Reflecting on History and Hope

These days, it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn, every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agents ' identities, giving you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust. So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta, you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure ever y agent. Secure any agent. Okta Secures AI . Two, one , zero all that you're fund ing . From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro. This is the daily. Nearly six decades after the United States put men on the moon. As one small step per man , one biomet for many . It is returning to that mission. And today , a major step in that process will begin in Florida. My colleague Ken Chang is there and explains why it is that the United States wants to go back to the moon . It's Wednesday, April 1st. Ken, welcome back to the daily. Good to be here again. So we always turn to you when something big and meaningful is happening in space and something big and meaningful is happening today , weather permitting. So does the weather permit this big and meaningful thing to happen on Wednesday? Hopefully it looks good. The forecast says 80% chance that it's gonna go, but that means there's twenty percent chance that something doesn't quite clear up. Aaron Powell Right. Okay. Those are pretty good odds. So start by describing this mission. This is the first time that anyone's going close to the moon in more than fifty-three years. Well four astronauts are going to be blasting off from Candy Space Center in Florida. And they're going to head out to the moon . They're not going to land. They're just going to swing around the moon and then head straight back to Earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean ten days later. And why? I mean, as you've just hinted at , some fifty so years ago , astronauts from the United States did that very thing. So why are we doing it again? So the goal this time in this program, which is called Artemis, is to get people back to the moon, but also stay there this time. And so this program is broken up into pieces because it's really hard to land on the moon. You don't want to do all the hard things all at once. You want to break it up into pieces so you do step by step. Right. So Artemis One back in twenty twenty two. It sent this spacecraft to the moon and spent several weeks there, but without any people aboard. So that's sort of established that the basic machinery works. Now we're on the next step, which is Artemis 2. This time they're including the four people aboard, and that's critical because the main task of this mission is to test the life support systems. And it's impossible to test it without actual people producing carbon dioxide, producing water and poop and everything else that you need to clean up. Right. So that's this mission. Step one was can we get a an aircraftround the moon? Step two is can we get people on this craft to live? Yes, the biggest goal for the astronauts on this mission is to not die. Hmm. And if Artemis II succeeds, NASA can move on to the next steps, which will lead to attempts to land astronauts on the moon in a couple years. Okay, and at this point I may sound like a broken record, but why? I mean, what is the rationale for trying to do this thing that we did with great fanfare 50 something years ago. What NASA says is that this time we're not going to just go there and then forget about it. That this will be the first step to building a moon base to A moon base. Yeah. So that they're going to start putting a power plant, some habitats to allow people to stay there for days, weeks, months. Hmm. So at first, it will probably be a scientific research station, much like what we have in Antarctica near the South Pole. Beyond that, people will start thinking about how we can take advantage of the moon's resources. They might even start trying to mine valuable materials that could be found there, such as helium-3. Aaron Powell And what's helium-three? And why do we want to mine it on the moon? Aaron Powell So Helium 3 is a light version of helium. And it's quite rare on Earth. It's a little bit more prevalent on the moon's surface. And this is a version of helium that could be very useful in future fusion reactors. It's also thought to be useful for future quantum computers, which people are very excited about because it could be used for artificial intelligence, among other things. And healing through on Earth costs roughly three million dollars a pound. Wow. So if you can even get a little bit from the moon, you could probably make a profit. Right. So what lies in the future is space research and potentially some serious commercial mining. Yes, they're still speculative, but there are companies who are planning to do things along those lines already. Mm-hmm . And then there's scientific dream ers who want to do something like build a big radio telescope on the far side of the moon to listen to the universe. Listen to the universe. Yes. There's signals from just after the big bang billions of years ago. But it's hard to do that from Earth because we've basically made things very noisy with TV, cell phone calls, podcasts. But on the far side of the moon, you have the entire thickness of the moon blocking all that noise. Wow. So you can hear the rest of the universe. Wait, just so I understand. We can build a giant listening post on the far side of the moon where it's dead quiet , and we could hear the ancient sounds of really the dawn of time itself. Pretty much. These would be almost the echoes of the Big Bang. Wow . And the other thing they want to do is use the moon as a testing ground for technologies that they ultimately want to put on Mars. That would include nuclear power plants, habitats, life support systems, because many of the conditions on the moon are things you'll ultimately have to face on Mars as well. Aaron Ross Powell So basically would use the moon and its conditions and its gravity to figure out whether something we eventually want to have on Mars can first survive the moon. Yes. And then there's this romantic notion of humanity just spreading out into the solar system that we are no longer just confined to