Late For Changeover 14 May 2025-VEED
I joined a raid last night and it went all night until early morning, with an excuse number 13 for being late for changeover, your weekly Space News and Variety show. I’m your host Marty Smith and I’m joined by my faithful Mr. History, Eric Perot. Howdy Marty, glad you successfully got back from your raid.
Was that raid dangerous? It was, a lot of healing in that raid. Yeah, it took a long time. We’re here to bring you the latest headlines and updates pertinent to all guardians and to the lower branches as well, so take your sheets, get informed and have a laugh as we present Late for Changeover.
That was the wrong one, but it’s off the rails already. Oh, I miss Ana, come on. I know, and Jake and Juan, they all bailed on us.
Life gets in the way. We’re here with the originator, me and Eric. Team OG.
God, I wish I would have chopped up some of that first episode. Have you ever listened to some of those first episodes we did almost three years ago? It’s been a while. We’re so at, I mean, we’re pros now, but it sounds like we’re just so… I mean, it was fun when we were doing it, but the growth, right, that we’ve had, I mean, we’re so reluctant and just kind of walking through it.
We don’t reluctantly go into it now. We barrel into it, right? Yeah, fall apart, fall on it. Well, good to see you as usual.
Did you play golf today? Tomorrow morning at 1120. Where are you playing tomorrow? Spring Valley. Didn’t you just play that? No, I played Aurora Hills.
Oh, Aurora Hills. And then I’m playing Aurora Hills at Thursday morning at seven o’clock. I can’t keep all your country club stuff here together, so… Well, you’d think I’d become a better golfer, but not yet.
Well, whatever happened with the lessons, who bought you the lessons? Remember? Yeah, the company. I had 12. And I must say, when you talk about golf tech, golf tech is great lessons.
They talk about making you seven shots better. That was accomplished. When I’m shooting 120 and now I’m shooting 112.
Well, they’re like, no money back for you. We did our job. No, I think right now I’m consistently breaking 100.
So, I’m in between 99. Wow, that’s really good. Yeah.
So, I think there’s the average amateur golfer, very few break 100. Really? And that’s if they’re scoring properly. Now, some guys will pick their ball up before it’s short and putt it.
A little foot wedge here or there. Yeah, or fluff the lie, pick the ball up, put it down better, move it away from the tree. Yeah, right.
So, I feel pretty good about that, man. Winner rules in May. Yeah.
Whatever makes you look better. What’s the most difficult part of your game? Chipping. Really? And it should be the easiest.
Yeah. I went to Spring Valley on the range for an hour, just chipping. And I’m thinking, okay, I feel really comfortable with this.
I know, because it’s nothing but a putt. It’s a putt swing, but you’re using a wedge just to make the pop, pop the ball up. Well, I go play and I am smacking the ball.
I’m in the fairway. My irons in are all pretty good. I’m coming up short every once in a while.
Chipping. I’m sculling it across the green. I’m sculling it back across the green.
I’m like, huh. Ridiculous. Wow.
I wouldn’t think that. That’s interesting. You wouldn’t.
Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, yeah. Let me share something with you before we get into the formal news stories.
I found this. Please do. Online.
I thought, ah, you guys, you’re going to get a kick out of this, right? This was from some website called futurism.com. I like the name. And this is a real life speeder bike. Speeder bike.
You know, like a Star Wars, you know, this, the motorcycles. And they called them speeders. They call them speeder bikes.
Yeah. So a Poland based startup called Volona has released a flashy new video of its air bike. A terrifying looking jet powered hover bike.
Quote unquote, super bike for the skies. Looks like the speeder bikes in the 1983 Star Wars movie return of the Jedi. The Polish startup even shared a promotional video of a rider dressed up like a stormtrooper.
I don’t have that video. Riding the bike for May the 4th inspired social media posts over the weekend. Inventor Tomas Patan designed the air bike with jet propulsion instead of spinning propellers to reach advertised speeds of up to 124 miles per hour.
Volona’s website boasts the air bike’s proprietary stabilization system enhanced by a flight computer provides automatic hover and ease of control for its rider. The unique riding position with unobstructed 360 degree view and also unprotected 360 degree view. It helps the rider quickly become one with the flying machine.
It provides a sensation of complete freedom. You want to see that? You want to see the video? I’m going to turn the video off because last time I played a video from YouTube, they’re like, oh, copyright, you use music. So I’m going to, I’m going to play it without the music.
So here it goes. Maybe I can play a little bit. It’s just like very expanse.
Wow. It looks just like a Star Wars setting. This, this video is very long and very repetitive.
And you’re wondering, I want to see more. I want to show me the bike, right? Is that AI generated or is that actual? No, that’s the guy riding the bike. Wow.
