Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / The Science Fiction Universe of "Orbital Cloud"

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The Science Fiction Universe of "Orbital Cloud" · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Kelly, are you a lottery ticket purchaser?
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: No, as a person who thinks a lot about statistics
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: and probability, I am not a lottery ticket purchaser.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Well, you just got to bet on the high variants events.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: But let's say that you win a billion dollars someday.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: What are you going to do with your windfall? Have
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: you thought about that?
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: My gosh, Well, I'd like to think that I'd like
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: work on the world hunger problem, so maybe i'd do
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: something like that. But also I would make a really
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: awesome lab for myself, probably probably put it into science.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: What would you do?
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I might start my own university where students can go
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: for free and faculty don't have to apply for grants.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Whoa, And then I encourage them to hire me because
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: this university you're talking about sounds fantastic and I would
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: like to work there.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: What I definitely wouldn't do is spend any of that
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: money sending myself to space.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: Really, you don't want to go to space.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I have zero interest in going to space. How much
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: money would you spend on a ticket to space coming?
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't know. We're on the same page, but I
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: still seems way too dangerous right now for my taste.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Let's just stay here on Earth and spend our billion
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: dollars on science.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds great.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Hi.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: UC Irvine, and I am terrified of fast moving vehicles.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: I'm Kelly Wiener Smith, and I'm a parasitologist with Rice University,
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: and I am also sort of petrified of fast moving vehicles,
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: but also maybe in particular, fast moving vehicles that have
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: a high probability of.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Explodingly tested my faith in science and engineering because A
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: took a helicopter flight for the first time last week.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: WHOA, how did you get that opportunity?
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: My daughter and I were on a road trip around
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the West Coast and we took a chopper ride through
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon, which was pretty spectacular.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: That does sound awesome, But are you saying you were
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: scared or was it moving slow enough that it wasn't scary.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I was terrified. There's so much angular momentum in that thing,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: you know, some little thing goes wrong, it just pulls
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: itself apart. And my daughter was scared. She thought, is
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: this thing really safe? And I know the numbers, I
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: know the statistics. It's much safer to get in the
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: helicopter than it was to drive to the helicopter. But
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: still it was terrifying, and so I had to reassure her,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: even though inside I was also terrified.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Well, it's also you know, the unknown things that could
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: happen that maybe you're not expecting, which is sort of
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: what makes the book that we are going to talk
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: about today, you know, makes Base Treble sound even more petrifying.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: And so welcome to the podcast. Daniel Le Jorge explained
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: The Universe, a production of iHeartRadio, in which we explore
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: everything that can and does happen in our universe, how
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: things come apart, how things come together, how everything works.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: We talk about black holes, we talk about white holes,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: we talk about galaxies, we talk about particles. We talk
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: about everything that happens in the universe, and sometimes we
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: talk about things that happen in fictional universes. My friend
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: and co host Jorge can't be with us today, but
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: I'm very happy to have Kelly, our hosts on these
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: science fiction episodes, joining us today. Kelly, thanks very much,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: So much for having me. I love every time you
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: email me and you're like, hey, how about we read
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: a science fiction book for work? And I'm like, this
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: is this My life is the best.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Science fiction is so much fun to read. You know,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: as a scientist, you spend all of your days struggling
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: against the boundaries of the laws of physics. It's so
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: much fun to have creative people also contributing, you know,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: thinking about other ways universes could be, what the laws
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: of physics might be, or setting stories in our universe
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: and figuring out like how to solve problems. I just
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: love the connection between the creativity of writing science fiction
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and the creativity of actually exploring our universe.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and this book was particularly exciting because it's set
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: almost essentially in our time exactly, and the world is
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: very similar to our world, and so it's interesting to
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: think about, well, it's just a few things were different,
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: what might our world be like? And so yeah, it's
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: a really fun book to think about.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: I love when science fiction tells us about how we
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: could live, how we might live, and also explores like,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: you know, the consequences of technology and how it can
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: affect and change people's lives. You know, we can lift
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: up one nation to make it more powerful. It can
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: give access to people who were excluded from the mainstream.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Technology really can completely revolutionize our society, and I love
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: seeing science fiction writers try to anticipate that and to
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: explore that.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: And that's absolutely what this book does. And what book
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: did we read for today's episode, Daniel.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: And so On today's episode, we're going to be talking
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: about the science fiction universe of Orbital Cloud by Tayo Fuji.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: This is a really fun book that takes place in
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: the near future. Kelly and I both read this book
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: and encourage you to pick it up. It's a lot
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: of fun and it's a really impressive display of like
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: the technical mastery of the author. It's like very detailed,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: very specific. A lot of the plot points really rely
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: on like understanding the science and how things actually work.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: But I feel like often when you get a book
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: that's really good about the science, sometimes you don't get
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: characters that are good. Also. There's like, you know, you
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: can be good at the engineering, but maybe you're not
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: also good at describing people. And this book, I think
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: does a really nice job of having like an interesting plot,
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: interesting characters, and solid science. I was personally very impressed
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: with his breath.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I was curious what your thoughts were about it, especially
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: like the space international law and all the treaties and
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: the intrigue and all that stuff. But first let's tell
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: our listeners a little bit about what this book is about.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: It was published originally in Japanese and then translated a
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: few years later, and in my mind, it's something like
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: a space spy techno thriller. You know, you have countries
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: battling against each other in space, but you know, it's
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: not like a shooting war. It's more like, you know,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: information and maneuvering. I got some sort of like Hunt
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: for Red October vibes. You know, it's like political and
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: it's espionage and all sorts of stuff. How did you
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: see the book?
