Episode Title: The Late For Changeover Show 22 May 2024
Date: May 22, 2024
This is a special event alert. Call a standby because we are short handed tonight. This is Late for Changeover, your weekly space news and variety show.
I’m your host Marty Smith and I’m joined by my co-host, the man in the closet, Jake Wall. Good to see you Marty, good to see you. I know, you’re a steady eddy baby.
We’re here to bring you the latest headlines and updates pertinent to all guardians and to our earthbound branches as well. So take your seats, get a floor and have a laugh as we present Late for Changeover. We got three people out tonight.
You know? We got three people out. That sounds like a movie line from somewhere. I don’t know where it was.
Anyway, they’re all the duties not including podcasting. So, teapots out in Disney World, I think, right? Juan worked late and Eric’s getting drunk somewhere up North Denver. That’s what he told me.
Yeah, he didn’t say drunk, but I added that name. Maybe they’re all… I’m excited to see Kevin’s commemorative tattoo right next to the Michigan Blue M. Oh yeah, yeah. I’m excited to see it.
Maybe he’ll get his kids with the Disney ears and their name tattooed on. You know what I mean? Good. Yeah, it’s like the old fighter pilot thing, right? You basically just go find a minivan and a Walmart.
And that Disney tattoo, boom. Or that Disney sticker right there just tattooed on the teeth. Well, yeah, sure.
Sure. I mean, but maybe he already has a Disney tattoo. And now he’s just putting… He’s putting hash marks every time he goes, right? It’s like a service address.
They’re doing a Sturgis. Sturgis 24. Disney World.
Magic is for tour. You know, in a strange way, I kind of respect that. I kind of be like, okay, you are committed to this motherfucker.
That’s for sure. All right. I’ll tell you.
All right. So… I’m excited to cover up his hip scars. Oh yeah, yeah, it could be right there.
All right, so let’s go through a few stories, Jake and I. This is… It’s always going to be done this a couple of times, just you and me, right? Because I think Eric’s… Eric’s usually in another country when we do this. I know. He’s usually pretty reliable.
The excuses are getting lamer. And they’re getting later and later. It was just like a couple of hours ago.
He’s like, hey, I’m not going to make it. I’m not going to make it. Okay.
I had to floss extra hard to get. Okay. I said… And I texted him back and said, you’re going to shoot with a Saturday, right? And he goes, no, I can’t make that either.
I was like, okay. He didn’t buy tickets, though. No, he didn’t.
No, he didn’t. And he did. To be fair to him, he said… He said, say.
Yeah, I didn’t really get a solid reason. He kind of waffled on that. But that’s the last you’re going to hear me defend it.
He’s still a big fan of vagina. And I have very little respect for him. And he really needs to work on his quads.
Well, wait till the new Mr. History campaign comes out. I’m looking forward to that photo shoot. So, hopefully next week we can get some… Get your calendar.
Could we come up with pictures? That would be awesome. We could hawk them. That would be so funny.
Because Mr. Brin will make that pretty cheap. Oh, hell yeah. This week we got that… I can’t even remember what it’s called.
But it’s for Freedom Hunters. We’re going to do that fundraiser for Freedom Hunters. And so, hopefully next week we can have some spliced interviews with some vets out there.
I hope that guy in a wheelchair is there again. Because I’d love to talk to him and get him on video. Yeah.
He was funny, too. Yeah, he was funny. I should have gotten that guy.
As a grown man, I’ve never been like, I should get that dude’s number. That guy? I should have gotten that dude’s number. I know.
I had a good time hanging out with him. And when you… I think you texted me afterwards. Like, did you talk? Did you give him a… And I was like, no, I didn’t.
I should have. So, hopefully he’s there again. But it’s a fundraiser for Freedom Hunters, which takes disabled vets out on hunting trips.
So, we’re going down to Silver Creek, Skeet Range, and do a little cowboy golf, as they call it. Because I can’t remember how many stations there are. Ten, maybe? I can’t remember.
It was a few, man. And you shoot about… Oh, shit. That’s right.
You might have to go buy some shotgun shells. That’s a lot. I forgot.
I forgot. It was a lot. It was more than ten.
It was like 100. 100 rounds we had to go through, I think. Or shells we had to go through.
So, you might have to go buy some. So, I received that offer of helping you out. I’ll bring some extra.
So, I don’t think I got that much extra. I got so many. I got left 23.
Okay. Yeah, I made you feel pretty good there for a while, but I just on air just rescinded it, so… It’s what I now have to do. Okay, let’s go and let’s knock out some of these new stories real quick.
From spaceflightnow.com. NASA and… Oh, god damn it. This is so difficult for me. I know.
It’s so difficult for me. NASA and Boeing further delay the Starliner crew flight test launch amid an ongoing helium leak review. So, last… No, two weeks ago when they were supposed to launch Starliner, which is with its first manned crew, they aborted the launch like two hours before, saying that there was a helium leak in the Centaur upper stage.
So, they have pulled it back, and I think they’ve solved it, but they’re still looking at what caused the pressure problem in it. So, they’re still reviewing it, and now they’re saying it’s not going to launch any earlier than the 25th. So, don’t hold your breath.
Now… I mean, it goes… It goes to show you the SpaceX, man, again. Like, I don’t know whether he just gobbled up all the great engineers, like he did an Operation Paperclip. What the hell he did.
Good pull, man. Mr. History would be proud of him, but he’d have to look that up, though. Anything? Mr. History, Operation Paperclip.
