and I make the videos for Gameplay Review UK. I guess I do lots of things, but focusing on the videos, at the moment, I try to make creative videos using Kerbal Space Program that also help teach people the history and science behind space flights. It's kind of it. It's kind of what I'm doing in a nutshell at the moment. And I'm also an editor for Marcus House's videos, which is quite a becoming quite a key role as well.

Well, it's hard to say, really. It's like a mix of everything. It's not like sharing sharing knowledge, I guess. I find that I've got quite a lot of knowledge, particularly awareness when it comes to spacecraft or the history of rocketry. And so I figured there's lots of people I try and have conversations with, you know, in public as it were. And they people don't seem to have, sort of broad information and knowledge that I would expect people to have in this day and age. So I figure if I, if I motivate myself to make videos to share the information I have, a wider a wider group of people can can also, have that information. I'm trying to do it in a fun way too. So it's I keep it try to keep it exciting, try to make the videos fun and and engaging, and that just all sort of just adds that extra dimension that keeps everything fun and interesting.

Well, I don't wanna be lazy and say, basically anything Marcus House shares. But, it's kind of quite parallel because, for example, when I'm making videos of Marcus, we we need to find, as many sources as we can for, say, for modern modern space flight, particularly SpaceX. So the more three d artists and the more sort of people with a camera who can actually get to sight and take a video, the more of those people we know, the better. And it's got to a stage where we find those people, which we say, can we use your material? They say, please use it as much as you can. Share it as much as you can. And so it's, like, quite a long list. On Marcus's, live chats like we did yesterday, we've got that long list of people. So anything anything Marcus lists, definitely, I'd recommend going to. And, for myself, it's quite hard to be specific because I like lots of, I like lots of smaller YouTubers. So I've noticed, like, is it I think it's called Parallax Nick. I'm not so good you know me right now. I'm better with the visuals. I'm not so good with the words. But we've got Parallax Nick, I think, is his name. He makes some really good videos. And what I want what I'm doing on my Discord, when someone in my community posts a video, it automatically gets shared. And I'm thinking about making a list of, videos like that automatically shared that I like because people see what we like as a community. But that's not something where I specifically trying to push, which isn't really Carespace specific. So, like, just sort of general things people normally know. Like, on YouTube, you got Isaac Arthur and all these sort of people. There needs to be, like, a dedicated list. So whenever those guys produce a video, people just get notified. So, yeah. It's hard to say where where I would go because we're still building the places to make it easy for people to access the info. But, that's what I that's what I'll be doing, keeping tabs on any playlists and things like that. And the other thing I would say is people that make music, that's for free. So it's good to keep tabs on musicians who are making music and putting it on the Internet for people to use for free. So there's lots of playlists for that too. So I guess Southwark would be a good example. Miguel Johnson. Those guys have every all the music they do is free. You can just and you can use it however you like. All you need to do is just do a link saying these guys made this music, and it's all for free. So that's the sort of that's the main things I keep tabs on. So free Creative Commons music on YouTube. And then anyone on YouTube who was, producing anything to do related to space science, basically.

