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May 12, 2024 - Info Warrior - Jason Bermas
24:16
NASA Insider Discusses A Red Moon Rising
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And we are back with Greg Autry.
Greg, you are the author of Red Moon Rising.
Let's talk about it.
China obviously becoming more than just an economic powerhouse.
They are now a military powerhouse.
And by the numbers, they outnumber us three to four to one at this point and are growing They're also sitting down with other power players and now discussing Middle Eastern policy.
So what road do we need to take to really, I would say, maintain our dominance?
Well, in the space world, we need to continue to make the investments in our Public, private, and military space sectors that were initiated during the first Trump administration.
The good news is the Biden team hasn't undone any of that, but we really need an aggressive reboot to keep up with China's continuing expansion on all three of those fronts.
And of course, their partnership with Russia and a variety of other bad actors in what I like to call the dark side of space.
So let's talk about, you know, this is really actually an interesting conversation for me because I'm a big NASA buff.
You know, I follow a lot of the stuff that the mainstream doesn't.
I'm not really that interested in moon launches or Artemis, but I am kind of interested in the politics of space and things like the ISS, where there are these group projects.
Obviously, Russia, China, the United States, a part of that.
Recently, We've switched over to SpaceX to put our astronauts up there, but for a very long time, they were being launched out of Kazakhstan.
We have the militarization of space, which obviously you're alluding to in this book, and that really began at least publicly on our end with the Star Wars program.
Now, prior to Ukraine and Russia, You actually had Elon Musk sparring with the head of their space department, who was talking about Russia's capability of weapons in space that would later be talked about yet again just a few months ago.
So what is going on up there?
You know, because obviously there are some sort of alliances.
I would imagine that space is also somewhat militarized, and there are obviously competing factions, China now being one of them.
Yeah. All right. So just to be clear, we are partners in the International Space Station with Russia, but China has no role by law and NASA is not allowed to work with China at all and does not do so.
Regarding the militarization, we cover the history in the book quite a bit.
And, you know, to be clear, the first space launch was done by the Nazi Germany's in 1942 when the Russians launched Sputnik in 57.
It was a military project on a modified ICBM. All the original American astronauts were Military test pilots.
And so this militarization has already existed.
The Russians actually put armor men, a cannon, an automatic cannon on one of their first space stations.
So this is nothing new.
The high ground is always something the military is looking for.
The Chinese understand that America has had an advantage on the battlefield.
For quite a while, because of owning that high ground, we were able to basically have a 10 to 1 advantage over anybody that we fought with.
And to a great extent, it was better communications, better intelligence from imaging and geolocation systems.
There's a lot going on in low Earth orbit, as you noted.
I do think the Moon is the important thing that's coming up, which is why we give the title of this and Artemis is super, super critical to maintaining our superiority.
Space Force understands that and they're beginning to talk about a human lunar base run by potentially the Space Force.
So, you know, Space Force also seems to be an extension of programs that were already there via the Air Force.
You brought it all the way back to Sputnik and, you know, basically it was us putting satellites That brought us ARPA and then DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency.
I would also argue that, you know, SpaceX's launches are mostly of Starlink satellites,
which are becoming this kind of artificial communication skin around the planet.
But also with that militarized space program, they launched DARPA's Blackjack program.
And just a couple of months ago, for instance, it was reported by the Associated Press that
Elon Musk is supposedly going to be building the new network of spy satellites for the
Defense Department.
So how does that align against China?
Are they developing a similar system that is competing with that?
Or will they, I guess, be worked into that information network?
Yeah, first of all, anything we do, they will copy.
You can count on it.
So you'll see a PowerPoint or a video shortly after we do anything announcing whatever their new initiative is.
And often it's, you know, a direct CGI copy of whatever SpaceX or the US government has done.
So that is no surprise.
It is, of course, important that we have a dedicated space-focused Command structure managing our military space assets, which is why President Trump decided to create Space Force, why the Biden administration has continued to support it.
Air Force is big, unwieldy.
You can't get to the top of Air Force without being a fighter pilot, which means you're focused on investments in the F-35 and not investments in space.
Air Force procurement is notoriously inefficient, to use the most polite word.
And so getting a nimbler, space-led Group is critical to success.
And you're right about the commercial sector, particularly Musk, because he's been so successful.
He's the go-to vendor now for both NASA and the US military if they want something done fast and cheap, and he delivers.
