Oh

And now a word from our sponsor better help. Right now there's a whole lot going on in this world and it's easy to find yourself focusing on

all the problems around us rather than focusing on solutions for the things we actually have the power to fix. As a scientist I need to focus on getting that next grant building that next software model recording that next podcast and eventually writing that next paper. I know what I need to do. But I have to admit I keep getting bogged down worrying about things beyond my control.

May worrying about congressional science funding and the problems in the rocket engine supply chain. I have no power over these things and sometimes I just need someone to tell me to stop doom scrolling and focus on solving the things I can solve as I work toward accomplishing my goals.

Talking with friends and families great but at times all of us just need someone to give us that outside perspective we need. This is where therapy can help when I found I needed help early in the pandemic. I heard an ad like this one on another podcast and I reached out to find someone who could help me find focus and find techniques to deal with stress and my doom scrolling tendencies. It was what I needed.

If you're thinking about giving therapy a try do like I did and give better help a try though have you fill out a brief survey and then match you with the therapist and if you need to you can switch therapists at any time.

Better help is entirely online convenient accessible and affordable. When you want to be a better problem solver therapy can get you there.

Visit betterhelp.com slash astronomy today to get 10% off your first month. That's better H E L P dot com slash astronomy.

Astronomy cast episode 651 Artemis and the decline of single use rockets. Welcome to astronomy cast are weekly facts based journey through the cosmos where we help you understand not only what we know but how we know what we know.

I'm for Zirkein. I'm the publisher of universe today. I've been a space and astronomy journalist for over 20 years with me as always is Dr Pamela gay a senior scientist for the planetary science institute and the director of Cosmo Quest.

Pamela welcome back. We are here. We are here and I'm here to say that 20 years ago this month I turned in my PhD's first full complete draft.

My PhD turns 20 in December. Right. Your PhD is not sold enough to drink in in Canada and it would want to. Yeah just not in the US yet. Yeah, so we're back. We finished our summer hiatus. I hope you had a great end.

I always want to see like all we had a relaxing summer but but neither of us actually relax during our summer hiatus we just don't do live streams we do all the other stuff to catch up on.

And we both had massive construction going on in different formats. Yours I think was more massive and mine was simply more inconvenient. So my studio no longer has the ceiling it used to have it also doesn't have a new ceiling yet so that's not being worked on.

Yeah, I know so we finished our our shop and studio and so now I'm actually recording the new episodes in the new studio is still a little hollow sounding I need to get a little more soundbathling in here but it is so great.

The internet is still slow but we're going to be upgrading to a faster internet and probably about a month from now but apart from that it is just it's so convenient to to be able to just sit down in front of the computer turn on the couple of switches and live stream as opposed to being hunched over a computer in the back of a trailer etc etc so feels great.

Thank you to everyone at standing bear construction for helping us build this shop in studio and get to a new level of productivity. It's kind of surreal because I'm just able to just like use my stuff now as opposed to like be waiting for things to be finished or staring at a sea container that contains all of my worldly possessions or carrying water in jugs or just like a new level of productivity.

Yeah, it's just like there's so much friction and now suddenly all that friction is gone and like yeah well that obviously because that was the point but still it's yeah it feels good but you have been changes to your studio as well so.

I have heating and cooling I have not had heating and cooling down here before and the fact that I could come downstairs and it was the same blissfully controlled temperatures the first floor of our house was yeah was truly glorious.

All right let's get into season 16 on the day that we're recording this NASA space launch system is about to blast off but everyone is expecting it will be delayed to October now when it does launch it will be the most powerful rock on our earth until stars it blast off so are we about to see the end of single use rocket and enter the era of reusable rocketry well are we.

No and that is something that really surprised me and in researching this show the first question I had is why isn't SLS reusing any of its parts when one of the things that's deeply confusing to me is is the SLS series of rockets is based on using leftover bits of the space shuttle program.

And with the space shuttle program we had this this glorious central external tank and it's beautiful shade of orange we had the two solid rocket boosters we had the engines on the back of the shuttle and while that external tank got.

...