Either way… Like, I don’t know whether Elon just gobbled them all up, or… Yeah, it’s a good point. Now, with NASA, you know there’s a ton of red tape, right? So, if it wavers… Let’s say the engineers fixed it, and they’re like, it’s within tolerance, and NASA goes, yeah, but we would like it a little more in tolerance, and they’re like, well, we’re going to have to pull this shit offline and do a lot to get it to where you are. So, that could be a problem.
I mean, an acceptance of risk, then? Yeah, right, right, right, right. And I think their acceptance of risk is a minuscule, where, you know, SpaceX is blowing shit up left and right, and they’re like, okay, don’t do that anymore, let’s try it this way, right? Well, I’m about to come… They learn well from their mistakes, too. I think so.
And I think it’s not as… Well, government-run agency, right? That there’s some… You know, their whole process, and everybody feeding into that process slows that process down, I think. I mean, it’s good, but it’s so lengthy. So, I think SpaceX is a little bit more streamlined and probably more open to other ideas, and they’re like, look, we’ve got to stop doing it this way.
Why? Tell me why. Well, this and this, and they’re like, that’s good, okay, let’s stop doing it this way. Whereas NASA would be like, well, we’ve got to change the rigs, and that’s got to go up and back down before we get approval on that, so maybe.
I don’t know, maybe. It would be interesting to find a cost per launch. Yeah, yeah, good point.
Including his explosions, including all the R&D, and see what NASA’s business model is compared to his business model. Sure, sure. It was interesting, as I was looking this article up, and there was a video playing, talking about Boeing’s Starliner, and kind of some of the history of why NASA went out to look for a couple different companies that could take our astronauts into space.
So, they did some, and part of that video was his congressional hearing, back in 2013, right? With his Air Force General, who was trying to explain that they didn’t have enough money. Congress wasn’t giving them enough money to try to meet the deadlines, and it was a great interview. He wasn’t just whining that he didn’t have enough money.
He was answering the senator and saying, you want to buy this date? We don’t have the money or the manpower to get it to that date. So, you keep cutting our budget, and he got as good as he received, right? But he was making sense. Was that the same interview where he was like, it’s also the problem of, here’s a bunch of money, go get this done, and then two years later, or two years, or three years into a five year process, you cut off all my money.
It might be. And then expect me to pick back up exactly where I left off, three years after where you cut off all my money, all my other guys got jobs. They all left.
Everything, yeah. It was very similar to that, I think. Yeah, it was like 2013.
It was an old one. He was testifying in Congress. I think that might have been the same one.
And he was spitting realities to him. And he was like, look, I’m just calling Basel strikes, man. We can’t do it with the budget that you’re leaving us.
So, and he also made a comment, and I was like, oh, I wish I had written down the number. The number, the amount of money it cost us to fly astronauts on the Soyuz. It was unbelievable.
40 million, something like that, to hitch a ride on the Soyuz. It was something up around there. And his point was, it was like, you want manned missions flying out of the US instead of paying Russia for launching our guys.
Yeah, we want to save that money too, but you can’t skimp on our budget. So, anyway, that’s why NASA went out and was trying to find new manned space missions. So, the Starliner spacecraft was selected alongside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule to become the two vehicles NASA would use to transport its astronauts to and from the ISS.
Boeing and SpaceX received 4.2 billion for Boeing and 2.6 billion for SpaceX, respectively for the development work and the first six operation missions. SpaceX, now remember, Boeing is still trying to get astronauts up into space with Starliner. But SpaceX launched its uncrewed demonstration mission in 2019 and the two-member crew demoed two flight in May 2020.
So, SpaceX has already put astronauts up there. To date, Dragon, which is SpaceX’s capsule, has flown 53 people across 13 missions. And four of them were non-governmental private flights.
Boeing, on the other hand, Boeing’s orbital flight test in 2019 ran into multiple issues, including a software problem that prevented it from being able to safely dock to the ISS. The second orbital test flight was delayed a year due to a corrosion problem in some of the propulsion system valves. I’m glad they found that.
How long has it been sitting up there, right? Teams were optimistic about a 2023 launch of the Boeing Starliner, but the mission was delayed until 2024 as they worked through questions concerning the parachutes, soft links, and either mitigated or removed about a mile, a mile of flammable tape within the space capsule. The only tape they used on that thing was flammable. I wonder if they got a bunch of 3M masking tape to drop it around that thing.
They’re still getting lighter fluid first. And maybe SpaceX hadn’t had these same problems that weren’t publicized, so I don’t want to get too down on Boeing. But they still haven’t put one up, and SpaceX has put 53 people up.
Well, and then to be fair, with that whole Dragon capsule thing, I don’t know exactly when it came in existence. It’s in the last 10 years, I mean 10 years even, probably. Let me see.
How long has it been launching that thing? Since 2019. Good night. Yeah, so they did the demonstration in 2019 of that Dragon.
And that was uncrewed in 2019. Yeah, but Elon, early on, he said that was his goal because we had to launch a place to shuttle. And he wasn’t working that many years on it.
That’s true. But I mean, I guess it’s that whole thing. But I mean, I guess he had stable funding.
Well, true. He had a couple billion. But if you let the engineers, maybe if you let the engineers do their job and hear them out, rather than worry about timelines, maybe you can unlock the potential of this whole thing.
And you can see the stark difference between the two, between SpaceX and Boeing. Whatever happened, remember that the X Prize, remember the X Prize way back when, what was that, 20 years ago? When the government threw it out to civilian companies to win the X Prize to put our astronauts into space. And it was this competition for several years.
And I don’t know who won it. It wasn’t SpaceX or Boeing. So, I don’t know what happened with that.
