How well do you think the film kind of captured that complex question when it came to astrophage?

I think both the book and the movie did a great job at that in astrophage because when I was reading that, when I was seeing it in the movie, it made me think very much of all the times I've reported on, oh, look, there's a hint of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus, and is that a biosignature gas or not? Or oh my gosh, is there dimethyl sulfide in K2-18b, you know, an exoplanet that might also be a biosignature.

Now, astrophage is not, you know, a molecule in a gaseous atmosphere, but it's the kind of thing...

I mean, a- you know, I covered Allen Hill's A4001 when people were arguing about is this squiggle in a rock, you know, a fossil of a life form.

And you sort of look at the astrophage and, you know, until you see it, you know, reproduce and spread or whatever, then it's obviously living, but what is it, right? What does it say? What does it say about what life is and how, like, weird and unique it might be and how similar to just, like, you know, microbes on Earth it might be as well too.

So one of the things I really love about Project Hail Mary, and I have a lot of critiques as well too, but things I love is these two different alien species, right? You've got astrophage, which is like slimy algae stuff, non-sentient, but doing its own thing to evolve and survive in the universe.

And then you've got the sentient creature, Rocky, which I guess we're not doing too many spoilers, but, uh, there is an alien creature named Rocky, and he is sentient.

It, it turned out, you know, clearly it's not astrophage, and it wasn't an imminent supernova, so what ended up being the case with Betelgeuse?

Mm.

-color difference, shadows, dynamic changes as kind of the light moves across the lunar surface.

That's stuff that a orbiter really just can't get, just a, a spacecraft with a camera taking pictures robotically.

So what we heard from the astronauts were colors.

We heard about greens, we heard about browns.

There was a lot of talk about, "Wow, the moon is a lot browner than I thought." It's not just black and white.

It's not just endless shades of gray.

Which do you think has stood out to you the most from those that you've seen?

So how is this different?

Well, it depends on who you ask, but I- I talked to a lunar scientist yesterday who made the argument that this is different because there is a longer-term plan.

So the point of Apollo was to land a human on the Moon from the US before the Soviets did, and there wasn't really clear what was gonna happen after that.

In the early '70s, the Apollo program got wound down.

There was some space station work.

Eventually, NASA pivoted to s- reusable space planes in the form of the space shuttle and the space station and Earth orbit as a destination to get to.

The argument this scientist made to me yesterday is that NASA has a plan for a longer-term return to the lunar surface to build a Moon base.

Are we hoping for something similar from the Artemis II mission, this kind of wonderful encapsulation of what's going on?

Explain that, please.

It's a very unique thing at the Office of Management and Budget.

So that's the White House office that's in charge of dispersing funds.

It's the budget office for the administration.

And once Congress has approved funds, what normally happens is the OMB would start giving out 30-day blobs, apportionments they call it.

So here, you get your 30-day check.

You can start spending the money that Congress says is okay to spend.

Does Congress have any levers to pull that could open the tap again?