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: Well, so, first of all, I should admit that I've
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: never seen Hunt for Red October, and I regret that
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: like every couple months because I feel like it gets
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: referenced all the time and I'm like, oh, yeah, I
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: got to watch that. But yeah, no, I got those
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: vibes too, although although I'll say that it like, yes,
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: there was the espionage web aspect of it, but you know,
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: there were also these very real weapons that were up
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: in space too, and so yeah, I had some of
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: that also, But I'll watch Hunt for Red October, so
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: the next time it gets brought up, I'm on the ball.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know how you can exist in the nerd
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: done without having seen that movie.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: When I've spent two years studying Russian and I'm interested
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: in Soviet history, and so it comes up a lot
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: because it's US versus the Soviets in that right, Yeah,
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: like every movie back then.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: So what is this book about. It takes place over
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: a few days in twenty twenty, and it involves a
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: lot of sort of amateur characters people watching the sky.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: There's a guy who runs a meteor predicting website who's
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: following something in space and notices something strange happening in
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: the trajectory of an object that was launched by North Korea.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: So if a lot of different characters all around the
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: world sort of seeing things happening in space and trying
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: to put together what's going on.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they all actually for the most part, work together,
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: which I hope is what would happen, but I'm not
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: always so optimistic. There's also a rich dude who is
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: doing a stunt trip to his orbital hotel and he's
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: bringing his daughter with him, and like, you know, you
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: read it for the first time, or you start reading
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: the book and you think to yourself, oh, is this
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: supposed to be Elon Musk, And then it turns out
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: he made his millions from a company that is very
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: clearly meant to be PayPal in fiction or in this
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: fictional universe, and you're like, Okay, I get this is
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: definitely supposed to be Elon Musk. So there's an Elon
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: Musk character who is going to space in his orbital
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: hotel for the first time, and as a big stunt,
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: like I guess, show how safe it is, he takes
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: his daughter with him.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm exactly. But then it turns out maybe space
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: isn't so safe because these amateurs watching the sky notice
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: that this object that North Korea launched has a sort
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: of strange trajectory. It's not really following like your typical
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: gravitational trajectory. It's sort of maneuvering in space in a
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: way that surprises everybody. And suddenly people panic, like, hold on,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: is this some sort of new weapon? Have the North
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Koreans developed this thing called the rod from God that
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: can you know, drop payloads from space, or maybe they're
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: like targeting this orbital hotel that the Elon Musk character
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: has built. So all of a sudden there's this sort
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: of change in the power balance in space. People think, oh,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: this is new technology. Maybe now we are no longer safe,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: whereas a moment ago we thought of ourselves as safe.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I think that's really interesting seeing how the explores the
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: sort of power dynamics and how very quickly things can
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: change with new technology.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: And absolutely if some country not only got the power
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: to knock out you know, the International Space Station, the
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: Chinese Space station that's up there any touris stuff, but
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: also all of our satellites that we use for GPS
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: or communication or something, that would be an incredible power
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: if they were willing to wield it for evil purposes,
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: and it would of course break all sorts of international law.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: But yes, you could certainly cripple a country like the
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: US if you suddenly took out all of our satellites,
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: we'd be in trouble. And so now that we've got
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: you all petrified of the idea that your cell phone's
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: not going to work anymore, or your credit card, how
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: plausible is the science here? Daniel could something like this happen.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: So this is a really fun book because Wow, did
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: the author do their homework? Oh my gosh. It's so
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: clear that it was really important to him that every
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: element of this book be plausible. I think he wanted
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the characters to be really living within the confines of science.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: And you know his background is he he is an engineer,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: and so I think he's trying to share sort of
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: that joy of solving puzzles within these rules. You know,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: you can't just break the rules and say I'm going
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: to magic away this problem, and so in the book,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: the characters can't magic away stuff. So there's a lot
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: of really interesting science in this book, includes like computer
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: science and space technology and physics. One of the espionage
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: bits in this story involves changing how automatic translation engines
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: will translate like Korean into English, so that it changes
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: what people hear when they're watching a speech. So you're
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: watching a speech by the dictator of North Korea, for example,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: and you're relying on this automatic translation. You can manipulate
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: what people here if you manipulate also these translation engines.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: And I thought that was really fascinating, a very clever
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and sort of troubling idea.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: I agree it was both petrifying and clever and troubling.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: And has anything like this ever happened before or did
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: he come up with this?