So that’s what it looks like. All right. And they don’t give you much.
They don’t give you a long look at it. Right. Okay.
So that’s not the greatest stopping point. But I think this video very sneakily doesn’t give anybody who has ideas a real long glance at it. So like maybe they can perfect an idea or something like that.
Create a competitive different bike. Yeah, I think so. Oh yeah.
Cause it’s so dark and you can’t see the image. Yeah. There’s no closeup on it.
He didn’t release any specs on it. Right. It’s really cool to watch him fly around.
I say, and even the article says the details of the bike are pretty sparse. We don’t know what kind of engines are being used to propel the bike, how long it can stay airborne or how much ground it can cover. We also don’t know if it will ever be made commercially commercially available, let alone how much it would cost if it did.
However, ball or not claims the air bike will go to market in the near future. Wow. According to a new Atlas back of the envelope calculations, the bike is unlikely to be able to fly much longer than two to three minutes at a time.
Based on it purportedly being seven times lighter than a typical motorcycle. So, and I don’t see a big fuel tank on that thing. Well, then what good is a two to three minute flight? But for right now, they got to start somewhere.
Everything starts somewhere. No, I just don’t think I’d spend money on something. That’s only going to fly me around for two minutes.
Yeah, but, but look at, look at the buzz it’s got. Right. I mean, I think it’s very cool, but damn, it’s gotta be.
Wow. That’s what people are speculating. So, uh, cause they’re saying if it’s a jet engine, you know, with it being that light probably doesn’t carry a lot.
So carry a lot of fuel, but look at that. How cool would that be? I mean, the design is amazing. That is straight out of the Jetsons, right? I mean, yeah.
We are approaching those days. Look at the stability of that thing. Yeah.
I mean, he’s not wobbling or he’s not trying to. No, he’s not. Right.
It’s not like the Chinese air taxi. Yeah. I mean, that is really cool.
Yeah. That is really bad-ass. So he released that a few weeks ago, back in April.
And if they’re going to make it commercially available, that’s the best way to do it. Well, and then you’ve got to, you’ve got to think the department of transportation is going to have to get involved. Will there be air bike roads or airspace or? Well, and it’s interesting you say that because that already is a much more viable thing than any kind of like drone with spinning helicopters.
Right, right. Or spinning propellers, right? But then again, he has music all over this video. That thing might be just loud as you could not imagine.
Oh, so you’re not really hearing anything from the actual. No, it’s not like, wow, I can’t ride this around the neighborhood. Yeah, I’m going to have to, I’m going to research that.
I want to see it. Did you go to the site at all? It’s Volonaut, V-O-L-O-N-A-U-T. So I tried to go to the site.
I couldn’t get to it on one browser. I haven’t tried it on yet. Okay.
But that’s the future of travel, maybe. That thing looks so steady. That’s what I’m impressed by.
It’s so practical too. I doubt you don’t get very high. So you don’t have to worry about, oh my God, dying if you fall off.
Yeah, it probably has a like, don’t go above 15 feet because it doesn’t carry you above 15 feet. So the fuel source has to become a question, right? Is it the economy or is it economical? Probably not. Yeah, probably not.
But it drives me crazy even as a motorcycler that they passed that law that you can split lanes because I hate the guys. While I’m waiting, I’m not expecting them. Colorado’s lanes are not California’s lanes.
No. And these guys are just trying to avoid your mirror. And I’m like, what am I going to do if one of these guys knocked my mirror? Well, it’s probably going to knock him down.
Maybe, yeah. But now with that speeder bike, you ain’t splitting lanes. You’re just like hovering over a car.
Yeah, I think that’d be awesome. Yeah, that’d be fun. Think about it the next 30 years if you and I live the next 30 years.
I mean, you maybe, who knows. But what’s the potential of those things to be literally all over the road? You know what I mean? It’s got to be huge, right? With the irresponsible drivers that we have, you’re going to get… I mean, I am not comfortable with driverless cars yet. I’m sure we will be.
I’m sure we will. But then flying stuff, it’s like, oh, really? Well, I’m not even sure that I’m comfortable with the Tesla hands-free. My buddy’s got one, and we’re going to the shooting range, and he is not paying attention.
He’s… And as long as the camera sees your eyes, it will continue to go. And I’m like, this is making me really… Yeah. Now, if you go to lower your eyes, like you’re looking at a cell phone or something, it’ll give you an alarm, and then it will shut off.
It will literally… Yeah, because it wants you to pay attention to what you’re doing. No, I get you. But I don’t want to shut off on E470.