So what about other players in that arena?
Because you also have Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' project.
It seems like NASA has kind of moved away from the Boeings as much or even the Lockheed Martins and gone to these type of companies.
But at the same time, I would also imagine that they have classified technology that we're not seeing that is also being deployed and probably worked underground with these contractors.
So what's the real threat with China?
Where are they? Because you talked about their carbon copies.
But where are they outdoing us?
Or what are the projects that seem to be threatening our dominance in space?
So NASA doesn't have any really secret projects that are undercover.
DoD clearly does. And to be fair, Boeing's X-37 spy plane is one of the coolest things out there.
It's an orbital space plane that can spin Years in space and do some amazing things.
Where China's beating us, hypersonics, absolutely very clearly.
They are aggressively moving to lunar resource extraction.
They launched a new mission on Friday, Chang'e 6, which will land near the resource-rich South Pole of the Moon.
Everybody talks about it being on the far side.
That's not nearly as important is the fact that it's near the South Pole where the best resources on the Moon are.
They intend to deliver two kilogram sample return back to us.
That's interesting because the U.S. and other countries have tried to land lunar landers recently, and success has been very mixed.
We're trying to get our Mars sample return program going, and we're clearly having issues with that program.
So it is interesting to see China move aggressively, landing on the moon repeatedly successfully, planning a large sample return.
These are areas where they are challenging our dominance.
We're going to take a quick break. We're going to come back.
We're going to talk more space, China, the United States, and more.
You're not going to want to miss it. More Making Sense of the Madness after this.
And we are back with Greg Autry.
Greg, what are some of the things that we need to do right now?
What are some of the programs that need to be funded?
And how do we counteract what China's doing in hypersonics?
Yeah. Well, there's a whole list of things, which is why we wrote a book.
The things that concern me most are making sure we get access to the lunar resources because they are limited and they are highly constrained and concentrated in specific areas.
It isn't that we're going to be mining them next year or five years from now, but the The territory will essentially be tied up by whoever puts their robotic probes down there and their people down there first in the right areas.
That's super critical. On the hypersonics, this is something everybody's seen coming.
The military has been talking about it for a long time.
These are missiles that we won't be able to defend against using our current technologies that are aimed at Ballistic trajectory missiles that go way high up and come down in a nice predictable arc.
These are things that will threaten our aircraft carriers and other vessels in the Western Pacific where China wants to push us out so they can have their way with Taiwan and eventually Korea and Japan.
We've got to Invest both in competitive hypersonics and in defense systems, particularly high energy weapon systems that can defeat that.
And that could be satellite-based and ground-based laser systems that could target hypersonics.
And you just talked about satellite-based laser systems.
That was kind of the idea of Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative back in the 80s, labeled Star Wars.
Are you telling me that we don't have some kind of extension of Star Wars right now?
Because again, I am a NASA buff.
One of the people that I have followed for many years, he recently retired.
He was the chief scientist at NASA for many years, Dennis Bushnell.
For instance, I remember in 2018, he was kind of put on the spot around the satellite systems and the way that they were moving and competing.
He said, I can't talk about it, no comment.
He referred that he also...
Talks to the national security and defense department agencies.
So are you telling me that those projects just are not good enough and that they really haven't expanded or maybe they didn't work in the first place?
Well, I can't comment on any classified programs.
I will say that amateur observers have noted that there are satellites in even in the database that the US Space Force provides to the public that are listed as You know, inoperative that appear to be maneuvering.
We don't know who they belong to or what they do, so that's interesting.
But there's not enough up there to suggest that anybody has an SDI defense shield working.
You know, we didn't deploy that.
Reagan proposed it. It actually is credited with helping bring down the Soviet Union.
When they looked at America's dominant space capabilities and saw that proposed, you know, Gorbachev felt that he had to come to the table.
But no, we never built it, and it's I honestly believe we probably couldn't have built it for software and computing reasons at the time.
We could build it now and there might be a very good reason to do so, but it's not hiding up there protecting you.
Alright, well, I guess I gotta take your word for it.
So let's talk about the laser weaponry that you were kind of talking about as well.
A lot of people out there talk about directed energy weapons.
We've seen some displays from aircraft carrier over the years shooting these concentrated beams of energy.
How sophisticated are these weapons and then how likely are they to be deployed in space?
In other words, where is the technology that they're able to do so?
