery, the culture has become more narcissistic. It's become more self absorbed. We don't really have visionaries anymore, and
Ian
when we do, they're so, like, politically ostracized.
Bill M
Yeah, it's their vision is a million followers,
Jason
you know? I mean, it's, it's the Tick Tock stuff and the, you know, this and that and everything else, and I you know, not the bash and that, in and of itself, that's not bad. It's just, it's just our, our energies at one time, were directed towards something greater than ourselves. I think there was more of a outward push versus now. It's about making the instant
Stoney
gratification thing. Right now we watch a 22nd video, we watch another 22nd video. We couldn't look 10 years into the future and go, let's get to the moon. Nobody thinks like that today. Back then, we thought about that. We weren't on these 22nd videos. We weren't on the YouTube shorts and all of this other stupid stuff. We were outside. Yeah, we were outside. We were do. We went. So, you know, I have an episode in mind, and I'm working on when's the last time you seen a kid with a broken arm?
Jason
You just don't see it anymore. That was
Stoney
a badge of honor for us. When you went to school with an arm or a leg and a cast, even a pretty girl wanted to sign your cast. Yeah, but ugly, but the pretty girl wanted to sign that cast. You were a hero, yeah. And now you don't see that anymore, because we don't have the vision to go somewhere.
Bill M
No, but that's a great point, and I'll tell you why. I was at my kid's school, I don't know, maybe a couple years ago, and they each had to put what they wanted to be when they grew up. I've heard about things like this, and I'm looking at all of them, and I'm seeing influencer, YouTuber, you know tick tock star. You don't see police officer, teacher, astronaut, pilot, you don't scientist, engineer.
Stoney
When I met my stepson five years ago, I asked him, What do you want to be? I want to be a tick tock star. That was his whole thing, nothing. I don't want to work. I don't want to do anything. I want to do anything. I want to make a tick. I want to be a tick tock star. And I'm like, really,
Ian
because they because they see well, because I think not only is it what I think a lot of the young people, that's what they're presented on a daily basis, but it's also like, it's what the life that a lot of people, a lot of those people live, is one of success. Yes. So it's like, if you want, if you're like, going to school, and they're like, how you want to be successful? How do you be successful? Well, the one thing I know is influencers. And these influencers look like they're pretty successful to me, but look at they look like I know.
Stoney
And these kids today, that's all they know. Refer back to the hat. Refer to the hat. These kids today are so stupid that they can't see how fake it is. They can't see that the majority of it isn't true. These people aren't living like that, that what's real and really changing somebody else's life is real. These influencers don't change anybody life. They're just doing the best they can to pretend like they're somebody, right? Why don't we go back to the day where you do something to change somebody.
Ian
What I think is going on is that I don't think the young people of today, I think know all that. They're not, I think mature or wise enough to know that, and I don't have people in their life to look at them and say,
Bill M
That's fake. No, they don't have that challenge like your generation had challenges to face. This generation doesn't have that and they don't see the need for the vision to go to space, right
Stoney
or the vision for anything. You know, how many we're looking at right now. We're looking at how many of the trade fields aren't going to be filled in the next 10 years?
Bill M
Well, we'll have Optimus for that. Oh,
Jason
Skynet, well, you know, I've said that the next, you know, and I know bright Elon has talked about with AI, the advancements in AI, but I'm telling the big jump will occur when they master quantum computing. Yes, that's when, when you can prepare AI with quantum computing. Now you've you've changed the paradigm. You have complete You've now made AI. That's when AI will be Skynet. That's when it will become Skynet. Yeah, I think that, you know, it's so funny how a lot of these episodes are intertwined with other episodes we've done, if you remember, in our episodes with MK Ultra, they've been mapping the human brain for decades in secret governmental experiments. All this has come out in documents, congressional hearings. I'm telling you, the goal is to import map the human brain into AI, to get AI to think like a human cortex. I'm telling you that it's all I can see it right now. I can see the how all this is converging together. It's coming, and now we can turn that and use it for good, which I think would be great for deep space exploration. When you're talking about sending things to Mars, the first thing they're going to probably do when we get to that point where we can even launch stuff from the moon to Mars. It's going to be a price ship that's going to be powered by the very advanced AI at that time. Hopefully you'll have some sort of quantum computing angle to
Stoney
it. One Space Odyssey, yeah. I mean,
Jason
so I killed everybody. Oh, yeah, well, I mean,
Stoney
they've been preparing us a long time
Ian
or but again, I think a lot of times, I mean, I think sci fi likes to push the boundaries of what's possible, and I think that gives a lot of people inspiration of what we could do. I that's at least what I think,
Jason
like Star Trek and all these that's, that's what kind of the premise was.