No, I think there’s a way that it guides you to the road and then stops. And then your hands-free is turned off for like a 24-hour period because you weren’t paying attention. Because maybe you fell asleep.
That too, right? I mean, you’re totally losing focus. Makes me nervous. Yeah, that’s… And yeah, maybe we shouldn’t see flying bikes.
That’s probably good. No, in our luck, I’d be wrecked. So I want to give you an example of… I go to help a buddy, Dixon Post.
He’s got jackasses, mules, donkeys, whatever you want to call them. He’s got a pen, and he wants to replace the gate. All right.
So he gives me… He says, I’m going to put you in a Bobcat. I want you to put the two poles in the front and bring them over to me. I said, okay, no problem.
So I get in the Bobcat. I’m driving it fairly well. He gave me the quick down and dirty.
It’s two-hand this stuff, right? The laterals, yeah. So I get them. I bring them up to where the gate’s going in.
I set the post down. And then he’s got two wider posts that the Bobcat can just barely get through, right? So he says, all right, I want you to go inside, turn around, come back. We’ll use the Bobcat to turn around, come the other way.
And I said, okay. So I get in between this freaking gate, and I don’t know what I did, but the freaking bucket starts banging both sides. He’s like, just hold them still.
And I hold him still. I have beat the shit out of this metal post on both sides so bad that we have to replace them. I’m like, oh man, I’m so sorry.
I know you’re doing like crap, but. I did. That’s what I’m thinking would happen if I get on this little speeder bike.
Oh, you’ll do a little correction and overcorrect. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Do something totally ridiculous, man.
Well, part of the thing said that it has like computer stabilization. So, but it’s hard to know because he didn’t reveal any details. So maybe he needs to get it patented or something like that first before.
He might still be looking for investors to build that thing, right? That could be, yeah. I’m sure you could find it out on Timu right now. I’m sure China’s copied it already.
They’re like, they’re taking notes on this thing already. So it’s better than the air taxi we got. That’s pretty damn cool though.
I’ll give you that. Yeah, I thought you’d like that. All right, let’s talk space stuff, Eric, your favorite stuff.
But since we are a space show, I know it’s just, it’s just more, it’s, it’s more space debris. Really? Okay, so from space.com, a failed Soviet Venus lander that’s been in orbit, crashes to earth after 53 years. It’s been space junk orbiting on our earth for 53 years.
Just floating around. Just floating around, right? Well, it’s in orbit, but it was slowly decaying. It just took it forever.
The Cosmos 482 probe crashed to earth on May 10th after circling our planet for more than five decades. Reentry occurred at 224 Eastern time over the Indian ocean, west of Jakarta, Indonesia. Earth isn’t the planet the Cosmos 482 was supposed to land on.
Spacecraft was part of the Soviet Union’s Venera program, which sent a fleet of probes to Venus in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s. Which makes me stop and think, you know, all these countries are sending stuff all over the place. We’re obviously not sharing any of that information.
Because, you know, you would think they’d be like, you know, if you went to a vacation resort and it was shitty, wouldn’t you come back and go, you’re thinking about going there? Let me tell you, don’t go there, right? Yeah, right. I, if the Russians made it to Venus, they’d be like, we burned a lot of money. No, we got nothing out of it.
Don’t go to Venus. Yeah, don’t go to Venus. You think they successfully got to Venus? Well, not with this one.
This one, this one blew up into like four pieces. And I think two of them burned down immediately. And this piece and another piece circled the Earth.
So the spacecraft was part of the Soviet Union’s Venera program. Cosmos 482 launched towards Earth’s hot sister planet in 1972. But a problem with its rocket stranded the spacecraft in an elliptical orbit.
Which is way out far and then really close and way, really close around Earth for the next 53 years. Atmospheric drag pulled the probe down slowly, but surely leading to its re-entry. Cosmos 482 is about three feet wide and weighs about 1200 pounds.
So it’s not big, but it’s really dense. That’s why it didn’t burn up. If it didn’t break apart during re-entry, it likely hit Earth’s surface going about 150 miles per hour.
I wonder, I mean, they don’t track that when it falls, right? They didn’t know it was coming. Yeah, they did. They know it.
They know it within like two or three revolution or two or three orbits. They’re not exactly sure which one it’s going to be, but they have the trace. So they knew it was falling in the ocean, too, and not going to hit.
That one, I don’t know, because I saw that ground trace of this thing. I saw it at work and it was over the Atlantic and over Europe, Ukraine, and then into the Indian Ocean. So it could have very well fallen on somebody’s head.
Imagine Putin’s joy if that thing had fell into Kiev and he was like, we didn’t even launch it, but look what it did, right? We’re destined. It traced over Ukraine. I mean, how ironic that would have been.
