Episode 1613: Talking Space Retrospective, Part 1

0:03 No, Mark is just like our calm, steady podcast dad. The voice of reason. What was that show? Do you remember? What is the name? Mr. Feeney? He's like our Mr. Feeney from like Boy Meets World. We still have some holdings on their own walk. We still have some holdings on their own walk. We still have some good dentists here. We still have one more film for man. On to die a plane for man. Music.

0:47 We'll be right back. Good evening, everyone. My name is Larry Herron, and this is Talking Space. It's Sunday, September 24th, 2023. And right up front, I wanted to let our listeners know that tonight is a special night for us here at Talking Space. Tonight, we're going to talk about ourselves. And by ourselves, I mean Gene Mikulka. How are you doing, Gene? Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to you. Mark Ratterman was also joining us. Mark?

1:29 How you doing? Hey, everybody. And also, Sawyer Rosenstein, good evening, Sawyer. Good evening. Happy birthday, Gene, and happy birthday, Talking Space, this past 9-9, 23, 14 years old and counting. Indeed. Indeed. And last but certainly not least, Dr. Kat Robison. How are you doing, Kat? Good to hear your voice again. Yeah, happy to be here. Hello, everyone from the future. Yes. We are happy to have you, Kat. Yeah, we probably won't be airing this episode for a little while, so you won't hear it in the usual order in which it was recorded, but that's okay.

2:10 Tonight, we're going to talk about ourselves. Like I said, here we are, our whole current team all together again on the same podcast for the first time in a long time against a backdrop of current events in the world of spaceflight that never stops or hardly ever even slows down for anybody. What with SpaceX's challenges getting approved for the second test flight of Starship, even while it's setting records every year for numbers of launches and annual tonnage lofted to orbit, and even with dozens of other private commercial aerospace companies and their support in manufacturer universes, it's all so much that it's almost impossible to keep track of it all anymore.

2:53 And yet, here we have a group of people who have been trying to do just that, to make sense of it all for our listeners. And for how long? How long have we been doing this now? We started in 09, 09, 09. So over 14 years, 2024 will mark our 15th year of putting out episodes. That's pretty awesome. Hey, gang, remember way back when everybody was asking us after the shuttle program ended, gee, what are you going to talk about? Yeah, I think now there's almost too much to talk about. Exactly. Yeah, for sure. So speaking of talking about all this stuff, you started on 090909.

3:37 And whose idea was this in the first place? How did this all get started? How did Talking Space begin? I'll raise my hand for that one, I guess. There's a bunch of ways I could approach this question. And I can give you either the history or just how it sort of spontaneously combusted. Because it really took a lot of stars to kind of come together. It was an idea I had way back when in the beginning of podcasting. I guess this was around 2006, 2007, when iTunes started putting podcasts out there for people to download. And there was a bunch of really good ones over there.

4:25 There were pretty kind of sad ones out there, too. But for the most part, there were some really good ones. And you can name the topic. It was out there. And there was some great astronomy stuff out there, too. But I could not find a specific podcast that I really wanted to hear. And there were a few shows kind of dancing around it, but they weren't exactly what I wanted. The concept I was looking for was spaceflight meets, I guess, meet the press or face the nation or something like that, where you have not just one person, but a team of people. Kind of looking at spaceflight and trying to put some context around what was being said or what was going on out there.

5:13 And also offering maybe some opinion every now and again as far as what was going on. And gosh darn it, I was looking for it and I couldn't find it. So I thought, gee, why can't I do that? And I said, well, okay. So I committed to doing it. And I shopped the idea around to the local planetarium here that I used to work for. And they didn't know what a podcast was. Mind you, remember, this is 2006. And I actually put the idea forward to the local NSS chapter here in New Jersey, who they were faltering at the time. And unfortunately, they collapsed. So the idea kind of sat on the shelf. And oddly enough, the folks that lit this thing up again was NASA themselves with how they got onto social media.

6:06 And, you know, everybody knows a story that everybody listening to this show knows a story about PAO Veronica McGregor over at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, how she took the Mars Phoenix lander and created a Twitter account for it and really, really put a human face on the lander and on the mission through through that account. And she experimented with social media and saw how it was going. And the Morris Phoenix account was a super success, so much so that she moved it to creating a NASA tweet up, if you will, the very first one over at JPL.

6:46 And that one also went very well. Tweet ups were starting to spontaneously combust all over the place. And these things were just like minded people getting together. So it was really that hotbed, that got the people I needed together to bring the show up. And it finally came to a head, I guess it was during the launch attempts for STS-127. If anybody remembers how that launch went, I think if they had to try it about maybe eight or nine times, I might be wrong on the amount, but it was a long amount of launch attempts. And the reason was because you were trying to launch a space shuttle in the middle of the summer.

7:28 I think this was July of 2009, and a lot of the press were getting a little ragged and so on, and they were saying, do we really need all these launch rules and all that? We kept on hearing during the post-launch press conference, and there were a group of us on Twitter going, what, do you guys remember a little thing called SES-107? Rules were there for a reason, and again, I understood the reason why the press, they were getting kind of cranky and all that, but you've got to remember, too, all of these launch rules are there for a reason. But a lot of people, our little merry band, I think there was like five of us during this thing, watching this thing on Twitter, kind of live tweeting it and talking about what was going on.

8:09 We were like, what the devil do we do to go ahead and try to combat this? Basically, a lot of what we felt was a lot of not exactly misinformation, but still, you know, kind of not understanding why the rules were there. And that's when I pulled the idea off the shelf. I said, well, I've had this podcast idea for some time. And everybody just said, oh, yeah, let's do that. And it got onto a bulletin board, the idea where I said, okay, fine. I was going to go ahead and try to get this thing off the ground and was looking for victims, I mean, volunteers, to embark on this little journey that I decided to launch.

