Hello and welcome to the session. In this session we discussed the following question which says out of a group of swans 7 upon 2 times the square root of the number are playing on the shore of a tad. The two remaining ones are playing in the water. What is the total number of swans? We have a group of swans and we have to find the total number of swans in the group according to the conditions given in the question. Let's see the solution now. First of all we assume let the total number of swans be equal to x square. Now in the question is given that 7 upon 2 times the square root of the number are playing on the shore of a tad. So the number of swans playing on the shore of a tad is equal to 7 upon 2 times the square root of the number that is square root of x square. So this is equal to 7 upon 2 into x. 7 upon 2 into x swans are playing on the shore of a tad. And also it's given in the question that the two remaining ones are playing in the water. So the number of swans playing in water is equal to 2. So now we have the number of swans playing on the shore of a tad that is 7 upon 2 into x plus the number of swans playing in water which is 2. This would be equal to the total number of swans that is x square. From here we have x square minus 7 upon 2 into x minus 2 is equal to 0. Now we will solve this for the value of x. So taking Lcm on the left hand side we get 2 in the denominator. In the numerator we have 2x square minus 7x minus 4 this is equal to 0. Or you can say we get 2x square minus 7x minus 4 is equal to 0. Now we can solve this quadratic equation by splitting the middle term. So we get 2x square minus 8x plus x minus 4 is equal to 0. That is we have written minus 7x as minus 8x plus x. So we get 2x multiplied by x minus 4 plus 1 into x minus 4 equal to 0. So we have 2x plus 1 whole into x minus 4 is equal to 0. Which means that 2x plus 1 equal to 0 or x minus 4 equal to 0. Thus we get x equal to minus 1 upon 2 or x equal to 4. Now when we have x equal to minus 1 upon 2 this implies x square equal to 1 upon 4. That is the total number of swans are 1 upon 4 which is not possible. Therefore we say that x is not equal to minus 1 upon 2. And thus we take x equal to 4 and we had assumed the total number of swans equal to x square. And we have got the value of x as 4 which means now the total number of swans is equal to 4 square which is equal to 16. So 16 is our final answer. This completes the session. Hope you have understood the solution of this question.


The ground may not be white now, but in just a few weeks it will be time to strap on the skis and head outside. This week's Northwoods adventure Clayton Castle talks about the Nordic ski culture in Brainer. The trails are bare now, but in just weeks it will be time to strap on the skis and time for the Nordic ski season. In case you're wondering if you're too old or too young to strap on the skis, the president of the Brainer Nordic Ski Club has a message for you. Well it's a wonderful winter outdoor activity. It's basically it's a lifetime activity, something that you can start from when you start walking until you can't walk anymore. The Nordic ski culture in Brainer does evident as there are programs in the schools and a number of trails for people to enjoy, including at the Northland Arboretum and the Dean Mackie School Forest at Forest View Middle School. The club has been in existence since I believe the early the mid-seventies, so it's been around a long time and they have been grooming trails out here since that time and then have expanded into the other areas. There are also two trail systems that the county growing county maintains, Larson Lake and Wolf Lake and their beautiful sites. The Nordic Skiing culture in Brainer also includes the presence of the Brainer Nordic Ski Club. The Brainer Nordic Ski Club administers a grant that we get through the purchase of Minnesota Ski Pass that all users on grant need trails in the state of Minnesota have to have the purchase in order to ski on those trails. In addition to the programs at the school, the Brainer Nordic Ski Club offers youth programs for youth of all ages. We have a youth program that we sponsor through the Minnesota Youth Ski League, several ski clubs throughout the state of Minnesota do, and it's a wonderful program to get kids started at age four and we'll take them up into about the time that their kids are ready to go into the junior high school program if your school is fortunate enough to have one.  Reporting in Brainer for this week's Northwood's adventure, Clayton Castle, Lakeland News. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


What if Christians actually treated their Bibles like we treated our phones, our iPhones or Android phones? Like if we leave the house and forget our phones, we feel like something's wrong. Some people go to the bathroom, take their phone, go to the next room, take your phone. What if when you wake up in the morning instead of thumbing through your phone, scrolling through your phone, you scroll through the pages of your Bible? What if when you wanna hear something kinda calm you, instead of searching on your phone, you search in the scriptures? What if instead of asking Google for an answer, you ask the Bible for an answer? Since the Bible says that we should be like newborn babes who desire the word of God like pure milk, what if our desire for time with the Bible was just like our desire for time with our own cell phones? What if we actually treated our Bibles like we treated our phones?


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Mr. Martin Kaur who heads the South Centre in Geneva and who is very well known to climate activists, WTO activists for the kind of work that he has done on the trade negotiations earlier now on climate negotiations. Martin, good to have you back with us. Very good to be here. Martin, where do you think the WTO negotiations are going? The minute we had the development round, it seems the development is off the agenda and the negotiations are collapsing. Well, it's very clear that we will not be able to conclude this Doha negotiations this year or next year because the developing countries now see things in a very different way. I think the developed countries led by the United States but also the European Union, they have given up the pretence that this is something to do with development this round and they have made it not only a market access round but market access for their goods and services whilst at the same time they are sheltering their own important goods and this is something that is very hard for the developing countries to take. Still they had agreed on some basic texts of December 2008 in which the imbalances are so greatly against the developing countries but even that was not acceptable to the United States now and they are making more and more demands especially of India and China and the demands really are to open up important industrial sectors including chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs to have zero tariff in these three sectors, industrial machinery, pharmaceutical drugs and chemicals and electronics plus further opening in agriculture and in many services sectors including financial services. So at this point I think correctly India has taken the lead among the two three developing countries who came under this pressure to say that this is just not fair and we just cannot take this you know especially since India is hardly going to benefit at all. The demands that India has been making particularly in services you know that there will be stability in relation to their honouring outsourcing for call centres and other services the Indian demand that Indian professionals will be able to enter the United States more easily and with a certain number this have not been given. Of course in India a lot of people would have seen that trade-off as something as a trade-off between helping a certain section of the people who'd benefit from services against those who are involved in agriculture and other activities but leaving that issue out even that's not being accepted. Even that's not being accepted. But looking at the other picture that the first round of WTO ten years of WTO clearly showed that the countries which had benefited were really the western economies. The developed countries are the ones who really had benefited and this was supposed to redress that so effectively WTO still remains completely one-sided against the interest of the developing countries. It is one-sided the developing countries tried to change it by putting forward a hundred proposals on reforming the WTO. India took the lead. Ambassador Narayanan is the father of that. I think he is now in Hyderabad and that was supposed to be the centrepiece of this new round but today this whole thing has been cast aside and only the market access issues. You know that the big countries want to get into China, India and other developing countries has now become the major demand and the major theme and we have been forced to take a very defensive position. For example, India is one of the leaders of the group of 33 developing countries that have said that we need to protect ourselves and our farmers from import surges, cheap imports coming in, overwhelming the likelihoods of the farmers and that if this is going to happen in future then you can raise your tariff