This Dutch satellite tracker, Marco Langbrock, said that the kinetic energy at impact is similar to that of a 16 to 22 inch large meteorite fragment. That would have done some damage, I think, if it had hit the Earth. Did it create? Well, it wouldn’t have created a sun.
No, it hit the Indian Ocean. No, not that big. But remember that one story we did in Australia, where the guy’s standing on the beach next to that big rocket piece? Yeah.
Oh, my God. You talk about an act of God. It was like, hey, I’ll see you next week, Sally.
It was like, whoa. Nope. I’m lucky to be here.
Truce, man. So successful re-entry after half a century of Soviet space junk. It’s pretty amazing how much junk we have up there, though.
We’ve talked about a lot of junk. And we’re not doing shit to clean it up either, right? It’s just as it falls or it burns up. So we need to send some more up there.
Keep sending it up. Well, that’s why all these international organizations are trying to get it. I mean, I think they have, I can’t sure if it’s an international law, but if they determine that your rocket piece fell and caused some damage to some country, like Elon’s Falcon X Dragon piece that fell in Africa or whatever it was, that country can claim money from it, right? You’re going to have to pay reparations.
Sort of reparations, yeah. But at the same time, it’s got to be peanuts to these guys because anybody launching right now are all billionaires. There’s no launch on a budget guy.
As long as it doesn’t kill somebody and then you’re definitely paying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that’s not preventative.
That’s all after the fact. That’s true. That’s true.
Who’s going to go, oh, shit, we got a piece up there that may come in. How are we going to go get it, right? So that’s another industry that’s trying to take off is how they can go clean up space. Well, that’s got to be huge.
What country is going to go, oh, well, let’s set aside 500 billion to go clean up our mess up there. Nobody. No.
No. Yeah. What they’ll do is they’ll start sending it into where it starts to burn.
Most of it will burn, right? Other than the heavier pieces. Yeah, yeah. You know, on a lot of that stuff will burn up.
But it also depends on what it’s made of. And, you know, the titanium stuff doesn’t burn up so well. Yeah, it just falls.
Yeah, it just falls. OK, let’s go to this next story from stripes.com. I thought it was pretty fascinating because we always hear these stories. Usually it’s like it’s I’m not going to say it’s funny, is that would be insensitive.
But I find it strange when I hear about, oh, there was a typhoon in Indonesia and there were 20 Americans like we have Americans everywhere in this globe. Right. It’s just like, why are you there? What are you doing there? Well, they vacation everywhere, man.
Yeah, yeah. But here’s an issue that it seems like there should be more attention on. I think, you know, after reading this, this article.
So from stripes.com. They’re right. An Air Force veteran and a Navy SEAL are among a group of Americans being held in Venezuelan prisons. I don’t understand.
And, you know, at first, sometimes you hear, oh, yeah, there’s Americans here. Oh, but they were drug dealers. Right.
But if you listen to some of these stories and you listen to why they’re getting kind of abducted down there, it’s Venezuela. Well, I mean, you can think of a million different places. Venezuela.
Anyway, that’s the thing. But this also this article also morphs into an organization that just started called Bring Our Families Home. So I want to bring some credit to them, too.
Several families gathered a couple of weeks ago. What has become known as Freedom Alley, a narrow lane between two buildings in Georgetown to launch a media campaign called Bring Our Families Home to raise awareness about Americans detained and held against their will in foreign countries. All right.
They give the example Air Force veteran Joe St. Clair was traveling as a tourist near the Venezuelan border in October 2024, when he and a friend from Colombia were arrested by Venezuelan authorities who transported them across the border to a Venezuelan prison. His family said, we learned that Joe decided to take a trip near the border with one of his friends to visit the friend’s family member, and he got too close to the border and got abducted by the Venezuelan police. Scott St. Clair said, I think that was his dad.
They were shaken down, questioned and searched. All their possessions were taken. St. Clair said he was told the border is fluid and that Venezuelan authorities detained Americans as bargaining chips to gain leverage against the US to ease restrictions placed on the country.
Now that makes a ton of sense. Sure. Like, why are these guys, you know, and sometimes when, especially with the Russian ones, they’re like, I was just minding my own business.
All of a sudden I’m in a prison. Well, yeah, you were smoking pot on a, you know, on a Russian street. Okay, dummy, you know.
But when I first saw this, I thought it was more about people being stepped up. So did I. Yeah, right, right. What was that old show? Like Locked Up Abroad or whatever it was, they have to have that show.
This guy got pulled in. And all of those guys were doing dumb shit. They were all doing dumb stuff.
