The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Christmas Pre-Record

00:00:00.000 all right i think we could talk a little bit about what spacex has achieved this year we're

00:00:06.980 right at the end of the year now so all sorts of people doing all sorts of retrospectives looking

00:00:11.300 back at what the 2024 has held for us i thought we could um instead of endlessly blackpilling

00:00:18.500 uh we could do a white pill or two yeah i'm excited for this i don't normally pay any

00:00:24.600 attention to what's going on in space news although i know that's more your area of area

00:00:29.980 of expertise so please enlighten me i like living in the past i.e my obsession with history but also

00:00:36.900 the future one of the things that i'm most gutted about profoundly gutted in life with the human

00:00:42.480 experience is i don't get to see what happens is that you're living in the present yeah that's the

00:00:47.640 worst part of life it's living right now it's really disappointing out of the past the present

00:00:51.800 and the future the present is the most disappointing yeah and mundane even though things are happening

00:00:59.300 but still i i'm just really gutted i don't get to see really the exploration of the of the solar

00:01:04.860 system let alone the galaxy well you never know it's a shame you never know what like uh cryogenics i

00:01:12.260 could get frozen yeah maybe you look a bit like a super villain so i reckon we could freeze you

00:01:18.280 i have no idea what you're talking about um um so spacex elon spacex one of the things i'll say is

00:01:25.300 that i don't think anyone could disagree with the fact that if it wasn't for elon personally

00:01:31.080 um spacex and the technologies that they're developing just would not be happening

00:01:36.640 nasa wouldn't be doing this the russian space agencies wouldn't be doing this stuff

00:01:41.120 i mean not yet anyway i think spacex already has like loads of contracts out with nasa anyway

00:01:45.640 oh yeah because he's the one pushing it forward or at least spacex are the ones pushing it forward

00:01:49.500 now that's what spacex is in all sorts of ways is a contractor for spacex ultimately when we go

00:01:56.000 supposed to go back to the moon next year it's a nasa mission spacex is just one part of that

00:02:02.880 um so yeah when if and when elon takes us to mars it will be a joint venture with all the most of the

00:02:12.720 earth's space agencies and spacex and other contractors as well um but so probably the big

00:02:20.340 takeaway headline was that mechazilla do you remember that no i do not so uh there was

00:02:25.760 was it some was it some kind of robot monster rampaging around tokyo kind of it wasn't rampaging

00:02:31.860 around tokyo not yet but it was a giant monstrous machine or is still exists it is prepped just in

00:02:37.400 case the japs get any ideas yeah next next step is he was going to put the mechazilla on on legs

00:02:43.080 make it walk around it's it's a stationary thing but so uh spacex launches all sorts of rockets the

00:02:48.960 falcon heavy is one of the biggest ones but the biggest one is starship that's actually what it's

00:02:53.760 called that's what he named it and it is massive it really is massive i mean in fact can we see this

00:03:00.380 image look there you can see for uh scale uh sort of how big it is and that is supposed to be the

00:03:07.800 vehicle or at least a vehicle very similar to it which will take men to the moon and ultimately mars

00:03:14.480 by the time we actually do that it'll probably it'll be a bit different but essentially this is what it

00:03:19.360 is um starship um and you know that uh spacex love to reuse their modules well yeah that's one of

00:03:29.280 that's the thing i'm most aware of them is that they want to be able to retrieve them so that it's

00:03:33.500 not creating debris so it's not creating waste and again just because it's more efficient to be

00:03:37.720 able to reuse them way more efficient when you spend millions and millions and tens of millions

00:03:42.100 of dollars on a rocket and it's a once use and lose send it up and it's it's gone whereas if you

00:03:49.000 can refill these things if you can get them back safely to earth and then refill them then that's

00:03:53.940 massively massively more efficient yeah that's the one thing i did see was that they had that large

00:03:58.260 uh tower that caught one of them that was a very very successful uh mission by the looks of it

00:04:05.000 that is the mechazilla oh that was the mechazilla that's its colloquial nickname is the mechazilla

00:04:10.380 um so you can see starship that giant thing we just saw men standing on you can plummeting out of

00:04:18.480 low earth orbit and um in fact we don't really need well actually let's leave the sound on because when

00:04:24.520 the when the boosters kick in it really is something i think it's like a monstrous obviously it's a lot

00:04:32.420 like that so is this all automated or yeah yeah there's no yeah there's no humans on board

00:04:36.220 well i imagine there's no humans on board but they're just trying to catch it

00:04:41.120 yeah the rockets kick in so they're all away from that

00:04:47.600 that was filming

00:04:48.620 so by my understanding that is a ridiculous step forward in this kind of technology yeah yeah i mean

