Welcome back to Knock Down Jay. I'm here with my man, Chris Broussard.  Bouchard, how you feeling? You feeling confident today? I'm feeling great. You the one got the beat down. What are you talking about? All right, all right. We need to start all over with the truth. How about that? Let's get started. Chris, the Los Angeles Lakers not in the playoffs, but still one of the most fascinating teams in the league. Chris, I don't kneel. Tyloo, Monty Williams, I'm just going to ask you, is this Lakers head coaching job even a good job right now? Well, it's always a good job to coach the Brown James. And I know that comes with a lot of headaches. It's stress, Tyloo out. He had to go to the hospital because of it, right?  So I'm not saying it's not stressful, but Shaq brought problems, right? Coach and Shaq, how about Kobe? There were problems. Michael Jordan gave problems to Phil Jackson. Didn't want to run the triangle. Superstars bring issues. They bring different challenges than a bunch of role players who just want to do whatever the coach says. LeBron's not unique in that regard. And on top of that, with all the challenges you get, you also get the great benefit of having a chance to win a championship. Any coach, any coach who doesn't want the challenge of coaching a great player like LeBron James, I don't want you. Because you're not built for this. Number one, number two, what makes the Lakers job right now not a good one is that is the front office situation. Not LeBron, the front office situation. Who's the president? Who's running basketball operations? What did we say about Luke all year? Magic and Polinka didn't hire him. Rob Polinka, I'm talking about, they didn't hire him. So if things go south, Luke's gonna pay the price. Well, if I'm a coach and the Lakers hire me, and then three weeks later bringing a new president who I'm not connected to, I'm not tied to, now I could be the scapegoat again. The Lakers are doing this backwards. And that says a lot about their organization.  And the challenge of coaching LeBron, it disappears if you have a strong front office because if LeBron, say, has an issue with the coach, the front office doesn't say, look, he's your coach.  If you're gonna win, it's with this guy. That's what Pat Raleigh did with Eric Sposter. It resulted in two titles. So you just have to, the Lakers don't have strong leadership right now. It's not LeBron James that's the problem. It's Jeannie Buss, and the way they're running things. Jeannie Buss is a major problem, I think we would agree. I don't know if she's in over her head or what running the show, but they do need a president because if I'm looking at taking the Lakers job, what's the game plan this summer? Are we trading all the young guys? Who's on the table? Who's on the market? What are we doing as our free agent pitch? Because right now, the Clippers across town have a much better pitch than the Lakers. You guys sell Glitz and Glamour and Hollywood and the Beaches and LeBron. We're gonna sell grit and hardcore tenacity. Look at that comeback we just made against them. A better front office. Better front office. Guys who were kind of undervalued. The Lakers had Lou Williams, Chris. And they let him go and Lou Williams now gonna be the sixth man of the year again. I don't know, this is a great job right now. There's just too much uncertainty and don't forget, you just say coaching LeBron's great. The Rich Paul angle is Rich Paul gonna wanna shove more of his guys into the Lakers and say, hey, we need to take this guy on. But that's my point. Just LeBron's 34 and a half. That's my point.  Unless there was some handshake wink nod deal when LeBron came here. Hey, me and Rich. Well, that would be gone. Who brought him here? That guy's gone. So this is a chance. So you're gonna be the guy to stand up to LeBron or Rich Paul? Orgently the most powerful agent and the most powerful player in the league. Why are you running a basketball team if you can't stand up to a player and an agent? I'm not saying be adversarial. I want the input of LeBron. I want the good relationship with Rich Paul. No question.  I wanna hear LeBron out. What are you looking for in the coach? Who do you like out there? What do you think about, you know, some of our off-season moves could be? I'm taking it all in, but I'm making the final decision and it might disagree with what you're saying. That's what David Griffin did. Well, that's a perfect pivot to the next question, Chris. David Griffin named GM of the Pelicans. New Orleans, of course, has Anthony Davis who has said he's played his last game. He said his goodbyes. He wore his Looney Tunes t-shirt. Oh boy. So do you think David Griffin in New Orleans means that Anthony Davis is more or less likely to land with the Lakers? Oh. I, look, I think there's still a chance he ends up with the Lakers, but I would say Griffin's place there makes it less likely. Interesting. Not that he's not gonna end up there. So Griffin LeBron, who worked together in Cleveland, now Griffin's gonna say, no, you're not getting AD, because I- Is he working for LeBron now? Well, hold on, hold on. His job, David Griffin's job is to improve the New Orleans Pelicans. True. He couldn't care less about improving the Los Angeles Lakers. He's heavily invested in the Pelicans for the next decade, right? We know these GMs. Come on, they have a couple of year job. He's on to the next one. Wait, wait, wait, wait. David Griffin could have held out, could have held off on accepting the Pelicans job if he was really interested in the Lakers job. Maybe he knows Genie's bus. I already got somebody in there. He didn't even talk with them, to my knowledge, and it hasn't been reported. So I'm just saying, Griffin, he's got a great relationship with LeBron and Rich Paul. Yes. But he's working for the Pelicans. He has no interest in making anybody else better. Of course, he could be a double agent. I'm kidding, that's a joke. I mean, here's the thing though. I don't think you're joking. No, no, we've talked about this in depth, Grusar. The Lakers' best shot at a start. You said it last week. I agree, Anthony Davis, right. There ain't no fallback if David Griffin stiffs LeBron and Rich Paul and says, we're sending Anthony Davis elsewhere. If it's a better deal for the Pelicans, I'm not, trust me, I know David Griffin. I've known David Griffin since he was working in the public relations department for the Phoenix Suns. He's a tough customer. He's not going to just hand the Lakers. If it's a tie, he's sending Anthony Davis somewhere else. If it's a better deal for the Pelicans, he's definitely sending Anthony Davis somewhere else. But then we get to the point of this other deal, that doesn't exist, is Anthony Davis signing in that other place long-term? Because he has said he wants to be with the Lakers. Has he? Publicly, as he said. Well, he hasn't said that publicly. And they haven't said, they didn't even say that to the Pelicans, that he definitely wants Lakers. Okay, Anthony Davis wants to be with the Lakers. Lakers are his number one on his list, but it's not Lakers or Bust for Anthony Davis. Anthony Davis, behind the scenes, the chatter is, he's going to be in space gym too, I'm assuming that's out there or something. He's going to want to be with the Lakers. He ain't going to sign in like 28 other teams. Maybe Boston, maybe the Knicks. That's, there's been talk that he doesn't want to go to Boston. Okay, he doesn't want to go to Boston. So Boston them all. The Knicks, if the Knicks get the first or second pick, maybe they can make an offer to New Orleans that might trump what the Lakers get. Okay. Look, and I'm not saying it's impossible for the Lakers to get him. Because if Kyrie Irving leaves Boston, if I'm Danny Ainge, I'm not giving up Jason Tatum. Now I don't know if Daniel shoot those craps, but I'm not doing that for a guy that could be a one year rental. So it keeps coming back to the Lakers. Well, but we don't, we don't, we have to see the landscape from Boston. Even without Jason Tatum, a Jalen Brown, maybe a Gordon Hayward, a Marcus Smart or, or you know, Terry Rogier, draft picks. Like David Griffin has to look at what's going to make my franchise better. What deal? And for the Lakers is Brandon Ingram, I don't want to say damaged goods. I think, you know, when blood clots in the arm, aren't as dangerous as those in the legs, but that does make it a little bit questionable. Let me come back to this. And now Kyle Kuzma, Kyle Kuzma not a franchise player? No, of course not.  So what, what do the Lakers have? I want to come back to February, when the Pelicans reportedly would not pick up the phone to talk to the Lakers. Okay. And then when they did allegedly pick up the phone, they said, we want everybody in four first round picks. Griffin's not going to be that standoffish, the way these other guys would. So I, that's why I believe David Griffin in New Orleans helps the Lakers in their quest for Anthony Davis. Whoever was running the Lakers, if it was back to Dell Dempsey and those guys, but seriously, during the summer during the new, the off season, if it was the same front office, they would begin talking with the Lakers in the summer. The issue was, we're not trading them there before the deadline. There was no reason to trade them in February. That's what it was. It wasn't just being upset with the Lakers. Yeah, that was a part of it. But come off season, they would have been willing to engage the Lakers along with the Knicks, the Celtics and any other teams that may want to get in this. Well, let's just wrap it up. What does Chicago wants to throw? What does Chicago got a lot of young pieces? Yeah, it's a big city, it's a big market, obviously a great history. So I'm just saying there are other things. I'm not saying it's impossible for the Lakers. I'm saying David Griffin is not going to give Anthony, give the Lakers any type of break. It may have to be a three or four team deal. And right now, who in that Lakers runoffice is capable of putting together a three or four team deal? Rich Paul, the guy who knows. Well, Rich maybe would have to go out and try to help orchestrate it. You know, to be honest, because agents do do that sort of thing. Are you ready to move on to the best player in the NBA? We're gonna talk about Kevin Durant. Yes, we are going to talk about Kevin Durant. He's in the running. It's up for grabs. I'm saying grab it.  Kevin Durant has averaged 12 shots a game in these first two games with the Clippers. Furthermore, Kevin Durant over the last month and a half of the season, okay, March and April, 17 games total. He averaged 13 shots. He went from shooting 19 shots a game or close to 19 to shooting 14 shots a game or close to 14 was 13.8 or something like that. So he dropped five shots a game. His scoring went down to 20 points a game from like 27. What is going on with KD? So I will, I'll be at the game tonight. I hope you will be at Staple. I'm going Sunday, not tonight. Easter Sunday, huh? Yeah, okay. So my theory here, Chris, is that Kevin Durant is testing the Golden State Warriors. He is saying to them, all I hear is I'm going to New York and the Warriors don't need me. The Splash Brothers will go back to the way it was when they won 73 games. And I believe Kevin Durant- Is he really hearing that or is that just how he feels? We know Kevin Durant has rabbit ears. But how many, have you heard, is that out there? I don't know that that's out there. I'm floating my ears. Do know this. KD does feel that. He does feel like the Warriors feel like we made you. You need us.  