But I thought it was interesting that Starliner is delayed again while SpaceX is just, you know, they’re like, who else, who else, who else you got? We’ll shoot them up in the space. There was another story about SpaceX, about how many launches they planned over the next year out of Annenberg. Did you see that? And they’re like, this is so many launches, this could affect our environment out here.
Because they wanted to go up like 300%. I don’t know how many launches that is. But they’re just like, do it, do it, do it, you know.
So, I guess that’s what you got to do. And it’s amazing. Weekly launch almost, you know.
Yeah, or a couple of weeks. So, I mean, he’s done a couple in a day, you know, so. But that’s, you know, that’s good.
I’m glad they’re competing. If it was, imagine if nowadays it was still under all government auspices. You know, we’d still be hitchin’ rides from other countries, so.
Yeah. Okay, this next story is kind of interesting. It’s another startup story.
I like these startup stories, because I don’t know where they’re gonna go. But these guys are playing around with millions of dollars and like 20 people, and they’re like, here’s our concept. Okay, we’ll go try to develop it, right? So, this is from Space News.
Oh, shit. See? You gotta at least tell me to change the banner, right? No, change the banner, man. This is SpaceNews.com. This is a company called Inversion Space.
Inversion Space targets the military market with, quote, warehouses in space. So, Inversion Space is a startup founded in 2021. It’s sending its sights on revolutionizing military logistics with its concept of warehouses in space.
The company envisions deploying reusable re-entry capsules to store cargo in orbit and delivering it to any point on Earth within an hour. So, my question is, they’re launching these up. I don’t know how long they stay in orbit.
But then they’re like, okay, we need this. All right, deorbit number 12, you know, whatever it is, and that goes. So, or is it just launch, glide low Earth orbit and then deposit it? I don’t know.
We did an article like that a while ago. We did. Right, right, right.
I thought this one sounded like more basically on orbit spares. Kind of like it’s just floating around when needed, we’ll deorbit it. I got that just too.
But they have a diagram here that, I don’t know, maybe it threw me off. I don’t know. Once again though, deorbiting things in other people’s area, like in other countries or other areas.
Right. Are we that pinpoint yet? Are we that close to pinpointing it yet? No, but it’s, you know, think about it as an adversary. I don’t want you deorbiting anything in my country or around my country.
Isn’t there a sovereignty, I don’t know how high up it goes. Because they’re like, you know, three miles offshore or seven miles offshore, whatever. Straight up, right? Straight up.
Yeah, right. I guess it, I guess it only goes as high as you can see something. If all you got is naked eye, then I’m like, okay, you don’t go that high.
So, a pathfinder mission dubbed Ray. Ray is scheduled for launch as early as October on the SpaceX Transporter-12 rideshare mission funded by inversion spaces. Ten million dollar seed round, Ray will test technologies that will support the development of a larger capsule.
So, here is Ray. All right. And this is from inversion spaces site.
That picture is hard to tell what that is. That’s a little bit easier. But there’s a spacecraft piece attached to it, right? The Ray is, I think, the gold piece or the golden white piece.
The reentry capsule. Right, right. So, that’s how big Ray is going to be.
It’s 20 inches. It’s only 20 inches because it’s a pathfinder mission. They’re going to do some… Only 20 inches.
Don’t be smirch, Ray. Good point. Yeah, good point.
It’s only 20 inches. That is a sight. It’s bigger than me.
So, yeah, I salute that. But here’s the diagram that kind of threw me off, right? And this, again, this is from inversion’s website. So, it launches.
The counting comes off. There is the spacecraft in number three. Number four, it flips.
And then five, I guess it launches Ray. So, you see the little capsule there, part that comes off. And then it comes down on parachutes.
I don’t know how accurate parachutes are. You know what I mean? You do? We were just talking. I don’t know how accurate they are.
But if you’re talking about pinpoint drops… I just finished an audio book about the history of the SAS, the early history of the SAS. Oh, yeah? They’re talking about parachute ops and people in World War II, right? Right. People are spread all over the fucking place.
Yeah. Because you go with the wind. Right.
You go with the wind. Yeah. Yeah.
And I mean, maybe it’s adjustable and precise or GPS-assisted. Or maybe they don’t come out until… No, that doesn’t make any sense. I was going to say, maybe they don’t come out to a low altitude.
But the guys we were dropping… The guys we were dropping in a Normandy and Market Garden, they were at a low altitude too and they were spread all over the fucking place. So… But let’s say… All right, we need ammo. All right? We need an emergency resupply of ammo.
And that shit drops on the wrong side. You’re like, motherfucker. You all right? So, I don’t know.
Interesting. That is interesting. CEO Justin Fiachette said, Inversion envisions itself as a warehousing and transportation company.
We would store cargo and space. So, I guess it’s more like it’s going to be orbited. That’s where I thought about it.
We would store cargo and space and when it’s needed, deliver it in under an hour. Well, I don’t know what orbit it’s in. It’s got to be low.
It’s got to be Leo, right? But there’s no Leo stationary. Or is there? I don’t think there’s Leo stationary. They would have to time it.
So, they would have to have a lot of capsules up there to guarantee an hour or to say we’re going to have an hour, right? He said the capsules could transport anything from medical supplies and battlefield gear to small surveillance drones. Because drones are making them out in the field. We already did that story.
The 25 employee startup believes its vision of orbital warehouses and rapid delivery has a viable future. People are already spending money on transportation. Fiachette said, Let’s give them a better way to do it.
So, I got it. It’s interesting. It’s cool.
It’s a cool concept. I mean, imagine if you needed medical supplies, blood. I don’t know.
Could that work? Well, I don’t know. I doubt that. Imagine the shielding and everything or just instantly freeze and instantly thaw.
That’s true. The temperature variance. Yeah, that’s a good point.