above the bound rate in order to defend the farmers' livelihoods. This proposal has been accepted in principle but not in practice because in practice there are so many conditions put for this special facility that it is almost useless. Can only protect a very small section of the agricultural imports if the way the US or the western countries or the European Union is argued. Yeah, the conditions for using it are so onerous that you can hardly make use of it, not even for a narrow ban of products. This is one of the issues which concerns both you and people like me who have been agitating on this for years that effectively it's hit a whole range of life-saving drugs particularly for those who most need it, those who cannot really afford high-cost drugs. That also has not been addressed in any significant way. Well, the Indian system you might say is the pride of the developing countries. You know the Indian Drugs Act of the 1970s that paved the way for you to have a thriving generic industry which was hampered by the TRIPS agreement and only in 2005 you really had to implement it and we are now seeing the suffering of that implementation because many drug companies are so uncertain about whether they will be able to expand the number of drugs that they can produce because now they may need to have a compulsory license and so on. It is the right of India to have compulsory license but at the same time that may be challenged by powerful countries and the drug industry is not really knowing whether they will get the compulsory license may not want to factor in investments in the future for something that might not appear. So I think this is the predominant effect that has implications not only for India. It has implications for many countries in Africa, in Asia and so on in Latin America that depend on cheap and high quality generics from India. My own country is Malaysia and the Malaysian government was the first to introduce a compulsory license. This was in 2004 and that compulsory license was to import three HIV AIDS medicines from SIPLA an Indian company from here. So in future we are not so sure whether these companies will be producing the new drugs. What is even more worrying for those of us who are watching the situation in India is the purchase of many Indian pharmaceutical drug companies by the multinational companies because it sends an element of uncertainty. We don't know whether the new owners will continue using these factories to produce low cost high quality drugs for the developing countries. Really look at the larger picture that health costs whether it's the US, whether it's the European Union are a significant section of what's called the welfare costs and you look at the fact that the patented medicine, patented products technologies are a major section of that. Do you think there is a really a possibility of getting a North South movement across the board for actually weakening the patent regime in the world? I think so because even in the United States there are many consumer groups and there are many people in the establishment too in the United States. Even the Democrats you know who are controlling Senate they have taken the position that you know it is important to reduce the cost of healthcare and that patents not only drive up the cost of healthcare but also prevent other companies from doing research. You know and there is a movement already even in the developed countries that are saying that the patent rights of the private you know holders have gone too far and that the consumer rights and the public rights have to reassert themselves. There is in fact already a North South citizens movement on access to medicine that has been operating quite effectively. Interestingly enough in the trade negotiations you get from the North from US particularly the far more regressive positions coming in on the question of patents. Yes because you know I think in terms of the balance of power and so on the big companies still are able to have greater influence over the government than this underlying force that is emerging but one very interesting thing is that the Obama administration at least the Attorney General's office themselves have taken the position that you should not the United States should not grant patents for genes for human genes because this of course has been a very major setback when the Supreme Court made a decision that genes even naturally occurring genes can be patented. That's an important and important milestone in that sense if that really goes through and the courts don't come out with something else. Unfortunately during the appeal well the courts actually ruled that you cannot patent genes that are naturally occurring but this has been overturned so we don't know what will happen at the final court. Thank you Martin. We will come back to you on this issue as the things seems unfold but as it appears the WTO negotiations seem to be deadlocked and that doesn't seem that this round is really going anywhere. Thank you very much. We will come back to you further on this. Thank you Prabir and thank you news click.


Welcome to this Farm Accounting 101 presentation on sample accounting entry number seven, making a payment on a tractor loan. I'm Robert Page, Regional Extension Agent and member of the Farm and Agribusiness Management Team with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System at Auburn University. As we have said in earlier presentations, the Farm Accounting 101 series is intended to help Alabama producers to improve their farm financial literacy. Farmers like any other small business have the same basic financial transactions every year, so we study typical checks and deposits. We also learned the accounting principles behind these checks and deposits. Earlier in this series in sample accounting entry number three, the farmer purchased a used tractor with cash down, an older tractor trade in, and financed the balanced due with a finance contract. Today we enter a payment on that finance contract. In this sample entry, the farmer writes a check for $1,743.75 to their ag lender for the loan on their new Holland T4.75 tractor purchased in sample accounting entry number three. The $1,743.75 payment consists of $168.42 in interest and $1,575.33 in principal due on the loan. Before we show this transaction on the Excel spreadsheet, you should understand that the Excel spreadsheet we are using does not track or calculate either the original loan balance for the tractor purchase or the current balance of the loan after the payment. This spreadsheet was simply built to record checks for tax deductible interest expense. Now let's change our view to the Excel spreadsheet. Here we are in June 10, 2019, recording check number 2148 to ag lender for the new Holland T4.75 loan payment of $1,700.43.75. Now how do we allocate the rest of this check to either an expense column? And the answer is we only can allocate for tax purposes the interest paid on this interest loan payment, and that's $168.42 in column P. The balance of the payment goes on our cash balance column in column AB. Thus is the entry in balance? Yes it is. So when we take a look at our profit and loss summary on sheet three, there is the $168.42 interest payment portion which is tax deductible. The balance of the loan payment is included in the $8,147.18 cash usage. So now let's move to our accounting entry back to the PowerPoint presentation. If you've not used this spreadsheet before, it is available for producers to download. To find the spreadsheet, visit the ACES website at www.aces.edu and select the topic tab entitled Farming and then Farm Management to find the article entitled Using an Excel spreadsheet for Farm Financial Records. There is a link to this spreadsheet embedded in the article. Now let's look at the accounting entry. And in this particular case, the accounting entry for this credit card purchase is a compound entry. In line one, we have loan payable to the ag lender for the New Holland T4.75 tractor and a loan payable is a long term liability, reflecting a three year loan. The principal payment of $1,775.33 decreased the loan outstanding balance with the debit entry as shown in line one. In line two, the portion of the loan payment for interest which is a farm operational expense increases with the debit entry of $168.42. And in line three, the amount of the total check $1743.75 reduces cash on hand which is a current asset of the farm with a credit entry. Now here's a reminder note. Due to the limitations of the Excel spreadsheet we are using, we are unable to track the current loan principal balance after this payment. Loan balances are not being tracked on the spreadsheet. And finally, like all accounting entries, debit and credit entries must be in balance. In this example, total debits and credits are $1743.75. We close by saying thank you for watching today's Farm Accounting 101 presentation on sample accounting entry number seven, making a payment on a tractor loan as posted on an Excel spreadsheet. This segment of the Farm Accounting 101 series has been produced by the Alabama Cooperative Extension System Farm and Agribusiness Management Team at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama. For additional information on the Farm and Agribusiness Management Team and other ACES programs, please visit our website at www.aces.edu.