8:55 And I was just flat out darn lucky in plain English. That i got the personalities that i got because i i and i i couldn't i couldn't see a better crew to do this with and and we've been doing this now for what 14 years so i was just darn lucky to grab the people that i did now it in the process of that i it took me a little bit to set things up there were only two providers back then that were doing podcast hosting libsyn and podbean And I went with Podbean because they were a little, honestly, they were a little cheaper.

9:38 And we got that account. And lo and behold, we got a schedule together. Everybody kind of chimed in. Sawyer, Mark, you came right on in. And for the first run, we did a show on going to Mars and the infamous idea that there was an idea circulating at that time for a one-way trip. And we basically talked about that. Shoot, this was like the 1960s when we were first trying to get to the moon. There was a plan on the book similar to this that was dubbed, believe it or not, the poor slob plan.

10:18 It went something like this. An individual was shot to the moon on a one-way trip. Food supplies, things like that are shot to him along with any type of science experiments. While we here back on Earth tried to go ahead and figure out a way to bring him back. And believe it or not, there were a lot of volunteers for that. So I'm, you know, I'm not exactly too sure that the public is going to support something like this. And we put the question out to people, would you go on a one-way trip? Now, Sawyer, you had a chance to talk to a rather interesting gentleman about this whole idea. Could you go ahead and sort of relay some of that to us? Certainly i was just about to get into that with what you said a couple of weeks ago i got to speak to richard garriott who was the multi-millionaire who actually sent himself to the international space station aboard a russian soyuz rocket right and i had the chance to actually sit down with him one day during a lunch conversation and he brought up a really interesting point because someone was talking about this one-way trip to mars and he asked all about seven or eight of us that were at this lunch table he went around and asked right now if i were to give you the opportunity to take that one-way trip to Mars, not going back, but you would have enough supplies to make it there, would you go?

11:32 And every single person at that table said, yes, I would go. And so I find that very interesting how, you know, even though it's one way, you know, you're not coming back to Earth, people will still say, yeah, I'd love to go to Mars. I felt that I still feel the absurdity of that. And that's really how the whole thing germinated. And it just kind of took on a life of its own from that point. But again, I'm going to say this. I had, you know, Mark and Sawyer jumped on this immediately, which I am forever thankful for. We had... A another individual gina hurley that jumped on a little later and she brought a whole nuance to the show and i wanted i wanted a woman's voice on this thing to basically try to say hey this is not just a man's world and i i i really really wanted that and she just provided a a grand platform to for her point of view and i was just darn lucky to have her because she brought a lot of stuff because of her her her day job she brought a lot of stuff to the show as well and in plain english the beginning of the show i was just flat out blessed with the people i got everybody was enthusiastic everybody worked worked their tail off to make this thing to make this little mouse that roared move and and go on so i guess in a nutshell that's that's the whole story i'm i'll save the big one for for for something else

13:04 but uh really that's how the whole thing started so one of those one of those people on that original team was sawyer who. Was 14 years old at the time is that right sawyer i think so let's see if it's september now and i'm 29 14 or 15 yeah i was in high school yeah when all of this started and that all came about i I have to give a small shout out to the Space Tweeps Society. Thank you, Sawyer. I was going to do that. Thank you for doing that. I appreciate it. To where Gene originally posted this crazy idea. And then I knew what podcasts were, at least at the time. And I was really into space stuff on Twitter.

13:45 So the Space Tweeps, Twitter Peeps, that's how it got its name, Tweeps. I just saw that. I'm like, you know, I like hearing myself talk. Why not? but so signed on not knowing any of these people in the thread besides the their twitter handle basically and yeah of course i'll have some fun stories later about this but my parents you know the back in those days it was don't talk to strangers on the internet here i was talking to a whole bunch of strangers and putting my voice out to the world to hear but yeah that was the really early days. So what I'm interested in knowing is like, what did you think about all that at the time?

14:28 So you were joining this podcasting team of adults. Did you ever say to yourself, what am I getting into here with all these old people? Not really. I think part of it in the beginning is the fact that we really didn't talk about ages that much. I mean, I'm sure the team knew I was younger, but it took them a while to realize how young I actually was. and they still accepted me and my viewpoint. And I think it honestly helped having that. I'm trying to put this politely, that younger viewpoint, someone who the only space vehicle that they'd grown up with at the time was the space shuttle, never seen the moon landing in person, anything like that, to, you know, be the voice of what at the time was today, quote unquote.

15:13 Quote but it's funny story we had our fifth beetle cassie tamanini and the first time i ever talked with her online turns out we grew up in the same town and she said oh i left in 1994 and i said i moved in in 1994 and when she found out later down the line months later how old i was she's like wait when you said you moved in i'm like yeah that's when i was born that's my favorite story ever. I was hoping you would share that. And by the way, age never played into it. It really never played into it. Sawyer, his wisdom goes beyond his age in plain English, and it really showed even in the early days of the recording.

16:00 So age never really, really played a factor in any of this. I'll be one. He definitely, Sawyer, you must be an old soul, because I think back to when I was 14, and I think, number one, I probably would have been petrified to, you know, talk about anything with a bunch of adults who were enthusiastic about space. And yeah, I might have been too, but I would have been very intimidated. And it's really interesting, and I'm really, really impressed by the fact that you didn't let yourself be intimidated. Well, I was confident, because at the time, I was working at the Challenger Centers for space science education, which was teaching kids and in some cases adults about space.

16:40 And so I was used to going up and talking in front of kids and teaching them. And I was also used to honestly teaching the adults as well through all of it. So I felt like I kind of had that sort of educational experience, maybe that I could bring and definitely the confidence in public speaking. So I think that was part of why I wasn't intimidated. I mean, at the Challenger Center, One of my favorite things I ever did was I worked a surprise birthday party for an 80-year-old woman. And to see how everyone, as soon as they talk about space stuff, gets childlike, that's kind of what I feel like happens with this. As soon as we get involved in a topic that we're passionate about, we're not thinking about age.