Low Earth orbit is 128 minutes. Is there orbital periods? Oh, is there orbit? Oh, okay. So, you could.
Yeah, you got a couple packages up there. So, you got multiple. Yeah, at opposite ends.
Yeah, you could reach an hour. Yeah. I mean, but that’s rotating everywhere.
So, you’d have to have… Yeah, right, right, right. A bunch, but… Boy, that ground crew would be fucking on it, man. Just me and our tracking.
Amazing. Just with Elon and Starlin and one web and all these freaking things. Those tracking guys.
Yeah, their mission has gone nowhere but busier and busier and busier. And the initial analysts, too, right? Oh, yeah. Just trying to put those… Just trying to buy everything’s exactly what they say is.
But they got to put those warnings out, right? Those… Oh, shit. What were they called? What were they called? When you had… Oh, there was a… When you were approaching… Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a term for it.
Do you remember what it was? Yeah, I don’t remember the term. It’s not near miss, I know, but it’s kind of that way, right? And I… Gah. I mean, maybe it’ll come to me.
Maybe it’ll come to me. So, good on a version of space for thinking outside the box. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Now, here’s the setup I was telling you in the pre-show.
Oh. I run that… I am one of many administrators on the Space Force WTF Moments Facebook page. You just outed yourself? I did.
Well, this is where I put this out at. This is… You know what? Those who watch knew it. So, the Army, Ken Eisen, or Ice, he posted, or Army WTF Facebook page, posted that… The story about the… I think it was an EA, so a Master Sergeant, black man in the Army, shaving waver, good-looking beard, and it’s not unkempt.
It’s well-kempt, right? Yeah. We did a TikTok video about the leadership opportunities that he has been denied because he had a shaving waver. So, he posted that out there.
And the comments hit the proverbial fan, right? And they’re like, yeah, I’ve known guys who are great leaders. Who cares about the shaving waver? You know, we shouldn’t even have the beard. We’ve been asking for this for years.
I don’t know anybody who was asking for a beard for years, but that’s all right. Oh, no, Marty, people have been asking them beards for a long time. Yeah, but they knew they couldn’t get it, so they’re like, why ask for it? It’s like, hey, Sarge.
Yeah, but they were coming down the list. I know. A wish list.
I don’t know. I never heard of it as a wish list. Like, hey, I would have re-upped if I could have just stopped shaving.
You know? I never heard that wish list. So, all these people came out in, like, defensive beards, right? I was like, all right. Now, his point was, is that just the way he looked? And there’s, you know, there’s people who are going to discriminate against him.
Right. You can’t help it when you’re grown up in a military environment and you see somebody without a beard. You can’t help that thought to go, hey, fucking lazy.
How’s he getting away with it? How many times, as many times as I got yelled for not shaving at fucking four in the afternoon, when I shaved at four in the morning, I was like, it’s just growing back. And they’re like, how many times I had to take camel paint off my face so I could shave? Or you’re shaving at 3, 3, 4 o’clock in the morning to go make formation. By the time you hit formation, it’s already growing back.
They’re like, did you shave today? It’s like, yeah, but that was four hours ago. And then the guy is just like, well, I gotta shave him wherever. Yeah.
So, it’s hard to breathe that out. It’s hard to get that thought of you’re scamming the system out, right? Yeah, that is the difficult thing. And I can understand why he would think that that has falsely affected or negatively affected his career.
He probably was. I don’t doubt that. And I know it’s a medical thing, right? Right, right.
If you have a push-up waiver or if you have a boot waiver, those are both medical things. Say you got shin splints. We’ll disqualify you from certain jobs, certain activities.
That’s right. I’m not saying shaving waivers, I mean, it’s close. It’s hard to make an equivalency except for the equivalency is here’s the standard, meet the standard, right? And that’s what it is, right? And I know guys who look chubby in their uniform but could outrun most of the unit.
I get that. I get that. But your look, you look unfit.
Well, look at my DT score. I know, but you look like a tub of shit. It’s not fair.
It’s not fair. Right, right. It’s not fair.
But there’s an appearance. Oh, there used to be a professional appearance, you know, upholding standards. Hey, this guy’s inspiring others by his look.
And now you got this big shaving waiver thing, right? So people are backing this thing aggressively. So I… Maybe we’re just crusty in times of changing. We’re like, all right.
Well, but his criticism was of the old timers and they’re like, they’re going to discriminate against me. And it was like, yeah, because they had 16, 17, 18 years of no-beards, right? You meet the standard. And maybe it’s hard to shave for you.
Maybe it’s hard for this guy to run. Maybe it’s, you know, whatever it is. But if you overcome whatever it is to meet the Army Air Force military standard, okay.
Well, hats off to you, right? It’s the same. It’s almost the same argument as women doing the military job. If you can do the job, nobody gives a shit if you’re a woman, right? I mean, that’s the truth.
That’s the truth. If you can meet the standards, if you can run, if you can lift the projectile, if you can do the maintenance, you don’t need any other assistance, if you can do your own ruck march, great. Nobody cares.
You know, it’s Starship Troopers shower scene, right? Nobody cares if you’re all meeting the standard. But part of that is, right, now we’re bending the standard, right? So I put, and this is what the funny, this whole lead up is to this, what I hope is funny. I think it’s funny.
So I made a comment and said, quote, why stopping beards? Why short hair? Why uniforms? Why not smoke pot? A slippery sloper on, right? And that’s what I put out there. You know, just try to say, look, how many standards are we going to bend? How many standards are we going to change? If we need to change the standard, let’s change the standard. I don’t have a problem with that.