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: It's a totally plausible idea because the way a lot
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: of these translation engines work is they just sort of
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: like scrape the webrin from you want to know how
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: to translate between English and Korean. You don't like sit
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: down with a bunch of experts who teach your computer
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: how to do it. You just get a bunch of
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: examples and you just learn the mapping. So you need
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: pages that are written in one language and in the
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: other language, and the computer learns between them. And so
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: just as chat GPT is learning from the web, they
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: just like s great text from the Internet. So they
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: rely on the fact that it's written by humans and
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: it's correct, and then they learn that mapping. And so
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: if you pollute that sample, if you insert a bunch
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: of new stuff into the web that has incorrect translations
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: that you want to insert into like English Korean translators,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: then that's totally possible. You would absolutely do that because
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: the assumption they're making when they're doing this training, is
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: that all the human text out there is basically correct.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: None of it's like maliciously incorrectly written. And there actually
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: is a sort of hilarious and tragic example of incorrect
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: text being pumped into you know, the sort of textosphere,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: which is a few years ago they discover that there
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: was one guy writing a bunch of articles in the
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Scots language. Right, you know, Scottish people part of the UK,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: you know, speak English obviously, but they also have their
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: local dialect Scots, which is related to English but not identical.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: And there was some American teenager, probably this kid watched
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: too many Austin Powers movies in which there's you know,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: some Scottish characters, et cetera, and he just thought, oh,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I'm going to write a bunch of articles in Wikipedia
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: in the Scots language. But he didn't know Scots, and
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: so he just wrote them sort of as like English
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: written in a Scottish accent, but he wrote like gibberish
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: and nonsense and just like made up a bunch of stuff.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, But and so like how many how
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: many articles did he write? Like how committed was he
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: to this endeavor?
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: For being something that was not malicious, It was really
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: impressively deep. He wrote twenty three thousand articles. About a
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: third of the entire Scots Wikipedia at the time was
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: created by this one guy who didn't speak Scotts. You
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: just like writing in a joking accent.
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: This is why teenagers should not be allowed to have
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: free time. They don't do good things with it.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: There was an interview with a professor who's like an
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: expert in the Scots language, and he said, quote, this
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: is gonna sound incredibly hyperbolic and hysterical, but I think
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: this person has possibly done more damage to the Scot's
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: language than anyone else in history.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, worse than mel what was it, Mel Gibson.
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: And didn't he do a.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Worse than all those English kings that's killed all those
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Scottish people and suppressed Scottish culture. Anyway, the point is
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: that you can actually pollute what's out there. If you
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: now go and write a translator that goes from English
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: to Scotts, you're probably picking up a lot of this
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: bologna that this American teenager created. And so now it's
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: a lot harder to learn that translation. So this is
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: totally plausible. It's really happened in our world that you
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: can pollute the sort of ocean of information from which
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: AI is learning to connect languages.