17:22 We're thinking about how giddy we are about being able to talk about it. Exactly. And space kind of transcends all of that. Yeah. Before we go on, Larry, I just want to mention one other thing. I really wish Cassie were here because she was one of our early big cheerleaders to begin with. And then she kind of got involved in the show. And I also want to give a shout out to Todd Cielo, who actually did the Talking Space theme. We did not ask him for it. He volunteered it. And we were just in that that whole band of folks that just came together and and really lifted the show up and i have there's so many people in that i have to really really tip of the hat and if i did that we'd be here pretty much the entire time so i i can't go through everybody but but i just want to say if you're listening and you're one of the early listeners and you really were really were one of our champions we love you and thank you and for todd just to point out not only did he do it once but twice yes here the outro music at the end that used to be our intro music and then a few years in he revamped it to what has still been the intro music all the way through and we still honor both works that he did by including both of them in all of our shows very cool i had always wondered where that song came from. Now we all know.

18:46 So, Mark, what were some of the biggest challenges that you remember facing in the early days of Talking Space? Well, a good point to start is the, Kind of a whirlwind, it seemed, of messages as this was slowly or quickly. I really don't remember gelling into the team that we started with. And I look back at one of the early emails just a few minutes ago, and I'm looking at the names and I'm thinking, holy cow, these are some good, good people. And as a what is it, the imposter syndrome, I'm thinking, what am I doing here? But be that as it may, if you were to listen to our first episode, we covered two primary topics, one of which would seriously question that Talking Space was a viable podcast.

19:41 We talked about an ABC TV show on at the time in 2009 called Defying Gravity. And I think we laughed a fair amount in talking about it because it was more like, and I never saw it. I got to add that, but it seemed more like something Mad Magazine might have come up with from listening to Sawyer and Gene talk about it. Oh, God, yes, Mark. I remember that all too well. There was somebody, forgive me, and the name just ran in here, and I apologize to this lady because she's wonderful, but her name just took off.

20:21 She, myself, and a few others on Twitter would sit there and just watch the show and literally lambaste it in real time on Twitter. The the individuals i'm talking about one of them is was a flight controller at the time. And a couple other people within the program and they were just like you know whiskey tango foxtrot what is this and and we would just just lambaste the show and we we did one of the first things we did as mark mentioned was a review on that program yeah i think we're ready for topic number two, and that is one that was suggested to me by just about a whole bunch of everybody, all the space tweets running around on Twitter.

21:08 It seems like every Sunday night we kind of sort of gather by our television sets at about 10 o'clock and sort of kick around an interesting series that both the American Broadcasting Company and Canadian Television have put together called Defying Gravity. It depicts a multinational crew on its way on a grand tour through the solar system. The year I believe it set in, if somebody could refresh my memory, is 2082? That's correct. Okay. The whole thing, if I recall exactly, and even the, I believe the producers even tried to sell it in such a manner, was sort of Grey's Anatomy in Space.

21:53 I don't know. I've I've I'm torn with this one. The way the thing is depicted. I don't know. Sometimes the first off, they make some really incredible errors in in, you know, in some cases in common sense. And in other cases, I don't know. It's too soap opera to me. You folks have seen the show. Sawyer. Go ahead. You're you're for thanks. Yeah. With this show, it's I'm one of the few people that actually can say this. Everybody out there please do not kill me and attack me on twitter but i'm one of the few people that actually say i like the show oh my true that it is very very inaccurate it has many inaccuracies including being able to communicate back and forth over a matter of seconds with no delay whatsoever even when there's a very small delay even between the station and earth even if it's two three seconds. This one, there's none at all.

22:50 Between that and some of the other topics that are brought up that they try to make seem realistic, it just doesn't exactly work for me, including even if they make it 2052, you cannot grow back a thumb. I'm sorry. I mean, I could see, yeah, exactly. I mean, I could see doing microsurgery or something like that, but grow it back? I don't think we're going to be that advanced in 2052 it only lasted i think eight what was it sorry maybe maybe eight nine it was supposed if they recorded all 10 episodes and apparently all 10 of them ended up airing in australia because i wanted to watch and see what actually happened since abc stopped airing it after i think the seventh episode because it was that bad yeah i mean it was getting absolutely no ratings you could do spaceflight but you could do it logically and And as a story and not as Space 90210, if you remember that series.

23:49 And that's essentially what it was. And yet now there's a show on Fox here in the U.S. about celebrities pretending to be on a fake Mars mission. Yeah, I think Bill Shatner is the host of that one. He totally hosted it. It was hilarious. It was so stupid, but I loved it so much. I think we need to bring back the space show reviews then for this. Oh good lord cat you're gonna you're gonna have to do the review on that one. The celebrities called william shatner shatty daddy oh my gosh and he seemed to be okay with it and then he shut up on mars but he was the only one who didn't have to wear a space suit outside also the only one that actually quote unquote went to space but yeah it was it was, so bad, but so bad it was hilarious.

24:38 It was like watching one of those old B-movies. So good. Oh, boy. Shout out to my friend Meg for recommending. See, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Yeah, exactly. Well, just to put our suits and ties back on for a second, the other topic was about ascending one human to Mars solo and a one-way trip. And as I recall, we generally speaking, we got into some good discussion and debate on that. And kind of we rolled on from there yeah we realized that there was actual space news that we could talk about and i think it helped also that once we kind of got the feel for how all of us interacted with each other then we felt more comfortable going all right you know let's uh let's talk about this upcoming shuttle mission or this upcoming science mission right and not only that we had in the beginning we had some really heavy hitters drop into our lap, Gina procured a couple of them.