So there’s a ton of hate that came my way, especially under the Space Force moniker, right? You page through all the Space Force hate comments that came back. And then one guy commented and said, oh, the old slippery slope fallacy. He said, beards and pot are very far apart.
I was like, okay. Well, that leads me into this next story. It’s premarital sex, children out of wedlock, drugs.
It’s all on the same thing. It’s all right. But he said, he said, but you know, pot’s not even in the same.
You know, what do you throw a pot in there? Well, that leads me to stripes.com article. Military recruits are the proposal is military recruits would not be tested for marijuana anymore. So maybe pot is not that far away.
Federally, they’re changing it, right? I don’t know. Are they changing federal? It’s still legal federally, right? But there’s half the states that have it legal. Oh, did they? Oh, they lowered it.
Yeah. They reclass it. Right.
They reclass. I mean, and we talked about this years ago where we’re like, hey, with this many states going medical and recreational, you’re you’re over half. You’re going to have to make some federal plans.
Right. Right. Right.
And I don’t I don’t want to affect the clearance, how to affect, you know, recruits. Sure. People that are already in.
I mean. Well, I wish you had the other guys. We could do all show on this.
But anyway, new recruits and incoming officers into the military would not have to undergo mandatory cannabis testing under the House’s version of an annual defense policy bill. It says must pass. I don’t know why they put must pass.
It never passes. So, yeah, the draft of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act bars the services from requiring an individual to submit to marijuana testing as a condition of enlisting or commissioning. Representative Matt Gates, the Republican from Florida, attempted to add the provision, this provision last year’s to last year’s authorization bill.
So he got it on this year, supporters of the measure believe it will help the military attract recruits at a time when few young people want to or are eligible to serve. I don’t know if the pot users are the ones you want to know. But it’s so prolific now.
Right. They stopped the recruiters. Remember when we were initially recruited and like, have you done anything in the last 10 years? You’re like, I’m 18 when I was seven.
Well, looking for the security clearance. The security clearance is like in your whole life, right? Yeah. And now, though, recruits are like, yeah, in 30 days.
Right. Right. That’s that.
And it addresses that policy. But what was that? What was the phrase you learned for at least a security clearance? Right. I was like, I was experimental.
One time. That was it. Oh, yeah.
I still haven’t got the experiment right. I will get it. Don’t try.
Matt Gates said last year, I do not believe that prior use of cannabis should exclude Americans from enlisting in the armed forces. We should embrace them for stepping up to serve our country. Okay.
I got that piece of it. Right. You used it in high school.
Fine. You clean. You’re good.
Come on in. I get it. Military has long maintained a zero-tonus marijuana use policy, but has revisited and loosened its rules in recent years as more states legalized the drug.
The Air Force and Space Force began a pilot program. This is what we covered. A pilot program in 2022 that allows some recruits who test positive for THC to retake the test after 90 days.
The Army, Navy, and Marine Corps also gave applicants second chances to take a cannabis test on the Navy announced in February that it will no longer send home recruits who test positive for marijuana upon their arrival at boot camp. So they’re already in. And they’re like, oh, you’re hot for pot.
They’re like, okay, just go sleep it off. Right. I mean, that’s a sign.
In a lot of ways, the military is really reluctant and slow to change. Absolutely. But in a lot of other ways, the military is ahead of its time.
It is a crucible for experimentation. That’s true. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. I agree.
I agree. So I don’t know. Well.
I mean, in my mind, the amount of stuff we did when we were drunk. Sure. Like.
Well, somebody brought that up in that article. Like if it’s alcohol, if you’re not blasted on, if you’re not drunk on crew, if you’re not drunk on, you know, driving home, if you’re not doing that, if you write like you use alcohol in the same kind of situations because we know we know what’s out of your system. Right.
We know it’s out of your system quick. What was that? What was the phrase? Six hours bottle the throttle, the phrase or whatever that shit was. Yeah.
Got it. Can marijuana wash out? You know, I don’t know. I don’t know.
I don’t know. I mean, if you test a positive for, for drinking, right? You’re drunk on duty. Yeah.
We throw the book at you. You know, if you’re high on duty, yeah, we throw the book at you. So, but it’s easier to high.
I don’t know. I don’t want to, I don’t want to dip my toe into that because I don’t either. I don’t either.
So, the article says, a 2021 Rand Corporation study of the Army’s marijuana waiver policies showed recruits who received waivers for testing positive for cannabis or admitting to past drug use performed no worse than other soldiers. Yeah. I get that.
All right. I get it. No worse.
No worse. Shitty. We’re not even, we’re not even worse than them.
You are a shitbag and you’re sober. You are a shitbag and you’re high. Good job, guys.
At least he’s got an excuse. You’re just a shitbag. You might want to think about this.
It’s worth a shot. You can’t get shitty. I think I’m, I think I’m torn between, uh, maybe you should stop smoking too, baby.
You might be better, actually. You might be better. In fact, I’d rather you, I’d rather blame it on you being high than just you being sober and being as bad as you are.
At least you give me something to talk about. You guys are just a fucking idiot. And he’s not high, he’s not drunk, he’s not nothing, he’s just, he’s just naturally that dumb.
Impressive. I don’t know, I’m torn between the adapting military to try to get the, whenever they say the new generation of kids, that’s the first time in 200 fucking plus years of the military that we’ve had to use that phrase, right? I mean, do you think the- They had to do tattoo waivers, they had to do- Alright, let’s, let’s look from, let’s look from World War II to the Vietnam guys. Did the military lower their- They had to do the smoking weed all over Vietnam.
But did the military lower their standards to get people in? Yeah, they did the draft. They were like, have 10 days of training and that’s a good point, yeah, that’s a good point. That’s a good point, I forgot about that.