Hey, Psych2Goers, welcome back to another video. Before we start, we would like to thank you all for the support that you've given us. Psych2Go's mission is to make psychology and mental health more accessible to everyone, and you help us do that. So, thank you. Now, back to the video. Do you feel like the spark in your relationship has fizzled out? Has your partner become more and more distant with you lately? Whether it's a romantic partner or a platonic friend, it's not uncommon for one or the other to lose interest in a relationship. Maybe they've become unsure of your future together, or it's because you have different priorities at the moment. While it may depend on a number of different factors, in this video, we have compiled six common reasons why someone might lose interest in you. Number one, they aren't sure about what they want. Have they stopped texting you as much after the first few dates? Another reason why someone might lose interest in you might not have anything to do with you at all. It could just be that they aren't sure of what they really want in a relationship. They may have shown interest in you at the beginning because they're trying to figure out what type of person they are compatible with or want to surround themselves with. Number two, the relationship began on lust. Did your relationship start off hot and steamy? Being sexually attracted to someone is often the way a lot of relationships start. While there's nothing wrong with relationships based on sexual attraction, there is a risk that the relationship will fall apart once the initial attraction fades away. Number three, you don't feel confident. Do you always shrink into yourself or look down when you're talking to someone new? Do you often feel overly self-conscious around your crush?  Because of this, those who actually want to get to know you and want to pursue a relationship with you might think that you don't feel the same way so they end up losing interest and leave. Number four, you're over-sharing too soon. Have you ever told someone you just met everything that's going on in your life? Maybe you tell them about the weird and gross dream that you had the night before or the chaos that's going on with your best friend's love life. Whatever it is, it might just be a little too much for them to handle. While it's normal to share everyday things with someone you like, over-sharing the personal details of your life to someone you've just met may become too overwhelming for them to the point that they start losing interest in their relationship with you. Number five, you met at the wrong time. I know this sounds cliche, but have you ever wondered if you might have met the right person at the wrong time? Perhaps you've just graduated and you're trying to figure out what you want in life. While they're already thinking of settling down. Even if you believe that you're perfect for each other, the differences in your priorities may end up pulling you apart. For example, you may need to dedicate your time to studying and working and you don't have time left to put into any relationship. This may cause one of you to start losing interest in the other in the long run. And number six, you're unable to communicate in a healthy way. Maybe you find what they're saying to be really triggering, but instead of letting them know, you keep it to yourself. Become passive aggressive or start to distance yourself from them. The changes in your mood can largely affect how you act and behave around them. If you don't communicate how you feel to them, they may find your sudden changes in behavior to be abrupt and upsetting. This goes both ways, as changes in their mood may also put a strain on your relationship and cause you to lose interest in them. Did you relate to any of these reasons? What do you plan to do differently? No matter your situation, we hope you continue to keep living your best life and to continue your lifelong journey into understanding yourself more every day. If you found this video helpful, be sure to like and share it with someone who might benefit from it too. And don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification bell icon to get notified whenever Psych2Go posts a new video. The references and studies used in this video are added in the description below. Thanks for watching and we'll see you soon!


So hell of a job by Ryan is what I just told the team. Came up with some huge plays. I thought he was in command. Most of the day, executing the stuff, and we tried to hit some throws down the field. Unfortunately, we weren't able to. But just his ability to keep some plays alive in the pocket, I thought we were really cool. We took care of the football. All credit goes to the players and Ryan, obviously. And Nick Westbrook coming up with that huge play when we were leaking oil. And just the way that they understand the situation there at the end to be able to finish off the game in four minutes. He does everything for us. And I do production meetings before the game. And early in the season, it's like, who's this guy with the last name? Or who should we? And it's like, we get to see him every day. And the type of teammate that he is, his value is very versatile. He plays a lot of positions. He knows a lot of positions.  And it's different personnel groups. And it's different formations. And he's able to line up, play special teams for us. And we need to find a lot of players like Nick. I'm not sure to pick here. Well, man, I thought we got off to a great start. We traded some punts. And then we kind of got on a roll and played really complimentary. We got a penalty down the field, scored. But give them credit. Timmy Kelly did a great job in the second half, going to empty. Davis did an unbelievable. He was throwing seeds. Amondola found the fountain of youth. And we were struggling defensively. So give them a lot of credit. And then we were able to give us credit for battling back. Well, his toughness, I think he does have some play strength. We've seen him run with the football. And we put it on the ground, I guess, and we were able to recover it. But I think his toughness continues to show up. And that's what you have to have in his league to play quarterback. He's our quarterback. And so we won 12 games with him. Well, that's all earned. That's all earned. It's not like talked about. It's viewed. And he's earned their respect. He's earned their trust and the confidence. Well, the first thing is going to be to get healthy, to use that time to get healthy. We started dropping there late in the game and then try to improve. We were really doing a lot of good things defensively. And this will be good. This will be a good week. And we'll be able to coach them hard. And they'll respond to that.  And Ryan to start to build some trust and throw in the football there. And I thought he played really well for us. I saw him trying to block. I saw him trying to finish. So that's great. Well, again, it's just a few minutes after the game, Teran. So I think we'll be able to identify that as we move on. Probably a lot of the same things. It starts with protection. I think it starts with clean pockets, but also identifying manor zone and spacing and the things that we have going. So we weren't perfect. But I think it was a huge step in the right direction. No, man, they don't give you a hat or a t-shirt or anything like that. But we understand that we're an elite eight. We've moved on to the second round of the playoffs without having to play a playoff game. And we have to take advantage of the time. We have to be great as coaches. We have to be great on our training staff, our physical therapy, strength and conditioning. A lot of these guys that get some time off, but also heal and then get to work. You saw the fan before. Yeah, fantastic. He had assigned coaching here. Well, I think Ron Rivera says his best. Focus on things that are important and not that are interesting. And that's probably interesting. Important is trying to get this team ready and find 48 guys each week that believe in the same things that we do and that help us win. So I do want you to mention the fans. I thought that that's where we were going. But I just appreciate them coming down here. Wish we could have given them a better third quarter. But it was great to come out of that tunnel early this morning and see people there and be excited. Do you expect all systems going with Derrick now? We'll see where Derrick's at when we get back to Nashville. Thank you.