25:44 Sawyer, you did as well. I mean, the interviews that we had lined up in the first season of this were just mind-blowing. And I still remember talking to a few of these people. We would turn the recorder off. And after we've recorded with that particular individual, and there would be dead silence afterward for like maybe three seconds, three or four seconds or so. And we just kind of laugh and go, did that really just happen? You know, that was the kind of interviews we had in the beginning. And a couple of these folks were awfully gracious.

26:25 And I want to, if I recall exactly, we talked with Miles O'Brien and it was where he was at the time. It was an ungodly hour, I think. It was something like 3 in the morning. But he was still gracious and still went ahead and talked with us and spent some time with us. And the man is just a consummate gentleman. I just want to go ahead and add that. And that's the former CNN space correspondent? Is that right? Right. He's now with PBS. He was a big supporter and is actually my mentor, in part because of all of that. But I'm just going through the list here. In the first year that we were on the air, so from September 2009 to September 2010, we had astronaut Dr.

27:10 Tom Jones, we had Scott Parazynski, we had... Walt Cunningham. We had Rusty Schweikert. And again, keep in mind, this is all just seasons one and two, our first year, and Mike Mullane. Wow. One realization for me, which was a real eye-opener, because I had never done anything with, really, with public speaking or in a capacity of press. But the astronauts and And the professionals we talk to are so generous with their time and with their willingness to participate and go down the road that, you know, that we that we talked, that we asked questions of. They were just phenomenal.

28:01 And that was a real eye opener for me. Yeah, I mean, the fact that they were talking to us and the most amazing thing is afterwards, some of them would even say to us like, oh, I've been asked questions like that, you know, because we're not where we were in that new era. Where we weren't mainstream media, which is what they're mostly used to. And there wasn't such a thing as social media influencers or anything like that at the time. Podcasts were still very new. So we were pioneering in the way a new era of even how to interview these people, especially some of these very historic astronauts who have had amazing careers and decided to give us an hour or two of their time. Yeah, one of the other things I didn't want to do is I didn't want to waste their time, nor did I want to ask puffball-type questions.

28:48 I wanted to ask insightful questions, and I wanted to let folks know that, gosh darn it, we're serious. And above all, though, I really didn't want to waste these folks' time with just really dumb, inert questions like that. I've heard some outlets ask. And that's a promise, by the way, going forward, too. If you come on the show, we're not going to waste your time. For sure. So, Kat, where along this whole journey of Talking Space did you hop on board? And how did that come about? Well, we have Cassie to blame for that. How dare you? I knew it.

29:31 So much like everyone on the podcast, Twitter is, you know, that's where we all were, you know, on space, we had the, you know, space tweets, and we were all there. And, I, a friend of ours, a mutual friend of Cassie and ours, Danny Sussman, who some of you may know, he's at the Suss on Twitter, knew that both Cassie and I were going to go see a launch. And he said, Hey, I thought that you two would be good friends. So you should talk to each other. And so we did. And it was, incidentally, my first launch that I had seen live and her last launch that she's seen live until just recently she covered.

30:11 But it was Juno, which, I mean, I have like a special love for Jupiter. Anyway, side note, at my wedding, Cassie actually sang a song about Jupiter, celebrating where we met. And I just, it's a lovely song. So it was very fun. Now that's commitment to Jupiter. I should clarify, I did not marry Jupiter. I did marry my partner, Kaveh, who is a human man. But yeah, so Cassie and I met And that was, oh gosh That was around that time Might have been 2009 as well I don't remember when Gino launched, which I should But, you know, I'm old now So my memory is not as good as some of our younger compatriots August, August, Kat, August 6th, 2011.

31:02 Yeah. I couldn't remember. I met Danny in 2009. So that's probably why I got that because that was at my JPL tweet up. This was back when they were still called tweet ups, which probably almost no one but us dinosaurs remember anymore. Except yours truly, but we're not going to go there. So Cassie and I met and we became good friends over the next couple of years. And I was working through education. I was in a master's program at the time. I think I first came on the show. I can't remember if I'd started my PhD yet or if I would still have my master's, but I had presented some research on the use of social media in tweet apps. And so NASA's use of social media at the International Astronautical Congress in Toronto in 2014.

31:48 And so I guess Cassie had spoke about that, and you were all kind enough to invite me on the show to talk about the conference and my research. And then you just didn't let me go. There was always some reason I kept getting invited back on. And so then I started covering things like IAC for Talking Space. And then, you know, at that point, I had gotten into my PhD program. And as all of our listeners will know, my PhD is on the role of political communication and the formation and dissemination of space policy. So my PhD is on, you know, how politics makes space work. And I currently still work in, you know, the space policy.

32:31 I'm working at a university, but teach things around outer space governance. And I'm currently, what am I doing now? Running a public opinion survey on Australian public opinion on space through the ANU Center for space governance. So it's, Yeah, so I just, that's how I'm here. I just, you guys got your claws into me and you didn't let me go. And I really enjoy it. It's been fun to be able to, yeah, bring a slightly different perspective. Although I feel like Gene always, he and I are always thinking about things sometimes from the same angles because he's got some of that background. on it again. My PhD is in political science, but my undergrad and my master's are in different subjects.

33:15 So it's really fun. And I enjoy it. Also quite big on science communication. So I see the pod as a great outlet for science communication. And one of the things I love about Talking Space is that we get to go in depth and have conversations that you can't hear on just a normal news podcast. It's more like reading The New Yorker. You get the commentary about what's happening. And talking about getting some big names, I was just thinking about my first interview for Talking Space. I did it with Sunny Williams, who is a NASA astronaut. And I was at IAC in 2015, which took place in Jerusalem and had managed to schedule some time.