Well, and usually where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I’m not convinced that this guy wasn’t doing something too, you know, dumb. Could have been.
Yeah, it could have been. Close. But again, I would assume that happens a lot of times because other people, other countries, their immigration laws and border laws are so much tougher than us.
Right. You do not cross our border and not go to jail. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. But the bargaining chip thing, if that’s true, then I see that too.
That’s back to the 70s, right? We’re going to hold a hostage. Yeah, yeah. Let’s see.
So Joe is a linguist who served as a tech sergeant in the Air Force until 2019. He was honored with discharge after nine years of service. Joe St. Clair endured four combat tours in Afghanistan.
Back to country. Now he is the one who needs protection, Patty St. Clair said. So this was all at this rally.
Right. Wilbert Joseph Castaneda, 37, is an active duty Navy SEAL, also detained by Venezuelan authorities in 2024. While visiting the country as a tourist.
Christian Castaneda, his brother, said Wilbert is a petty officer, first class, who has served in the military for nearly 20 years. Wilbert called us right after he was arrested to let us know he was in trouble. We’ve heard nothing from him since.
Now that would be scary as shit. Was he there by himself visiting? I don’t know. That explanation said he was he was visiting the country as a tourist.
It didn’t go into too much detail on that. Nine U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents remain in Venezuela custody. Nine.
I mean, that’s crazy. Yeah. Why are we getting these guys out? Right.
The State Department in March designated Castaneda and St. Clair wrongfully detained. It is a formal recognition that an American citizen is being unlawfully held in a foreign nation, according to the State Department. In Venezuela, hostage diplomacy has become a common tactic employed by the government, said Elizabeth Richards, director of hostage advocacy and research at the James W. Foley Foundation, which advocates for families of Americans wrongfully detained or held hostage in foreign countries.
Let me show you a picture real quick of this rally. I don’t believe there’s anything in Venezuela that I now need to go see. No, me neither.
It’s like Venezuela. It’s like, OK. So that was the rally that they’re talking about, calling it Freedom Alley.
And that’s Joe St. Clair’s mother with the microphone. So they’re trying to rally support for this foundation to get these guys back. There are now.
25 people there? Not many. No, true. There are now 46 publicly disclosed hostage and wrongful detention cases of Americans held in foreign nations, according to the foundation.
While the Bring Our Families Home campaign unveiled a mural that spanned the side of one building and featured larger than life portraits of 11 Americans missing in Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, Russia, Venezuelan and the UAE, the United Arab Emirates. According to the organization. So this is the mural.
That’s really cool that somebody is paint those pictures of those 11 people. But every one of them, other than the UAE, what the hell were you doing there in the first place? I mean, I can’t imagine you’re touring Iran. You probably get snatched up and taken there or something.
But some guy’s death to America. Now I got one death to you. Well, and all those countries are all hostage.
We got an American. You want to take that tax off of us or help us out or something? Anti-West, man. They don’t like it.
Yeah, yeah. And it’s the article went on to describe how bad the prisons were. They don’t give them any rights.
You know, and it’s just look at those people they released that Trump brought home. Are they out of Palestine or whatever? They look bad. Yeah, a couple of months ago when he got him back.
And it’s just one that was the the American that just got released to the last American. He didn’t look very good either. No, that’s a long time being in captivity.
What was the do you remember the story of the American who was in, I think, North Korea? It was a couple of years ago. And North Korea finally released him after so many years. But he had gotten cancer or something.
You’re not talking about the young black airman, right? Oh, no, not the one who ran over. OK, this was a couple of years ago. And they held him, held him, held him.
And finally, they let him go. But his his condition was so bad, he eventually died shortly after he was released. I think I do have to look that up.
But why are we talking about more of these guys? I mean, now, if they were like Britney Griner, the basketball player who went to Russia and got caught with pot in her bag, stupid, you know, all right. But I I have I have a hard time believing that all these guys were in that kind of same situation. You know, so do I. So I can see where they’re snatched up.
And the value is just that they’re American. Well, and you would think in most of those instances, it’s some kind of overseas missionary religious maybe. Yeah, yeah.
Right, right. But I’m looking at the mural and I see a Marine. So that had to be a military snatch of some sort.
Right. Well, it could have been. Yeah.
I mean, the Air Force guy that they mentioned, he he’d gotten out in 2019. So he wasn’t on active duty. The seal was, I think, an active duty.
Yeah, that I mean, that piece is just strange to me. Yeah, yeah. What you’re doing there, especially by you remember all the old anti-terrorism classes that they put us through.
Right. And they would use all those those 70s incidents. You know, hey, the guy was in his hotel room.
He he didn’t flip the door and they walked right in. They got him. Right.