It's got a very 80s vibe. Yeah, absolutely. But like the 80s and 90s are back, Patrick. Yes, for the second time in my life, I've walked into a room full of people considerably younger than me looking like they would blend in with my sophomore high school class. It was terrifying then. It's terrifying now. You know, when people started saying the 90s are back, I was like, what? Where's the kajikuku hair? What are even the 90s? Stop it. But now I see kids in high school walking around and I'm like, yeah, the 90s are back. They're very bad. I see them every morning when I take my kids to school in the high school.  It's the weirdest thing. Listen, let's be honest. Between 1990 and what? 96? At least in my neck of the woods, it's like you just were the biggest things possible. It was great. Well, and I have a conspiracy belief that someone secretly cashed all those clothes. Like they didn't throw them away or dump them or try to resum. There's warehouse and they found them and it's like, hey, 20 years of past, let's reintroduce all the apparel, all of it. Probably. When I went to see Return of the King, I remember this.  But he and I had gone to see Return of the King because I really wanted to. And we were supposed to do something afterwards. We were going to see the movie that was the better part of four hours. And then go to a bar and hang out with other people. And as people are starting to say their goodbyes in the movie, he was like, we can go, right? And I was like, are you kidding? No. Sit here.   Like the movie's over. It's a long goodbye. And I'm like, no, we're here and we're staying to the end of the credits. That movie tested a lot of letters. If you could only eat one cuisine for a year. Oh, yeah. What would you choose? Can I say noodles? Noodles. As my cuisine. You can't. No, no, Tom. When you say noodles, does that mean noodles? No, no, but is it like udon, but also spaghetti?  No, no, no, no. When I say noodles, I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to define it. I'm going to bracket out Italian. Somebody should be running for office at the end of this guy. I'm talking like. Thank you for letting me respond to your question. Well, maybe I shouldn't have thanked you since you're not letting me respond. All right, I'm Asian noodles. That's why I can't run for office right there. I'm so Tom's a fan of cats. This is so weird. That's not an excuse. All right, I need to get some tea. The Atlanta Braves on these Friday shows anymore. Responsible for two out of all that. Do you know why I remember the Goodwill Games is because when the Goodwill Games were on for two weeks every fourth year, Gilligan's Island in Laverne and Shirley, we're not on TBS that afternoon for weeks.


since Hitler marched into Poland, years full of suffering and death and sacrifice. Now the war against Germany is won. Historic pictures of the last days of the war in Europe show American and Russian troops as they joined at Torgau on the river Elbe, splitting German armies in two. United States General Reinhardt meets Red Army General Russakov, a meeting that spelled out certain German defeat. Inside Germany itself, the Allies seized the famous stadium of Nuremberg, seen of countless Nazi party rallies. In a symbolic gesture, American troops destroyed the Nazi party emblem.


ThinkTec Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Hey, hello, and welcome to Standing Energy Man here on ThinkTec Hawaii, where community matters. We got a great show lined up for today. We're going to do some catch up. But before we get to our guests, I want to talk to you a little bit about some things going on locally. Last night, we did an all hydrogen powered event, which was a Gala fundraiser for Center for Tomorrow's leaders, all powered by hydrogen. And it was a great event. So thanks to Katie for inviting us out and giving us a challenge of running an event that we thought would take 5,000 watts and took 10,000 watts. So it was pretty challenging pulling it all together, but we did it. Right now, I'd like to show you a quick video that was also a highlight of this week. It was produced by Hyperspective here in Honolulu. And it won second place in the local animation professional advertisers awards. So Robert, if you could roll that video. The simplest element and also the most abundant hydrogen makes up roughly 75% of all mass in the universe. Hydrogen also powers most of the stars in our universe. So it's only fitting that it has come to be recognized as a viable alternative energy source. And we need alternatives because fossil fuels are problematic. They're messy, dirty, expensive to obtain and not secure and they're limited. Hydrogen on the other hand is everywhere. Hydrogen can be produced from a wide variety of sources, including water itself, using other renewable energies. That means it's clean, really clean. As a zero emission fuel source, the only byproducts are water, heat and electricity. Easily transported, hydrogen can be stored and distributed on a large scale as either gas or liquid. As a fuel, hydrogen itself is very light. In fact, hydrogen is 472 times more efficient by weight than lead acid batteries. And it isn't just for transportation. Hydrogen can also effectively produce and store energy for power grids. Hydrogen gas is transformed into energy within a fuel cell. As hydrogen passes through a fuel cell, electrons are released and an electrical current is produced and captured for use. Electric vehicle motors powered by hydrogen fuel cells are twice as efficient as gas or diesel engines. They can travel farther distances than lithium batteries, especially in heavy vehicles and can last for decades. Hydrogen powered fuel cells are scalable to buses and commercial fleets such as trucks, trains, ships and aircraft. Fuel cells allow for fast, easy refueling. And hydrogen can be easily adapted to current refueling stations, making it a convenient fuel source for everyone. What is a proven, safe, clean and efficient energy source currently in use worldwide? Hydrogen is everywhere, including our clean energy future. Hey, and I love that video. So congratulations again to the folks of Hyperspective for winning the Pelley Award second place in the animation division. And we'll be showing that video some more. In fact, I've sent it out pretty broad and wide around the world because I think it's a great video to introduce folks to hydrogen. But today it's time for me to introduce my guest for today, Turmer Melton from Nicola Motors. And we talked to him, I think about seven, eight months ago, and got an introduction to what he's doing. And we in our shop think he's doing a regular rocket launch and moon launch here. But boy, when he takes off, I'm looking so forward to seeing his products out there. So Trevor, welcome to Stand the Energy Man. I really appreciate you coming on this time. I know how busy you are. And I see you in the news all the time. And I'm really excited about what I see. So welcome back to the show. And we're looking for an update. So just hit it. Yeah, thanks, Matt. Appreciate it. Well, thanks for having me on. We've had a lot of fun. The last year we spent primarily focusing on ensuring all the components on the semi-truck are ready for production and testing with fleet. So for the public that knows about Nicola Motor Company, we've designed the first ever hydrogen electric semi-truck that can outperform the diesel in every category and weighs less than the diesel and operates at about 30% less than the diesel also. So that truck will be finalized near the end of this year and it'll be unveiled next year in January to the world. And at that point, it goes out with fleets for testing 25 vehicles with different fleets around the country being tested full time. And really some really fun stuff being able to see that truck completely done. Is