00:05:09.500 it's scarcely believable yeah that was a first that was literally the first let's watch from

00:05:14.560 another angle we don't need the volume necessarily i don't think it's got any audio anyway all right

00:05:18.840 um oh no so this is very recent this is this happened very recently and it's landing if you

00:05:26.500 can see on the right there that's a a platform at sea oh it's sea as well it's at sea yeah and

00:05:33.760 that obviously isn't a starship yeah but um they tried there's lots of footage you can see of them

00:05:38.940 trying exactly that and it failing it failing to land and blowing up well i've seen i've seen those

00:05:44.860 ones and people were using those ones in the past as kind of a celebration of haha isn't elon an idiot

00:05:49.600 he's never going to get this story because of course spiteful mutants being mutants who are spiteful

00:05:54.600 are more interested in uh just being able to get one over elon musk than anything that's actually

00:06:00.720 exciting or pushes us forward or pushes technology forward like um what's his name is uh is it

00:06:06.320 thunderfoot chunderfoot yeah chunderfoot blunderfoot yeah yeah he can't help himself but try and dunk on

00:06:12.180 elon yeah he there was the live stream that was the live stream compilation of him watching one of

00:06:17.800 these maxillars catch the catch the shuttle and uh he was so disappointed he he was saying it through

00:06:24.320 gritted teeth like oh i guess it worked it's pathetic it's pathetic if you if you're somebody who claims

00:06:30.640 to be interested in science and technology and the future of it all this is not something that

00:06:35.940 you should hold personally against elon for petty reasons this is something you should be like wow

00:06:40.180 this is amazing it's really weird uh i don't want to uh i don't want to dwell on thunderfoot for a

00:06:46.940 second longer than needs to be but yeah it's weird that him and people like him hate uh elon for

00:06:52.640 political reasons i imagine it can only be out of pure blind jealousy or political reasons i don't

00:06:58.900 actually watch thunderfoot so i don't actually know exactly why watch the compilation why i did i did see

00:07:04.420 that yeah and i have watched a little bit of thunderfoot over the years you know he's running

00:07:07.980 through carl and things uh um but yeah it can only be out of uh jealousy or political reasons i don't

00:07:13.600 really know don't really care but anyway um what a remarkable thing that it worked first because it

00:07:19.780 was the first time they tried to use mechazilla sort of you know like live fire if you know what i mean

00:07:26.560 yeah yeah and uh yeah again when you see images like that you sort of forget the scale of it a bit

00:07:32.300 it looks it looks amazing and when you pointed out the scale that whole that whole tower must be

00:07:38.760 enormous yeah it's like the size of a block of flats yeah yeah remarkable let's uh let's do another

00:07:47.180 one probably don't need the volume but this is like a close-up one in fact maybe the volume because

00:07:54.500 again the rockets are yeah you can see like the the 30 plus engines all throwing away yeah the

00:08:07.580 precision required that's the thing isn't it um man is mankind is a tool maker that's what we are

00:08:17.500 we're we're an ape really zoologically speaking an ape but quite a remarkable ape that's able to talk

00:08:23.920 and build tools and eventually build this right and who knows what next yeah well that's the thing

00:08:30.880 where i talked at the beginning of the segment about not getting to see the future how disappointed i am

00:08:36.100 on a fundamental level because this is the tip of the iceberg we're still in our absolute infancy

00:08:41.740 of space travel and space exploration and engineering and technology and all those things but still we've

00:08:47.720 just we've we've been turned off from this stuff for so so long and now elon's come in with spacex and

00:08:55.060 all of a sudden there are these massive leaps that yeah there's a few uh faulty starts to begin with

00:09:00.540 but then all of a sudden you're starting to get these kinds of developments so who knows what's going

00:09:04.780 to happen even in the the near future it doesn't have to be that uh you know it's multiple lifetimes

00:09:12.580 away you might still get to see it but well i've been a smoker since i was about 15 so i doubt it

00:09:18.840 hey i have no 19 year olds who still smoke a pack a day true there's a brilliant worse for wear there's

00:09:24.460 a brilliant photo of a little old lady lighting a cigarette off her 100th birthday cake hey there

00:09:29.280 you i love that photo that's what keeps me that's what keeps you going that's what keeps you sucking it

00:09:34.080 down yeah you're not gonna get me sooner starmer you can't touch me um so yeah i mean hopefully

00:09:41.760 hopefully in the next few decades maybe there'll be sort of massive acceleration of of the technology

00:09:48.520 and things and maybe you'll get to light your 100th birthday cigarette off of the engine