Because obviously when they're on an aircraft carrier, they're anchored to something, they're more easily controlled, they're not in orbit, etc.
And that has to add an extra layer of sophistication, correct?
Yeah, and the most important thing is they've got a big power source sitting there on a nuclear aircraft carrier.
So you really want a nuclear power source on these, which is why that's becoming an interesting topic in space.
You might have noted that there was a leak a few months ago that Russia was launching a nuclear-powered weapons system into space, and it was all very vague about what that was.
The fact of the matter is the development of nuclear power and nuclear propulsion in space is the next big area of competition and something the US needs to reinvest in.
We had a lot going on in the 60s in that regard, and then it kind of petered out in the 70s.
So again, I'm a huge buff on all of these types of technologies, and you just talked about basically nuclear-driven devices in space.
We've seen the impossible engine come out over the last decade, or at least them showing us that.
We've also seen the rise of CubeSats.
You know, those are now really everywhere because the microchip technology is so plentiful and have been for a long time.
But then you also have fully 3D printed rockets, satellites, and devices.
So what are the next big things we're going to see deployed in space, at least that we can talk about?
Yeah, you've hit some good ones there.
So 3D printing of rockets is exciting.
There's a company called Relativity Space, where a couple of students that I mentored at USC, Jordan Noonan and Tim Ellis founded, and they launched into space an almost fully 3D printed rocket.
You're going to see 3D printing in space of tools and components that are needed in space and eventually of entire structures on the surface of the Moon or Mars or in orbit.
So that's an exciting technological place to be.
And there's real benefits to people on Earth as well when we begin to do manufacturing in space because there are things you can do in space you can't do in gravity.
And this includes the 3D printing of organoids and highly Sophisticated computing chips, three-dimensional silicone structures that could beat anything we have now in the chip world.
First of all, for the audience, what is an organoid?
And again, I dork out.
I actually watch the NASA channel all the time.
One of the things that I kind of took note of is some of the experiments on the ISS, because you are in this low gravity arena, they're doing experimentation with things like hydrogels.
Which are supposedly going to be the next step in types of medication, bio-nanotechnology, to be utilized on Earth.
So again, going back to the organoid question, what are those?
And then what is the benefit of doing this type of experimentation, especially in that bio-nano arena in low Earth orbit?
Right. So when you try to do a lot of things on Earth that you would like to do chemically, structurally or biologically, gravity interferes.
If you needed a new liver, you can wait for somebody to die or the Chinese to knock off a Falun Gong member and sell you their liver.
But you're going to get a liver that's not a perfect match.
You're going to have to be on immunosuppression drugs your whole life.
That's expensive. We can take your stem cells today out of your blood.
Differentiate them and make them become liver cells.
But when we try to grow you a new liver in a petri dish, you get a liver pancake.
It's a two-dimensional structure.
It's been demonstrated in space and there are experiments going forward to actually move this to a production manufacturing state that when we grow those stem cells in space, they grow orders of magnitude quicker because they're in a three-dimensional structure where the nutrients flow more efficiently to all the cells.
And they can actually begin to form what we call organoids or small organs with vascularization so that they have the veins and arteries that are needed for those to become implantable.
So eventually we'll be able to take your cells up, grow your liver, put it in you.
You'll never need the immunosuppressant drugs.
It saves, honestly, the insurance and government millions of dollars over your lifetime, keeping you healthy.
So it's a solution just around the corner, frankly, that will be exciting.
And again, with the silicon structures, with metal alloys, metal foams, the gels you've mentioned, there's all sorts of things that you can make in microgravity that you can't make on Earth.
We've got to take one last break.
We're probably going to have about six minutes left when we come back.
I want to ask you about that organ printing through stem cell material because we have something similar here on Earth that just got passed by the FDA via United Therapeutics in a xenotransplantation.
I want to know how that stacks up.
We're going to ask that question and more final segment of Making Sense of the Madness after this.
And we are back with Greg Autry.
And Greg, before the break, you were talking about stem cell technology and essentially being able to create organs that we could then use on Earth.
Now, the competing technology, a lot of people don't know about it, but it has just gotten FDA approval through United Therapeutics.
How does it stack up?
Because obviously with this, they're implanting or growing these things in pigs.
You're not doing that in space.
You're putting it in some kind of biological atmosphere.
And it almost seems, at least from what I understand, kind of the antithesis or the opposite of what happens to human beings in space in long time periods.
For instance, their muscles seem to decelerate.