it going to look a lot like your initial model that you rolled out last year? No, it's changed quite a bit. I mean, it's still very aerodynamic, but it's a lot more aggressive looking. If you look at the old, the very first truck we ever built, it looked very similar to a bullet train, very soft lines, very rounded. The new one has got more aggressive lines, a lot more lines in the vehicle itself. But still the same type of aerodynamic shape, but it's a lot shorter too. We've shortened up the production vehicle by almost four feet. So we have a 210 wheelbase compared to like a 230, 240 on the old one. Okay, so you're more your drainage truck as it got those kind of lines, the shorter? Yeah, exactly. It's actually exactly like the day cap that you see online. Great. So the day cap will be both a day cap and a sleeper. That design will be the exact same design we use in both trucks. Okay, we threw that image up there so the folks got to see that on the screen while you were talking. But that's awesome. I like the lines in that thing. It looks really nice. I think you've done some great work there. Yeah, it's gonna be a lot of fun on building it in January. And that's not just a prototype out there built. It's actually a pre-production unit ready to be finalized into full production for 2021. So we're about five to seven years ahead of our competitors right now. Outstanding. And your infrastructure pieces, I know you were working hard to set up nationwide infrastructure for these things because they go like 1,200 miles, right, between top-offs on 100 kilograms. They can in peak, you know, in kind of a perfect scenario. So most of the time they'll get about 500 to 800 miles on a Philippa hydrogen. And that'll give you a lot of stations pretty much every 450 miles throughout the country. We have, we already have two of the stations ordered right now that go up this year. We've got 18 more next year and we've got over 700 going up over the next eight years. Outstanding. So the stations will cover the entire continental U.S. and Canada and allow you to pretty much handle, you know, being able to drive a truck anywhere you want in any direction. Are you looking and making the hydrogen in those stations available for like Toyota and Hyundai and smaller vehicles or is it going to be strictly? Yeah. Yeah. Anyone can fill up at them. Yep. Anyone can fill up at them. Terrific. And so what's the total number of stations you're looking at again at the end game? At least this first one. We've got 700 stations. So we'll have over eight years, we'll have about 700 go ups. We've got a lot of stations going up every year. Great. So what are some of the new improvements in your new design besides the lines? What are some of the other things you can talk about? Yeah.  That was a big monumental task. We lowered the center of gravity down lower. We've made improvements on the drivetrain efficiency. We've made the interior of the cab more spacious for the driver. We added 14 inches more of elbow room. We added camera mirrors. We went to full screen displays. Primarily, the entire truck took a makeover from the ground up. So everything that's on the old truck has been replaced with new. Wow. And so you say January, you'll start rolling these things out. Where is the first market going to be? What are some of the companies that are looking to use this thing right off the bat? So you'll see that come out May 3rd. We have a big announcement on May 3rd. One of the most respected brands in America is going to announce that they're converting every truck over to Nikola only. And that's the first time it's ever been done. So they ship hundreds of millions of miles a year. These guys know shipping better than anybody. And every one of their trucks is going to be converted to Nikola away from diesels and away from other vehicles. So this is a kind of a big statement. Ultimately, there's a rush to see who is the leader in trucking zero emission. And Nikola is certainly the Super Bowl champ right now for sure. Are any of those 700 stations in the state of Hawaii? No, they're not. Come on, buddy. No, we hope. Oh, you mean the 700. I'm sorry. I think I'm talking about the first batch. Yeah, I'm sure we'll have a couple out there. Ultimately, it kind of comes down to the fleets and how many trucks they have and what the political stance is. If you get the right people out there that are willing to push it and want to move to trucks, and zero emission, we're happy to come out and help. We haven't seen a lot of traction from trucking groups out in Hawaii. But if they want to move to zero emission, we're certainly willing to help them. We don't have much of a market for your long haul trucks, but for your drage trucks. That's all we use here. Short beds because we haul a lot of 40-foot containers all around the state on all islands. The big island has some long runs. It's probably 100 miles between Kona and Hilo, roughly, up a big mountain and down the other side. Your stuff would definitely be plug-in electric hands down and would be a lot cleaner than the diesel stuff we're using now. I don't know if you're aware of that. Go ahead. We're all for it. Ultimately, it comes down to the fleets. If we'd seen a call to say, hey, we want these trucks, because right now we've got over $9 billion in pre-orders. Go ahead. What? Are you going to be in any of the shows that any of our trucking companies would show up at on the mainland there? I know they go to those big... In 2019, we will be. Remember, we unveiled the truck in January, the production truck. In 2019, we'll have it all over the country. You'll see it everywhere next year. Great. That's exciting. That's exciting stuff. I know you get out here to Hawaii once in a while. When's your next trip out this way? I don't know. My dad has a house out in Haiku, over on Maui, and I certainly love to come spend time there. I haven't been there for about a year and a half, so I need to get out there for sure. Ultimately, we have that off-road UTV that's really fun. I think we're going to try to bring one over to the Hawaii Islands and go drive it around. I'll try to get over there sometime this year, for sure. We just put your ATV up on the screen, and that's a mean-looking machine. We're looking forward to seeing that, and that would do great on Maui. Yeah, it would be fun. The Big Island has a lot of... Yeah, all zero emissions, fun, waterproof, it's a blast, so hopefully we can get it over there and people can start renting those instead of those gas guzzles and jeeps and mustangs. If you look at the Big Island, there's already hydrogen over there at Blue Planet, and then the University of Hawaii is opening a station over there this summer, so there's two sources of hydrogen on the Big Island already if you want to run one over there. We're still working on Maui. Yeah. Good. We got a lot of work to do. We've got to hit the whole country as fast as we can, so we'll see where we can... How quick we can get out there. All right, sure. We're going to take a quick break here and go and show some of the other shows on Think Tech, and we'll be back with Trevor in about 60 seconds. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host, Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, where we motivate, educate, empower, and inspire all women. We are live here every other Thursday at 4 p.m. and we welcome you to join us here at Sister Power. Aloha and thank you. Aloha. I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on ThinkTechHawaii.com, 1 p.m. on Friday afternoons, and then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up, and please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keepin' you safe. Aloha. Hey, Aloha, and welcome back to Standard Energy Man on my lunch hour with Trevor Milton from Nicola Motors. We just spent the first 15 minutes talking about some of the new models that they're going to go into production next year, and he's going to roll out for public display starting in January. This is really exciting. In fact, I hate to be a downer on your vehicles, but I'm more excited about your infrastructure plans than the vehicles, and you got some awesome vehicles, so that says a lot about your infrastructure. But let's talk a little bit more about what your, the technical side of your vehicles. A lot of folks don't realize why it makes sense to use hydrogen versus batteries when you start to talk big trucks and big buses and things, and right now we have a lot of folks over here that are sold on battery power and they think it's great and they want to put batteries in all their buses, but I tell them that when it comes to energy by weight, you can't beat hydrogen, and when it comes to transportation, weight, you know, counts for a lot of stuff. So Trevor, give us an idea of why you picked hydrogen in your designs for your trucks. Yeah, I mean the first thing to know about NICO as we actually build both vehicles, we build battery electric and hydrogen electric with batteries, so we're not, you know, we don't really care which way people want to go, we'll just give you the straight facts on it. When it comes to hydrogen, when it comes to towing loads, that's where hydrogen really makes sense. The battery electric is very good when you're not towing loads. That allows you to kind of go a couple hundred miles, you know, busing people around is very good. If you get into the heavy hauling of load, you know, where you have a trailer behind your vehicle, there's a lot of advantages with hydrogen. One is we weigh a lot less weight, so if you were to compare our truck with a, say, the Tesla semi-truck, we'll weigh between six and ten thousand pounds lighter than their truck. If you look at the refill time, we can refill in about 15, 20 minutes where it takes anywhere from two to five hours on a very expensive charger to charge a vehicle without much energy in it. It's also easier to produce hydrogen at a cheaper rate because of renewable sources than it is through storing in batteries, only to put it back into another vehicle with batteries. So, you know, we're not, we don't really care which way people go because we sell both types of vehicles, but ultimately when it comes to heavy heavy loads, hauling trailers, hydrogen certainly a much better solution, cheaper solution, lighter solution, and it's, you know, it just turns out to be a better packaging solution also. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that you're kind of agnostic about whether it's battery or hydrogen because it's really more focused on the purpose, on the distance and the terrain and things like that than just straight, what do you like better batteries or hydrogen. So, if you have short range. Yeah, well, one size doesn't fit all. That's the thing you remember. One size does not fit all, and you'll never have one product that'll fix every problem. It's a blend of technologies to fix everything. And the hydrogen vehicles all have batteries in them anyway. They're going to all have batteries. They do. Yeah, one of the things that, in fact, we had a visitor come in the shop this week and we were talking about the worldwide stores or availability of things like lithium and it's actually fairly limited. So, rather than trying to load up vehicles with just lithium batteries, probably better to spread those lithium batteries over a lot of vehicles and couple it with hydrogen. But this guy pointed out to me, and he apparently does a lot of study, that cobalt's even rarer than lithium. And the current lithium batteries require cobalt. So, you know, we kind of need to make those materials go as far as we can. And I would say that using the hydrogen would help in that part, too. Well, how about some of your... Yeah, hydrogen's the only element that's completely renewable. So, ultimately, the only thing you have is carbon fiber tanks that you can recycle. And you have unlimited hydrogen indefinitely for thousands of years where you're not using up the Earth's materials to support it. So, that's the advantage of hydrogen is it just doesn't... It doesn't take any rare Earth materials really other than a little bit of platinum and you can recycle that.  Yeah, and I think that's another important factor. You know, when people start to just look at the technologies, they're very short-sighted. The recyclability of components is important. The toxicity of end-state materials is important. The hazardous, you know, mining lithium is not exactly a clean sport and that factor has to be taken into account. We have to take in the cradle-to-grave aspect of all these technologies, how long they last, how much can be recycled, basically address the sustainability piece. And hydrogen certainly has an edge on sustainability. Yep. So, the components in your truck, do you have subcontractors making things like the fuel cell or are you guys doing all that in-house? So, we own all the intellectual property behind every major component on the truck. So, the fuel cell, the battery, the e-axle, the controls, things like that. But what we do is we sub it out to groups to commercialize it. So, we don't want to be in trying to commercialize every component ourselves. So, for instance, like the e-axle and the fuel cell will come from Robert Bosch, one of the biggest companies in the world. It comes to the suspension that'll come from Meritor. And stability control will come from WAPCO. And these are all things that ultimately we're... We don't want to do it ourselves. We don't want to do everything ourselves. So, we design it, we engineer it, we own it, and we send it out to groups to help us commercialize it. Okay. And for all the gear heads in the audience, give us some idea about power, torque, and those kind of things. Yeah. So, a normal diesel truck is about 400 horsepower, times 450, that's a pretty high-end diesel. Some of them are even down to 350. So, the Nikola semi-truck is over 1,000 horsepower. But what we have to do is we have to tune it down because it has so much horsepower, you just can't use it all. So, it has over 1,000 horsepower. It has more torque than a diesel. It can accelerate from zero to 60 with a full load, about four to five times faster than a diesel. Once again, no one's really concerned about acceleration speeds. So, it's all about safety. Ultimately, electric motors are just much more safe than diesels are. You can control the slippage, the stability, the control, the analog braking, the braking power within milliseconds, whereas a diesel takes sometimes up to a full second to even change what's going on with the drivetrain. So, these are things that are more advantageous with electric. And you don't have a traditional transmission in this. What kind of transmission or transaxle technology is in an electric drivetrain? Yeah, it's just an electric motor. And then how you couple it to a gear reduction doesn't really matter. So, with ours, we have an electric motor for every wheel. It's sitting in the middle of the frame and it has two half shafts, one to each wheel with two motors. So, we have two motors, two gear reductions, and two half shafts for every set of wheels. So, we have what we call true independent torque vectoring or wheel control, because every wheel is driven independently by its own motor. So, that's the advantage of electric motors is you can control every wheel individually. So, there is no transmission, but there is a single gear reduction. Okay, so the driver's not shifting gears all the time. I mean, we hear the drivers over here pull out of a stop sign and they're going through five or six gears by the time they're up to 25 miles an hour. So, this is totally different concept for your drivers