00:09:53.720 two two of the engine just stand just close enough

00:09:59.180 remarkable on my 200th hopefully they'll be able to uh map my genome and like 3d print like a new heart

00:10:08.980 and new lungs and liver yeah there you go as long as the brain stays good keep on going or whole yeah

00:10:15.740 who knows yeah uh maybe one day i'll do uh a segment about uh advances in medical science

00:10:24.080 medical technology so i'm also very interested on podcasts and lotus seeds is episode 500 000

00:10:29.880 you'll still be here presenting that one i'm on my 16th new heart still keeping it going

00:10:39.300 they've just put a zip in there now so you can change it out you can do it at home

00:10:44.140 um all right so let's watch another little clip there's a camera in the way i can't quite see

00:10:52.180 there you go there you go all right i don't need to actually hear it but just uh so that's a starship

00:10:59.080 taking off obviously a launch uh i think that was the fourth one left on five now uh i remember

00:11:06.120 watching the first one in our old studio didn't get very far it blew up quite quickly um that elon said

00:11:13.660 uh it would be weird if it didn't because it was just it was like the first test it's a work in

00:11:19.400 progress um yeah but it's a giant thing and um well i'm looking forward to that's the thing that

00:11:26.000 returns that's the bit of it that returns um i'm looking forward to whether it's next year or probably

00:11:31.900 more realistically the year after or who knows it could be many years down the line uh men are going

00:11:38.660 going to go back to the moon now i know people say uh many people just think like sometimes you

00:11:44.560 get a comment saying space is fake i've heard i've heard that once or twice in the office yeah

00:11:51.460 not gonna say who um but yeah some people think it's all a giant hoax and we've never actually been

00:11:58.460 to low earth orbit let alone outside of low earth orbit certainly never ever been to the moon it's not

00:12:04.840 possible you'd have space cancer immediately or whatever um that sounds like a very scientifically

00:12:10.860 informed opinion and we did a segment once with dan about i remember right yeah i i remember i

00:12:17.620 remember there was one feature of that segment right in the middle who did not look very impressed

00:12:22.960 oh uh calum yeah yeah he wouldn't have it would he uh i just say on that real quick i do think

00:12:30.120 there's some very very suspicious this is one of the failures earlier on one of the fins burnt off

00:12:34.780 um um i do think there's some suspicious things about especially the early apollo missions

00:12:41.340 i wouldn't be surprised if it transpires that apollo 11 there was some really weird stuff about it

00:12:48.580 um but nonetheless by like apollo 15 and 16 seems to me anyway to my mind

00:12:55.500 uh no doubt that they went to the moon and came back i don't know anyway so hopefully this this

00:13:02.300 generation's lunar exploits will sort of they'll make it sort of beyond doubt in all in various ways

00:13:08.980 hopefully we'll see they've already picked the crew and stuff dei

00:13:14.040 are you joking no the leader well he's probably must the dude must be perfectly surely you can't but

00:13:21.040 he's a black dude you can't dei something as important as that because it's not like it's not

00:13:27.860 like an office job where you just got hr manager i'll just get whoever in off the characteristics

00:13:33.440 you're playing with people they could blow up if they get it wrong yeah unless this is some like

00:13:39.760 4d chess from elon but i don't think so he must be he must be qualified and he must be good at what

00:13:46.260 yeah yeah yeah he's a nasa dude he's not a spacex dude and uh yeah i mean he's perfectly qualified

00:13:52.040 but um he happens to be black but anyway oh this is best of luck either way yeah yeah of course

00:14:00.480 absolutely absolutely best of luck i wish them all the best uh a thousand fold that's just a falcon

00:14:07.560 heavy a mere falcon 9 taking off um but yeah i just can't get enough of all this stuff

00:14:14.980 um i love it i imagine you had effectively endless money or not endless money but imagine

00:14:21.800 you had 200 billion plus and growing and you could do whatever you want with it whatever you want with

00:14:28.820 it um short of just philanthropy and just like you know yeah i like that you said it like a dirty word

00:14:36.420 just helping people no i would do that would you be like bullington going out burning your money in

00:14:44.280 front of hobos yeah no i wouldn't if i had 200 plus billion i would be doing a fair bit of

00:14:51.920 philanthropy i would be i'll be doing a reverse george soros as well though in the west you'd

00:14:57.100 have to do like old school philanthropy like the carnegie type where you just build massive libraries

00:15:02.140 beautiful buildings in cities re-beautify cities in urban areas that's what i'd want to do

00:15:09.960 or wells everywhere like uh water aid is a quite i think quite a good charity uh where you go to all