Fans on social media feed that. The media, I think kind of feeds that a little bit. And I- That's always going to be there. Yeah, and if you look at- I don't care how many rings you're wearing with the Warriors. His pre and post All-Star splits are dramatic. I mean, he just stopped shooting the basketball. He had eight shots and nine turnovers in game two. And I think he's testing the Warriors. And I think he's saying, guys, I want you to come to me the way you came to me in the Hamptons and said, we need you. We need you, KD. You flew across the country to recruit me. And now here I am in your backyard and you're not showing me the love. And I think the Warriors need to come to Kevin Durant and say, we need you, Kevin. It's on us. We came out of our element. We moved out of our comfort zone and we messed it up. We need you back. And I think Kevin Durant, this is why I give a chance that he signs a one plus one, Chris. We need you back? Like- You've been telling him all year we need you. But are they showing him? Are they showing him? What do you want him to do? Run, please, for Kevin Durant. Get him on the block against Patrick Beverly. The head coach just said, I want Kevin Durant taking 20 or 30 shots. That's not, that's not, what, what? Get him the ball. Does he have to say, I want you taking 50? Maybe he wants- He's kidding Kevin Durant of all. Chris, you know- I want to hear what Kevin Durant needs to hear. Chris, you know, you go home and maybe you take your wife, a nice bouquet of flowers, you put them on the table. Here you go honey.  And you do all the right things and say all the right things, but you're not showing the love. I think, and again, this is just speculation, Kevin Durant is not- First of all- The only love from the Warriors. I think he wants to be embraced.  You got guys at this network, ESPN, all saying he's gone, it's done, it's the mix, it's done. Maybe Kevin Durant likes it and has fun. How much fun does he have right now? I don't think he's having fun. He does not look joyous out there. He hasn't looked joyous though for a few years, to be honest. I mean, I think he was joyous collecting those MVPs in the finals. Yeah, but he also is saying he's on LeBron's grill. He also is quoted as saying, I won the championship and it was like, okay. You know what I mean? Like he kind of played down, played.  I'm just saying they want Kevin, all this stuff you're talking about is periphery. It's us in the media talking about it. It's not the Warriors. Believe me, the Warriors want Kevin Durant. He knows they want Kevin Durant. The players want Kevin Durant. Again, Simon, this is a good presume. That's Traymah and Green. That's one player.  Right, that's my point. Isn't that showing you love? This guy's won three championships with us, but we're gonna suspend him for something that really wasn't suspendable. Shouldn't have suspended him for it. Going at a teammate, one sentence. Going at a teammate. We don't need you. Two time finals, MVP's not a teammate. Best player in the NBA, not just a teammate. He's a teammate, just like Steph is a teammate and so on and so forth.  And I'm not saying it was right for Traymah. I'm just saying, typically that's not a something you suspend a player for. They did it. That's showing Kevin Durant the love. Steph, Steve Kerr saying I won him shooting 23rd time. Who doesn't want to hear that? Well, you reminded me. You don't think Michael Jordan would have loved to hear a coach say I won him shooting 30 times? You reminded me of Kobe Bryant in the Sun series, right? He had, what, 50 in a game? Well, that's the only reason I'm not completely shutting down your theory. I think Kevin Durant's better than that. I don't think Kevin Durant will pull a stunt like this, especially in the playoffs.  Let's see what you can do without me. I think he's more of a winner than that. The only reason I won't shut it down is because Kobe Bryant did do that. Against Phoenix Game 7, we know years back, he was getting a lot of flack for shooting too much. And he decided not to shoot in the second half of that game, and it cost him. The difference is Kobe Bryant did it for one half. Right, right, Durant. You're talking about Kevin Durant doing it for two months? Well, so you really think that? You made a great point with Kobe, people were calling him selfish, right? I think that was exactly what happened, and he took three shots in the second half. People are saying the Warriors don't need Kevin Durant. He ruined the NBA. I think there's, Kevin Durant is showing them, you guys need me, I'm telling you right now, they're not beating the Rockets without Kevin Durant being MVP, final Kevin Durant. Not if Kevin Durant's gonna be on the team and then sabotages and not play. I mean, but the old Warriors, the old Warriors that Kevin Durant joined, that team was capable of beating the Rockets, but if it's gonna be thrown on us like out of the blue and I'm still here but I'm not gonna be myself, I'm gonna be a role player. No, they're not, cause it's gonna be jacked up. I think Kevin Durant's better than that. But I'm, look, it's a mystery. Why all of a sudden, cause Steph, like Kevin Durant tried to explain it, like we're playing differently. The last two months, well he is.  He's the only one who shots are down. Boogie shots weren't down, Steph and Clay shots weren't down. I don't know how to explain it.  Again, I think he's better than that. I'll quickly ask this, do you believe right now the Warriors could be in some trouble against the Rockets in the next round? Yeah, I still favor the Warriors, but they're gonna have their hands full. First of all, a lot of people are saying Houston's not better than they were last year. They look better. They're way better right now. They weren't the first half of the season. Utah is no slouch. They're murdering Utah. They are dismantling Utah. I mean, to do this to Utah is no joke. So yeah, they got a great chance to beat the Warriors. I would say right now I'm probably 55, 45 Golden State. All right, let me quickly move on to the Rockets now. Maybe it's because they're killing the Jazz and it's unwatchable. I don't find joy watching the Houston Rockets because James Harden dribbles the ball 600 times a game. They run the exact same play ad nauseum. It just becomes boring. It's crossover, crossover, crossover drive, either floater or step back three or alley-oop to Capella every single time. And to me, that's a little boring. I like pace and space.  Who else do you like watching? Come at me, brother. Other than the Warriors, who else do you like watching? I like Kyrie Irving down the stretch. He is nice. Kyrie Irving. Kyrie ain't handling it like James Harden. But he's not dribbling 600 times a game. And if you won- 557. 553, I think. Look. I like Portland. Damian Lillard, man. I'm having more fun watching Damian Lillard than I am the Houston Rockets. Damian Lillard is going off. Lillard is going to another level. There's no doubt. He's unbelievable. You're not alone. A lot of people feel that way about Harden. I love watching him. He's a great player. I'm not saying I love watching him more than I liked watching Michael Jordan or Steph Curry or something. But I love watching him because I understand how difficult it is to do what he's doing. For you to come down time after time after time. They know what's coming.  You're not the most, the fastest guy in the world. But you're somehow able to get around him or create space. The step back three, his three point shot is so pure. It's incredible. Like I like watching it. Like it's not the most artistic thing. It might be the difference between watching Muhammad Ali in his prime and say, I don't want to say Mike Tyson because it's always fun to see somebody knock somebody out. But it's just not as artistic. But I understand how difficult it is to do what he's doing. And I'm in awe. I don't want to, I'm like, I'm poo-pooing what James Harden's doing because he's incredible. I had Giannis as the MVP. Harden is looking like the MVP. I think Giannis is going to get it. And guarding him is difficult. But just from my point of view, watching it, it's just, it's gotten a little tiresome. And I'm a little nervous that if the Warriors get extinguished, we're seeing colossal ratings drops already. No LeBron in the postseason. If the Warriors get knocked out in the second round, I don't think like every night out here in LA, six o'clock, I'm like, I got to get home, watch NBA finals, conference finals, Rockets, Blazers that I just don't know. And I'm a huge NBA guy. I'll give you this. From the casual fans such as yourself. The Jits are not the real fans. But for the casual fans, I do think there'll be a drop. Because I'm enjoying the playoffs now without LeBron. Obviously I'd love to see him in it, but I'm enjoying it just as much as I would if he were in it. But obviously the casual fan is not. And I think it'd be the same thing if the Warriors are gone. I do think there'd be that same thing. But I think it'd be great for the NBA and the hardcore fans because there would be an air of mystery. We wouldn't know would it be a Milwaukee, Boston, Toronto, Houston, maybe, like you said, from the other side of the bracket, San Antonio. I mean, it'd be awesome.  Oh, Kevin Durant just unfollowed Curry on Instagram. Like that's gonna be the story. I'm not even making that up. It's gonna be all, where's Kevin Durant going? Cause he ain't staying if they don't win. One last quick note. Well, are you so sure? In the NBA, wine as much as the Houston Rockets. Dude, it is unbearable.  