now. Yeah, yeah, you don't have any of that. It's just a pedal, just zero to full speed on one gear. We do have something out here in Hawaii. I think we're nearly one of the first states to have it. One of our landfill folks has an electric D7 caterpillar bulldozer. And the reason he likes the electric transaxle, the electric drivetrain is not only that his guys aren't shifting all the time, but his maintenance costs go down and there's less wear and tear on the equipment because the diesel operators like to leave it in one gear and not shift and it tends to tear the transmission up. So, he's finding a lot of maintenance advantages to this electric, plus he's using a D7 where he used to use a D9, which is a bigger piece of equipment. So, that sounds like you're experiencing the same kind of revelations. Yep, yeah, all the same similarities. I mean, ultimately electric drivetrains have very little maintenance, if any, compared to any other vehicle. So, they're better across the board. That's certain, whether you go electric or hydrogen electric, it really doesn't matter. Just hydrogen electric gives you a little bit better advantages with weight and range and fill-up times. You know, battery only gives you advantages also to get the same performance is just on a limited range. Okay. Regenerative braking, is that just on the truck itself or do you envision the trailers actually having regenerative braking as well? No, I think most of them will have them in the long run, but trailers are always used separately from the trucks. So, a little harder to make sure they combine together, but as trailers get smarter and smarter and as technology is solidified, then people will begin to make trailers that are compatible with the regenerative braking as well. Okay. Yeah, that's always been a big factor for us when you factor in the regenerative braking for the battery packs. That helps a lot, especially in hilly terrain like we have here. The buses really... You can use a lot of battery power up going up a hill, and coming down that hill gives you a lot back. So, we really appreciate that. Yep. Okay, so the drivetrain is different. We've got regenerative braking. That's something that most people aren't used to. Any other factors in the hydrogen and electric drivetrain that you're finding the customers or potential customers are really liking? I mean, it really just comes down to having a vehicle that's nearly silent, having a vehicle that's zeroing mission, getting rid of all the pollution, getting rid of all the noise. It's very quiet. Hydrogen's a very good advantage because you can create it over a 24-hour period. You can take energy off the windmills. You can take energy off the solar. You can take energy off the waves. And you can create hydrogen whenever it's good. And you don't need to worry about storing it because the hydrogen is... Essentially, in one kilogram, hydrogen has 35 usable kilowatt hours. So, if you think about a Tesla car, their 100 model, which is their high-end model, three kilograms of hydrogen has more energy than that car has. So, it's all about being able to store a massive amount of energy in a very small space, and that's what hydrogen gives you. So... Yeah, I tell folks that the number of the sticks in my head, I have a little battery efficiency chart. And it shows, like, lead acid batteries are 52 amp-hours per kilogram. Most lithium batteries are in the 400 to 600 amp-hours per kilogram. If you're into hazardous material, hydrazine gives you, like, 2,000 to 2,500 amp-hours per kilogram, and hydrogen fuel cells are 26,000 amp-hours per kilogram. So, by weight, it's hard to be hydrogen for energy efficiency. Yeah. Yeah, it really is. When we're talking about batteries, I just flashed back, I wanted to ask you this. One of the things that people tend to overlook when they're looking at battery infrastructure is the charging stations. Now, for a big truck like yours, if it's a battery truck and you guys have the experience in this, what kind of facility upgrades does the average place need to have in terms of adding a transformer or things like that just to accommodate the charger for a big vehicle like this? You did mention it was more expensive to, you know, the infrastructure was more expensive for charging than most people anticipate, but give us some idea of what the magnitude is on that. Yeah, so in order to charge a semi-truck like ours, like a Tesla truck, it would cost you about $500,000 for one charger that would charge in three hours. If you wanted to charge in one and a half hours, it would cost you a million dollars. So ultimately, you got an enormous amount of money just for one charger, and then you're going to need, you know, tons of those for a fleet of trucks. So it's pretty expensive. It's very, very expensive. It's about 100 grand per 100 kilowatts for a charger, and that includes your install and your hardware. So they're pretty pricey.  But when you get into a truck, you have to take that in times of buy 100 or 1,000. So it's, I mean, it's just very, very expensive. It's very, very pricey. Yeah, that's part of that cradle to grave and totally burning cost I talked about. You know, we're used to just buying the car and then buying the gas, but when you're buying the gas station and the gas production, you know, and basically in electricity, you're talking about a pretty steep investment for charging. And then the time-wise, you know, if the trucks are making money being on the road 24 hours with multiple drivers and people like doing the pony express thing rather than a sole driver doing it all himself, hey, you want those vehicles on the road, they're making money and you can do that with hydrogen instead of stopping and plugging in a vehicle for two to four to six hours. So I know that's another factor. Yeah, hydrogen stations are ultimately, what we try to tell people is it costs us about, you know, right around about 100 grand a truck to build a hydrogen station and cost about 500 grand a truck to build a charging network. So it's about one fifth of cost to build a hydrogen network compared to a charging network for trucks. Yeah. Anyway, we're down to our last minute, Trevor. And what I'd like to do is just leave it with you to spend the last minute telling the entire world on stand-lander demand what you're looking forward to and what's exciting for you in the next year or so.  I mean, how fun is it that we get it, and we get to get rid of all these oil companies and those diesel fuel and the pollutions and money just being, you know, hundreds of billions being thrown into the oil company's pocket. Time to change that. Time to keep that money local. And you know, I love that. That's what's so great about hydrogen is all the money stays local. So time to keep it local. Time to, you know, build hydrogen network out. Time to get these trucks out there. Get rid of all the pollution. Make the health benefits better.  So over the next two to three years, you'll start to see these popping up everywhere. Well, we'll do our part over here. We'll get the HCAT folks out beating the bushes and we'll sell some trucks here on Oahu and we'll sell some of your ATVs out on Maui in the Big Island for you because they sure got a boatload of them over there and they're pretty cool looking too. So, Trevor, I want to thank you again so much. Yeah, thanks so much. Thanks for being with us. And we'll catch up to you another six months and do this again, all right? No problem. Sounds good. Thank you so much. See you. Bye-bye. Best of luck, Trevor. Bye-bye. Well, that's going to wrap it up for Stan Energy Man today and we'll see you next Friday here on Think Tech, Hawaii where community matters and thanks to Sydney and Robert here in the station for making it all a magic happen. Trust me, it's like a moonshot every Friday when we do this stuff. Aloha.