33:58 And so, she told her handler, oh, we're just going to go over to this quiet space. I was supposed to have five minutes. She proceeded to ask me about my work for the 30 minutes, which I, to this day, I'm so sad I didn't record that part before I was like, hey, you're really supposed to give me five minutes. And I feel like your handler's getting a little stressed. Maybe we should do this interview. But she was just so incredibly gracious and kind and interested, like that curiosity. I think I've great things about space is that it awakens this, you know, one of you said childlike, you know, you get that passion, but for me, that like innate human curiosity.

34:39 And I think that Sunny, she just really showed that just quality. She was just so curious and just wanted to know about the world around her, even though she was supposed to be the subject of the interview. Yeah. This is really fantastic, the opportunities and the people I've gotten to meet because of talking space. And just, you know, very humbled to be able to go into people's lives and talk about something that's so important to all of us. Yeah. For holding you hostage, blink twice. You stole my line, Sawyer. That's exactly what I was planning on saying, something like that. Well, you guys kept me. I'm like, you've got the real Stockholm syndrome going on here.

35:23 I moved across the planet and you guys still have me somehow. There is no escape. One of the things that I'm sorry, I was just going to say that one of the things that I am amazed at about talking space is that once you're in, it's like you're in, you know, you just everybody's was very welcoming and very matter of fact. When I joined, which I was really, you know, kind of worried about, I just couldn't understand how, well, you know, why is this so easy? Why is it so easy just to be accepted and be a part of the team and just carry on?

36:05 Did you have that? It's a summer camp. Thank you. Did you have that same experience, though? Did you have that same thought when you came aboard? Yeah, I mean, it's just, I think the best analogy is really is that the crew here is like a summer camp, you know, no matter who comes, you're part of the you're part of the team. And yeah, you're always welcome back. We love a reunion. And, and I think, you know, we, we do this. And we have to respect there's got to be some flexibility. So there's times when, you know, some people take up more of the reins than others. And anytime we can get someone on that we haven't heard from for a while, and lately that's been me, everyone's just thrilled and super happy to have everyone back.

36:55 So like I said, Talking Space, it's summer camp. But it's like nerd camp because we're all also nerds. So one of the things that hasn't, at least it hasn't been mentioned since I've been a part of the team, is that at one point you moved from the United States to Australia, Kat. And that obviously makes it harder to get on a recording session. And, you know, there are some other challenges involved there, too, I guess. Yeah, it's easier right now because the time difference isn't horrible. But once we go into daylight savings and you guys go in to the opposite out of it. Then we the time difference between like the east coast and me is 15 and a half hours right now it's 13 and a half so it's uh 10 46 a.m for me right now and i believe it's 9 16 yeah something like that yeah but you know just make it work luckily i'm a night owl so when the time when the time switches, it works weirdly as well.

37:56 I don't know, but we just make it happen. We always make it work. Always. So another question that I had for everybody is, uh, what are some of your favorite episodes and why? And Mark, we'll start with you as he thinks. This will be a surprise. Oh, by the way, I remember a cartoon from when I was a kid, might've been tumbleweeds. And it showed this character in a cowboy hat saying, And when I sit, I think, and when I think, I fall asleep. So, you know, you might want to shake my chair every now and then make sure I'm still paying attention. And what was your question?

38:38 So what are some of your favorite episodes or most challenging episodes or, you know, pick an episode and why was it that? I'll give you one of each. Most challenging was a guest, and I believe it was Gene and Sawyer, at the very least, the three of us, and this guest who had her background in the Apollo program. And I want to say she was a mathematician, and she worked at, I'm going to use modern day terms, let's say, Michoud. And she was working on the Saturn V, the first stage of the Saturn V. And of course at this point that would have been in the 60s and you know fast forward to early 20 teens i guess she was difficult she was funny she had some great stories but oh my gosh when it came to editing it sawyer and gene said mark it's all yours, And I did the best I could.

39:44 And it was tough. It was really tough because she rambled. She went off on tangents, but she had some interesting stories. So that was the tough one. The one that was the most fun. This was for pre-launch press events for one of the last shuttle missions. It would have been Endeavor. and I remember walking across the grass towards the press site building and seeing a young woman walking in front of me with, I want to say, a backpack. And I remember thinking, who's this kid? Well, later in the day, that kid was one of the people that I signed up for a short interview with, Dr. Tara Rutley.

40:27 And Dr. Tara Rutley was a guest several times on the show. But she pretty much got me when I asked her some, probably a couple of questions. And then I said, tell me about AMS-2. And she said, oh, AMS-2. And she went on from there. And that was, to me, that was so, man, it was like finding a gold nugget because she was so excited. She was extremely knowledgeable. I think she was the associate scientist for ISS science and just incredible.

41:07 If I had known nothing at that point about the space program, she pretty much would have sold me entirely on the opportunities to talk to some of these engineers, mission managers, flight people. I can't even remember the terms for some of the people that I talked to in the time frame of 2010, 2011, 2012. And Dr. Tara Rutley, she was on with us a couple more times talking about ISS science, payloads going up, and she's just a gem. And that's my positive. And, of course, you heard the other part.

41:47 Sounds like somebody we should have on again sometime. She's now with Blue Origin, I believe. Yeah, she at one point, I think, ended up becoming the head of science. And that was followed by somebody else who we also ended up speaking with. And I do have the business card for the current head of ISS science over at the Johnson Space Center. So maybe we'll bring that back. Science is fun. Indeed. And Mark, I concur with you. And Tara Rutley was such an engaging guest. And I'm hoping that at some point we can get her back here. Sawyer, you have the same answers to those questions or different? Oh, very different. Go for it. In terms of...

42:30 The proudest? It's hard because it's not necessarily like a straight up recorded episode, but it has to be the STS-135 broadcast would be top of my list. When we broadcast live, both on digital radio and actual NPR stations and NPR affiliates on 11 different stations in seven countries, the final space shuttle launch. And I still recall just before they entered the terminal count, T minus 32 seconds, they called a hold and they weren't sure if the beanie cap, which helps fuel the giant orange external tank, had fully retracted or not.