If Hardin misses a shot, he's like, where's the foul? Crystal, Crystal, Golden State wine's a little bit, but nothing like it. A little bit. PJ Tucker, Boston River, Austin Rivers wants Michael Jordan whistles. I mean, that's what's happening out here. It's insuffable. Stop ripping the Rockets. Sorry guys, kill me in the YouTube comments. All right. He loves when you kill me. Let's wrap up here. Goatsard McIntyre, Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics, second round. Who you got? Milwaukee in six. Woo. Look, Eric Bledsoe locking down Kyrie. Not locking it down, but making it. Can't lock down Kyrie. Eric Bledsoe was on my first team all defense. You can't, nobody can like down Kyrie, but he will make it tough on him. Here's the deal. Because people look inevitably, they're going to look back and say, Boston beat Milwaukee in seven last year, without Kyrie. Without Kyrie. That's probably where you were going. Tatum was a rookie. You don't know where I'm going. Okay. All right. That's true. I never know where you're going. Look, last year, the Celtics in Milwaukee was nowhere near as good as they are. We know that, right? And Brad Stevens, despite not having Kyrie, had a humongous coaching advantage over the interim coach in Milwaukee. All right? So that was huge. And then in the second round against Philadelphia, he had a humongous coaching advantage over Brett Brown. This season, this series against Indiana, which Boston isn't looking all that great. They do not look phenomenal. They have a talent advantage, because Kyrie is there in Victor Oladipo for the Pacers is not. There's no advantage against Milwaukee. Talent wise, I'd say it's a wash. Both teams are close, but I take Giannis as the better player over Kyrie, even though I think Kyrie is more clutch. And then the coaches, it's a wash. Mike Boudinhozer is a great coach. Mike Boudinhozer, Brad Stevens is a wash? Yes. No question. What are you doing in your wash? Who is the coach? Who is the coach? Get out of here. Stop. Brad Stevens went to the finals, game seven last year in the East, without Kyrie Irving. Coulda took down LeBron. Are you kidding me? Mike Boudinhozer. Kenny, you win a big time playoff series first. Just give me one. One. Because it's a hit. What big time playoff series has Brad Stevens won? He went to the Eastern Conference Finals last year. What big? Mike Boudinhozer took Kyle Corver, DeMarie Carroll, Al Horford. Both teams are in trouble. Jeff Teague, to the Eastern Conference Finals. I did not sweat, but I'm proud. I know, but they dusted out. He didn't have the talent that Boston had. And he won. You just said they had four old stars. He didn't have talent. He started. Stop. Look, stop. He won 60 games. All right. 60 games with a bunch of role players. Got to the Conference Finals. You said winning a big series. For that Atlanta team with that roster, those were big series wins. He took a team that had the 16th best record last year in the league. Now has the first best record. He took a team that couldn't shoot threes last year. Now they make more threes than anybody. He took a team that couldn't defend last year. Now they were the only team in the top five defensively and offensively. What in the world is, Brad Stevens has had a bad year, dude. He has a bad year, no doubt. But you laugh, but you laugh. What body of work? And actually we need to go back to Jason Kidd, who was awful. What body of work? Brad Stevens, I don't know. Should we go back to him? When he took a bunch of kids from the Midwest. No, we shouldn't. Because we don't care about college. This is the NBA. Coaching doesn't matter. This is the NBA. All right. Take that one to the YouTube comments. I gave him a blue chip dude in Kyrie and the whole season was a mess. Well, you're blaming on him, Brad Stevens? Yeah. I'm blaming on Brad Stevens. You want to blame it on Kyrie Irving? Kyrie Irving blamed it on the other players. He didn't blame Brad Stevens. I'm, well, Brad Stevens isn't that confrontational. And he needs to be more confrontational. I didn't think Buck Celtics would be this heated. Now I do a coming up winners gambling podcast. Myself and Andrew Lynch, we like the Bucks and Celtics as great value to win the East. If they show up here and the Milwaukee Bucks get their butts kicked by Boston, which very well could happen. No, it couldn't happen. Because the Bucks are favored. You don't think it could happen? They're not getting their butts kicked.  What's Indiana look like? Indiana finished the season eight and 14. Doesn't, they're still a good team. Eight and 14 is a good team. I mean, the struggle they looked to the finish, but they still got there without Oladipo. Without Oladipo, they're not much better than Detroit. Detroit loses Blake Griffin and they lose the first two games by 3000 points. Okay, let's not compare Indiana to Detroit. I think actually the Bucks are overvalued here because of what's happening in Thon Maker and the Detroit Pistons. Like, come on, dude. They're running play for Thon Maker. Like, come on, there's a little bit much. I don't even know where you're going. What are you talking about? Celtics, Celtics. Celtics in six. You're going Bucks in? Six. You're wrong. All right. Is that it? This is so much fun, folks. I know you're happy we're back. He's a glutton for punishment. Chris Buzard high. I'm like Rocky in Rocky Four against, he's the Russian. I'm Rocky. You know who wins that battle. You like that wing? I'm just gonna let you join in because nobody believes you. Nobody watching believes you. Okay. The Kevin Durant, the Bucks Celtics. You're who? Can we talk Orlando Toronto? Do we have time for Orlando Toronto? No. All right. Signing off, knock down Jay. Peace. See you next week.


Hello, can I get a vegan Royale? Do you have that that one the katsu one? Katsu vegan Royale in a meal with fries and a Pepsi with no no ice and can we have nine-piece nuggets? So what we got we got a katsu curry the nuggets and the burger. Thank you Taste says a vegan Royale for us, bro So this is vegan chicken burger This is a vegan one You didn't see anything Yeah, like death and crap Different labeling Yeah, yeah Yeah, that's crazy Well, they change a label don't they fancy What do you think about cruelty to animals generally like Yeah, why for the animals But I'm older kind of a build range that more because of Now I just kind of eat whatever I'm given to think yeah, cuz you're homeless. Why do you think people eat meat? Why do you think people like these people here? Why do they eat it? Just it's like in their condition Yeah I've been vegan nearly about nearly nine years You don't like tofu. I don't think you've had the right tofu to say that Vegetables in general are better than that stuff. Yeah, you don't worry I'll have a curry man. If I was having a curry, I'll have a vegetable curry anyway Do you want to have you had the vegan burger from Burger King? Would you do a taste test on camera? Yeah, I'll go buy it for you now. Yeah, go on then. Can you watch the things? This is a vegan one So right I don't know I reckon Sawyer in that a Sawyer, it's a Sawyer burger. It's Sawyer. It's Sawyer, isn't it Sawyer in that it's just plants It's good. You know, at least say it's not like some chopped up When you get a burger in that it looks looks the same as any other burger, right? I'll say chicken burger, for example. It could easily just be a chicken burger, couldn't it? Yeah, except there's no one getting chopped up.  Yeah, I'll get you. And it tastes all right. The cost is a thing as well though sometimes. Yeah, sometimes meat's cheaper I think that's about the same price though. Yeah, if it's the same price then yeah, I think people should buy for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But obviously when you're in a shop and that tastes good, as you get 10, say 10 Fish fingers, for example, for like, if you've got, you know the cheap, like, taste grow value You get like the bulk, your bulk burger. But they don't do that in vegan food or vegetarian food or It's just the cheapest foods that are vegan, right? The rice and the lentils and the beans and the The pasta and the bread and all that Then you just get a little bit of the meats in that, the vegan meats, you know what I mean? I want to say like, what's it called, corn in it? Corn, a little bit of the corn, I like the cornhams and things like that. It's kind of quite processed though, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, it is processed. It's sort of meat though, isn't it? Yeah, so it's a chicken burger. They're even vegan burgers too, I suppose. Yeah, isn't it?  I'd rather eat plants than that, because if I had the choice, I'd eat this. But in my situation, I'd just keep eating it. I'll get what you're saying man. But when I get my house and get my children out, I'll go back to eating and just plant it. I'd rather eat that animal stuff than them. Because when you think about it, the little chicken, right? I couldn't do it. There's someone in there, there's a little brain in that. Yeah.  Should we be paying other people? I mean, if you do it yourself, then I think that's a different thing. And that's for something, when people do have a choice and they go in there and they're actually paying for cruelty or they're just paying for plants, you know what I mean? Yeah, they're a plant and they, but then if people want to be funny, they start going, oh well, plants have got a life in it.  No, you get some dickies at times. They do.  It's not about the dog beating that.  Do you know what that's called? It's called speciesism. What does that mean? It's like racism, but speciesism. It's when you discriminate between species. So like, we won't eat dogs and we look after the dogs, but the pigs are food and pigs are more into... Does China eat everything, I suppose? Yeah, yeah, it's more consistent, but it's still... A lot of people in China like dogs, but some places in China, they eat dogs, you know what I mean? I just thought China was one in countries where they eat everything. Like, any animal, they eat anything. Depends on the region. Depends on the region, yeah.  Well, it's all meat in it, it's all dirt. Yeah, we're all living animals that don't want to die. Yeah, that's why we're all breathing it, yeah, it's all pain. Different to a tomato though, who we don't care. I don't really care about a tomato. You know, I don't mind a squash one. Yeah, no, not really, mate. Do you do it across the UK or just Norwich? Oh, across the UK, man. Across the UK. In Australia, I got around the world investigating farms and stuff as well, going to factory farms. So it's probably quite big with the farmland, isn't it? Yeah, this... Like, it's different to here. Like, Norwich is quite far from here, don't it? It's the factory farms here that no one sees. They're big buildings. Yeah, big factory farms. And they think, oh, you see the sheep and the cows on the land, but that's not... Majority of animals are coming out of industrial... Yeah. That's what I've been doing the other day, that's what I've been asking about. When McFunnel was the other day, I went in there, my pal was getting me some chips, and he said, oh, some of our free range... Yeah, free range hens, you're saying? Yeah. And now we're in Barnes, right? Well, how's that f***ing free range? Because there's some... It's good bird flu. They take away free... There's nothing in this free range, though. There's not a free range. So, I can see some of our free range hens. That's what I'm saying. And I've been in free range Barnes, and I've seen a bunch of free range investigations, even when they do let them out, and the free range hens end up dying on their faces because of laying egg after egg after egg. Well, it's like a...  Everybody lay in that, the other sort of thing, yeah. It's just that the egg laying is what gets them.  