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: So what you're saying is that North Korea is going
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: to hire this teenager and we're all going to be
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: in a lot of trouble. And I think after the break,
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: we should talk about the weapon that the North Koreans
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: were wielding in this book. So let's take a quick break,
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: all right, So that there's a corruption of information, and
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: there's also actually these weapons that are going into space.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: So Daniel tell us about these weapons.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: So in the book, they have this weapon. They call
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: it the Rod from God, which is a really fun
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: name for a weapon, but it's terrifying, right. The idea
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: is to take a big, heavy object, launch it into space,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: and then drop it on someone. And this is essentially
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: just taking advantage of the kinetic energy. You have something
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: really high up in the gravitation a well, and it
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: falls to Earth and as it falls down, it speeds up,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: it gains a lot of kinetic energy, and when it
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: impacts it's like a meteor. The reason why the dinosaurs
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: were wiped out there wasn't a nuclear weapon nobody blew
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: up a fusion bomb. It's just a massive amount of
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: energy delivered to the Earth's surface, which doesn't take high
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: technology as long as you can get something heavy up
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: really far above the Earth and then drop it into
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: the gravitational Well, but as time it hits the planet,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: it can be devastating.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So I did a little bit of research on
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: these rod from God proposals when we were working on
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: our spacebook, and there are some pretty good arguments against
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: not using them. Like one, you know, the fact that
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: it's heavy is super important, which is also going to
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: make it super expensive, because every pound you send into
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: space is still pretty pricey these days. Also, it's sort
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: of hard to direct this kind of weapon relative to like,
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: you know, a missile that you can in some cases
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: maybe turn or point, and so it needs to be
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: almost always over a potential target at all times. And
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: then finally, this weapon so as you mentioned, like asteroids
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: were pretty bad for the dinosaurs, you know, they were
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: also bad for everyone because they created this like cloud
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: that impacted the climate. And so this is a kind
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: of weapon that can cause problems for people who aren't
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: necessarily the target, but still a very scary weapon. And
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: I guess the final argument that usually goes against these
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: things is that you can do all of these things
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: with weapons we already have from Earth. So I spend
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: the money to send it up into space, and then
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: you have to worry about maintaining this weapon. But still, yes,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: Rod from God comes up in sci fi. I actually
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: I think the idea came from a sci fi novel
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: first and then got explored by the US Air Force.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: And to be honest, I didn't know that the Air
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: Force's Project Thor had gotten as much attention as it did.
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: I ended up doing a little research after reading your outline.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is something the Air Force has actually thought about.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: They like read about an end science fiction of the
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: is that possible? And so they explored the idea of
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: dropping basically a tungsten telephone pole from space. And you know,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: this thing would reach like mock ten and it would
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: have the yield of a nuclear weapon without any fallout.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: So from that perspective, it's like less dangerous. You know,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: you worry about like nuking other countries and then the
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: fallau trip across the ocean or whatever. In this case,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: there is no radioactive fallout, but as you say it's
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: super expensive. They calculated it costs like two hundred and
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: thirty million dollars per shot. Oh my gosh, Because you know,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: tungsten is expensive. The thing that makes it powerful is
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: also the thing that makes it heavy, and so that's
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: pretty tricky. I think you'd have to like mine the
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: tungsten in space to make this thing more effective. But hey,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not here giving the air Force, you know, good
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: ideas for futuristic weapons.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: Why, I'm not too worried. That's pretty far off in
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: the future, I think, being able to mine that much
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: tungsten and use it for weapons.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: But then they also have this other interesting technology in
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: the book, which are anti satellite weapons. So if you
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: have now things in space that can attack you, you
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: want to have ways to defend yourselves. And so in
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the book, there's a long thread at Norad where they're
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: talking about, like what could we do to attack a
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: satellite to help defend ourselves, and it refers to this
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: technology this as M one forty is anti satellite missile,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: essentially shooting a missile from Earth into space to attack
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: a satellite. So what do you know about anti satellite
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: technology in our universe? In reality chilly.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: Well, so I guess this is one of the the
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: ways that the rod from God actually is a good weapon.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: Like if you it's pretty hard to mess up a
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: giant's slug of tungsten, and so like, if you are
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: sending it towards Earth and someone shoots it, probably that
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: giant's lug of tungsten is still coming towards you. But
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: in terms of actually shooting at like you know, like
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: a GPS satellite or something, this is something that a
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: number of countries have done already from the ground. China,
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: the US, Russia, and India have all shot their own
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: satellites out of the sky just to show that they can,
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: so that other people know that they have that power.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: I think that in all of those cases it was