Well, really, there's, like, two there's two main turning points, I guess, that got me to where I am in that regards. The first one is I used to make lots of maps and games. So, like, we've got Rollercoaster Tycoon. I'd make a big map on Rollercoaster Tycoon. Sometimes it'd take me a couple of months of doing nothing but working on a map. And then occasionally, I'd load the map up and I'd I'd show my friends, and we'd explore it, you know, and have, you know, have not necessarily play the game anymore, but just look back on the stuff we've done. But then one of my hard drives blew, and I realized I had all of my saves, all of my rollercoaster tycoon saves. It was, like, years and years of, like, not real work. It was more it was just a hobby. Like, it'd be like if you build a model train set, say, and then suddenly it just it just got set ablaze, and it was no longer there. You know? But I figured, well, what was I what were we gaining when we kept reloading it? We were doing weren't playing the game anymore. We were just looking at stuff we done. So I thought if whenever I do something like that or if, you know, if I do something like I don't have the time to afterwards, record a few little video of the end results and just upload it to YouTube. So the first step was just guessing a YouTube, creating a YouTube account, but not doing it because I wanted a YouTube account. It was because I wanted somewhere to store my videos of stuff I'd done. So I couldn't save on the computer, of course, my own one, because the whole point was if a hard drive blew, I couldn't watch those videos or play those games again. So I wanted to have somewhere else those videos would be so I could come back and look at them wherever I was, whenever I wanted. So, obviously, YouTube's a perfect example. And then the next turning point, I guess, was Kerbal Space Program itself because I've always liked astrophysics, planetary science, and the rest of it. And I thought, well, this game's perfect because it's just a well, actually, one of your questions, like, questions, I think, leads into this, doesn't it, Ryan? But, Kerbal Space Program is good because it's a game, but because it is using real physics and relatable parts, you can use it to create quite realistic spacecraft. So when that game came along, I was like, well, I love this game. I'll do a few videos of this. And it was just like a snowball effect. Did you want video? Someone was like, hey. You could do this as well, or I'd love it if you did this too. And you think, yeah. I've got I can try that. And even before you know it, there's 10,000 people click subscribe, and you got crazy ass emotions on your t shirt.

Well, it it was originally. Like I said, it was it was for me, really. So if I wanted to archive something, I've done in the past. But it certainly is not that anymore. It's now kind of a a force to help share information about history and engineering, so people can learn. But doing it in a way that's fun because I've always believed if someone gives me a book, can I read the book? And someone asks gives me a test on, you know, the information in that book, I'm gonna forget most of it because I've just got I've just read a to b, and it's done. Whereas if you're in a computer game and they say you have to you have to do this right now, you either do it successfully or you do it wrong, and you die and you have to restart. So it's giving you this feedback link of whether here's the information and did you understand it. And, obviously, when you're watching the video, you're not playing the game yourself. The game itself is giving you that best experience and it's giving you the best information. But if you can condense that information, sometimes you have the opposite effect. Because sometimes to learn, you might have to play the game for three days straight just to recreate one realistic mission, say. But if you can condense that three days worth of info into a video and stick it on YouTube, then and thousands of people watch that video. Each of those thousands of people are getting thousands of hours' worth of information plugged into them within just a couple of minutes. So it's like a a compounding effect, hopefully, of knowledge that's being spread.

could you tell us a bit about what that game's all about? Well, originally, it was just the simplest terms. It was just a way to understand orbital mechanics, and it wasn't even I don't even think it was three d. I think it was two d. And it was very similar to an even older game. I can't remember what it's called. I think it was just called Orbiter. So you'd have you'd have, you'd have little some but unlike the original games, we just had a, like, a LEM, a little picture of the lunar module, and then it had you know, you just told it where to go. With Kerbal, you had a couple of a couple of fuel tanks, a couple of rocket parts, and you had to add a computer to control it. So you had to assemble it. But this is still very simple. We're talking like a a cylinder or even just a a rectangle that's representing a cylinder with, you know, a little effect at the bottom to cause the exhaust. And then you can see how you can gain altitudes and gain, horizontal velocity to try and get into orbit off the circle. Right? But people liked it so much, and the guy who was developing it kept adding and adding to it. And it's ended up as a place where you can do full blown three d simulations of pretty much any analog of any any sort of, any mission that's gone into space you can think of, really. We've it's almost like the community tries its hardest to push itself to where we can find a craft that is un that's unmakeable. But there's always there always seems to be a way to, to make them to some an analog to some extent. So it's, yeah, it's very good.