Yeah. Watch, you know, watch. See if you can see who’s watching you.
Don’t take the same route. Remember? And don’t wear American stuff when you’re abroad. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Don’t be a big American. Yeah. Well, I wore a hat like a big American flag right on the side of my head.
It seemed like it shifted from like the Soviet bloc countries who were threatening to kidnap you to now all these other kind of third world, if you will, that are doing the same tactic. And they’re like, hey, look, we can get some of our boys back or we can get some money or something like that. Look, look what Israel had to give up to Hamas just to get two or three.
I was like, yeah, right. Two hundred prisoners that they’re holding. Three times.
Yeah, three times. It’s just ridiculous. Yeah.
Yeah. So anybody, you guys traveling, be careful out there. Pay attention to those reports, those foreign country reports.
They could just save your life. Be aware of your surroundings, man. Holy cow.
Be aware of your opposite and be aware of your surroundings. We’re going right back to the 70s. Uh, all right.
Let’s lift our spirits with a dog story, a dog story. Oh, yeah. So it’s been a while since we’ve had an animal.
We had the rat, right? The rat. Yeah, that was interesting. Still can’t believe we had.
We had the rat. Anti-mine rat. The anti-mine rat.
But now we’ve got a search and rescue dog. The military. This was kind of interesting and they didn’t expand on it.
I wish they would have. From task and purpose, the military’s only search and rescue dog has retired. The Air Force’s search and rescue field is losing a veteran service member, a decorated member of the Kentucky Air National Guard’s 123rd Special Tactics Squadron.
Callie the dog retired after six years of service. Callie, a Dutch shepherd, helped locate deceased people in disaster zones, assisted in clearing rubble, made 15 military free fall jumps, free fall, and accumulated 750 flight hours while serving with the 123rd Special Tactics Squadron. During those years, Callie was the military’s only certified search and rescue canine.
And yes, the dog had its own beret. Look at that. Look at Callie.
I’m not sure I understand that because- It was confusing to me too. Right. There are cadaver dogs that are part of search and rescues all over the place.
Yeah, I don’t know why they said… I mean, okay, I got Bob sniffing. I got drug interdiction dogs. I get that.
But it sure seems like we should have more search and rescue dogs. But task and purpose is the only one. What does the search and rescue dog do for the Air Force, right? Is it strictly cadaver? Because if it’s not, then what do you… The dog’s hot on the trail.
What, sniffing? Right? Are we attracting? I don’t know. I admit, it seemed surprising to me too. Maybe if I had more time, I would have looked it up, but I didn’t.
I forgot. We don’t go into detail. You guys didn’t go to look it up.
But they say it was the military’s only search and rescue dog. Maybe it’s a title thing. Maybe, oh yeah, we got cadaver dogs, but they’re not search and rescue.
You’re not rescuing a cadaver. But you’re… Okay. I’m not arguing against you.
I’m trying to figure it out too. But this is pretty cool. During her service, she worked with her handler, Master Sergeant Rudy Parsons, who also left the 123rd Special Tactics Squadron after 11 years.
Both the dog and the handler were awarded Meritorious Service Medals at Cali’s Retirement Ceremony. Okay. Yeah, that’s good.
In a sense. Dog’s not going to do anything with that. But… Doesn’t care.
And I said it was like an edible. Give me a bone. Edible MSM.
They’d be like, oh yeah, we got a box of edible MSM. Give me an edible beret. The idea for pararescue dogs came after Airmen deployed to Haiti in 2010 in the aftermath of its devastating earthquake.
They saw how useful dogs were in helping to locate people trapped in the rubble in Port-au-Prince. Parsons led the effort in developing the program. And in 2019, Cali became the first dog to be fully trained and brought into pararescue work.
So, yeah, because the PJs are always jumping and stuff. They’re not, you know, they’re not searching rescue. They’re pararescue.
Military working dogs are not a new invention. The U.S. military has more than 1,500 dogs in service around the branches of the Armed Forces. But Cali was different.
For her work with the 123rd Special Tactics Squadron, she had to train to be able to handle very specific conditions, hold certifications in free-fall parachute insertion and mountain, hold certifications in free-fall parachute insertion and mountain rescue, among other skills. Since then, she has rappelled, ridden on helicopters and snowmobiles, and traveled around the country for training and rescue missions. That included missions to Alaska and West Virginia, amongst other states.
So, the way this is written, you kind of think the dog has the carabiner on its chest and it’s using its paws and it’s rappelling. It’s riding that guy everywhere. Yeah, it’s Nassar Parsons who’s- The free-fall jump, it’s strapped to his chest.