one planet, but we can live elsewhere as well. Someday on a moon colony. But on top of all that, there's also the geopolitical competition with China. And of course, we want to do all this before they do. Right. If we are to be a multiplanet species, Americans would like to be the first. People there first are the ones who make the rules of how space commerce is conducted, will have the prime locations on the moon, and control the resources and so on. So being first means being the one who's in charge. Ken, what you have just laid out is a tremendous vision for the future, and all of it rests on the shoulders of four astronauts who are going to be blasting off True, but that's probably not what is going to be on their minds. Remember, their first job is staying alive. If they don't do that, then all these dreams are pushed even farther into the future We'll be right back . This podcast is supported by the American Petroleum Institute. Energy is all around. Today, America's natural gas and oil keeps the country moving, growing, and building, and makes every day a little easier . But energy demand is growing, and the infrastructure built today will help secure a more affordable, reliable future with enough energy to go around. When America builds , America wins. These days it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn, every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agent's identities, giving you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust. So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise. With Okta, you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent. Secure any agent. Okta secures AI. I'm opening up cross play. I've been playing against Dan, my colleague at the New York Times. Kat's played another move. Ugh, she played stoop for 36 points. I've got a Z, which is 10 points. I'm guessing tanga is not a word. Let's see. Tanga is a word. Oh . Dan Dan played his last turn. Let's see who won. It's so close. But I did win. Crossplay, the first two-player word game from New York Times games. Download it for free today. It's devastating when you see a game that you could have won . Ken, can you introduce us to these four astronauts who have all this responsibility on their shoulders and describe the logistics of this 10-day mission they're embarking on from their perspective. Yes. Um the commander is Reed Weissman We just need to go execute this mission and bring a little bit of each of our own personalities in. We don't need to be able to former fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy. He served in the Middle East on two deployments . And he was the head of the Astronaut office before he stepped down, which allowed him to be assigned to the moon mission. The far side and back. And there's also a point in detail about him. His wife died a few years ago. Him going to Moon means leaving his daughters behind for 10 days. Well. And so I hope there's a piece of it that extends beyond human space flight as well. Victor Glover, he's also a former naval aviator. Ten years from now, when the next challenging thing happens, maybe we can look back on this and go, hey guys, remember we did that? We we had our own wind shot, remember? And it was global, it was international, and we did it together. He was the first black man to serve and extended stay on the space station, and now he'll be the first black man to go to the moon. Next is Chr istina Koch. None of us can be as big as what we're asked to do, but we can contribute the part and bring our best selves and come together to do it. She's an electrical engineer by training. And she actually worked on NASA missions on the ground before she was selected by NASA to become an astronaut. And she now holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by women of 328 days. So that's almost a full year. All these um all these things that we talk about first are really not about any one individual's accomplishment, but more about celebrating where we are at . And finally, there's Jeremy Hansen. He's the Canadian on the crew. You can't fix all the problems in the world, but you can influence uh the little bit around you. It'll be the first time that a non -American has gone to deep space. We don't know the ripple effects of what we're about to do, but we can do it well to best of our ability and have joy while we're doing it and hopefully that will make a small contribution. And he has a sense of humor about this. He said if something goes wrong on this mission, then NASA can blame Canada. Okay, so that is the crew. Talk to us about their next ten days as they're going to experience it the four of them together So they'll have a very long day before launch, even. They'll wake up eight hours before launch. They have to get into their spacesuits. They'll be driven out to a launch pad. They'll go up this huge tower and enter their spacecraft. It's known as Orion. Then they'll be sitting there for about four hours until the countdown clock gets to zero. And eight minutes later , they'll be in space. Wow. And that first day in space will also be quite busy. They won't immediately go to the moon. In fact, what they'll do is make two looping orbits around Earth. And the reason they're doing that is they want to take this time to check out every little system on the spacecraft to make sure it's working before they make the decision to fire the engines to send them off to the moon. Basically a couple of test flights. Right. So after day two, when they fire the engines to head to the moon, the moon is close to a quarter million miles from Earth. So it takes a while to get there. Basically four days. And they'll be spending the all this time in this capsule, which has about as much space as two minivans. Two minivans? It's actually a little bit more than it'd be on Earth because you get to float around. So you can use all the space above you. It's not quite as crowded as it would be if you were driving cross country. Right. So on day six is the big event . This is when they're closest to the moon. And they're not super close. So the way NASA describes it, the moon will appear about the size of a basketball held at arm's length. And the moon's gravity will basically pull them around the