Yeah. So, yeah, so it would have started with just, like, just a circle, and then it's ended up with it's got its own its own solar system called, I guess it's the, the Kerbal system, but with an with an o at the end. Kerbal is the star. And Kerbin is the Earth like planets that's, that's going around it. But they've added a few more planets closer to the star and a few further out, and they've even added asteroids, comets, and all sorts of the game now. So, for example, one of the reasons they added asteroids is because they're trying to push, concepts about asteroid retrieval. And, obviously, in real life, if NASA wanna retrieve an asteroid, that's a lot of time and effort and energy into doing so. But if they can make a computer game and a million people are playing it, so they're all trying their own methods to try to even maybe they wanna grab an asteroid. Maybe they just wanna visit one and mine from it. Maybe they wanna move its orbits. Like, say, an asteroid could be heading towards the planet right now, and we wouldn't know how to fix it. But if you had a million people all trying to fix it at home on the computer with a quick simulation, and then say you've got the 10 best examples, you might actually have, the foundation there to deflect an asteroid better than just letting NASA do it on their own. You know? The, potential is vast too because it's a semi a physics simulator. It's not perfect, of course. It's extremely watered down and simple, but you can do things like you don't have to build spacecraft. You could build a car. You could build a train. You you know, you could try and build anything, really, and that's how physics. But, obviously, the game is lends towards making spacecraft is the best way to go, really. So that's what it focuses on. Something that's neat about what you do is how you're able to create rather accurate replicas,

a recreation of one of those craft? It's hard to say really because it it became more and more sophisticated over the years. Originally, it would all be from my memory. So the first sort of wave, you could say, of videos, I just thought, I'm playing Kerber Space Programme. What's what's it's like a sandbox. So what are the what are the goals here? What am I actually doing? And I thought, well, why don't I try and copy some of the things that happen in real life? And then so that that's I don't have to get bogged down with trying to make up a mission. I'll find a mission that already happens and try to make an analogue, and that I'll learn what happened in the mission. I'll learn the history, and plus successfully achieve it, which means I've got the knowledge base behind, like I say, if you do something like that, you can remember it. If you just read the book, you forget. If you research something, build build a replica, go through the whole process of the mission. You you pretty much remember it. At the time, I would I would consider myself a a space buff because no one I knew knew more about space than me because it wasn't like the Internet and everyone you know is on the Internet now. Most of the people you knew you'd met around town or whatever at school, and nobody knew about space. I'm like, well, I know I know more about space than most people I know, so I'll just do it all from memory. And I did it all from memory and looked back, and I thought, oh, at the minute. If I look at now if I now if afterwards, I look at a picture or photograph of the parade, I was like, that was a nice video. I'll look at a photograph now. And I started to think to myself, shouldn't I really be looking at the photographs first and not doing it from memory and trying to make it good? Because every time I do a craft, I look at something and think, nah, that wasn't actually that accurate or that wasn't that great. It really could have been better. So I think, well, next time I do one, I need to get the photograph first. I need to get a three d model. There's loads of information I don't know that exists, so research it first, you know, obviously. Because before it was for fun, it was for art. It was me messing around, but it turned into more of a mission. I noticed there was gaps. For example, if you googled first, animal in space, and it quite often says, like, are the dogs the first animal in space? It's not the first animal in orbit. So even just simple search terms on Google weren't correct. If you go to research lots of old rockets, like pre Apollo especially, you're not getting the information. Again, a black and white a grainy black and white image, which was digitized in the nineties that was taken in the sixties, and, you know, there's the information's not there. So if you can recreate that in a computer game or any simulations for that matter, you've history is being brought to life in a way that it's not like the second World War. We've got millions of hours of video of the second World War, and we can then make a game on top of it. There's there's almost too much information. Whereas with lots of old rockets, especially, you've got one grainy grainy picture and a random something random someone said in the past, and you've got to convert it into a rocket. And that in itself became a massive challenge. I'm pretty proud of that too because you've got examples like Mars three, which is a spacecraft, which is really hard to get the whole all the information about that spacecraft. You got one tiny grainy video of how parts of the lander works. You've got you know how the proton rocket launched and worked, but there's no actual real footage that's connecting that craft with the rockets. You have to kind there's lots of lots of colds you have to fill in as it were. That's gotta fill in lots of colds yourself. And, but when you get to the end result and you realize what you've made is it's pretty much as close to the best the best you could have done with the time you've got and the information you've got. It's pretty satisfying. It's pretty, it feels very worthwhile.