43:14 I didn't know that for certain because we had no nasa tv this was the era of 3g so everything crashed cellular and there were so many people there that it also crashed the physical wi-fi the only wi-fi we had was connecting us to our broadcast so we were not going to mess with that to make sure that the station still got our feed so all i had was the audio from uh mission control. And somehow i made the correct assumption i don't want to say it was a guess but it was i guess an informed and educated guess that turned out to be correct later on to be on the air there making history mark worked his tail off to get the whole tent and technology set up and even had a talking space banner out there at the press site when we say that one of us is there flying the talking space flag.

44:10 That was the time we literally flew the flag. And it was also the first time that the original four members had ever met together, been in the same room at the same time together. So I think that was up there as both exciting and challenging. We're talking about actual episodes. I believe it was the ISS Research and Development Conference in 2016, if I recall, in Washington, in D.C. I was there. Obviously, we were there for the couple of years before. Great events, a lot of great science and information from it. And of course, there's, you know, astronauts that are there. And I remember talking to one of the astronaut handlers of like, hey, you know, if she has some time, I'd love to talk to Kate Rubins, who at the time had just come back from the space station.

45:02 And she's like, sure, I'll talk to her. We'll make something happen. So I ran into her in the hall at one point and stopped by to said hi and asked if she'd want to do an interview. She's like, who are you with? I'm like talking space. She's like, we listened to that in Houston. The fact that she had heard of us and that said that other people in the office, which I assume some of them were also astronauts, but her herself, an astronaut who had just come back from the space station, knew of and had listened to our show. So that just made that interview that much more special. And she was so enthusiastic about all the DNA research that they had been doing on board the station. And I was just that was one of my favorite episodes was not only realizing that, hey, there are astronauts that listen to us, but then are willing to share their passion. That was just the best.

45:52 That's pretty awesome. I would have I would have probably been rendered speechless by that. So, with that little tidbit in mind, do you think that – I'll throw this out to everybody – do you think that our audience has changed over time? And another question is, how would we even know that? Because I know that we get not hardly any comments back to our website when no matter how much we ask for them, I know that we get comments on social media. I'm just starting to find that out for myself, getting myself in a little bit of hot water from time to time.

46:36 But how has the audience changed over time, do you think? Well, I think the times have changed. For instance, when we first started out, there was really maybe one, two, possibly three, possibly three entities that were doing something along the lines that we did. I think I'm trying to remember their names. One of them was, I think, Space Task Force. They no longer exist. They're not podcasting anymore. There were two others, but they kind of started out. But I think the audience has become a lot more sophisticated because now we have we're in the age of YouTube influencers and we have other individuals out there that are sort of fan club ish around a certain one entity or another.

47:28 They're everybody's wearing their their T-shirts and their their team jerseys now for some reason. But the audience has has become a little bit more sophisticated. And to be honest, we've we've tried to respond to that in in the way we go about things. We've we've had some changes in format right and left and so on to respond to the way the audience we think is is kind of listening to our program. So we've really, really tried to accommodate the audience and still hang on to the folks that have been with us forever. I'm not too sure that we've succeeded. I'm hoping we have. But, you know, unless we're part of a Nielsen rating thing, it's going to be very, very difficult to ascertain what's going on.

48:14 I know we do have our own stats and so on, but it only gives us it doesn't really give us the whole picture. And I wish we had something that would give us the whole picture, but unfortunately, we don't. Yeah, that's a problem with the industry at large, I think. I feel like I should design a talking space listener survey. It's like my area of expertise. You should, Kat. That would be awesome. That would be awesome. That would be a great idea. One thing I think, though, for sure, is that whether the audience has changed or not, we have certainly changed. Our format has changed multiple times up until this point. And I think that was a combination of A, us all getting older and things happening in our lives.

49:00 And B, the fact that the internet was quickly taking the world by storm. More podcasts were popping up, so you want to make yourself a little bit different. There was one point where we were the, you know, the long form go into detail on everything episode, Which, having edited the first 180 or so episodes of the show myself, was getting to be a little much, especially since I was also doing this while in high school and college. But I think now that the attention span is so short for a lot of people on the internet, everything is the shorts, the short form content, the TikToks, the Instagram, the reels, all that kind of stuff.

49:43 I think we're kind of adapting in a way as well to that where, you know, leave our current format where we go over a couple of quick items and then we take our time with a few others. But still nowhere near the 30, 40 minutes we used to spend sometimes on one single topic on the show. So I think we have evolved. And I'm going to guess that the people that are still with us or that are just recently joining us have evolved as well. I think that's 15 years. Something had to have changed. That's a very valid point. Very valid point. Hey, Larry, can I just add something real fast? You were talking about favorites. I'm not going to talk about a favorite episode, but I'm going to talk about a favorite moment.

50:23 Sure. It was during the landing of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, as Mark had pointed out. That was the first time that talking space was permitted on site at the Kennedy Space Center. As this thing arrived, it was the first time we got press credentials. And Mark, you were carrying the banner into battle for us. And I had gotten home from work. In fact, I think I got home from work early just to see this. And I. I remember turning on NASA television and sitting there and watching the whole thing.

51:08 And when Mark, when you came up to ask the question, I just lost about five buttons on my shirt because that moment was the moment where I think we had finally arrived. And if I remember exactly, we had to almost fight tooth and nail to be on site for that event. And we weren't guaranteed that we were ever going to be back. But Mark, you represented us extraordinarily well. And when you went ahead and asked that question, as I said, I almost welled up because I was like, we finally did it. We did it.