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: from the ground shooting to space, as opposed to the
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: method that's used in this book, where you climb on
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: an airplane and then the airplane shoots at the weapon.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: I could be wrong about that, but anyway, so anti
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: satellite weapons are a thing that exists right now. In
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: the time between when his book was published and when
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: it came out out, Russia shot down one of their
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: satellites and it got some news because the ISS folks
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: had to jump to their return vehicle because there was
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: some concern that the debris caused by the satellite getting
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: blown up was going to hit the ISS and puncture
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: it and expose everyone to the vacuum of space. Russia,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: of course, claimed that everybody was making a big deal
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: over nothing and it was nowhere near the ISS. But anyway,
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: so these sorts of weapons are real.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's really the downside of it is that
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: if we have like a war, we're shooting each other's satellites,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: we could fill the near space environment with garbage and
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: we could make it impossible for anybody to get off planet.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: We have an episode about space junk and this concern
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: that as soon as you have enough space junk, it
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: becomes exponential of banging into itself and destroying all the satellites,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: and then space is just filled with junk and you
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: can't launch anything safely, which would be terrible in lots
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: of ways.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Kessler syndrome. We want to avoid that for sure, exactly.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: I think there was actually a program in the Air Force,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: it's called ASM one thirty Fivehere they were going to
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: launch a missile from an F fifteen doing this crazy
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: supersonic climb. I was reading about how they did test
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: it in nineteen eighty five and destroyed a solar observation
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: satellite and the junk still was floating around for twenty years.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: They track each piece of junk after this explosion, and
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the last piece deorbited in two thousand and four. So
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: it's not like space cleans itself up very quickly either,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: like you make a mistake, It's could be decades before
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: we could launch something into space again.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: So that I was wrong. There has been They have
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: tested this from a plane shooting the satellite thing before,
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: so that's super interesting. And I think the country that
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: got the most flat for this test was China because
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: they shot a satellite that was still at a sort
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: of higher orbit and so all the junk it created
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: stayed up there for much longer most people when they
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: shoot down their satellites, it's much lower, so the junk
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: is going to deorbit sooner. And I think the international
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: community went after China, whereas they usually don't make a
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: huge fuss about this stuff because they had sort of
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: polluted the space environment so much. But anyway, okay, so
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: that's been tested.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: COO cool scary. I'm lazeria. One of the key technologies
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: in this book. The thing that allows the North Koreans
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: to sort of like steer this ode, to manipulate this
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: rocket in orbit without having propulsion on it, is this
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: idea of a space tether. The sort of central plot
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: device in the book is that they're watching this North
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Korean satellite and they're expecting it to just to be tumbling,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: but then it's maneuvering and they're wondering like how did
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: they do that? And so this space teather technology is
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: what allows the North Koreans in the book, having stolen
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: it from the Iranians, to sort of maneuver this object
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: in orbit and you know, maybe target areas with their
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: rod from God.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: So how do these tethers work?
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: So these space teathers are super fascinating. Again, the author
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: has been like very diligent because there is real physics here,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: like you can't actually use these things to manipulate the
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: path of things in orbit. Especially space teather is just
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: a long wire. You have an object in space and
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: you have a very very long wire attached to it.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: If you're moving through a magnetic field, then you can
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: take advantage of the Lorentz force, and you can either
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: turn your motion into electrical energy. You can like become
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: a generator by turning the motion of your wire through
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: a magnetic field into current in the wire, so you
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: can generate power, or if you can dump power into
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the wire. If you can create current on the wire,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: then you get a force between the wire and the
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: magnetic field, and you can use that essentially to steer.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: So you get something like an electronic rudder where you
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: can control your motion through the magnetic field and basically
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: position your satellite anywhere you want it at least steer
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: it somewhat.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: So could we actually have this and why don't we
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: or should we? Let the author explain that later in
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: the interview.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: This is totally plausible. The physics is solid. You know,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: it's all just the Lorentz force. You're either turning kinetic
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: energy into electrical energy or electrical energy into kinetic energy.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Both of those actually work, and people have explored this.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: NASA had a mission in two thousand and two called
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the pro Seds mission, which was going to have a
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: fifteen kilometer tether attached to an object that was going
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: to explore like electrodynamic propulsion The advantage again here is
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: that you don't need propellant. You know, most of the
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: time when you're maneuvering in space, you have to throw