Just they're not supposed to produce that many eggs. They usually produce one a month, but because they've been modified, they produce like one every day. It's like a modified sort of thing, yeah. Yeah, they're selectively bred. So, they're pushing out like a nearly an egg a day. So, it puts all this strain on their body, and you're pushing a basketball out of your s*** every day for something. You know what I mean? Like, how would you feel at the end of the year? So, that's what gets them the free range hens, so...  Yeah. How long have you been vegan? Did you see me, or...? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I stopped... What made you change? I went to prison, got sober, because I was big into drugs and gangs and gangs in Australia. And then I went to prison, I got sober, and because I was sober, I was like, I've already seen someone talking about, like, karma to do with animals and that. And then when I got out, I was like, I made a decision about a month after I was out. And my mum was talking about, like, I was talking about how she shouldn't be smoking.    Hypocrite, yeah. But then when she said it, she goes, oh, there's a lot of vices people have, they don't change. And then I thought... I've always thought I was a hypocrite, because I care for dogs. I've got a cow on my plate. I would never do that to a cow.   Yeah, you can't deal with that, yeah. I couldn't deal with it. So then the next day, I went full vegan, and then I started to be an activist. It's not true ever since. November the 1st, 2013. They've been asleep all night, huh? No. Well, maybe at the start, I looked in the back, and I was like, oh, I can't eat that now. Yeah. Well, that's what I heard about. Even sweets apparently like me. Yeah, you see, you learn all that. You like me. That's my anecdote, isn't it? Yeah. They got gelatin from killed... You know, the gas chamber pigs here. They put them in a gas chamber. Have you seen it? It's crazy, bro. What's that like they should do to Jewish people? That kind of thing. It's a gas chamber. See, look, it's not the same type of gas. That was ICON-B. No, I mean that kind of approach. It's... Let me show you, so you know. And then they feed... Is it illegal? Isn't that illegal? It's... It's... If you torture a pig like this on the street, but the industry do it constantly, so they force them down this... It's pretty good. Where's this? This is Australia, but they've got them all in the UK as well. There's one in Manchester, big one in Manchester. So they push them in here, and they put them down this dungeon, and there's gas down there. See them trying to escape? It's like a truck, yeah. It's CO2 gas. You know the same gas that's in your Pepsi? It burns when it burns. You know when it burns? When you drink your Pepsi and you burp it?  Yeah, it causes them crazy suffering. And they all know it. They know what causes them suffering too. The industry know. They just still do it. Why would you want something to suffer? They don't care about the money.  They want the bacon. But we make bacon. Vegans eat bacon, but it's made out of plants. Tastes like bacon. So it's become quite a thing recently, vegan, isn't it? In the UK. But I think it's going to be... I don't know if it's why it works for fads, but like, you know how many people... Some people do it for a little while, and they don't do it, and then... You know, like, it's almost trendy. Not in a... I get what you're saying. It's got to become mainstream. It's become... Like hippie, almost. Yeah. But I'm not a hippie. Nah, nah, we're not. But I mean, like, other people... You see, like, the hippies are doing it. I get it. You know what I mean? Nah, yeah. It's called it to be... It does. It's got to be mainstream, like... Nah, because I want to be awkward. No, not that. That's the right word. I don't know, but... Like, new age kind of thing. Yeah, like, because... I get what you're saying. Yeah, but I hope it sticks to... I do it for the... I do it for the reasons of the animals. The animals, that's the... You're not doing it because your pal do it, and you think it's cold. I do it for... And I... And it's my... I actually spend my whole life speaking for the animals, you know, dedicated to it. So... Because it's so bad, and everyone supports it. It's one of the worst things... I don't think people realise you're just putting those... Like, when you're going to just go and buy something, you just think... You know what I mean? But if they actually... You're disconnected from it. Yeah. I mean, it's in a packet. You don't... Nah, it's completely removed from what it was. But you should try them nuggets as well, bruvz. They're gangster chicken nuggets. They're good. They're all right. I don't know, I like them, because I've been vegan for a long time, but like... They look bigger for a start. That's always good when you're homeless. Yeah. So, imagine a little kid, right? You give... So, this is the thing with kids. They eat a nugget. They don't know there's some suffering bird on the other end of them. No, no, you don't do that, because it's little. Yeah. So, they just eat nuggets. Say, mama, I want some nuggets. I want some fish fingers. They don't know they're real chickens and real fish that will suffer in blood and got gutted. I know what's been happening. Yeah. They wouldn't eat it otherwise, eh? They're all right, everyone. Yeah. Yeah, I like these ones better. Yeah. What's your name again, bruvz? Jamie, mom. Good to meet you, Jamie. Jamie, all right. Take care. How are you? We're going to go back to work, all right? Yeah, yeah, take care. We're going to go turn people vegan. Yeah, good luck. Good luck to you too, brother, eh? Peace out, mate.


A few weeks ago I made a video asking why don't people pay for open source software and in that video I had a very brief thought that I just mentioned very briefly. Let's see if I can say briefly again. And that thought was why don't we have in-app purchases. And I've been thinking about this now for a couple of weeks and there's a problem in the Linux community and that problem is people don't like paying for software. And I can't blame them. I'm not flush with cash. I don't want to pay for all the software that I use either. I do like to contribute what I can. And I think that everybody should contribute what they can. I mean it's just the way software has always worked. You donate to the projects that you enjoy if you have the money to do so. But there's a whole other group of people who are just that are completely against paying for open source software completely.  And they are philosophically against actually paying money for software that has the word free on it. So I've been thinking over the last few months about how as a community we could get past this roadblock we seem to have because it's important. How many open source projects have you seen go under, go belly up or be abandoned however you want to look at it because the developers couldn't afford to keep going. There was that offshoot of GIMP that had to be shut down because they didn't have enough developer resources in order to actually continue on. There have been a ton of different projects out there over the last 30 years that have just had to shut down because they don't make enough money to pay their developers. And like I said that is a huge problem. I mean we all want FOS to succeed. We want open source software and free softwares to succeed. And in order to do that the developers have to feed their families. If they want to focus on their open source projects they have to make money from those projects. And they have to fight constantly against this idea that it's free software therefore people shouldn't have to pay for it. So my brief thought during that video was why don't we have in-app purchases? And I just want to kind of expound upon that just a little bit. On the mobile side of things in-app purchases have just been completely popularized by games and everything. I mean really it's not just games. That's how the vast majority of developers on iOS and Android make their money is by in-app purchases. Now it has been much more popular in games than in other applications but it works in other applications too. And the question I have is would this work on Linux or through open source software? You know it doesn't really have to be on Linux but whatever. Let's just say you had a project like Audacity. Let's say Audacity was forked again. Let's say it was forked really well by a development team that actually wanted to do things with Audacity. But in order to pay for that they put in some in-app purchases in order to make money. Because people aren't going to pay for Audacity. But would you pay for extra features in Audacity? It's possible that they could make some money that way. Now I don't think that if they forced people to pay money for features that it would work. I think it would have to be something similar to what elementary OS does. As much as I just like elementary OS I think they've been a good job of getting people to think at least a little bit about actually paying money. So if you had in-app purchases for Audacity it had to be pay what you can. Defaulting like $5 or something like that. I think you'd have a lot of people who would go through and actually pay money for in-app purchases. If they had that option to still say I really can't afford to I'm going to just select zero and I still get the features. I think the thought experiment for this is that there have to be other ways than just saying hey you got to pay me money for this piece of software because we know as open-source software that doesn't work people just fork your project and give it away for free or the binary appears in app stores or impositories or whatever and you know just bypass the paywall that you had put up. And that might happen here as well. The thought experiment is more how do we get people to actually give developers money because we don't want to keep seeing really great projects die because they couldn't make a living off of it. And that happens over and over again and it's just not it's not a great feeling as a community and it shouldn't be because we want to support as many developers as possible and we're not going to get any more new developers if we can't figure out how they can make a living actually doing this developing open-source software. So that's just a brief ramble about the idea. So what would you think if a piece of open-source software implemented in-app purchases? Do you have any other ideas that we could implement if we all got together as a community to have this discussion of how we could get people to actually pay for open-source software? Let me know in the comments below. I'd really like to hear from you. If you'd like to follow me you can do so as a Linux Cast on Twitter. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash Linux Cast. Before I go I'd like to take a moment to thank my current patrons. Devon, Marcus, Meglin, Donnie, Sven, East Coast, Web, Chris, Mitchell, Mr. Fox, American Camp. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.