51:50 We're there. We're at the table, finally. And I'll fast forward a little bit to a moment with former NASA PAO, George Diller. This was at the Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, as it's known for a lot of folks. This was the launch for that particular rover. And, of course, there's a pre-launch Q&A and all of that. And I sat there, and George goes ahead and points to the person with the boom mic so you can ask your question while you're in the gallery there. And George, when he pointed to me, he called on me by name.

52:33 And the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I was just – I asked the question, but it was an indication that, yeah, we've arrived. That they know us. And and we are officially a member of the fraternity, as it were, when it came to coming to these these events and with with the rest of the accredited press. And that was just, again, probably the second most proudest moment that I've had. The first one was was when when Mark asked that question, I was just as I said, I lost. I was so darn proud. I mean, I was just so darn proud of the team that we had built at that moment.

53:18 I knew one thing, Jean, too, about this is being able to cover these events as press. We bring a really different perspective. Even today, I think the way that we cover events is different than almost any other group out there. It's certainly not the way that traditional mainstream media is covering it because most of the time they're news bites, very short. And there are some people who are doing more space-focused news. But again, it's very much. Most of the Space News podcasts are looking to get information out quickly to get the info out. We are one of the few that does a lot of analysis. And that's something that I've been proud of because that's the kind of news coverage that I prefer to read myself on any sort of topic.

54:01 And, I mean, who would have guessed it? That's why I have a PhD, right? But it is something you know it and it's and to be able to sit down and maybe ask more in-depth questions than other places have time to do you know when we're doing interviews i'm just thinking about and also interviewing people that that are very interesting but may not be considered you know quote unquote newsworthy for for whatever reason so that's always been to me being able to sort of get some really impressive, interesting interviews that we've all done over the years, that these people would otherwise not really probably show up on anything else, right? Unless it was niche.

54:47 So, I'm thinking, you know, we interviewed Noah Petro, who does things with Moon, and he's still, you know, still at NASA doing things there. Mark, I think you got us a great interview we had with Nicole Stott talking about her work after astronaut life and also her life as an astronaut. It's been some really interesting things. So I really enjoy it. For me, it's always getting to talk to new and interesting people. I don't know that I would choose a favorite episode. But anytime you get to talk to someone who's really passionate about the work they do and really excited to have the opportunity to talk to a new audience about the work they do is really exciting. But also, I think my favorite moment is Exploration Flight Test 1.

55:30 It was the first time I got to meet everybody in person. I think I'd seen a couple other people before. I don't remember. But that was a really nice thing. I remember going and having breakfast, and it was really fantastic. Yeah so it is it's like summer camp i mean i think that's the best the best analogy for i mean you get to do cool interesting things but then also you get to open you know new ideas and new worlds to people who otherwise might not engage with the topics and subjects that we engage with, i want to throw something in we talk about press conferences and gene your pride in talking space being represented. You know, I was there and they got to know me and they called me by name.

56:15 But often it was questions that I was getting from Gene and Sawyer and Gina and haven't been to as many press conferences since Kat's come along and joined the team. But it was questions from them. And at some point here in the future, I'll give an example of questions that I ask an astronaut during the time when Discovery was about to depart for the Smithsonian. And again, it's that teamwork, which sounds so corny. Sometimes I get tired of hearing about teamwork, but it was the contributions of the team that sometimes brought the questions. And one that was a favorite, another favorite for me, on a scrub for STS-134, we had the post-scrub press conference, and I asked a question that Mike Moses ended up answering about how they could tell, how they could possibly figure out what caused the scrub and how they could come up with a workaround.

57:18 And he went into probably at least a five-minute explanation of the, the approach that nasa had to dealing with you know at that point 135 shuttle launches who knew who knows how many actual launch attempts and to where they could look at the data and say yep we need to change a main engine controller and that'll take care of the problem and he just lit up with that one and i thought wow i didn't realize it but i asked a question that had some meet on it. And, you know, it was, again, the team, but it was those opportunities to be in there.

57:58 And it helped with, at the time, I was three hours away, and everybody else was halfway across the country. So by default, I became a one of those people that was there for a lot of those last few shuttle launches. And then when I moved down to Florida later, originally Tallahassee, now South Florida, it was the same thing. I think all of us had that same moment of when the person in the press conference calls you by name. Something about that moment that just makes you feel really good inside and knowing that we're up there with some of these biggest names in the history of NASA and space media journalists, and they're calling us by name.

58:42 There's something about that that's just still so cool to this day. And the fact that again, we can go hang out and talk with George Diller when he was before he retired from NASA. It's just the press conferences is a whole different ballgame. And I know, at least when I was there, I tried to make it as much of a team effort as possible. Gene, I'm sure you can count on can't count on two hands the number of times I was in a press conference, I'm like, hey, anything you want me to ask? Yeah. And, and yeah, and I would perhaps fire a couple of ideas out. And lo and behold, you try to put the nonsense that I would write into a coherent sentence and, and go ahead and, and, and ask, and you'd do it a heck of a lot more elegantly than, or phrase it a heck of a lot more elegantly than I did.

59:32 And that's the whole point. One of the things I try to say is we don't want to leave anybody just simply out there. You know, I try to we try to talk to each other when we're thanks thanks to technology. And we try to help each other other out when we're when somebody is on site and at least try to help and give a little bit of insight to to what what we're seeing. And perhaps maybe we can help them out with some questions. And just so our listeners know, I think we should back up a little bit because I've got something to say about the whole process of even getting to the point where you can be in on one of those press conferences.

1:00:13 It takes a lot of work, a lot of coordination, a lot of emails, a lot of trying to convince the right person at the press office that you deserve to be there and overcoming a lot of, you know. Institutional bias against podcasters sometimes. And then just getting into that room is a tough thing. And with most podcasts, including this one, you're not getting paid to do any of that stuff. You're doing it just because you like it. And that's what I think a lot of people don't realize is that, you know, we're doing this podcast. Nobody's making a dime on it. It's costing us money. It's costing us money every time we, you know, not that I've been there yet, but go to Cape Kennedy or any place they would go to try to cover a launch in person.