There's loads of, loads of ways to, you have to start worrying about that. There's all the opposite obvious stuff I'm going to. Like, you have to make sure it's copyright using stuff that's not copyrighted. If, say, we're gonna make a video now, a rule of thumb would be anything by NASA is not really copyrighted. Occasionally, like, NASA might hire a photographer that does something which is not directly through NASA and it makes it more complicated than all this. But nine times out of 10, if you're looking at an old NASA documentary, you can you can use some clips from it as long as you're not just stealing the video. It's your video. It's it's it revolves around your craft or your creation, but you're also adding some bits NASA also did for support. Now, generally, the flow of the video are almost dictated by the music. So I'll get the music and the music and the tone and almost score the video. I think it's kinda good because I think it keeps my videos short. I could probably do, like, four like, my hour long video, which I really like. I would I swear I'd want to do the most. But, not many people either have the time or they didn't quite get it and stuff like that. I'm I do you you see my hour long special, Ryan. It's good, but it's a bit outty farty, you could say. You're not necessarily you might not necessarily get it first time. So if you let the music dictate the actual video and then not if you try and find ones that are about six minutes long or if you wanna make a longer video, you you get a six minute long video, splice it in half and mix it so it sounds like a continuous song. And then you just kind of let the actual, you know, the let the music take over as it were, but just keep in the back of your head what you want the story to be. So Apollo Soyuz is probably the first good example of of it because before Apollo Soyuz, the clips were very minimal. Like, if I sent a spacecraft into space that I'd made, but I wanted to show you the actual photograph it took. I'm not gonna make a pretend photograph. This is the photograph it took to go with it. This is, you know, here's the spacecraft plus this is the actual photograph. How cool was that? But people were like, no. We want more. We want more. And I'm like, yeah. It's supposed to be original content, but I'm thinking if I do properly splice and mix and rehash as much content as I can, it is it really becomes original content and transformative. Right? So we're doing that sort of stuff. And Apollo Soy is, again, is a good example because before Apollo Soy is most of the craft I did I did because I really liked them. Just the history was just added on top because I thought that's just, you know, nice information for people to have too. But Apollo Soyuz is the opposite because all the hardware they're using apart from the the adapter that's, so they can connect the two different spacecraft together. It's all basically old stuff. It's just an Apollo an old you could call it an old Apollo and an old Saturn one b and an old Soyuz, basically. Docking is all it is. It's just two spacecraft launched and docked. And as far as big milestones and stuff is concerned, as far as new different hardware, which is what I like to focus on is well, none of it there. But the history of the actual launch itself is is the first mission to me where it's more gripping than the actual hardware itself because you've got these two enemies that have been, have been competing with each other for ages. And instead of trying to blow each other up, they're like weights. We should join forces and make a space station because ultimately, it led to the creation of the International Space Station. It was like the foundation for for those because it was docking the Russian and the American spacecraft leading to the docking of our full blown modules. Plus of plus the actual guys that went up there. Normally, even though the astronauts obviously are amazing, I always put them second because to me, it was more about the engineering and the physics. Like, Neil Armstrong's awesome, but and it could have been anyone in that capsule. It was the actual capsule itself I was trying to, you know, focus on more. You see? So it didn't didn't didn't necessarily matter. When you get to Apollo Soyuz and you realize some of the guys on the mission like Alexei Leonov, he was a Russian. He did the first spacewalk. You know, all these first guy to draw a picture in space and just all these crazy things. And the the amount of the amount of, like, legacy that all of those people had together, plus the people that made the craft, and then the effect it's led on us and the effect it led on me to make that video. I mean, everything all came together into, like, one one big video. So that was that was probably the best way to put it all together.