Hello everyone and welcome to Tomorrow Space Orbit 12.36. I'm Jared, I'm going to be your host for today's episode where we will be talking about something that is so important to spaceflight that we wouldn't be able to do it without it and to talk about it. We have Richard Stevenson, the operations director down at Canberra Deep Space Network. So Richard, can you tell us a little bit about what exactly is the Deep Space Network? The Deep Space Network is essentially an interface between the project and the spacecraft. So obviously if you're launching a project, so if you want to be able to communicate with your spacecraft and serve, yes, the Deep Space Network or NASA's Deep Space Network allows that communication channel, I suppose. Now there's three complexes around the world and that's to provide 24-7 coverage. We're around about 120 degrees apart. We've got Canberra where I am at the moment and we've got Colestone in California in between LA and Vegas. Just off a small town called Barstow. Then we've got one just outside of Madrid and Spain as well. So it sounds like the DSN has a lot to work with. Are you guys fully stacked 24-7, 365? Things are scheduled down to the minute to make that happen? Definitely. So it's certainly all scheduled. JPL, actually I should point out the hub of the DSN is JPL. So if anybody's been to JPL and seen the dark room, so that we stay referred to at the center of the universe. So the operations chief sits there with the TSSs and he's coordinating the network and then you have us at the stations as well who are actually doing the tracking. So yeah, it's an interesting web all over the world. So I said with three complexes, the JPL hub is the most important. And we're talking about interfaces with the project, generally the project interfaces with JPL and it talks to the complexes from there. So a project can subscribe to their data and they can have it delivered in real time from their spacecraft or they can come in the following morning and find this nice little packaged up bit of data that we received during the night. And Deepod Dolphin in our chat room is asking, are you going to be adding more ground stations in the future as Deepod Dolphin is noticing that there's a big gap over Asia? No, no, it's funny because if you start looking at where the DSN is evolving, they're now talking about optical as well. I think the first spacecraft that we have that's capable of optical is Psyche, which is coming up in a few years time. It's not in its core communication package, it's all class of science. So look, we might, and then we've got to start asking the question, is Canberra, Madrid and Goldstein really suitable for optical? So there may be a separation at some point, but at the moment where the complexes are, you've got the infrastructure, you've got the antenna, there doesn't have to be any more because we have a 24-7. What we do need to do, because we have fairly congested periods as well where the projects are fighting for time, we do need further assets. So currently in Madrid, you've got two new beam waveguides being built. So we're slated for another one in Canberra and so is Goldstein. So yeah, what we're doing is we're increasing the number of assets of these complexes instead of building new complexes. So three sites, they're all very close to being equidistant from each other. Is that a choice? Yeah, about 120 degrees. So they like to use a magic 120 because it divvies up 360 into 3. ESA uses the same one. ESA slips it slightly. So if you look at the where the ESA stations are, they've got one in Western Australia, in New Norcia. They've got one in Argentina and they've got one in Europe as well. So they're doing the same thing. ESA only has a 35-meter in each one. So occasionally we all support ESA spacecraft as well if they're getting a little overloaded with their antenna as well. Yeah, I was actually going to ask, you know, because it's not necessarily a NASA spacecraft that DSN may be talking about. Who are some that you support? Well, at the at the moment, so we support any agency that NASA has an agreement with and that the current agency is with our JAXA and we support their Planet C and their High Booster 2 operations. We support ISRO. Until recently we supported the Mandrayan, which was their Mars orbiter, and Chandrayaan 2, which is their lunar orbiter. And so we supported the landing or the lander, unfortunately, when it was unsuccessful too. But yeah, the spill, the Israeli spill a couple of years back. So we supported that and going forward, you know, I think we've got the Emirates on the books as well in a couple of years for their first spacecraft to Mars. So yes, it's any agency that NASA has an agreement with. And you have to obviously be operating the Deep Space Network at all times. The GoSkins in our YouTube channel is asking, you know, have the brush fires that have unfortunately been affecting Australia, have they affected operations and kind of to talk to that too, you know, here in Southern California, we had a significant earthquake in July. We had a 7.1 that was out in just about a couple tens of miles north of where Goldstone was at.  Not earthquakes. Very hard to brush a little bit. So as far as the fires are concerned, so look, Canberra was impacted in the early 2000s and the fires came very close to the complex and they were fighting fires on the complex then. But one of the reasons why Canberra was picked is as far as we have no fault lines, we're 100 per cent stable here. Goldstone, and if you've been to Goldstone, they've just had an upgrade as well with all their racks and they have their new soft boots on the bottom as well just to prevent damage in an earthquake. It was one of the first times I've known an antenna be stopped during an earthquake, so in the recent ones that you were just describing, so DSS-14 just to be 70 metres there, nice picture. So yeah, so it was read and required engineering check out that after the last one, but so there was no damage to that. Look, I suppose if you look at the antennas you're showing that they're kind of robust antennas.  We have a 34 metre of parks run by CSIRO as well, but its elevation only goes down to 30 degrees. Again, this meant to look at celestial objects, not spacecraft. You look at the DSN antenna, they look like battleships. So the big, robust, heavy, and it takes an awful lot to have an impact on them. And in our YouTube chat, Gregorius Sodharmo, hopefully I got that right Gregorius, is asking, how big bandwidth and fast can you push the deep space network to? And are there upgrades planned in relation to the new Artemis and Mars projects? And also, Raj Lutra in our YouTube channel is asking as well about upgrades to communicate with spacecrafts and rovers at faster communication speeds as well. So what can you really crank at? What's the fastest up and down that you can do? And then you're talking optical too, so what are we looking at with that? Look, I have no idea with optical, so we haven't actually seen the design specs for the optical yet. But you look at, it depends on the bands as well. And if you go through the DSM bands that we use, Sierra band, which is 2.2 gig. So we use that generally to the moon, a little bit beyond. So there are some agencies that use it beyond. Then we start talking about X-ray band as well. So you're starting to talk about deep space around the 8 gig, 80.4. Then you start kicking it up to K2, which is 26-27 gig. And we use that for closer spacecraft that need to dump higher rates of data. So you're looking at the likes of TESS, who are delivering 400 megabits, which is kind of cranked and out. So then you've also got the K-band as well, which is a DSN K-band, which is deep space, like SPP or Parker Solar Pro, as it's called now. And so yeah, it's where do we go from here? People are saying that optical, we really need optical if we're going to bring back bandwidth we want to from Mars. But at the moment, we seem to be able to deliver the required bandwidths with the existing spacecraft that we have. As I said, TESS with 400 megabits is incredible. Yeah, I actually would like to go back to that screen that we had while Richard was talking, showing the dishes in real time. This is a thing called DSN now. And Richard, can you speak to this a little bit for our viewers so they can know what they're looking at? Yeah, so well, at the moment, this is a snapshot of what the network's doing. You've got the Madrid-Colston and Canberra antenna. Look, I love this as well. So this isn't just for the public. So I'll quite happily have a look. And if I'm at home, just a bit sad to see what we're supporting. So and it shows a 70 meter and the three being waveguides in each. And obviously, the waveform coming down is what's being received. The waveform going up is what's being transmitted. You can see whether it's modulated or not. So there is a modulated wave on it. So you can see it is just carrier or whether we actually are receiving telemetry. In this case, they all are. It shows the 70 meter as well in Canberra. It's actually doing three spacecraft. And we're actually, you're talking about software developments and evolution of the DSN. It's been identified long ago that Mars was going to be the contention where we're just going to have so many spacecraft around Mars. And so essentially, not enough assets to support it. So a lot of the software developments in the systems at the moment is to expand that capability with Mars spacecraft to add more. The beauty of Mars is that we can point directly into the middle of Mars. And the beam width of all the antennas incorporates not only the planets of a space on either side. So we don't have any spacecraft outside of that beam, even the big elliptical orbiters like Maven. And yeah, I've lost my chain of thought there. So with the 70 meter, and I'm actually just looking at the window at the 70 meter now. I might be able to just bring that up. You can actually set up a camera. Go for it. You brought a prop today. There's your prop. I talked to prop. So this is a current view of the 70 meter. So we're tracking the three spacecraft. And as I said, so we point directly at Mars. And there's a number of spacecraft that we can track around it. There is one limitation. And that is we can only uplink to one at a time. So we're talking about high bit rates. And so what's required by the project. So the big one around Mars at the moment is MRL. That requires lots of bandwidth. And they'll increase, I should also say that the spacecrafts have variable bit rates. So they can change it. So the spacecraft is uploaded with a schedule. So it knows what antenna it's communicating with. So it knows that if a 34 meter is supporting, then it can drop that bit rate. But it knows that when it's over a 70 meter, then it can increase that bit rate proportionally. So there's a little bit of leeway there. So for instance, MRO on the 70 meter here. So it could be bringing down a high rate. We might not have an uplink available for it. But we can provide that uplink from a 34 meter. So it doesn't all have to be on the same antenna. We can bring telemetry down from one and provide a command capability to another. And that is an incredible amount of efficiency being built into a system. That's just fantastic. Well, it is actually. So you're talking about efficiency and you're looking at our days and we plan our days and how many spacecraft. We fluctuate a little bit, but generally it's the high 20s. So for my day shift, and this isn't in the 24 hour period. So for my day shift when Canberra took control of the network at 9 o'clock this morning. And so we really wished to Madrid at five and finish up at six. So yeah, we'll have 30, mid 20s, 30 supports during that period. And Madrid and Goldstone will have something similar. So we currently have the mid 30s spacecraft on the books. So it's always a very busy schedule. And you can see when you look at the schedule, how difficult it is for projects to find time. Obviously there is, if a project is desperate and they declare spacecraft emergency, it's the same as maritime law, where all the other projects have to help out and give up some time. But yeah, other than that, so the schedule, if you're planning, for instance, an event or a launch in two or three years time, that has to go into the schedule to see whether the DSM is capable of supporting. But also, with the other routine spacecraft, you've got the voyagers supported almost on a daily basis. So they have to find time as well. So yeah, when I talk about building new assets, that's really to not only allow more spacecraft, but also allow the existing spacecraft to be supported too. And you talked about coming in and how many you do at day. What is your day to day like? Because I mean, this is the deep space network is not diverse. I would imagine it's like we said at the beginning of the show, it's not exactly something that a lot of people know about. You know, I'm sure people can get a really easy day by day as to what it's like for somebody going into Johnson Space Center to be a flight flight controller for the space station. But what the heck is it like being day by day doing operations at the deep space network? Well, the asset diverse, the beauty of the job. And now I started, I was recruited from the UK just straight out of college in 1988. And so the most I did want to work for NASA in Australia. So and I came over here for the Voyager Neptune encounter just prior. So essentially, there was a lead in training. And since then, so I've been involved with every NASA spacecraft in the last 32 years. So the Voyagers are the only ones now that are still going from when I started.  