It is harder for them to survive.
I forget what Scott's last name was, but he spent more than six months out there.
Yeah, he was pretty banged up when he got back.
We don't really have that much research of people spending long time periods in there.
So how is it, on one end, being in space for too long could be hazardous to biological life, yet through technology you're creating three-dimensional biological life that is better than possibly what we can do here on Earth?
Yeah. Well, that's a lot there.
But yeah, human beings are not designed to survive in microgravity for long periods of time.
And we do have a lot of good data on that because we've been doing it for more than 50 years.
What we don't have is partial gravity.
So we don't know what being on the moon or being on Mars is like.
This might be just enough gravity to To keep everything running in order and keep your muscle development and bones from decaying and relieve a lot of the pain and stress that particularly older people or people with disabilities have.
So it might be a good place to be.
We don't know that yet.
One of the things NASA should be doing is considering developing a rotational A space station that can simulate different levels of gravity by changing its centrifugal force.
That would be interesting.
Also seeing the development of organisms in those states.
Regarding the organ development in microgravity, it appears to be very promising.
There are certainly people trying other things on Earth by printing Uh, organs into plastic 3D scaffolds, uh, for instance, that doesn't produce the same growth rates that you get, uh, in microgravity.
Uh, you mentioned, I believe, uh, trying to grow, uh, specific human organs inside of pigs.
Uh, you have immunosuppressant issues there where the pigs don't want that organ, but it'll be really interesting to see how those, those trials, uh, uh, play out.
And, you know, as with any other technology, uh, it's, it's best to, uh, Try a number of different routes and see what works out, but there are a lot of promising reasons to invest in microgravity manufacturing.
Getting back to the book, I guess the big question is, what if China does beat us?
What if five, ten years from now we just can't compete and they are dominant in space?
What does that look like for us in the world?
Yeah, I was asked that specific question when I was testifying to the U.S. Congress in December to the House Natural Resources Committee.
And my answer was that that's an existential question.
When you control the high ground, territory underneath it.
So if China takes space or we don't take it seriously and we let them, you know, it's game over.
Basically, the United States will be relegated to A subservient status to whatever the Chinese Communist Party wants us to do.
So basically what you're saying is, you know, right now I think there's a lot of justified hype around artificial intelligence and its possible dangers and uses through nation states, etc.
But at the end of the day, it really is the high ground and it is the technology in space that's going to decide who the military superpower of the world is.
Yeah, and history doesn't speak well about countries that turned away from technological investment or turned away from paying attention to external threats and decided to just deal with their own social problems.
That has never worked out well for anybody and no reason to believe it would work out well in the future.
Where does Russia play into all this?
Because obviously again, we talked about kind of that alliance
and really Russia was kicking our butts prior to the Apollo missions.
They had done more in space than any other nation.
You also mentioned the fact that they were talking about these possible nuclear deployments in the last couple
of months as well.
But at the same time, again, it's Musk's Starlink network that are the communication systems for this war via Ukraine
and Russia.
It is what the Ghost and Sidewinder drones are hacking into.
So obviously Russia hasn't been able to stop that.
Yeah. If you look behind me, I've got a picture of Yuri Gagarin on the wall, actually.
I'm a big admirer of what the Soviets did in space, even if I despise their government, right?
It's sad to see the state that the Russian space program, particularly on the civil side, has fallen into.
So they used to do great exploration and science.
In the last few years, they've been nothing but a cash cow trying to generate some revenue for Russia.
Elon Musk has basically destroyed that cash cow by Launching cheaper than the Russians can launch and providing a much better human spaceflight system than Soyuz, they don't really have a reason to exist.
These anti-sat tests they've done recently and the threat of deploying a nuclear anti-satellite system in space are the desperate acts of a declining empire as far as space is concerned.
Sad to see, but they're basically China's junior partner right now, and I don't see a turnaround.
They've lost their way.
They've had a brain drain problem.
Russian space scientists want to get the heck out before they get handed an AK-47 and sent to the front in the Ukraine.
It's not a good thing.
Greg Autry, thank you so much for joining us.
I had a great time talking to you.
You know, again, this is an issue that I think more people should wise up to because the space race is a real one.
Folks, that issue is certainly not left or right, and neither am I. It's always about right and wrong.
I want to thank you for joining me right here Monday through Friday on Patriot.tv, where the truth lives.
I absolutely love you guys.
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