00:15:17.900 sorts of rural places in the world where people sort of are forced to drink dirty water and get all

00:15:22.920 sorts of diseases and you just build them a decent well or pump so they can drink clean water just do

00:15:28.860 that hundreds of thousands of times all over the world um maybe it's selfish of me i prefer the idea of

00:15:35.320 big beautiful libraries well and libraries and the libraries um but then beyond that you could then

00:15:42.700 just finance any sort of pet project up to and including um a space agent a personal privately

00:15:48.480 owned space agency um it's quite cool that you know i do think it is cool that elon chose to do that

00:15:54.640 out of anything he could have done right um took sort of the big view the sort of zoomed out view

00:16:02.300 of human civilization and thought that now we do actually need to get off this rock

00:16:09.740 in case it's annihilated by something um i think after the 20th century i think has shown that that's

00:16:18.440 a fair concern before then maybe less so but the 20th century maybe i mean what if we just uh through

00:16:27.140 all just really a miscommunication there's a some sort of terrible miscommunication there's a

00:16:32.060 nuclear exchange like almost happened a number of times yeah exactly that did almost happen a couple

00:16:39.180 a few times it was only aliens that came down and saved us actually wasn't it you know that

00:16:43.980 oh yeah yeah yeah i think that's a dan segment isn't it it was the aliens came to the us silos and

00:16:51.500 stopped them from firing um again we just we don't need the volume this is just sort of a montage video

00:16:57.500 of sort of what spacex has achieved not just this year but oh yeah do you remember when they put that

00:17:02.940 tesla up in orbit do you remember that oh yeah yeah i do remember that

00:17:06.620 these are that's a falcon isn't it um um yeah so i suppose uh just to reiterate reiterate one more time

00:17:18.780 um um what spacex has achieved in this last calendar year has been uh really really remarkable and it's

00:17:27.660 set to go forward because for the for the mars shot they need a sort of a permanent semi-permanent

00:17:37.020 well permanent but semi-manned semi-permanently manned base on the moon they need probably some sort of

00:17:45.980 moon station something like the international space station but that orbits the moon

00:17:50.460 and definitely a bigger better earth station dock because you'd have to the idea is that they

00:18:01.180 that the final ship that goes to mars has to be refueled in orbit because it would just be too heavy

00:18:08.300 there's no way like what the apollo missions did was go straight from like alpine style go straight from

00:18:13.980 the base to the summit and back in one go that's why those massive saturn five rockets were so

00:18:20.460 monstrously big um well to go to mars you just can't really do that you have to take the thing up

00:18:28.060 and refuel it in orbit and anyway and for all sorts of different logistical reasons you just need loads

00:18:34.220 and those starships we saw you need loads of them like half a dozen or a dozen or two dozen you need to

00:18:40.780 be able to be relaunching them all the time like musk has said he wants to be able to be launching

00:18:47.420 a starship like every few days it needs to be a production line yeah absolutely a production line

00:18:53.340 and just get used to and be sort of perfect at launching them and then re-landing them

00:18:59.340 perfectly i suppose programming in the sort of um precision that it takes to do this will also go a

00:19:04.940 long way for the precision it would take to do an in-orbit refueling as well yeah because um i mean

00:19:10.860 it sounds to me a lot like uh sci-fi did you ever watch the film the martian yeah what the one with

00:19:15.660 mac damon yeah the one with mac damon didn't they have to do a thing in that where part way through the

00:19:19.580 trip they had to send out a rocket to refuel the the ship that they were on uh whilst they were in

00:19:25.260 space i don't really remember it that way it was a long time ago sorry but it sounds right yes

00:19:28.860 exactly right that is the science samson is nodding so yeah no that is the science of it

00:19:33.980 probably ridley scott's last decent film yeah god don't get me started on uh sir ridley um

00:19:43.980 so yeah i just think it's remarkable when the mechazilla caught that thing earlier this year

00:19:48.380 is sort of unbelievable to me anyway sort of can't quite believe your eyes like was that ai is that real

00:19:54.380 but it was real a gigantic thing okay so spacex long may it last and godspeed to them

00:20:04.060 merry christmas and a happy new year and what you should be doing is using your new lotus eaters

00:20:09.180 gift subscription that new feature we've got on the site to watch all of our premium content where

00:20:13.180 you've got lots of downtime over the holidays i hope you're having a nice time also check out our

00:20:17.740 twitter where we post links to everything that we're putting out thank you very much for watching

00:20:21.740 have a nice holiday and goodbye

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - December 29, 2024

Christmas Pre-Record ｜ SpaceX’s Year of Triumph

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