I liked that one because it's the first time where I used the kind of the skills that I'd that I'd, that I'd learned and all of the resources I could pull to make an a video that I wanted to see for the first time in a while. First, I was making videos I wanted to see, but they were they were rushed or they were just, oh, look at this thing I did LOL, etcetera. Whereas it got to the stage where I've been making these videos for over a year, like, almost with a professional mindset. It's always been too professional. I've actually wanted to make these videos because I wanna see videos that didn't exist. Right? So I thought, what do I wanna see? I wanna see a documentary that's an hour long about the pioneer probes. Well, I wanna see an hour long documentary about every probe which has gone further than Mars. Right? Because that's it's a finite amount. It's not like a huge number, but it's not but it's also there's a lot going on. There's different probes together Saturn, different probes together Jupiter. We've sent one to Pluto now, etcetera. There's lots of crazy stuff going on, and it deserves it's each well, each one of these spacecraft deserves its own limelight. And I thought, well, log logically is why I like to do it chronologically. So as people watch the series, they can see how one thing kind of led to the next and all this sort of stuff. And so just a logical step is to do Pioneer ten first. And you'll notice if you wanna watch a documentary about Pioneer 10, there's a couple out there, but mostly they don't exist in the sense that most spacecraft, if you Google them, you can you can be watching videos for days. Whereas if you're gonna be googling Pioneer 10, after about three or four videos, you it's you're done. It's kinda done with. And some of them have are very long for a modern consumer as an audience. So a modern someone in the most people nowadays don't wanna watch a four hour long video for 15 really good points and then all of the spiel that goes between. But what you can do is get a four hour long video and look for those key moments which can flow in and out of each other. And if you cut everything else between, you know, look, they're no longer irrelevant, and it feels like its own story, but just the main points. And then you can mix those into the mix those into the whole story. And, again, they're fragmented. So you're watching these four different videos. One's about this thing. One's about the other thing. That's why I wanna see it from from launch, what it did. And then the end of its mission, I wanna see it all in one coherent flow as it were. That's in one, like, easily digestible format. So you've got an hour long because I'll give myself an hour too. Normally, the video runs out when it runs out. So either the music runs out or the content runs out. So that's that's the video. It's done. Cool. Whereas this, I've got an hour to put in, an hour's worth of material. So I just filled as much of the the best bits that I thought were the best from lots of old NASA videos. Then also fill refilmed all the missions in Kerbal Space Programme with the real life solar system mod, so it's as realistic as possible. And then, also, wait. What was the third thing I did? So we got the we got the spacecrafts in there. We got the music in there. We got the bit we got the footage in there. Oh, and the last thing I did was say boot up, Space Engine, which is like a three d, just just like a three d interactive planetarium of the whole known universe, basically. So I'd I'd if I wanted to enhance a moon for, like, the game, it's all very simplified, Whereas, and also the footage from Pioneer 10 was very old. So I it's intentionally done so the audience is only given the information as you would have in real time. So, like, we didn't know how many bands of clouds there were on Jupiter before the Pioneer probes and stuff like that. So when they when you at the start of the start of the program, you think, we think Jupyter might have four bands, five bands, six bands. By the end of the by the end of it, it's kind of like, Jupyter has sixteen, seventeen bands, etcetera. So even though we're in the future as an audience, we're trying to drag you back just to to see for a moment, so you feel like you're almost put in the shoes of the person just before there was the mission. So the information that they had before and the information that have after, instead of now, like I said, you can look back and you can get all the information straight away if you want it. And there's no there's no there's no there's nothing to be amazed by. You're not anticipating that information because it's there. Whereas I wanted the I want the that series to be that you feel like you've been you'd taken back to before it all happens and how I'm trying to refill what it was like to have experienced, these discoveries firsthand, if you know what I mean.

Well, that's hard to say because, technically, my content is quite niche. So, I'm I'm happy for what mine is because I know if I did something I liked, other people who other people this you know, I'm not no one's 100% unique. Right? If you do if there's something you like, there's gonna be a bunch of other people out there that also like it. So if you start just doing things down that, starting on that chords, you can end up somewhere good. So, yeah, the main the main thing about content creation is not even even content creation in a way. Like, it's hard to explain, but it's not like I sit down and force myself to make content. It's more like, what what am I naturally doing that is content? And then how do I convert that into some a way of sharing it on the Internet? Like, I didn't say to myself, I'm gonna make the 2020 rover because it'd be really good content. I said to myself, I really, really wanna make this twenty twenty rover. How can I make that so it is, so it is also content so other people can see it, if that makes sense? So if there's something you really like, there's something you're already enjoying, just step back for one second and think to yourself, how could I be sharing what I'm doing right now with others so they can think, oh, I'd really like that too. Or, oh, wow. I didn't know that. That's kind of all it that's kind of all it is at the at its root core. So if you're doing something you like, stop for a second, step back, and think, how can I also share this? It's kind of, I kind of I think that's the main the main philosophy I've always used for that, really.