moon and they'll go behind the moon. So that means they'll lose all radio communication with Earth for about forty minutes. And we won't know what's going on until they emerge on the other side. And during this time they'll also be making all these observations of the far side, the moon. Hm. Such as So what's really interesting is that they will be seeing parts of the far side of the moon that no human eyes have seen before. And that's because the last time an astronaut passed over the far side of the moon, it was a different time of day and those areas were in darkness. So that's fascinating. These astronauts, because there will be light , will cast their eyes on parts of the moon that no human being has ever seen before in actual daylight. Correct. On the moon there's no street light. So the last time an astronaut passed over these parts, it was completely dark. So can as these astronauts are moving along the far side of the moon. You had said that the moon's gravity was going to be holding them down. How much power will they have to actually direct the craft that they're in during this period? The trajectory that they're on, NASA design ed it specifically that they actually don't need to use the engines to bring them back to Earth. It's going along a path that the gravity of the moon basically is gonna sling them around and throw them right back toward Earth without them doing much of anything. So in a sense, they're kind of powerless to do much themselves. They're at the mercy of the moon's gravitational push and pull. Which is a good thing because it's much easier to be headed back to Earth than into deep space where who knows where you would end up. Right. So assuming this gravitational slingshot system brings these four astronauts safely home, what happens? So once they complete their lunar flyby , they have to spend another three days just sitting around waiting to get back to Earth. This is probably the boring part of the trip. It's already there yet . On the very last day, Earth's gravity is going to be pulling them around Earth and they'll be on a path to re-enter the atmosphere and they'll splash down in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego . They'll be plucked out of the ocean, taken to a ship and then flown back to shore where they'll be checked out by doctors. And then they'll get to fly back to Houston. And that will be the end of Artemis II. And assuming that the astronauts leave this process in tipto-p shape, which we of course hope they do. My sense is that this is going to be a really proud moment for NASA because from everything I've taken from your reporting in the lead up to Artemis II, it's really a NASA production through and through, and not what we think of when we think of the modern space system, where things kind of get divided up between NASA and these well-known private companies , Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk. This is old school NASA where NASA designed and operated the various spacecraft. And it'll be a triumph for them in that the old ways of doing things succeeded. But on the very next mission, Artemis III , the new space companies, SpaceX , run by Elon Musk , and Blue Origin started by Jeff Bezos, they become involved because SpaceX and Blue Origin are producing the lunar landers that are eventually going to take astronauts Got it. So in these next phases, these big private companies are going to be providing some of the really key equipment that will allow NASA to land on the moon. So in that sense, Artemis two is kind of the end of an era ? In sense, yes. This expectation is this will be the last big NASA spacecraft and rockets and in the future there will be much more work from private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. You know, can just to end this conversation, it's pretty hard to ignore the context of when Artemis II is happening right now. We're in the middle of a war , and it's big and it's controversial, and it has had ripple effects across the entire world. And I think of space exploration as at its best this big unifying experience for the whole world. And this mission comes at a moment that's not so unifying. But if you think back to nineteen sixties when we went to the moon for the first time , that was a turbulent era. Especially the year 196 8 . Martin Luther King was assassinated. Robert Kennedy was assassinated. The country was mired in the Vietnam War. The Democratic Convention in Chicago was beset by riots . It was a very unsettled time in the United States. And at the end of that year, December of 1915 The engines are arms. Four, three, two , one , zero . We have commit. We have Apollo eight launch. Oh there's the rumble in our building. And that was the equivalent of Artemis 2. It's a beautiful takeoff so far . It was the first launch of the mighty Saturn V rocket that NASA used then with people aboard. And the three astrona uts on Apollo eight, they went to the moon or visit the moon and on Christmas Eve. And uh for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send you . As they were in orbit around the moon. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth The three Ashn ots took turns reading Genesis from the Bible. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, Let there be light and there was light and it was such a calming hopeful moment that some people even talked about how that mission saved nineteen sixty-eight. So we don't know what the four astronauts on Artemis two are planning to say as they are coming back from the moon . But still, just the imagery that's gonna come back of them see ing Earth from a quarter million miles away could just provide a moment of calm that makes us realize we are still all part of the same planet. And perhaps it'll just offer a note of hope that maybe it won't be as turbulent as it seems right now . Okay . Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. I hope it goes off perfectly later today. Me too . And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters called East Sea . Because God saw that it was good . And from the crew of Apollo 8 , we close with good night, good luck, a very Christmas , and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth We'll be right back