Stoney
I think what we need to do is we need to get the writers for South Park on the show and find out what their predictions for the next 10 to 15 years are with Artemis and Simpsons too. Yeah, Simpsons, that's what I'm what did I say? You said? You said, South Park, sorry, sorry, my bad. Begin the brain cells, brain,
Bill M
so I got you covered,
Ian
but I do, I do wonder how many you just like the hat. How many safe love that? How many fail safes they have in place. This is, obviously, I don't know what I'm saying is, for you keep talking about AI and how it's gonna take over, how we keep talking about Skynet. But what I'm saying is, I mean, you're talking about national here, and we're talking about fail safes, we're talking about AI, we're talking about this stuff. And it's like, I wonder you know, obviously I feel like if we have much of sci fi stuff that has told us about Skynet and about Hal and all those things, I do believe there could be a there has been problems in the past where AI has gotten in control of weapons and has killed people in our modern history. That has happened in the past couple years, or whatever, and things that has happened, and I wonder what kind of fail safes we can come we can put into place to help stop that or mitigate those kind of things, because obviously,
Stoney
well, but can't. Can it? Because there was inventory in Japan where the robots killed some scientists and they pulled the plug. They pulled the. Electricity from the laboratory, and the AI and the robots were trying to restore the power. And what I'm saying is they were smart enough to figure that out and go forward and try to restore the power, right?
Ian
But I still think that couple years ago, right? I still think that we're the I could be wrong, and this may be too optimistic of me, and maybe this is where I'm the visionary. I don't know. I still think we're the creators of those things, and we can put them out. So I feel like, if that, if we start to notice these patterns, we need to start coming up with things, safe words, code words, what do you call it? Whenever you like a sleeper agent, you have to, there's got to be a something. You got to do something button, you got to push. There's got man jury in Canada. We have to figure out. We have to figure out something like, because, again, in case we're in deep space, and it's like, oh, yeah, these humans are not optimized properly.
Bill M
That was x ai did that. They actually had a position where it was your job was when the code word was said, you don't plug everything, turn it off, kill it, everything.
Stoney
I'm smart enough to try to turn itself back on.
Ian
Well, that's, I'm saying, There's got to be a way in which, regardless, they're the AI, cannot have access over this situation portion or or has to believe in its and it's in its hallucinogenic fake mind that this did, this button doesn't exist, or whatever,
Jason
I think, where the idea, I think this is where we've talked about 5g towers. I think they're fixing to go to 6g towers, you know, Bill, you may know something about what's, what's kind of on the horizon with, with that stuff.
Bill M
You know, you're 18 team Verizon or T Mobile, you start to partner with Starlink, which is what T Mobile did. Interesting. Yes, the future is going to be satellites, and you're on life support now if you're on standard cell phone, because satellite is going to be the future, and that, that opens up a whole nother world of problems. And, yeah,
Jason
yeah, I just, I think that's where machines will just wirelessly draw power. I think that's kind of how you're gonna, you're gonna see how that evolves over time.
Bill M
Right now, we're in control, right? The humans are in control? Yeah, we think we're in we think we're in control. Eventually there's going to be a teeter point where now we're not as in control as we thought we were, and that's when that that's going to be a problem. I just we might be there. I don't know.
Ian
Maybe I don't know. And that's, that's all I'm saying, is I feel like that's our fourth turning Yeah, I just feel like there's got to be, I hope that I'm not the only person in this world of AI surrounding me that is talking about the way to stop it all in case of an emergency, I hope that there is somebody smarter than I am, and hopefully more financially stable than I am, that is working on this process, because that's the one thing I would like to figure out, you
Stoney
know, you know what? It's funny. You said that. You know what? Really bothers me. Something Jason said the other day on one of our episodes, and we talked about it, that America is working on their version of AI, China's working on their version of AI, Russia is working on theirs. Everybody's working on it. And just like everything else, America comes in and they put all these restrictions on emission controls. China doesn't No Okay, so what happens if China's AI decides to take over our AI because they we put in our stops, we put in our stop measures. We do all the things we need to do to protect ourselves. But then China's comes in, takes over. Starlink takes over. This takes over that because they don't have the same things.
Jason
I don't know. I think, behind closed doors, I have full faith that, trust me, that the United States government, if they know exactly what China has, oh, yeah, and what their capabilities are. I think we kind of touched on that in our episode on the Venezuela, about the technology our military used to go in there. There's some pretty crazy stuff that was utilized, and a lot of that tech that they were using to supposedly combat that was Chinese anti stealth and stuff like that. So we overcame that pretty easy. Oh yeah. So I'm a firm believer that DARPA is doing work. Oh yeah. I truly believe that they're probably 25 to 30 years ahead of what's out of what they have of it. You know, if made available.
Bill M
That was that flex that Stoney talked about?