For me, there's two main challenges. The first challenge is, is it technically hard for me to do? So the an example on that would be the n one rocket. Now the n one rocket, again, is a very big rocket. It's got lots of different stages. The information behind it isn't always complete. But I guess it's so the n one rocket's so, so complicated. It's and it never really fully worked, in the end. But it's very hard to get a complete information. So just that alone was quite hard. The amount of different websites and, normally, it'd be couple of websites, couple of photographs. You've got the information. A three d model would be is preferred. Right? And, let's say, NASA released a three d model. It's very easy to turn that three d model into a Kerbal Space Program, craft. But you got the n one. It hasn't really got any of that stuff, especially not at the time. Remember, most we've I've been doing this for a few years now. So if you look at the Internet for three d models of spacecraft, say, five years ago, it's totally different landscape. Look at it now. You you you Google the craft. It will it'll pretty much be there. If you did it five years ago, it was a lot trickier and necessary to get all the info you wanted. So it's I haven't got the info. And then building it itself is complicated. It's like lots of, lots of rockets are almost easy to make in Kerbal Space Pro because it's like, I make this it's a logical step. I have this part. This happens. I need to have this part. But when you get to the end one rocket, it's this happens. Oh, wait. There's no parts for that. This happens. Oh, wait. But the part I have doesn't doesn't want to behave like that. It behaves the opposite way to have this example did in real life. And the amount of workarounds you do and the amount of messing around you do to get everything together is pretty tricky. And half the time, you only got 90% of the information. If you've done everything right, you've still only got 90% of the information. So even your building is second guessing yourself. You're questioning it. Is this actually right? Because I saw a video of this, but then I saw a photograph of this, but this astronaut said this. And in this newspaper newspaper article, they were saying this. Right? So there's all of this stuff going around in your head the whole time when you're building it. And then the n one's a good example because as the second challenge in purpose based program, which is, a, can you build it? But, b, can your computer handle it too? So there's quite a few craft I'm making. So the n one's a perfect example where I feel like I could have done I could have made even though everyone said it was great, I think it could have been better if I just had, like, an in Infinity PC or, you know, or a PC which, like, could a PC and a and and software, which would carry on running smoothly. So, like, it took seven days to make. I think the first three days, it was most of the craft, and the rest of the days was finishing the last couple of stages. But every time you click the mouse, you'd have to wait five minutes for the part to be added. Get the next part. Oops. I did it wrong. Wait five minutes to undo that part. Wait five minutes to add and the exact etcetera. Right? So the the the last bit of the project that should be the quickest takes the longest because by that time your computer's like, what are you doing to me, man? I wasn't quite the software wasn't quite designed for this. Good luck, me. So you can get there. The good thing is that if you if you're patient and you, you're very you have a lot of, what's the word, perseverance, then you will, you know, you can get there. So, yeah, you got, so you got a web. What can your computer handle, and what can you handle? I think the third thing you're supposed to do is handle how long it takes, but what I always do is I wanna do this. It doesn't matter how long it takes because think sometimes thinking like that, it won't get done. If I if someone said to me, you know that rocket you're gonna make is gonna take you eight days of building before you can even start filming, I'd have been like, let me look at my calendar. Oh, I can't really do that, can I? I can't actually do that. But what I've been doing instead is just doing it. So, it's just like sometimes people don't hear from me for, like, four or five days. And what have you done in that time? I did one thing. Here you go. I post it. Was that it? What do you mean was that it? But, you know so sometimes I feel like I disappear for a long time enough it seems like nothing's happening, and you always want stuff to be happening. Like, what what did you do today, Ryan? I woke up. I had a tea. I went to work. I did this. I met Cody. I did this. Did that, did that, did that, did that. What did you do to Adam? I added five parts to a craft file. I'd probably add a few more tomorrow. You know, it's it's it's quite a long process, and that could be quite hard as a human because you wanna see stuff happening all the time. You know?