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: some mass off your ship. You want to change direction,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: you got to push away by throwing something in the
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: other direction to conserve momentum. And so this would allow
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: you essentially to swim through the magnetic field indefinitely because
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: you will never run out of propellant. So this is
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: a very cool idea, totally plausible. My one question when
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: I was reading about this was whether the magnetic field
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: of the Earth really was strong enough to give the
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: effects in the book. But we asked the author about it,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: and he gave us a very fun answer about it
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: when we talked to him. All right, and so enough
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: of me and Kelly talking about this book that we
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: didn't write. We were very excited to talk to the
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: author about how he wrote such a fun book with
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: so many interesting characters and so much cool space technology
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and space dynamics and space law and space politics. And
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: we're very happy that the author was willing to join us.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: So here's our interview with Taio Fuji. So it's my
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: great pleasure to welcome to the podcast. Mister Taio Fuji,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: author of Orbital Cloud Tyo, thank you very much for
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: joining us on the podcast.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much for inviting me to their podcast.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: I'm grat to the talking about the op the cloud.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: We're glad to have you here. We loved it and.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: We'd love to hear about how you got into writing
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: science fiction. What was your path to becoming a successful
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: science fiction author.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: I was a computer software engineer and especially the developing
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: their computer graphics software for the commercial usage. Then in
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: the nineteen eleven May nineteen eleven March elevens we called
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: the huge eest quack in Japan. On that time, then
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: ten thousand people has gone away at batsnami. We know that.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: But the two days after the Kushima nuclear pakpround got
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: the boomed exploded. All the news source and the media
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: it changes to their mentioning about the tsunami disaster, but
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: also they turned to the reporting the radioactive dangerousness honest,
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: timing safely, safely, but the news media kept framing that's
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: dangerous and other radioactive is dangerous and then we cannot
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: live there. I go anger and I was thinking about
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: how to show that we can stand in front of
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: their technology or disaster or the natural natural disaster or
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: the climate change or another many things. Then, but I
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: was only once engineer. I'm not scientists. I was not
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: famous for talking about their disaster nuclear dister. Then I
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: started to write science fiction. Fiction is the most low
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: cost way to their sending the message to somebody. Then
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: I wrote the first science fiction story about demagogue killing people.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: I sold ten thousand copies of a book on the
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: two months was sold. I became the every many writer
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: editor and my publisher editor know my work. Then I
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: and then the higher clup of the published a higher colup,
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: the Japanese science fiction dedicated publisher, that offered me to
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: the publishing the gym, but to becommercial publisher. Then I
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: agreed and rewriting it and changing my job to the
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: engineer employee to their independent writer.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: That is such an interesting path. And so I'm wondering
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: you were inspired by an event that happened in modern times?
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: Is that what motivated you to write a book that
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: could be happening in the very near future as opposed
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: to like thousands of years in the future. Were you
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: a science fiction fan before that?
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, I was science fiction big science fiction fan. I
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: already have eight hundred books on my books on my shelf,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: andunder I kept the games p Hogan and the Asimo Founder,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: and I was like, right, especially I love the woke Up,
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: the power patiology, the wind up goal.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Well, tell us about how you came up with this story.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: There's so many fascinating interconnected pieces to it. Did you
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: come up with sort of the story first and then
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: figure out how the technology worked? Or were you more
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: fascinated by the technological elements and then figured out a
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: story you could tell with them.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: I start the story from there. I start to write
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: a science fiction from the story who do? What is there?
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: My either my story is starting point and about the
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: cloud and speaking about golf. Then the Weber Engineer saves
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: the world is a story storiist call corp. Then how
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: I think and when I think? The uh then when
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: the food.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: I was impressed by how much different knowledge you had
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: of things, so like international law, different space agencies in
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: different countries and how they work. And the knowledge was
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: expansive and beyond just what you would expect from your
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: experience as an engineer. So how long did it take
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: you to get all of that additional information, and how
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: did you go about learning all of those those additional pieces.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: I researched to the sleieve or four months about that's
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: the internet. The mess up is joining onto thek there
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: Marazon NASA study. It's the hockzon of the space up
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: datas discloaded all the data by the Obama governance. Then
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: NASA started to let the engineers to the make something
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: developed something from with using the NASA data space data.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: Then I joining it. Then there I spent two days
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: at the Tokyo University and making a friend and I
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: UH under my I joined uh and with my friend,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: then my friend is more the protagonist model of their crowd.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: I met many people, some people is appearing in this book.