You see Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 like an old friend. But you also get the new projects coming in all the time. As far as my day, I'll walk in. And so I have a team of controllers. And I'm also a controller. So I can jump into the seats. In fact, that's what I love about the job. I can sort of get my hands dirty. And it could be so, you know, one minute you're doing, you know, you avoid you, then you could be on to a test, then you'll be going into a parker. You know, you could be having a few issues with Maven around Mars or and and that's what keeps it really interesting. It's just continuously cycling through. And just when things start to get a little mundane, a new project comes along. And so you'll go, oh my gosh, surely they're not going to try this. Now I just remember where the power finders went and landed on Mars with the airbags.  But yeah, brilliantly successful and so and we've been after a bad run of Mars, so in the late 90s, so we've it's been brilliant. So as far as the success rate of our Mars missions and so. And what's it take to become a controller at the Deep Space Network?  The background of all the control of it. It used to be it was very much RF. So my background is RF and radio and radar. And that's why I did a college. But we also have the digit side as well and software. And as the DSN has evolved, so it has a role as well. Obviously the system administrator role is far more important. But we identified the fact that, you know, we recruited RF people and we that recruited digit people and each offered unique skills. But we needed to get the RF people up on the digits and the digits up on the RF. So around about 10 years ago, we actually had a certification program, which is the first time that essentially we had a NASA DSN controller certification program. So so yeah, we've tried to do that benchmark. So regardless of where your background is, there's a common knowledge in the RF and the digit side. And working for the Deep Space Network for over three decades, I bet there has to have been- Oh, Sam, so long when you say it that way. Sorry, I'm so sorry. I bet there has to have been a ton of interesting things that you have been witness to throughout your time there. And Lupi in our chat room is actually asking, you know, do you have any interesting stories you could share? Any crazy hijinks? Close calls? Silly technical problems? Like what's the wildest and funniest stuff that's happened to you? Look, so there is so many. I have some people on the team and they all say, do you remember when we did this and we saw this with that spacecraft? I'm going, no, not really. So some people have far better memories of me. I just say, oh, that was an interesting day. I'll move on to the next. You know, you talk about spacecraft and so, look, I love the story of in the early days, I think it was the 90s, ESA had their first cluster spacecraft that were going to be launched. And it was the first time ESA had come over here to support one of those spacecraft. And they brought their own ground systems with them as well. And I can still remember. So you look at the DSN, it's all battleship gray.  It seems that it only came in one tone of paint.  And I thought, oh, wow, I never thought I'd ever have rack envy. And so the first cluster, we also had an ESA engineer out here, a gentleman called Peter. And he was going to be there for the launch in an early orbit phase as well. And I can still remember standing in the operations room, so watching this launch. And obviously, if anybody knows the first cluster, it was unsuccessful and ended up falling into the swamps of French Guiana. But when we saw it explode, the first thing, so he said, it was Shison. And he goes, well, I suppose I'm going home. And probably within five minutes of that, one of our controls had strung up a big for sale all over the Mercedes racks. I sort of hoping they were going to leave them, but so they never did. But yeah, it's, look, one thing. So you realize in this industry is nothing is a hundred percent. You know, it's whether we've had spacecraft that and sometimes there can be silly errors. I can remember the Pobos missions that we supported. And it was all down to a controller switching off the batteries and a solar panel at the same time or heaters being switched off and so spacecraft essentially freezing. I mean, there's so many variables that you have in space. So there's so many errors that you can make. And some of them just aren't recoverable.  But also you've got the same issues here on earth, you know, so the antennas, although I said they're big and robust, you know, the specifications required to track a spacecraft are absolutely mind boggling. You know, so when you start looking at the beam, so I keep on looking at the 17 meter on my window, you look at the beam with the 17 meter, I'll give you a picture just because I can. There it is. So if you look at that, the beam bits of the 70 meter is, you know, so with X band, it's 32 milli degrees, you know, so with S band, it's 118. And that's the three. So you're half that. And which means that's your error.  So there's always things that some reflector on 43, we had issues with a little while ago. So and it just took one tiny component. And so if it was wiping out one spacecraft after another, you're talking about the earthquakes in Madrid as well. So look, there's so many good star stories. And I saw one of my favorites is Cassini, you know, as we were talking about before, you know, I was there at the end as well. And it was actually a really sad day. It was a sad day because I think I'd actually stamp this human type personality onto it because spacecraft do have personalities. So whatever, people try and tell you otherwise. And it's a bit like a person.  Some of them are unreliable. Some of them are always late, just like people. Some of them can go for a bit of a wobble. They can go a little unstable occasionally and we have to adapt for that. You know, so I think you had a gentleman talking about the Marcos from JPL. And look, the Marcos were a brilliant mission. So it was as far as cost, cost effective and essentially success. I mean, they brought the insight later down flawlessly. But when he was talking about the loss of propellant, so we were seeing that on the ground, you know, we're the ones that are saying to project, look, you know, we're seeing oscillations here. So we're seeing fluctuations. It looks like if your spacecraft is rolling. And so it's a DSN, they'll see telemetry but without any telemetry they can't interpret. So what we have to do is say, well, this is what we see on the ground. Now we are seeing oscillations. We are seeing variations every minute and a half as your spacecraft is rolling. And that's, you know, you were talking about spacecraft, distant ones as well. And the voyages, both voyages at the moment, all other end to stellar space. So drifting on, they're really dynamic spacecraft. So two or three times, so an hour, they actually have to correct the pointing on the high gain antenna. It's got a 12-foot antenna that has to be orientated to Earth. It has a sun sensor, which obviously uses our sun to sense, just, which corrects the urine pitch. But then you've also got some of the star scanner as well that controls roll. And I always thought that once the voyager was going to disappear, it was going to be through power. A little RTGS, it's half-life and the thermocouples degrading as well. But for the first time, we were having issues with that, pointing from Voyager 1. And we were seeing those on the downlink as well. They were slowly dipping and we were having problems locking. So from 22 billion kilometers, Project was able to send corrections to the sun sensor and biases. But it made me realize that it's not just power. There are so many things that can happen to all spacecraft that can be showstoppers. And you're talking about the purpose of the DSN. Yes, we have an antenna on Earth, but a spacecraft has an antenna as well that it has to orientate to Earth. And if the two aren't pointing at each other, then there's no mission. So some spacecraft will have low-gain antennas, which they can use to, if there's an error, to flip to, allow us to get commands in and hopefully correct an issue. But with the voyagers, they're so far out, so they have a high-gain antenna and a high-gain antenna. So if it's not pointing to Earth, then I said the mission ends. So there's always things going wrong. And that's why we're here. Those spacecraft need very little interaction. We can configure it and sort of support it, finish up, and then we have the ones that are very much manual stick control. And they're actually the fun ones. You're talking about lunar orbiters. We've got Chandrayaan at the moment, the ISRO spacecraft. And it's very much manual as it comes out of authorization around the moon. So we manually sort of enable drive to actually capture the spacecraft. So send a command to it. We see the spacecraft go two-way because it's so coherency is what we're looking for, where essentially the spacecraft references our clock. Really good for Doppler. We can tell exactly the velocity of the spacecraft. And so, yeah, and then we get telemetry from it. So every day is interesting. And it's not just all about experiences because every spacecraft is different. As I said, there's personality. Do you have your favorites and not-so-favorites? And that comes down to the characteristics of the spacecraft. And do you have a favorite spacecraft? Or is that sort of like asking, what's your favorite child? I'll be quite happy to throw a number of them under the bus, but I won't tell you which ones. I have probably sentimental attachment to those voyages. And I said that's because they've lasted my entire career. And if they can just last another five or six years, we'll retire together. And then I think I was a two spacecraft controller. So lasted the entire period. Projects I really like at the moment, the MMS, the Magnospheric Multiscale spacecraft. And that's just because of the scope. So they're looking for the magnetic connect between the sun and Earth. And they're flying in for the tiller with a degree of accuracy, just mind-boggling. And they'll zoom in around Earth and close up, and they'll go into a data collection mode as it comes back out. Dom's data. And it was actually an interesting one because when MMS came along, it was actually a bit of a pain spacecraft to support. So there's four of them, and they have to be tracked in sequence. So one, two, three, four. And you're talking about scheduling, so being tight, to actually incorporate the MMS supports. Our countdown time had to be reduced between them. So instead of normally 45 minutes, 10 minutes. So we went from one spacecraft to another with only a 10-minute gap. But they, as far as emissions, brilliant. It did offer a couple of challenges tracking, but that's become the norm now. But even at Parkhouse, the Solar Probe, that's another amazing one. And so it's a support that has so many stages. You get where it is about to enter, essentially, not far from the sun's atmosphere, where we have problems talking to it on a really low rate. So as it comes out again, so free of the sun's influence and it can downlink the high-rate K-band data. And it's flying out as far as almost Venus. In fact, they're actually about to go through a Venus flyby. So there's so many really interesting ones. You have ones that you like a little less, but that's purely because they're difficult to support. I would have thought Cassini, Cassini was a lovely one, but it was a pain. So this was a spacecraft not only whizzing round Saturn, but it was doing the moons, one moon after the other. And we had these experiments called bistatic radar, where essentially they used the transverses on Cassini to bounce off Titan and we'll receive those bounce signals at Earth. And the preamble for the support was like three hours where we were just following one sequence after another. There was hundreds of steps to calibrate our downlink systems. So yeah, that was a pain, but I still have fond memories of Cassini as well.  