Jason
Yeah, I truly believe that. I think it's I think our challenge as country is going to kind of re establishing a common understanding of ourselves. I think that's what we've lost. We were kind of gotten kind of off track. And I think we do have, sometimes have elected leaders in office who are more worried about their own selves and are not providing the leadership that the people that elected them will want them. To do. And I think that's why you have this apathy, why you have huge amounts of people who don't even bother to vote. They don't care, because they don't feel like what I do nothing fundamentally is going to be any different. It's still just going to run the way it's run.
Stoney
See in right there in your statement, lies the problem. They're not our leaders. They've never been our leaders under a constitutional republic. They are our representatives. And even our founding fathers knew the day that they could vote themselves a raise. That's why the early ones didn't even get paid, that they would become corrupt. They're not our leaders. They have told themselves and convinced them in their delusional self, like Ian said, that they are our leaders. They're not our leaders. They are our servants. They are our people that are supposed to be representing us in our best interest. And that's gone
Jason
well, that's amazing. So there's some sense there. They're not, they're not exactly that's what I'm saying. So the the the will of the people are is not really being conveyed and accomplishing what needs to be accomplished. So regardless, I just think it kind of goes back to a a deeper issue that we have as as people, whereas the people back in, you know, in President Kennedy's era, when, you know, I need for y'all the country to rally around that we're going to beat the Russians, we're going to put a band on the moon. And there was a collective rallying cry behind that. Everybody got behind that idea. The problem is, is we don't really have that anymore. Because, I hate to say it was just, we've just, you know, the country's just different now because
Stoney
people aren't proud of America anymore. Back then you got that because we were proud to be
Jason
exactly, yeah, you got people. You got, I hate to say it, you got kids now in school that just they say they hate the country, or whatever the case may be. I mean, it's just crazy.
Stoney
Think about this, America is still the greatest country in the world, because even the people that hate it won't leave.
Jason
Oh, there's no doubt about it. And, yeah, I agree with that. Okay, if all of
Stoney
these people in the world thought that America was such a bad country, why do they get on these little floats and half boats and half whatever, and risk death to make it to American shores?
Ian
Well, but it's the same thing that we've talked about, I think, numerous times on this podcast, is that I think people are comfortable, and they have their things that they are, you know, they've been around this for their entire lives. Whereas people like that, like you talked about, have been in a different country with a different regime underneath, you know, above them. And it's the same thing that happened whenever we talked about last week on the episode, you know, we have, we came in and took Venezuelans, Venezuela's president, and all the Venezuela president, regardless, doesn't matter. That's what they that's what all the publicists will will call it doesn't matter their leader, whoever their dictator. We came in, stole them, and then the whole country has been praising us. Everyone who is here in America that is a Venezuela or has, you know, is a second generation Venezuelan, is like, hurrah, let's go. And all the everyone else who has been comfortable around here is like, I can't believe we would do this on the would do something like that. It's just the same thing, and it's and that, I think, is, is the world we live in now. That's very sad. And then as a sad reality of it is that I think people are very comfortable with the freedoms that they have and the freedoms that they were. You know,
Jason
I'm hoping that the younger generation, such as your yourself, Ian, your your age group, even the people younger than you, can pull us out of the mess that unfortunately has been laid down by by, you know, Boomers and Gen X, because not boomers.
Stoney
Gen X started this. Boomers left y'all with some great stuff. Y'all the ones who
Jason
messed up, because, because Jenna, I would I get that, understand that. But I think the seeds of that started with boomers, and unfortunately, because in the boomers are vastly different than the parents that came before them, yes, and their grandparents. If you want to go back to the silent generation, I mean, so, I mean, it's just what
Stoney
it is. I Well, we left y'all with respect. We left y'all with a whole lot of stuff that y'all decided to change.
Ian
Maybe you did, but I don't think every one of your generation did.
Jason
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I just think it's they were issues that that came down from that. And I'm not saying that just didn't happen
Ian
in a vac and it's the same thing with my generation. There's a lot of people in my generation that I do I might agree with
Jason
my hope is that Elon Musk inspires these, this young to aspire something greater than these, these
Ian
four astronauts that are about to that are going.
Bill M
God willing, are going to fly out of Earth and around the moon and come back down and land safely, and are going to tell of their experiences. And I hope that people like that can also be Ian, look, don't, don't screw this up. Okay, I'm gonna try not to, man. I just look, I just pulled an article Artemis two scene, okay, on the ISS space station. Okay, so it looks like the it's getting ready, the ship is on the pad. This was posted 10 hours ago. Really, astronaut from the International Space Station took the photo and sent it, and it looks like it's on it's on schedule to
Stoney
postpone for a couple days because one of them was sick or something. This is
Bill M
saying it could launch as soon as February the sixth. Yes, all that.
Ian
Yeah, which as of the time of this recording is, give or take two weeks, which is crazy to think about, that we could be Yeah.