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Do you have a friend like Kazumi who could like
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: i'm'm sorry to re pronounce the name, but who could
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: like imagine orbital trajectories in his head?
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: There during the Hockazon, I tried to to make it
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: the positioning of their is s. Then we we we
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: agree that if we track the two weeks, there is
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: s s orpital elements a weekend, the prejudice of their
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: positioning in the one hour, the accuracy with in their
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: brain calculations. That's the real research under the story about
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Isana is very interesting. He is my friend from friends
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: from the university and the very long friend and he
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: is he made a unique program and he displayed the
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: ISS position of the ISS on the Google map. Then
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: everybody can see there where is the I, S S
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: on the on the square. Then I love that program,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: very small program and on that years Google Maps API
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: was really into very important thing. Then we love that.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: So we love that program. Then many the amateuria uses
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: program and the Yeah. And one day there is an
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: phone that NASA use it on the Space Sattle mission.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: That he watched the NASA TV and the Space Attle
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: mission there on the bigger largest console. The NASA displayed
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: his app on the biggest screen and sharing the position. Wow,
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: and the iPhone, I know that the under After that
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: thing there he was invited to the Space Shuttle launching
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: mission to NASA. Then he was he watched the launching
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: from the fast price. Then this story is the basis
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: of the one with the big base of the object.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: All right, we have lots more questions for Tayo, but
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: first we have to take a quick break. Okay, we're
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: back and we're talking to Tayo Fuji, the author of
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Orbital Cloud, about how he wrote such a fascinating and
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: complicated but compelling novel. I really liked how in your
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: story a lot of the contributions to solving the puzzle
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: come from people who are amateurs, and I don't work
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: for NASA or the Space Agency. You know, maybe they're
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: amateurs but wealthy, or they're professionals but they're underfunded. Is
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: it important to you in our real world that everybody
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: can contribute to cutting edge science and space exploration with
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: whatever skills they have.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Writing the year about twelve thirteen, that tools a year
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: the SpaceX had not succeeded yet, then I think the
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: amateur can helped or work better.
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: So you mentioned that you were researching and writing in
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: twenty twelve. So in the decades since you wrote the book,
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: what about the trajectory of the space industry has surprised
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: you or disappointed you? Are we about where you expected
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: we would be by now? Or are we falling short.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: There with limiting on the space development their commercial under
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: non government or the space development it gett succeed rather
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: than I imagine writing of the optail Cloud. Of course,
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: the Ronnie Smack the space developound. The story models evil
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: masks under the mask that followed very closely to image
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: mention his specifics and the starting system is a very
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: similar for my story. My imagination was touted by the
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: el Mask and another challenge is keeping. Then their space
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: development is better than my expect And but thing was
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: the world tension of the geopolitical situation. It's hard as
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: I thought that I pree real.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: And if given the opportunity, would you like to travel
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: to space personally? If Elon Musk after your SI on
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: one of these points.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the masks showed that it is possible.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Then there are many forwer works and better I think.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm excited by companies like rocket Lab too. I
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: know they're not bringing people to space, but they're doing
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: a good job of lower and the costs and stuff.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: So your book was translated into English. Did you work
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: with the translator or have you read the translated version?
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: What was that process like?
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: The translation was a very standard process. The publisher, the
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: publisher High Castle Route, the San Francis publisher, the selected
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: the translator, the translator is the payer translation and then
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: this is a Chemo Silver is the group name of
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: the two transferrectors, then they are living in Japan. Then,
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: after the translation was almost refinished, the two and then
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: asked me to the accuracy question about accuracy with the
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: but it the connect communication was were the publisher high
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Castle not direction to me? Then there I only review
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: the translation in English there, but I was so excited
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: when right and during the writing the opital cloud in
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: Japanese edition, there I imagine that of course the many
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: characters speaks English in Japanese edition, or of course then
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: but I write in Japanese. But I imagine that how
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: they say it in real in English. Then I was
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: so excited to read in their English edition and with
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: the real English ones, I was so excited. Under that
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: translation is very accurate, very similar to the Japanese one.