Voyager 1 is 22 billion kilometers away from us. How do you work with something that's that far away? I mean, the transmitter on Voyager, I think it's like 20 watts, I think is how much power, but it's ridiculously tiny. And then also like you, do you have to use support equipment from 42 years ago to talk to it? Yes, in a way. So even the, they've had to, we now have an industry standard. So actually, I should point out that any, any mission now that uses essentially a CCSDS format, which is an industry standard for communicating to, to the spacecraft. So that, so it means that what we can track any agency spacecraft as long as they're using that international standard. Voyager's had to adapt to that a little bit. So the commanding, for instance, they've had to form, go in or transfer into those types of blocks. But now look, as people keep on thinking, because we have a spacecraft 22 billion kilometers away, it's, it must be the weakest spacecraft we support. And it's not, so not by our long shots. So if you start, it all comes down to the mission purpose. Obviously, Voyager, huge high gain antenna to deliver data down to earth, a 20, 20 watt transmitter or 22 watt transmitter. So and, and we were still able to get 160 bits down with plenty of margin on the 70 meters. So Voyager one still has a working eight track tape recorder as well. And so every few months it will do a dump of that data. So and essentially normally it's always covered on, on Goldstone. And it's a 1400 bits down. And they need the 70 meter and all three beam wave guides arraying that one as well. So yeah, it's, it's cut back in itself is kind of incredible that we can get 1.4 K from 22 billion kilometers away. But I said it depends on the purpose of the spacecraft. Now we've got Maven, for instance, around Mars, and a previous spacecraft messenger. Where the primary goal of the project is to collect science data. So while it's orientating its high gain antenna to the planet, it's using a low gain antenna from the back. So and the signal that it's being received is far lower than the Voyager signal that we received normally. And the bit rate is lower as well, you know, we can be receiving 11 bits a second. And all they require is a spacecraft help. So within that 11 bits is just saying, either yes, I'm happy or no, I need a little bit of attention. Just like New Horizons did, so on its nine year journey out to Pluto, so it will go into hypernation. So for the long periods to conserve power. And every now and again, it would send a simple tone down. I see one of the one of four tones. You had obviously a happy happy tone, a sad tone and indeterminate tones in between. So and that was really low as well, because it was using this low gain antenna. So it's, yeah, it's a strange one. You think the further out is obviously needs to be grand antenna, but that's not necessarily true. So it really depends on the mission and their design. And even though Cassini was a little bit of a, I guess a pain, if you will, for the deep space network, the best possible way I should point out to the Cassini folks. Oh yeah, definitely. It's always, it's a great problem to have. But he stoves is asking, you know, what was it like to see the loss of the Cassini signal in real time? Because that was a, it was a nearly 20 year mission wrapping up. Yeah, you got to watch that happen. I suppose bittersweet would be the best way to describe it. So you had, obviously, you had the sense of loss and it was literally a sense of loss. Actually, you only saw the two, we were lucky. So we've actually set it up. So you saw three frequencies. And I was doing an interview with Catalyst at the time and I was predicting how the signals were going to disappear. I was saying, well, based on the beam width of the antenna, the first one to disappear would be cave end. And so the next one, because it's such a tight beam. And then the next one that would disappear was X band because that's a little broader. And then the last one is a more is a big robust Sierra band. And so as I was seeing one after the other disappear, each one was a sense of loss. But then after they all disappeared, it was a case of what a brilliantly successful mission that was. So suddenly it was, wow, what an accomplishment these guys have made. And so, so yeah, as I said, bittersweet, it brought down some amazing science. It was, oh, there we go. So we got X band and S there was also a K band as well, which was coming down on on a 34 meter. That 43 strangely enough doesn't have a DSNK band, frequency band. So, yeah, so 43 is the, oh, there we go. It's funny the thing to think of afterwards because after I've done the interview, I'm thinking, did I get the order right? I had so many self doubts of getting the order right of which ones. It was only when I forced myself to watch it again that I didn't get it right. But yeah, I was a little paranoid there for a while that it'd been broadcast in error. But yeah, so Cassini was, it was, that was a fun mission. I should point out, when you asked about favorite missions, probably Hayabusa. You know, so if you're ever going to launch a Swiss army knives of spacecraft, ask the Japanese. So, I mean, that's just, we have our own sort of asteroid chaser with the Syrox going to Japano, but the Hayabusa around regular, and it's just on its way back now. And it's a little sample of the asteroid is going to be dropped in South Australia. And, but that was, we always get the briefings. So before any activity comes, we put everything into levels. Level one is the most critical, and it's normally a launch or a landing or an orbit insertion. And then you have level two, which is pretty done close to a one. Level three, so is heightened awareness. And when we get a level three, they have to provide a briefing of what the spacecraft is doing. And Hayabusa, it was just like, you look at the briefing and seriously they're doing this, whether it's throwing holistic projectiles at the asteroid, throwing little rovers at it. So, throwing out markers as it says, orbiting this thing. As far as brilliance, the Hayabusa mission, I think so would be right up there. Well, yeah, I remember seeing a lot of those images and things from it too. And they just, Swiss army knife really is a good way to describe just how much they packed Have a blade for everything. Yeah, exactly. Even a bottle opener to crack open some samples from the surface as well. So when there is like a major problem with a spacecraft, how does the deep space network handle that? Well, so first of all, we have to categorize it. You know, I was talking about the issue with Voyager and the project, that they're looking at data coming down. And if we can't deliver data, we have to give them a reason why. And, you know, so we'll say, look, we're seeing that the spacecraft is low. For instance, the signal we're seeing from the spacecraft is low. We'll go through troubleshooting on the ground to make sure that there's nothing wrong with the antenna pointing, the low noise amplifiers, the receiver systems. We have redundancy for a number of things, not all. If we can, we can throw another asset onto another antenna just to verify that there is an issue. So project don't see telemetry and we're trying our hardest to deliver it. So whether it means moving up a size of antenna going to the 70 meter is one thing. We're also looking at the profile from the spacecraft as well. Are we seeing it modulated? Has the spacecraft gone into saving? So every spacecraft has a saving mode or an emergency mode. Where if something goes wrong, for instance, the clash between the CPUs or whether the star scanner's got out of alignment, it goes into a saving mode. The saving mode normally means that, you know, it'll kind of reset. You'll go to a low gain antenna. It'll go to a low bit rate as well. So if we see that break from a high rate to suddenly we go low rate, then we start saying we need to reconfigure for that possible spacecraft saving and we'll inform project as well. So yeah, I think for the DSN, a lot of the time, it's a case of, okay, what are we seeing? The project can't. What can we interpret and tell project that, you know, it's a possible issues? Now, we knew from the Voyager, the Voyager project thought that they were hitting Linkmarge and they thought the Voyager one was getting too far out. And what we were seeing didn't make sense then because it wasn't just a spacecraft, it came. We were seeing a spacecraft that was oscillating. So sometimes it was good, sometimes it was bad. And we were able to feed that back to the project as well and said, well, we don't believe it's Linkmarge. And what we think is there's some sort of orientation of the high gain antenna, because we're actually seeing it wasn't just a sinusoidal wave, it was an abrupt change. So we'd see the cycle with a slight kick at the bottom. And that was obviously the little thrusters on board. So with the sunsets are just moving off just a little bit, detecting that it was off point and then just kicking in again. And that's when we saw the signal improve and it would drift off. So a lot of it is characterizing what we're seeing and informing the project. And what's the future of the Deep Space Network looking like? Because we have a lot of folks in our chat room that are asking that, you know, headcrab on YouTube is asking, you know, with more and more missions and rovers. Is there a limit to what you can do? Stephen Porter? It's incredible. Actually, there was an earlier question about human spaceflight as well. Strangely enough, we haven't heard a huge amount of how the DSM will support it, although we have been told it will be supported, not only the lunar missions, but also the Mars missions. We are going through software upgrades as well. And our new data delivery system has now been modified to include essentially voice communications. It's a self-proclaimed, we'll declare ourselves astronaut ready, because we can now do all aspects of support. So as I said, we can deliver telemetry and voice. We're still not sure what the demands of the DSM are going to be when Artemis goes up. We're hearing conflicting reports of, you know, they may not want support every day. So yes, it's going to be fairly intensive. And until that solidifies, I think it's very hard to plan for. But when I first started, we were actually supporting a shuttle before the TDRS network went up. So in my career, I have a little bit of experience with supporting human spaceflight. And I can remember in those days, it was incredibly arduous because there was a level of competency required that we've never had to deal with before. And I said, so if that comes in for the new human spaceflight, it's going to make things really interesting for the DSM. And also, John Bensted in YouTube is asking, will the deep space network support commercial spacecraft to the venture beyond CIS Lunar Space? So is there any potential, like, private partnerships that are going to happen? Well, I suppose SpaceX would probably be there. Although SpaceX is trying to find their own network as well. I suppose we have to remember the DSM is not the only game in town. The DSM is by far the largest. So we also have the ESA network as well. We have a number of commercial players coming into the scene too, who are looking at supporting the SpaceX and the more commercial aspects of space communications. As far as NASA, look, if somebody, if a commercial entity, so went to NASA and said, this is what we're proposing, I'm sure that it would certainly be considered.  We did do the Israelis at really short notice as well. And that was a semi-commercial. That was, I think, a privately funded spacecraft. So yeah, certainly on the books, but ultimately, the DSM has to support NASA spacecraft. And so as soon as we're taking on commercial customers, that gives less time to our call business, which is NASA spacecraft. All right. So basically, if you want to support your spacecraft, kind of build your own, or give NASA a little reason for doing that with you there. That's right. There are different ones. I mean, there's a number of networks for close Earth. We've got the USNL and the Swedish Space Corporation as well. I think the Chinese are building their own subnetwork too. The Indians have a deep space network, but it's really just limited to the skies over India. So that's the same with JAXA. And that's probably why we support a lot of the other agencies as well.  They'll build one in their home country, and they'll ask another agency to support their spacecraft during critical supports, knowing that to the majority of it they'll be able to support through their own antennas. And to kind of wrap it up here from our YouTube chat, we have a question from R1, which is something that everybody always asks them this, which is that if you had all the funding you wanted, so since you guys are the deep space network is supported by NASA, if you had all the funding you wanted, what would you do with the current system? Boy, more antennas. We had a group of Samsung out here and he said, and it was a similar question. So what could we do for you? And I said, more assets. So when you start having projects fighting over time, arguing over who has priority, so then maybe you don't have enough assets. And so I think that'd be the biggest thing. I'd have the 34 meters of great antennas, a little jelly mold antenna, a couple of years construction. We can array, I didn't really cover that, but we can array our antennas so that it takes four 34 meters for the equivalent 70 on the downlinks. But yes, the more antennas the better, I think. So we have the infrastructure in place, we have the control room, the physical hardware in the field. Yeah. Well, it's so cool to hear about the deep space network, the literal bandwidth of the solar system talking all around and getting that to everybody. And maybe one day we can do tomorrow from Mars and we'll have to use the deep space network. Actually, just on a parting note, so I was listening to an interview with somebody who put their name down for the Mars, humans to Mars, and they were talking about their journey to Mars. And they were saying, but that's okay. Communication is fine. We can communicate and we have Skype. And I can remember my first thought was, it'd be a little stilted in conversation. So I think Mars at its closest is sort of about six, seven minutes round trip, light time furthest is 44 minutes. So if you're expecting this chat to Mars, so with a 44 minutes as a cause and effect, so to get a response, I think, so yeah, it'd be a very long conversation. All right, well, I guess we're going to have to bring someone along to chat with us in order to do that. And you know, we have a ton of questions that we didn't even get to with you, Richard. So we're going to go ahead and do those in our aftershow today to talk with that. And one of the ways that you can see that is if you become a citizen of tomorrow. And we always want to thank our citizens of tomorrow as well, because we can't do this show without you. We can't do the news without you. We can't do letting off steam without you. You're the ones who help make this happen. And if you would like to become a citizen of tomorrow, you can head on over to youtube.com slash tmro slash join. And you get to see things like what we're about to do after the show with Richard, which is basically everybody who's asked a question so far will try and grab all those questions and throw them at Richard and get you that opportunity to talk to somebody who's actually doing real stuff, which is so cool. I'm so glad we get to do that. And our ultimate goal is to get people excited about space. And our citizens help us do that. And you get to do some cool stuff on the side with that. So that wraps up orbit 12 dot 36 for us here today. So until the next one, keep exploring.