1:01:04 That's all coming out of our pockets. And we do it because we love it. That was a very not surprising thing that I learned when I came aboard, but just it was eye opening in terms of just how long everything takes and how much work it is. And again, not getting paid for it. If I can, just for one second, there's a story that I kind of mentioned earlier that I definitely wanted to talk about. And it involves you, Mark. While we were talking about the fact that we weren't local, I at the time lived in New Jersey. And i was coming down for the sts 130 launch and i remember i flew down both my parents came with me and one day i told them oh i'm going to meet you meet a bunch of friends at a restaurant for dinner and they went are you crazy you're meeting strangers on the internet how do you know them from twitter there is no way you're going i'm like really yeah this is 2010 so i was 15 16.

1:02:05 And they're like nope not letting you do it i'm like but but mom you know and i told him that mark was going to be there they're like all right fine we'll go but we're coming with you i said all right fine and so sure enough the first time that i ever met anyone from talking space was mark at a restaurant called dixie crossroads in titusville florida my parents came along with They literally sat at a table a couple of seats away from us. And I think, Mark, you and Mary ended up talking with them for a bit, too. But yeah, that was the first time I ever met someone from Talking Space was I had to drag my parents with me to a dinner before a launch.

1:02:46 Yeah, I got to throw my perspective in on that. So here we are. We're all chums with, I don't know, half a dozen, a dozen people at this table. And and i'm sitting there and i look over and there's your your folks sitting at a table by themselves and i'm thinking they need to be in on this so i went over and i talked to them and you know just tried to kind of bring some cheer to to their party of two, and we've been friends ever since and i appreciate that greatly yeah that was the moment that my parents stopped questioning anyone i ever talked to on the internet was once they met mark in person And we're like, OK, these are actually good people.

1:03:29 What's funny is that, you know, strangers on the Internet, that time period to a lot of my like really good friends are from like the early days of the Internet. Like I'm talking even before like the Twitter space tweets, but I'm like, those of you who may remember when we used to chat on like ICQ. Oh, my God. Yes. Like my oldest friend, like the person I have known and kept in contact with the longest is from that era of the Internet. Like we were 12, 13. Funnily enough, one of the reasons I have so many friends out at JPL because she ended up being on jury duty.

1:04:12 She went to college in California and lived there. She was on jury duty with Scott Maxwell, who used to be the lead rover driver at JPL. And she ended up dating for a long time his friend Doug Ellison, who many of you might know if you're in the online space community. He used to run, or still does, I believe, I'm not sure, but the Unmanned Space about processing images from NASA, which actually got him a job at JPL because of the image processing. And he's now actually still there working. But a lot of them I know really well. And so it was very weird. My first launch that I went to, which was Juno, was sort of like worlds colliding because I had known Doug and Scott not through my space stuff, but through my friend Mary.

1:04:59 And then suddenly like my friend Mary which was like another part of my internet life was then meeting my internet spaced life so it was just very interesting that that was a you know that was an interesting time on the internet where I don't think that yes we had parents who worried about strangers on the internet or things like that but a lot of my really good friends are friends I either met on ICQ way, way back in the day from like message boards, basically the easy boards that then went to instant messaging or people that I met on Twitter, you know? So it's just a very interesting, it was an interesting time of the internet that, I don't know, it's just not the same anymore, but yeah, I'm grateful for it because, you know, a good majority of my friends i met first as strangers on the internet you know half of my friend guest list more than half of my friend guest list when i got married was internet stranger friends and hey i married a stranger from the internet so there we go.

1:06:05 A stranger that is no longer a stranger. I'm just glad that we can dissuade your parents, Sawyer, and that they know that we're on the up and up, and you're part of this extended family we have. Oh, yeah. No, they're aware of it now, and they're aware of the wild circus that we run. Hey i gotta i gotta tell you a uh a fun one about your mom sawyer and you've probably heard this before but i'm down at kennedy this might have been 2011 or 12 and i had her phone number and so i sent her a text what size shirt does sawyer wear and she replied who is this.

1:06:53 I'm picturing it now yep yeah so uh you know there was still some caution there but once i identified myself uh i got your shirt size and picked up the first uh souvenir for you from one of the ksc gift shops they still get so happy whenever i mention you're going to be at a launch that I'm at. Oh, yeah. That scrub that, which one was it? Delta 4 Heavy. Not too long ago. Yeah. Or one of those. Yeah. Yeah. Got to see your dad. Got to see your dad for, oh, 10 or 15 minutes until they announced the scrub and everybody took off.

1:07:33 Yeah. I think Mark is everyone's favorite on my podcast. I just feel like that's true. Like, he's even the favorite of Sawyer's parents. No offense to anyone else on the team, but yeah. I think also just because that was who my parents met first, and they must be like, oh, everyone's like that. Yeah. No, Mark is just like our calm, steady podcast dad. The voice of reason. What was that show? Do you remember? What is the name? Mr. Feeney? He's like our Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World. Well, he was always my older, wiser cousin as well.

1:08:16 So I feel the same way. I appreciate all the praise, but I got to tell you, too many times or more times than I can recall, I was interviewing people, you know, face to face with my fancy dancy recorder and I forgot to press record. Happens to the best of us, bud. Happens to the best of us. Music Music Music Music Music. Music. Well, I think that's a good place to leave it for part one of our Talking Space Retrospective.

1:08:57 We really had a lot of fun with this episode and had so much to talk about that it stretched on long enough that there'll be a part two. We really had a good time with this episode talking and reminiscing, and we hope it was entertaining for you as well. Big thank you to Gene Mikulka, Mark Ratterman, Sawyer Rosenstein, and Kat Robison. Join us next time for part two of our Talking Space retrospective. Music.