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: Every paragraph is not removed that no one is add
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: it wonderful. Well, I'm glad that it's so accurate. Kelly
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: and I have both written books that have been translated
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: into languages we can't read. And I wonder sometimes if
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: my bad jokes work in Turkish, you.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Know, or in Hungarian. But I'll never know. Speaking of accuracy,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: something about the book really impressed me to say, you
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: have all these characters sort of fighting against the rules
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: of science, sort of string against nature. You know, how
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: do we solve this problem? And every time they find
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: a solution, it falls within science. You're never inventing new
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: kinds of science. Is it important to you that the
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: science in your book be plausible, essentially that your story
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: take place in our universe? You never like make up
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: new laws of physics?
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Only why on one thing that I had told
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: a lie about this book physics, And one thing is
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: the strongness of the magnetic field of the US. Then
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: I calculated it is a thousand times the stronger than
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: the actually one in order to the moving the things
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: quickly because their electrodynamics power is very small. The one
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: thing of the physics lie is a magnetic strength strongness
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: of the magnetic fields, and the second one is the
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: clock computer clock. I set the atomic clock on the
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: cellphone based circuit, but the atomic clock is not there.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: One of my friends science fiction writer say that you
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: should set the solar cell on the tser. Then then
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: they're even if the abling it cannot be there, the
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: making the enough power, but also that the fictional accuracy
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: was held. Everybody cannot stand there claim you that you're
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: making you you're talking and you you're writing there an almosty.
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: This you can correct in the second edition. There you go.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Sure And when the when the movie.
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, they'll have solar sales in the movie.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when somebody said the movie.
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So one of the themes in the book is how
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: space technology and you know, the satellites that we have
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: in orbit are really helpful for the developed countries that
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: have them, and that this contributes to power imbalances. What
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: do you see as the current state of things and
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: do you see any hope that the developing countries will
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: be able to catch up and benefit from space technologies
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: as much as we do in develop countries without like
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: something catastrophic happening.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the catastrophic might not be happened because they're too
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: much prayers. Is there launching them things to the orbit,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: then there are many the thousand eyes is watching their
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: spaces every time, every second under already the whole thousand
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: satirized by one company, studying system is covering us and
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: they studying system guys are watching their orbit every second.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Of course under the China, already the launched the two
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: space the two space stations and under and they are
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: often to launching the projects to their their can go
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: second and the North Korea already the launching the menacing
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: to the there and another country is starting to launching
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: the manzing. Then the increasing of the player makes to
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: the watching by each watching each other us then and
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: that makes the club thing or the big projects for
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: the big tyrant country may not be appear because there
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: are too many players is working on the space basically
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: and the challenge of the space six that will let
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: our past see to the sky at least, then that
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: makes the interesting is kept on the orbit. Then I
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: think the the club things think may not occur from
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: the space, but also from the ground.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: I think wonderful. Thank you again very much for doing
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: us on the podcast today and talking to us about
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: your book and congratulations on it.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: So I forgot to tell you that the when there
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: about o the clouds, then the cloud said the date
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: of the twenty twenty. Then why I said to this
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: year is because the moon is not shown in Christmas.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: It's a new moon date. Then I was very love
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: about the wind the people looking about the sky. If
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: there was a moon, I should describe the position of
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: the moon every time. Then I've suched when the new
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: moon I searched, I should set there the date of
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: the story. This is a seven days story. They're during
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: the new moon. Terms. Then I found that twenty twenty.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: It's the best just after the president was changed. It great.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: Then I said a year to the optocra.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: I love that you use the moon phase to figure
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: out when the book was going to be set. That's awesome.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: So the many scientifics the science fiction found phone that's
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: were is the moon or other on the time the
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: moon is under the in front of you? You then
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: everybody cannot see the meteo or other another things. Then
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: then I once remove the moon. Then I found the
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: new moon terms. Many retailer gelators can remove the moon easily,
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: but science fiction.
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: Cannot do it.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: When you read science fiction, do you check the science yourself?
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Do you think is that accurate? Would the moon be
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: in the sky? Are you that detailed in your reading
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: as well?
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Yes? Exactly read we cannot escape from the science.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Awesome. Awesome, all right, well again, thank you very much
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: for joining us on the podcast. All right, so that
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: was super fun interview. Thanks everybody for joining us, and
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: thank you Kelly for reading this book with me and
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: chatting with us about it today.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, and thanks again for doing another
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: one of these sci fi episodes where I have an
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: excuse to read a super fun book.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: I had a blast, all right, Thanks very much, and
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: we encourage everybody to check out this book. It's a
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: lot of fun. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening, and
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: remember that Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe is a
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: your favorite shows.