I'm Professor in EU Law and Senior Fellow in the UK and a Changing Europe programme. I want to talk a bit today about migration and benefits. We know from the press that the real concern in some quarters is that migrants come here simply to claim benefits. I want to talk a bit about the research that I've been doing with Dr Amy Ludlow, which has been looking at why migrants come to the United Kingdom. Before I do that, I just want to say a word or two about the legal framework in which they come and which gives them entitlements. So EU migrants, nationals of member states of other countries in the European Union, have got the right to come to the United Kingdom to work, to seek work, to work as self-employed persons and also to provide services. All of that is laid down by the treaty. The treaty also enables them not only to work but to reside here while they are working and also crucially to be treated equally with nationals in respect of the terms and conditions of employment but also in respect of what is called social advantages and tax advantages. That can include benefits. Now that's one of the reasons why Polish migrant workers can claim tax credits on the same term as nationals. If you are low paid and you've got family responsibilities, then your pay can be supplemented by tax credits and they must be paid on the same terms as for national domestic workers. The question is, are migrants coming here for benefits? Let's look at some figures. First point is that last year about 270,000 EU migrants came to the United Kingdom. Now that actually is a smaller number than the number of non-EU migrants. So migrants coming from Pakistan or Australia or Canada, the figure there was about 277,000. Why have they all come? Well if you look at the chart you will see that in the case of EU migrants about 40% come for work. They've already got jobs and another 30% or so come to look for work. The numbers are much smaller for non-EU migrants who are coming to the UK and of course in respect of non-EU migrants coming to the UK the UK has much stricter control over their entry and residence. In respect of EU migrants there is an almost automatic entitlement to enter and to reside and after the first three months provided that you've got enough resource to look after yourself and support yourself and your family while you're here. So as I've said, as you can see from the graphics, the numbers coming from the EU to work are high. It's about 70% if you add together those working who've already got jobs and those who are looking for work. Does that coincide with the experience that we have found when we've been talking to our interviewees in the context of our project? And actually the answer is yes. Quite clearly people tell us that the reason why they're coming to the United Kingdom is first of all work, either to look for work or to take up jobs they've already got and pay, pay differentials substantially higher between Lithuania and the United Kingdom. And you'll see the picture of Thelma. Thelma we met in a shop, Eastern European shop in Peterborough. She'd given up a job working in an office in Lithuania to come and work in the UK. And the reason why she did it was simple, pay was much higher. We asked her about benefits and she looked really quite perplexed and she said, I have no idea how to get into the benefits system here. I don't understand the rules. I'm here to work and to earn money. The other reason why people come is to broaden their experience, to make themselves more employable when they go back to their own country and also to improve their English because again they think it makes them more employable. None of our interviewees have said they come for benefits although a number have said we know other people who might have done but nobody has said to us that they have come for benefits and a lot of them express perplexity at the benefits system in the UK. They have no idea how to get into it. Now you might say of course they would say that wouldn't they because they're being interviewed by you and they know what the agenda is and of course there is a risk but that is our empirical observation. Now despite the fact that it's not just us but other comparable research has said EU migrants aren't coming here for benefits that was the main focus of David Cameron's renegotiation back in February in Brussels and you'll recall that in the February renegotiation what you have is David Cameron trying to finally get a deal whereby he can say to the country that he's now going to support the Remain campaign and he got two big ticket items. The first big ticket item was the so-called emergency break. Now he wanted to prohibit EU migrants for the first four years getting in-work benefits tax credits. He didn't get that. What he got instead was the permission to ask the European Union if a process could be put in place whereby in-work benefits would be tailored. So in the first year no in-work benefits and then an increasing number up until the end of four years when migrants will get the same number of benefits, same amount as UK nationals. He also negotiated restrictions on the so-called exportability of child benefit. So if a Polish worker comes to the UK and has children back in Poland under EU law you can send back the child benefit to your children in Poland. David Cameron wanted to stop that. He didn't negotiate that successfully but what he got instead was permission to get involved in a negotiation process which will mean that the child benefit if it's sent back to Poland is indexed to the standard of living in Poland. Now crucially with these two reforms they will only take effect if there's a vote to remain on the 23rd of June and in fact they do both require amendments to secondary legislation to EU regulations and that will go through the normal EU legislative process. So in conclusion are migrants coming for benefits? The empirical evidence suggests they're not. Indeed evidence does show that EU migrants contribute far more to the economy than they take out in benefits. They contribute approximately three billion in terms of tax, national insurance and they take out about half a billion in terms of benefits. But that's not to deny the fact that the spread of migration and the impact on local communities is highly variable across the United Kingdom and there are some areas which have suffered what locals perceive as a decline in public services. You can't get to see a GP, you can't get your children into local schools because of the number of migrants. So although you've got a global figure that actually migration is good for the economy there are local impacts which are quite serious.


Russia wants to buy missiles and drones from North Korea. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shogu exchanged opinions on global and regional security with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during his visit to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Russian Defense Ministry reported. During the visit to Pyongyang, Russian Defense Minister Army General Sergei Shogu was received by chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kim Jong-un. Shogu exchanged opinions on global and regional security with the North Korean leader, the ministry said. The Russian delegation led by Shogu arrived in North Korea on July 26. The Defense Ministry expects the visit to help strengthen military ties between Russia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and be a milestone in the development of cooperation between the two countries. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gave Russian Defense Minister At-Tur of a defense exposition in Pyongyang with images from North Korean media showing them walking past an array of weaponry from Pyongyang's nuclear-capable ballistic missiles to its newest drones. At a state reception for Shogu and the Russian delegation in a reference to the war in Ukraine, North Korean Defense Minister Kang Sunnam expressed Pyongyang's full support for the just struggle of the Russian army and people to defend the sovereignty and security of the country. It should be noted that Russia is checking out North Korea's missiles and drones. Russia has already acquired Iranian drones to be used against Ukraine. Russia's goal is to keep waging the Ukraine war on the cheap, and that may mean acquiring weapons from places like North Korea.


We just received our first H8 might yesterday. We expect to be flying them and putting them in the flight training schedule around the October-November timeframe. We received one, we expect to get six, and we currently have around 12 pilots right now that are trained and qualified in that newest version, but we still need a maintenance test pilot before we can actually put them on the flight schedule and start flying them regularly. So if something breaks, we've got a maintenance test pilot who can fix it and then return it to the flight line ready and safe for the other air crews to fly. It's the Army's brand new and latest version of the Blackhawk helicopter, the Army's medium lift transport helicopter, and it has an enhanced propulsion system, so new rotor blades that increase the lift capability of the aircraft. It has improved engines, the GE 701 deltas, so they give us better thrust and performance, and then it also has an advanced digital avionics system with better flight instruments and navigation systems, and it has a fully autopilot capability, which our Blackhawk versions previous did not. It gives you so many more functions and features, so it enhances your ability to focus on what's going on outside the helicopter, the navigation, whatever mission you're doing, whether it's rescue hoist, a sling load, a terrain flight, low level tactical mission to transport troops or equipment, the system, the aircraft will fly itself if you set it up correctly, and then that enables you to, instead of flying the helicopter with your hands, to gain better situational awareness, monitor as the flight progresses so things that aren't planned are unexpected, you can handle those events easier. It's just a great thing for the 77th Brigade, it brings modern new capability to the Arkansas Guard, so when it comes to a deployment overseas or an in-state response mission, we've got a new airframe, we've got new technology that are helping assist our air crews perform that mission safely, so it's just a huge win for the Arkansas National Guard.