They knew they were taking criminals, that’s true, because the judge was like, you’re going to jail or you’re going to the military? What do you want? I was like, oh, go smoke pot in Vietnam, I guess, okay, fair enough, yeah. We’re not yet to prisoner status, okay, we’re like, no GED and pot smoking, okay, give us a year and we’ll go to prisoner status. You know, and on another note, I always thought the tattoo thing, I think the tattoos are excessive now, but when I was coming in, you know, the whole restriction on officers having tattoos, I was like, come on, what kind of officer are you trying to produce? But you know, that was the rules, that was the way we did it, so we played by it, right? But now they’re just like, oh yeah, come on in, you can be tattooed, I mean, it’s hard to readjust to go and, okay, military used to be spitting polish, guys, like those guys we did on the story of Mar-a-Lago, right? When those guys were standing tall, Mar-a-Lago, you didn’t see them coming with neck tattoos, you didn’t see them with the beard.
Old Navy guys though, tattoos are a real strong Navy history. I always thought it was funny to be like, oh, you got too many tattoos, you can’t come in the military, and, or you’re perfect, you can come in the military, we’ll be like, we’ll get you more tattoos. So I don’t know, they’ve got to do something, I get it, but I think lowering the standard is going to be hard to recover from, because once you lower that bar, how are you going to raise it back up, right? Who’s going to want to come in the military after like, there’s a bunch of pot smoking, neck tatted, long haired fucking freaks in the military now, you know, I’m not going to join that, I’ll join, I’ll join the World War II military, where it was hard, I don’t know, it’s weird.
It’s just a big ebb and flow kind of thing, like. I guess so, maybe, that would be interesting to see if like what you just said. They chucked it all down after Vietnam.
They did, yeah, it took to the 80s too. Vietnam, they were way down, and then during Cold War, they cut everybody out, and tightened everything up, and I wonder if we’re just kind of on that back down swing. I think there’s a lot more truth in why people aren’t joining up that the military is not publicly acknowledging, and when you go, okay, like we talked pre-show, look at that Afghanistan.
That’s not a great reason to join up, right? Let’s look at all the stories about the guys who were in, who the military’s not, or the VA’s not compensating for them, you know, how many more diseases can we add to the list of somebody who has served that is going to debilitate you later in life, you know? All those things have a cumulative effect, I think, and it’s, you know, especially when you look at where we have evolved in a formal war, yet these guys are being deployed everywhere, man, all the time, right? So it’s interesting, it’s, I’m not sure if what you’re doing is, I think you’re using the military for your purposes, but you’re not, the military does not appeal to a sense of patriotism anymore, I don’t know. And not even the guard or the reserve are safe from that deployment stuff, right? Right, when those guys are like, I don’t want to deploy, I’m joining the guard. Was the Alabama guard, those guys, what? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They just died in Jordan a couple months ago, Alabama National Guard, I think, or something like that. And that begs the question, do the guards up and active, and we’re not at war? And that’s where, you know, we’re going to have, beginning of June, we’re going to have General Chris Petty on, the big guard guy, so I want to ask him what he thinks about all this stuff, because you’re right, that’s supposed to be, they’re supposed to be for state. Why are they going for federal missions all the time? Federal missions overseas.
Overseas, that are guard guys, man. I remember when, I think I’ve told you this story, but when Desert Storm was coming up, we had to go train our round out National Guard Brigade before we could deploy over to Desert Shield, right? Desert Shield, Desert Storm. And so they activated the Louisiana National Guard artillery guys, and they did not want to be activated, right? And so as we were doing this too much train up with these guys, and these guys were like, I don’t want to be here, I do not want to be here.
This is not what I signed up for, and you’re putting me on active duty, I’m away from my job, I’m making E3 pay when I was making more of my civilian job, and you guys want to send me to war? It’s like, I don’t really want to fight. So I’ve seen that, and I respect that, you know? It’s like, that’s not the contract you signed, you know? So anyway, we’ll see what happens to that house draft bill. It sounds like it’s probably going to pass, I don’t see why it wouldn’t.
I mean, there’s been such a lessening about marijuana. I don’t know how to think about marijuana. I don’t know if it’s, I mean, it’s not reefer madness, you know, like it used to be, right? We all know that.
But it’s just another one of those hits like the military adapting. I don’t know, are they adapting or are they just trying to make concessions to get numbers? Now, I would also equate this similar to prohibition of alcohol. Kind of, yeah.
Right? Yeah, that’s a good point, yeah. On base, you couldn’t buy a beer, you know, you couldn’t buy anything. You couldn’t buy it on Sunday, definitely.
You couldn’t buy it on fucking Sunday, right? Yeah, right. Now, you can buy it on base, you can buy, you know, drink on base. Anything you want.
Yeah. I mean, they’re definitely going to have to seriously look at and consider the rules. And the people who are advocating for this have a good point.
They’re like, and one of the comments that I read about this not turning away people for marijuana use was like, hey, okay, marijuana is one thing, but, you know, you go out here and you drink to your blot out and we allow that. But we’re not going to allow a guy to get, you know, get a little buzz from a joint. You know, and there’s a lot of alludes to that.
And I get it because I saw some destructive alcoholics, man. Can you imagine if they had a dispensary on base like a Class 6? What’s that? What’s that? Right next to the Robin Hood? Yeah, right next to the haircut. So, you got dry cleaning, you got your dispensary, and you got your $20 haircut.
Yeah. Maybe, maybe. I mean, we could be heading there.
We could be heading there. What was it last year? No. Was that almost a year and a half ago? Well, we were joking about the revamped MREs.