The rappelling, it’s strapped to his back, right? So, I give it. It’s a cute way to write that up. I was going to say, it appears to be really over-embellished.
I almost like a decoration, right? Yeah. But still, look at that. The dog’s jumping.
I mean, let’s say, hell, my dog gets freaked out at a door slam. When you put a hat on her, she’s like, I get the same thing. Right, right.
I couldn’t put doggles on my dog. That’s pretty cool. No way.
So, just to be up there and be calm enough, because if it wasn’t calm, somebody, his buddy would have told Nassar Parsons, get that effing dog out of here. If it freaks out again, I’m not cleaning up shit all over the helicopter again. I see the need, for instance, with a National Guard unit.
Because the National Guard units do more of search and rescue and buildings. Right, right. They’ll respond to all the disaster stuff in state.
Yeah. And then on the other hand, you get a dog that’s trained as a bomb sniffer. It’s also an attack dog.
Then the mission is in the field, on the ground. Yeah. But I don’t really get the search and rescue, because I don’t see how he’s going after a pilot, you know, a downed pilot.
Well, right, right. And it could be. I mean, it could be.
True. Hell, if I was looking for a guy, if I didn’t. I mean, I don’t think these guys, they’re not going to insert these guys with no idea where a downed pilot is.
True. But they could, like they use that Haiti example, they could put him down there and go, hey, there could be the cadaver dog, could be this dog. But they’re like, there could be survivors here.
Please help us out with that. That would be very, very convenient. It’ll be interesting to see if this takes off and they start training.
Well, the article did have a line in there said they tried to train another dog, but they didn’t train it. So it was like, oh, they probably put them in that plane, started up and this dog is like, no, no, no, I’m not going, I’m not going. Right.
Yeah. That’s gotta be a pretty specialized animal, man. For sure.
I mean, I’ve seen bikers and I’ve always really envied this, the bikers with their dog, like sitting on the tank calmly at 55 miles. How the hell did you get your dog trained to do that? I start my bike up and Gracie’s like, fuck that. And she runs away.
So I’m like, you know, it’s got to be a certain temperance, I suppose. Certainly. Certainly.
Specialized training there, man. So the last part of that is, oh, it’s not been an easy job for the dog. The dog has taken several injuries, including knee injuries, eye damage and even a snake bite.
But while deployed to Mayfield, Kentucky, in the wake of a tornado in 2021, Chelsea Suffolk cuts to her paws and belly as she and her handler worked their way through a destroyed candle factory looking for survivors. I don’t know, good girl, I guess. That’s more along the lines of what I was thinking.
The whole National Guard, insert the dog. Hurricane, tornado, earthquake kind of stuff. Now officially retired, Callie is still with Parsons, but they’re not deploying to disaster zones as special operators.
Master Sergeant Parsons adopted her after her service ended. So that’s got to be the best bond, right? You worked with this dog, maybe you were under fire and now you, whoa, sorry. Lost a little audio.
I was thinking, oh, damn, is that me again? I dumped you. Sorry about that. No, I can’t.
Oh, there it is. But now you get to retire or just leave the service and you get the dog that you. Even the dog handler is really the dog trainer too, right? Absolutely.
I mean, they may not do the initial training, but they got to reinforce it all the time. It’s almost like a service dog, right? No, it’s after the initial certification of just a guy in a kennel that teaches the basics. The handler is then paired with the dog and that handler now goes through the training while the senior handler just observes, okay, you did this, you did this.
You and the dog need to do that. So it’s always good. Do they have to go through like a compatibility period to see if like, oh, the dog responds to the handler.
Handler likes the dog, that kind of thing. Handguns they’ll use. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They’ll shoot blanks with the dog. Yeah, the whole nine yards. Oh, wow.
What kind of temperament the dog has? Is it trainable? They ever offer that to you when you’re in? I could have, I could have. I’m allergic to dogs. What do I want? The hell do I want with a dog? Give me a stinger instead.
Give me a stinger. I love gunpowder, not dander. Dog funk, I like dog funk.
Plus the stinger doesn’t shit on my cot. Doesn’t make a mess. Yeah, I mean, most of the cops who go in, and speaking for the Air Force, have an option.
You can always apply to cross-training. Oh, no kidding. That’d be cool, man.
That’d be cool. There’s a lot of good stories that come out of that stuff. You got a history tonight, Eric? I do, my friend.
I have a history for you. All right, all right. It’s kind of cool because this is something that the regular American public doesn’t really know a lot about.
That’s our kind of story. Yeah, right? I’m going to give you a little history first. Under the threat of war, the United States had refrained from annexing Texas after the latter won its independence from Mexico in 1836.