Jason
They say that the reentry at 25,000 miles per hour is the fastest reentry ever attempted reentry coming back. Or they said the spacecraft will perform a skip re entry, briefly dipping into the upper atmosphere to use its lift to bounce back outward, dissipating energy and enabling a more precise landing.
Bill M
Wow, that's exactly what I thought was gonna happen. Yeah, that's what
Ian
I was gonna say too. That's what I was gonna suggest too.
Jason
They said the US Navy will recover the crew and spacecraft using a San Antonio class amphibious transport dock. Wow. They said, Okay, so the ocean, yeah, it's gonna land in the Pacific and hang they're gonna pull it out and wow and reuse it. So here's
Ian
hoping this is, this is exciting, and yes, even though we talked about some pretty heavy stuff here at the end, I think that I'm excited to see where this takes place. And like I had said before, I hope that they all have a have a very, very, not only just a safe trip, but I hope they're able to get a lot of information out of it. I hope they're able to learn a lot, and hopefully make make everything better for not only just NASA, but SpaceX as well. I hope that this is a
Jason
very fruitful trip. Yeah, I think it's gonna test those things they want to test with the hopes of another trip and another two, three years, and hopefully it's you'll we'll be seeing on TV. I would love to actually see it in my lifetime, to actually see the news of a ship landing on the moon and somebody walking out of it and walking on on the moon. I just think that would be yes, an absolute, just an awe inspiring to say, and I did it,
Ian
and I can't wait to hear all the people that say it's all fake, all over.
Jason
Oh, yeah, there will be some. They'll say, Yes, of
Stoney
course, there will be aI generated. Oh,
Bill M
definitely. There'll be naysayers, no matter what, no matter what you do. I just hope they put another land on i 12.
Jason
It would be nice, wouldn't Well,
Ian
before we wrap this up, is there anything that you want people to go towards or to read or to see from you, Mr. Bill, or is there just or any last words you want to say?
Bill M
No, I don't. I just really hope that as we talked about all this new AI, things are used for the good of the people and not for the bad. Unfortunately, that's not the reality. The reality is, there's going to be people that use it for the good and use it for the bad. But thank you very much for having me. This was probably the best coffee I've ever had. It's top, top five, bro.
Ian
Okay, okay. Well, I appreciate you.
Jason
Are you using those beans?
Ian
I am good. We have some very nice beans that that obviously, Jason,
Jason
that's what I drink at home. Yeah, that, that, that would you have? That, those coffee beans? I'll order. Yeah, it's a low acid coffee.
Ian
It's great. They're very good beans,
Stoney
and I, I'll never know what it tastes like.
Bill M
Oh, no, I'm sorry, man,
Stoney
luckily, I got to try the Poopoo coffee. Yeah, before my accident, I
Jason
am going to get some of the elephant poop coffee. Sounds
Bill M
great, yeah. I don't know anything about it,
Ian
and I'm scared of it, but if he buys it, I will make it for him. That's what I promised.
Bill M
There you go. I'll come back on when they when they take off with the shit, yes, yeah,
Ian
that would be fun. I would I'm excited. And also I want to keep in touch, as far as you know, like how I just, I hope everything goes safely and they come back around, because I want to have a good conversation about them landing back safely and some or if there is any, any problems, very minor, there you go. Anyways. As you all know who have listened to this podcast for any length of time, you know how to give us your comments. We have comment sections on Spotify and on YouTube. Be sure to subscribe on any platform you listen to us on it's greatly appreciated, or give us a like however, or five stars. You know, every platform has their own way of doing it. Be sure to let us know that you love the show. We also have people who want to give us more long form responses. We have an email address. Get a few. It together@gmail.com or you could give us those more lengthy responses that comment sections don't really allow for. And until next week, thank you so much for listening. Bye, bye,
Jason
goodbye everyone and God bless, see ya.
Stoney
Boomers remembered when we aimed for the moon and meant it. Gen X remembers watching budget cuts cut big dreams. Millennials inherited a world that says Everything must be cheap, fast and on demand. Artemis two doesn't fit neatly into any of that. Multi million dollar space suits sound insane until you realize it's cheaper than losing the ability to go beyond Earth at all. This mission isn't nostalgia, it's a question mark. Hang in orbit. Are we still the kind of civilization that builds things meant to outlast us, or are we just renting the future month to month? We love to argue about price tags. We always have. We did it with the interstate highways, with Apollo, with the internet and now with Artemis. But here's the truth, the space suit isn't expensive because NASA forgot how to shop. It's expensive because it has kept a human alive where the universe is actively trying to kill them. The moon isn't a destination. It's a test, a test of engineering, patience, leadership and whether America still believes long term thinking matters. Artemis two isn't about planting a flag. It's about proving we can still finish something hard, because nations that stop building for the future don't collapse overnight. They just quietly hand it to someone else. Thank you for hanging out with us today. You're the best. Peace. You