Oh, definitely. This is Soviet space dog's friend. Like what I was saying before, if you Google first I think I I think originally I've Googled first animal in space. Right? So be clear for anyone listening. Space is basically if you get above 100 kilometres in altitude, you've got to space. Right? But what goes up must come down, and it's true. If you go straight up into space, you'll just follow that ballistic trajectory, and then you'll come straight back down again. Whereas Yuri Gagarin or Leica the dog, not only do they get to space, the rocket then continued to accelerate so fast horizontally that they achieved an orbit so they'd never fall down. They'd be falling down the same as the curve of the Earth falling below them. So they always go around forever, as it were. There's no drag, etcetera, making it simpler. So if you Google the first animal in space and you see Laika the dog, and you think, wow, Laika the dog, she went she was the first animal in space and the first orbit. That's pretty incredible. I mean, Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space and in orbit at the same time, so it foggies it a bit. But Laika, first animal in orbit, not the first animal in space. First animal in space is actually a jar of fruit flies. So after the second World War, the Americans not including bacteria. So the Americans got some v twos, and they took them to White Sands, New Mexico and fired them up into space to test them. After a few, one guy was like, this is the story. One guy is like, if we put a jar of fruit flies in that rocket, they'll be they would have sent some animals into space, and we could see if they if they survived, etcetera. So literally, the first animals were just some guy thought put a jar of fruit fly. It was like a last moment thing, put a jar of fruit flies in there. And then they did a few other things at White Sands. Like, they sent a few small small monkeys, primates. I can't think which species they were, but very small ones and little canisters, basically. And they were just they were almost like biological units. So they put a little little, rhesus macaques. Is that what they're called? In a little canister, and it was just like a bar you could call it a biological piece of equipment. They didn't care it was an animal. They cared it was biological. So they would just put it in a canister, fire it out there, did it survive did did that life form survive type deal. But then when the Russians came to getting their rockets underway and they had their they started sending dogs into space, it seemed a little bit less clinical and a little bit more like the dogs were, like, were doggy cosmonauts. Right? So before the dog the Soviet dogs came along, pretty much anything biological put into space I mean, even other animals, non dogs, in fact, that the Russians were putting into space were kind of treated like an experiment. Whereas the Soviet space dogs before Laika, and while Laika was one of them, were, like, were the first cosmonauts. I really think that's what's kind of understated. Who was the first person in space? Yuri Gagarin. No. It was these dogs like Gypsy and Danzig and all these other dogs. Right? It was they were the first ones into space. It's totally it's like it's the we think this is the thing which I think everyone should know, which no one knows.