But in 1844, President John Tyler restarted negotiations with the Republic of Texas, culminating with a treaty of annexation. The treaty was defeated by a wide margin in the Senate because it would upset the slave state-free state balance between North and South and risk war with Mexico, which had already broken off relations with the United States. But shortly after leaving office and with the support of President-elect Polk, Tyler managed to get the joint resolution passed on March 1st, 1845.
Texas was admitted to the Union on December 29th. Okay, so let’s go back. So on May 13th, 1846, U.S. Congress overwhelmingly votes in favor of President Polk’s, James K. Polk’s request to declare war on Mexico in a dispute over Texas.
Wow, that’s neat. Right? So that’s the part that is crazy. That almost sounds like a setup.
Right? But on 13 May. So it actually started on 11 May, and then on 13 May, Congress solidified it and said, declare war. Of 1845, right? Right.
Or 1846. 46. While Mexico didn’t follow through with its threat to declare war, relations between the two nations remained tense over border disputes.
And in July of 1845, Polk ordered troops into disputed lands that lay between the Nuez and Rio Grande rivers. In November, Polk sent the diplomat John Slidell to Mexico to seek boundary adjustments in return for the U.S. government settlement of the claims of U.S. citizens against Mexico, and also to make an offer to purchase California to Mexico. So that was a true mess.
And then hence, you know, that’s when you had your battle for the Alamo. Yeah. So 13 May.
Oh, so wait, now wait. The Alamo happened while they were already a state. Not when they were independent.
Okay. All right. Well, they were in the process, right? Oh, okay.
All right. So yeah, we got to go off to Santa Ana at that point. Yeah.
And we declared war on them. So hey, you’re done, right? I liked it. So the date was May… What was the date? 13 May, 1846.
So the Battle of Alamo was 1836. It was the pivotal event. Oh, so they were independent.
Yeah, okay. In the Texas Revolution. 13 May, 1846.
That’s when Texas was admitted. We declared war on Mexico. And then after that was when Texas was admitted.
I was so lost in the journey. I thought, oh, Texas became a state. Well, because the article I was reading, it’s kind of funky.
It starts off with, on 13 May, 1846, the US Congress overwhelmingly votes in favor of President James K. Polk’s request to declare war on Mexico in a dispute over Texas. Got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So all that stuff happening prior was this buildup. Yeah, right, right. That’s interesting.
And it’s interesting when they bring up the, oh, we can’t admit them to the union because you’re supposed to admit… You know, and I still think that stands. Like if we admit a new state, there’s gotta be a counter state. You know, like Alaska and Hawaii came around, right? Yeah, it’s funny.
How do you declare a state one way or another and then say, okay, we gotta find another state that’s opposite of them? It’s weird. Last Trump, he holds, you know, let’s, we’re gonna make Canada the 50th. Now we’re gonna get Canada.
Yeah, that’d be nice. I just thought it was interesting because I don’t know a lot about that time period. Yeah, yeah.
And them trying to bring it in. So I thought it was interesting that on 13 May today, 1846, we declared war. That’s great.
Yeah, always pull out. I mean, we got the main bites of history, just, you know, World War II, all the big major wars, but all that little stuff is awesome too because there was a… It was critical, right? I mean, Mexico or Texas could have been Mexico. Well, that whole part kind of was, right? California, New Mexico.
Yeah. It’s all desert. It’s like, who wants this? We had a major who used to be a huge history guy.
And he, I mean, he would carry around books like this thick and he would read them without like, you know, in between shifts or whatever. I was like, that would put me asleep immediately. Oh, no, I find it fascinating.
And then we got on a topic of civil war and I asked him, you know, we don’t hear much West of the Mississippi about civil war, really. And he goes, oh, we had civil war battles right here in Colorado. And I was like, what? And so you start looking into that and you’re like, wow, how did that spread? Yeah, we were out here.
So that was really interesting. Yeah. Now I like going to those places and really reading.
Like, you know, my trip to Rome, I think Rome is just so interesting with all the history that’s in Rome, man. So imagine that you’re standing. I told you there was a circle in downtown Rome that is where Mussolini came out on this little balcony and gave a speech.
And I’m right there looking up at it. Oh, wow. That’s cool, man.
That’s where you just, your mind feels like, oh, man, I connected to this. I was here. Wow, that’s really cool.
Pretty cool. Eric, good work as always. Let’s get the two of us out of here, shall we? On behalf of us, we’d like to thank you for listening today.
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I like it. Make sure next week that you are not. I love that.
Eric, thanks for coming on. And to all those listening and watching, thanks for watching and listening. And we’ll see you next week.
Good stuff, Marty. See you next week.