I wish I had that clip, man. I should have prepared for that. I should have played that.
That would have been awesome. You know, the oatmeal bar is all laced. Yeah, that would be great.
I mean, there you go. There you go. Calm down, you guys.
Calm down. Laced, brownie, our oatmeal cookie, and every MRE. Be a lot less stress on the battlefield.
Yeah, a lot less productivity, but a lot less stress. So, maybe it, maybe it cuts down on PTSD. Who knows? You can only do it after taps.
You can eat your dehydrated pot bar, but you still can only have three drinks. All right, let’s finish this out, my friend, and do a little bit of history, sort of. All right? But I want to compare these two stories, and I want to talk about this.
I don’t know if we can do this in 10 minutes. Probably not, because we’re going to go off on it. But I’d like to compare these two stories about quote-unquote ACEs.
And interestingly, both of these stories were from taskandpurpose.com, only a couple days apart. So, I found that curious. Okay, so the first one is great, is a great one.
It’s about a World War II triple, triple ACE. So, an ACE is five, right? So, he’s a triple ACE. Bud Anderson, the last World War II triple ACE, he died at 102 years old.
He died last week, right? One of the last masters of the year has died, Brigadier General Clarence Emile Bud Anderson, credited with downing 16 enemy planes over Europe. In World War II, he died this past week at his home in Auburn, California. He was 102 years old.
So, he was right out of college after we entered World War II. He enlisted in 42. He was an enlisted guy.
He became commissioned as a second lieutenant. He went to Europe in 43. He was assigned to the 357th fighting group.
He flew P-51 Mustangs. His plane, he nicknamed Old Crow after the Bourbon Whiskey, right? In the first five months of 44, he shot down five German planes, earning him ACE status. He rose through the ranks serving two combat tours.
By the end of 44, he’d reached triple ACE status, won several dogfights, and by the end of the war, flew 116 missions. He shot down 16 and a quarter German fighters. And it’s fighters, so they’re- Yeah, fighters.
They’re- Dog bombers. They’re hunting them. Correct, right, right, right.
He had the third highest number of enemy aircraft kills in the 357th fighter group, which alone took out nearly 700 German planes. That’s amazing. They should definitely get more credit for that.
He served alongside fellow fighter pilot legend, Chuck Yeager, during World War II. Why haven’t they- I only know Yeager as a test pilot. I don’t know any of his history.
It’d be interesting to see. All right, to hear. The two were close friends.
They would both serve as military test pilots after the war. According to his website, Anderson logged more than 7,500 hours in the sky, flying more than- Here we go again, Jake. Flying more than 130 different types of aircraft.
Those guys back then are like, hey, just like your- Was it your uncle? My uncle, yeah. Just put me in a cockpit. I’ll figure it out, you know.
That’s amazing. That is so amazing. I guess it’s flying and flying, but- Yeah.
Just to think of the difficulty you have. Getting in to a new car. The seat’s not right.
The seat’s not right. Why is the turn blinker on my- Let alone there’s no designated switch location. No, it could be anywhere, right? Like, so the driving dynamics are, you know, unique to their own airframe, but- Yeah.
Like, switches are different. The freaking everything- But the error you might make in a car you’re not familiar is, okay, you might bust a turn signal up because you think it’s a wiper blade. The error they make in the air is a lot more- You can roll over.
You’re like, okay, this is getting crazy. Just roll over. I mean, all of a sudden, you’re in an inverted dive because you thought, oh, shit.
That was the wrong way to go. So, yeah, the margin is there. It’s impressive.
It’s crazy. Very impressive. What a bunch of men, man.
However, he wasn’t done fighting after World War II. In Korea, he led an F-86 squadron after the 1953 ceasefire. And then an F-105 squadron, out of Okinawa during the Vietnam War.
Bud Anderson again was in combat flying 25 missions while in command of the 355th tactical fighter flying an F-105 Thunderchief. That’s a great name, man. Thunderchief named Old Crow II.
His wing focused on bombing North Vietnamese supply lines along the Ho Chi Medreo. Anderson retired from the military in 1972 with the rank of full bird colonel. In 2022, Anderson was given the honorary promotion of brigadier general.
Bad ass. All those guys were bad ass back then. That’s freaking crazy.
But that is cool. So, triple ace in the air. Dog fighting.
Shooting down 16 German planes. Now, let’s compare this to another story that’s a task and purpose. You set up like that.
Yes, I did. You’re interested in these poor kids. I know.
I will caveat them. Good on them. But the story goes, 10th Mountain Division gets three new aces.
For drone kills. Okay. You got to change your banner for you.
I remembered. God damn it. I don’t have a banner.
I did that last week. Yeah, I did that last week. That’s all right.
Nobody’s going. Hey, I tuned in to Inversion Space and you guys were talking about aces. You may want a banner.
You may want a banner down there. They’re talking about a 104-year-old. True.
Sorry. Sorry for our 10 guys watching. Sorry about.
All right. So let’s compare Bud Anderson’s triple ace. To the 10th Mountain Division gets three new aces for drone kills.
The U.S. Army has three new aces. They aren’t part of the helicopter crew, but rather artillery soldiers who took out more than two dozen enemy drones while deployed to the Middle East. Now, let me first say for Staff Sergeant Daniel Smith, Sergeant William Turok, and Staff Sergeant Henry Davis, all assigned to 2nd Battalion 15 Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team 10th Mountain Division.
Bad ass. You guys shot down a shitload of drones. That’s awesome.
Like 16 apiece, something like that, right? Now, I don’t know if they did that with their rifles. I think the article said five apiece. No, it was more.