There's two types of civilizations. There's ones that go into space and they stop asteroids from colliding with a planet and understand how everything works and they survive. And there's the other type who do what they want hedonistically. Mhmm. They try and rush everything. They get what they can done because it's easy for them. It's convenient. They don't think about ten, fifteen, 20 generations down the road. Those civilizations don't exist. Look around, so we don't see any that did that. They're all gone. So if we don't go into space and we don't take the ball by the horns and understand that we're part of this universe instead of just sort of trying to live in spite of it. So, yeah, it's crucial. It's 100%. If it isn't our main focus, which I mean, the fact that because of history and stuff like you, we both love a bit of history. Right? It's obvious that we've got to this stage where we've got lots of weapons and all of this crazy stuff because because of the way history is. And I I think humans have this, potential to convert all of this nonsense that we use from paranoid states back into a way in which we can bring bring the world back together again, and we already can. When we go out into the universe, it's not gonna be as a country. It's not gonna be as a planet or it's gonna be it's not gonna be at all. Right? If you send a few countries up there, it's just gonna be terrible. It has to be everyone as a people. And I think the the story of how the first rocket, orbital capable rocket, is perfect, example of this. Because that rocket was only made because some crazy dictators wanted the potential to nuke people from any part of the planet at will. But the rocket scientist, Sergei Korolev, who created it, didn't want that. He only wanted to make a rocket that could put a person into space for exploration and, you know, for mankind not to blow people up. But he thought I say he thought. It's a lot more complicated than this. This is I'm make I'm kinda making this story up, but I guess it's to make the point. He fought, well, I'm the only man in the world that can make this rocket. They I'm gonna tell them this is what it takes to nuke people, but instead, I'm gonna make the rocket that actually puts people into into space and swap the spacecraft with a nuclear weapon. And when the government says that's a great little device you've got there that we wanted, perfect. Because it wouldn't have been made if it was to send them out into space, but it would have been made if the government wanted to blow people up. And at the very last minute, when that rocket was built and assembled under production line, all they did was swap the nuclear payload for a spacecraft, which was planned all along. So it's kind of how I feel about humans going into space. We've made a few mistakes in the past, but I think we can convert all of the technologies that have come out of these mistakes into things which are really will benefit everyone, like the jet engine, for example. I mean, we can argue about the fuels, but thanks to the second World War pumping up something like the jet engine, people have, if they want to, the ability to fly anywhere on the planet in the day. Right? So it's trying to convert these these sort of turn things into happy accidents, I guess I could say. So it's crucial that we convert all of this technology that doesn't help us into technology that does, and it's crucial that we not necessarily have to break down all the borders of the world to have no countries, but the force that goes into space needs to be a planetary force where we're all where everyone everyone feels like they're doing it together. It's not America did this, Russia did that. We did we went to the moon. And you know that is where naturally, we do that. Because when we did go to the moon, it was for, oh, yeah. America's winning. America's doing this. NASA's doing this. But when they finally got to the moon, like, with Apollo eight from Apollo eight onwards, it was very much hold of the minute. This is more than just a country sending its its pilots to the moon. It was about it was for all mankind. Right? Adam, as we as we get to the to the tail end of our conversation here, a a tradition on our program is to allow the guests some space to

I guess what we could take away from this at the this in our current climate because I haven't heard anyone use the phrase current climate for ages. I'm missing that phrase current climate. With 2020 and 2021 being here, the world seems like a new scary place. But I would argue it's not I'd argue it's potentially much better. But anyone who's trying to, move backwards and try and live how we were living before the before the new normal, I think they're gonna be disappointed. I think what we need to do is start looking more into the future and planning more ahead and bring people together. And always remember, you always have a choice in what you can do. And I learned I I took me years to learn this. So I could have played the computer games and never shared them. But I thought I'd take the extra bit of time and the extra bit of effort to share them. Right? And it wasn't much extra effort. It's just a few extra steps, you could say. And instead of being someone that plays computer games in their bedroom on their own, who no one's heard of and has no friends, it's like I feel like I'm the center of my whole whole community just because I said shared a few extra videos and just tried to include people of what I'm doing. So I always include people. And if you have the option of saying something I know this is it sounds silly, Ryan, but but if you have the option of saying something nice or saying something horrible, just say something nice. Because the problem I had a lot when I was younger was I like to play pranks on people and stuff, and I wouldn't think if it wasn't nice or not. I'd think, is it funny, and is it not too bad? They'll go, oh, Adam, that wasn't very nice, but that was funny. But I could have spent that time doing something nice instead. And if I'd have had the choice and have thought about it, I would have done something nice every time. You know, try and include people and bring pull people together. If someone's your enemy, it's just because you've had miscommunication. It's because you haven't had time to work things out, Russell. And the cabinet community shows that. Because the amount of people in the Kerbal Space Programme community that are opposite poles and have total opposite opinions, and you could even argue hate each other, something about the community pulls them back together. So, yeah, ever give everyone a second chance, and you never know, you never know what people are capable of. You really you never don't you really never know what people are capable of. Everyone's there to help. You just don't know it.