Well, yeah, to get an ace. But they shot down more than that, right? The tree got down 28 drones. Look at that.
One-way drones, right? So they were kamikaze drones. But did they say that? Oh, you can’t say that anymore. Oh, you can’t? You can’t say that anymore? I don’t know.
I don’t understand why we don’t say that. Yeah, one-way drones. Kamikazes.
Everyone knows what a kamikaze is, right? One-way drone. Is that like a delivery and it’s just not going back? Now you get your package and a drone and you’re like, oh, great. Yeah, I get it.
Delivers face explosives. Thank you. I would refuse that delivery.
Which one of you says the bitches? You know, if it was dropping eggs on you and it was like, oh, that’s a good one. Good one. He got me.
That’s a good one. You got me. But when you put C4 in there, it’s a whole different thing.
Yeah, C4? Not friendly. Yeah, not friendly. That’s enough.
That’s enough. It’s getting rude, guys. Don’t burn up the toilet paper.
I’m kind of pissed. If you know, you know, right? Yeah, if you know, you know. Oh, shit.
So anyway, good on these artillery guys for shooting down those drones. I wish they would have told us. Are you shooting them down with just your rifles? Because that’s fucking badass, right? Drones coming down and you’re taking them out.
That’s that’s awesome. They’re artillery guys. Well, they got a rifle, right? Yeah, I know.
But you got to defend themselves. Yeah, we got it. Yeah, exactly.
So they did good. They shot down this stuff. Yeah.
But it’s not. Did the ground crews running anti-aircraft missions who shot down planes. They didn’t qualify to be an ace.
The problem is they called them aces. And this is not the first article that did that, right? This is like the second article I’ve seen where they’re calling these guys aces for shooting down drones. Is the military getting less and less and less creative? I mean, we used to have such cool names for like everything.
And we can’t come up with some other name for shooting down a drone than an ace, which compares him to Bob Anderson shooting down German Messerschmitts. You know, that’s not fair. It shouldn’t be.
So maybe we should go on a campaign. And maybe we should ask all our commenters, what’s a new name instead of ace for shooting down drones? Imagine if we got like some great suggestions and we could throw it up there in the army. It’s like, hey, who is this swearing in podcast? They got a great name for drone shooting downers.
I don’t know what it would be. So if you’re out there listening, come up with a new name instead of ace. I’m sorry, Marty.
I did a little tiny bit of research though. The term ace just refers to that. Anybody in any specific expertise who has multiple kills.
So you can have sniper aces. You can have those kinds of aces. Yeah, what you’re thinking of is flying aces.
Well, sure. That’s the most popular. That’s the most popular.
Right, right. So maybe I guess it’s still, to me, I’m like, yeah. It still would be better if it had its own name.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be awesome, you know? Because I mean, did the Fruze get ace awards? Right, the Stinger guys. Yeah, where’s Eric? Oh yeah, he’s freaking sauced up in the streets of Denver.
But how about the some merit? Uh, how about the submariners? Did they get, are you a submarine ace if you sink five ships? Yeah, I don’t know if they’ve sank five ships. But the U-boats did. The U-boat, the Germans.
Those U-boat guys definitely got their ace. So ace is for any, any, what was it again? So multiple. But it’s multiple kills in your expertise.
Huh. Huh. There’s a joke in there somewhere, but I’m not quick enough to do it right now.
Not after three bears, so. So anyway, good on, buddy Anderson. Good on those three NCOs.
Good on your research now. And now you’ve totally shot my whole mocking right in the ass. But that’s good because I didn’t, well, but I didn’t realize that ace, uh, okay.
All right, fair enough. So good on them. They are aces.
They are aces. Yeah, it did. It denotes a successful military professional who has accumulated a meaningful, measurable statistic.
Such as aircraft shot down, tanks destroyed, tonnage sunk, number of successful sniper shots. Wow. You can be a sniper ace.
God, that sounds so weird. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, oh yeah, I’ve shot this. The terms most commonly applied to flying. Flying, right.
All right. All right. Well, I was going to try to mock that, but, uh, I should.
We can still mock it. It’s still bullshit. I appreciate what they did.
And I have no idea how difficult. I I’m going to thank all week now for a new name for shooting down drones. So because I think we need it.
I really do think we need it. So, uh, too bad of the sky or something like that. Oh, it’s going to be something, uh, like, I don’t know.
Cartoonish or something. I don’t know what it is. Well, or anime or something.
There’s probably a phrase in anime that that’ll be applied. So I’ll go do the research. They probably love it.
Those young guys will probably love it. That’s the new, that’s the new army. Right.
I don’t know. They’re, they’re high and they got big Japanese anime. And they’re yelling at everything.
And just shit going on. It was 10 feet. Get there already.
Geez, guys. Okay. How breathy are you going to be when you actually start fighting? That’s intensity.
That’s intensity. You got a whole bunch of E ones that he’s gone. Look at these old men.
They don’t know what they’re talking about. Exactly. Who cares? I’m having fun.
Ah, shit. Let’s end up, man. Let’s end up with the whole crew.
Oh, on behalf of Jake and I, I’d like to thank you for listening today. Please like, share, subscribe, and let us know how we get in the comments and give us a new name for a drone downer. Oh, wow.
Down one way through. I mean, the one-way drone was going down anyway. And it just didn’t deliver daily.
And I don’t even know they successfully shot. Ooh, because it’s going down. They’re like, oh, it’s in the ground.
It was one way through. I got it. Yeah, that’s fine.
That’s fine. Jake, thanks for showing up, man. Thanks for being here.
To our guys who are taking sick days. Hopefully you can come back. But for everyone listening, thanks for listening, and we will see you next week.