June-July marks the end of the 2021-2022 academic year, and with that comes graduation season. This year, in particular, has had much to celebrate, as the education sector continues to navigate with the easing of COVID-19 restrictions, seeing the return of many school activities. Besides the return of mass-gathering activities at schools, this year also notes the first cohort of students writing CPEA, the return of the laptop program, and government payment of facilities fees to government primary and secondary school institutions. Minister for Education, Sustainable Development, Innovation, Science, Technology, and Vocational Training Hon. Sean Edward joined several secondary and primary schools' graduation exercises. His message was wrapped around students' ability to ultimately chart their destiny through hard work, commitment, and remaining hopeful and resilient in times of uncertainty. You can be in an environment like this at the Ulyakambine School and achieve anything you want to achieve.  That is false. That is not true.  And you have to believe it. When a young person in the Caribbean today can successfully complete five years at secondary school, we have a lot to celebrate and to be proud of. And so I want you to give yourselves a round of applause. Minister Edward took the time to also speak directly to parents and encourage them to continue to support and invest in their children's general welfare, as their presence ultimately makes a difference in their children's lives and can help shape more positive outcomes. Parents continue to support your children. We are living in a world today where land does not have the value it used to have before. We are living in a world today where material things, they are important because they give us a certain degree of comfort in life, but they do not mean everything. The best investment you can make is in the education of your children and sitting to my immediate left hair, right hair is afternoon enriched form. We have doctors there. We have lawyers there. We have engineers and teachers and honest police officers here. This group of students will be remembered as the first set of students to engage in graduation exercises after the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also marks Minister Edward's first graduation season since becoming Minister for Education. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Education, Sustainable Development, Innovation, Science, Technology and the Vocational Training, I am Danielle Dubois reporting.


And welcome to tomorrow's season 9 episode 37 for Saturday, November 12th, 2016. My name is Benjamin Higginbotham, and before we get started, a huge shout out to all of the patrons of tomorrow who helped up to make this specific segment of this episode happen. These are people who have contributed $10 or more to this episode. We are Crowdfunded Show. Every single dollar helps. That list keeps getting longer and longer. So thank you to all the patrons of tomorrow. Head on over to patreon.com slash tmro for more information on how you can crowdfund the show. Now before we get into the interview today, I did just want to remind everyone this is a fairly touchy subject. We do have three basic rules here at tomorrow. They're all very simple. The first is no dying. We do work in the aerospace industry. A lot of people work with explosives and whatnot. So be safe, be smart, no dying.  Treat people like you want to be treated. And rule number three is you debate the idea, not the person. So no name calling, no debating people and their personalities. You debate ideas themselves. Head on over to tomorrow.tv slash rules for more information. Now because of the particular topic, you know, the citizens tomorrow, you guys are awesome. We traditionally have great comments in our comments area. You all treat each other with respect even when you disagree. All I ask is please continue to do that even with the fairly heated topic. So on that news, we're going to bring on Jeff Faust. He is the senior staff writer over at Space News, or a senior staff writer over at SpaceNews.com. And we're going to be talking about the Donald Trump policy for space. So Jeff, first off, thank you very much for taking time out of your Saturday and joining us today. No problem. Pleasure to be here. All right. So we don't know a whole lot about what a space policy under Trump would mean, but some of these pieces are starting to come together a little bit. Can you tell us a bit about what we know? Sure. You know, the Trump campaign didn't talk much about space during the campaign. That's not surprising. Space is in a big issue. There are a lot of their much bigger issues that got all the attention during the campaign. It was really in sort of the final weeks of the campaign leading up to the election where the campaign did bring in a space policy advisor. He is Robert Walker, former congressman, former chairman of the House Science Committee. He helped formulate sort of the framework of a policy and that framework really calls for some very basic, more almost philosophical points. That includes promoting commercialization, promoting human exploration, less of an emphasis on earth science, more cooperation between the various branches of the government where it comes to space, issues like that. So not a lot of details, not a lot of depth, but you get sort of an idea of what a Trump administration might do once it takes office in January. So the big one, the big item you mentioned to us in human space exploration is the space launch system. Under Trump administration, have they said anything about SLS? Do we have any insight as to what might be happening with that particular program? Yeah, that's a good question. They haven't specifically said anything about SLS or Orion or the other parts of the exploration program. You can read that to mean that they're not particularly interested in SLS. That they might make changes to that in the future or simply because they haven't gotten down to that level of detail. And I suspect for the time being, that's really the latter explanation. They really hadn't had the need to think about what they would want to do with SLS, what they would want to do with Orion, what they would want to do with these other systems because space wasn't a priority with a new administration coming in and some decisions to make about who's going to be NASA administrator about flushing out some of those policy basics that they unveiled during the campaign itself. You'll start to see some more details about what they might want to do with some of those key programs. Keeping in mind, I think, and I think this is important, that what a campaign says during the campaign and what it attempts to do maybe two different things, what it attempts to do once elected and what it's actually able to get through Congress can also be two very different things. And how long does something like this take, right? So when Obama took office, it wasn't right away when there was suddenly like day one, he had a space policy. How long do these transition periods generally take? Yeah, that's a very good point. A lot of people tend to think of the transition as taking place between election day in November and the inauguration in January. In reality, that transition can last months longer. Case in point with the Obama administration, you know, they took office in January of 2009. It was four months later of May when they finally nominated Charlie Bolden to be NASA administrator after going through a number of other potential candidates for the office. So I wouldn't be surprised if it takes the Trump administration a while to fill that position simply because it's going to take a while to fill all the cabinet and higher level positions out there in the federal government. Likewise, it wasn't until January of 2010, actually February of 2010, when they actually unveiled their plan to cancel the constellation program, to develop the commercial crew program, things like that. So there's going to be a period of transition that will last for many months and until the Trump administration is really able to put its own stamp on space policy. So for the time being, we just sort of look at who's involved and what they're saying and trying to guess from there what they might do in a year or two. So when it comes to the United States president, how much does that matter? There's actually a question in the chat room from I think it's Furkeep, which is how much of the total space business can change or in how much is set in stone for the long term? Yeah, I mean, you know, the federal government, NASA runs on annual budgets, so you can change things on an annual basis if you decide you don't want to continue a particular program or if you want to accelerate a particular program by adding more money to it. That's certainly a possibility. But again, we're almost ready to get the 2017 budget done. That's one of the priorities for Congress when it returns next week for its so-called lame duck session after the election. The new administration will have to quickly develop a 2018 budget proposal shortly after it takes office. So there won't be much time for them to make major changes to NASA there. It's really going to be the 2019 budget proposal which will come out in early 2018 that they've really had their first opportunity to make major changes to NASA programs. So there's going to be a period of time running for, like I said, up to a year after the inauguration where NASA programs may more or less continue as they're going now as the new administration tries to figure out what changes they want to make, what new programs they want to implement, or what existing programs they want to cancel. But it's not just the president, right? I mean, the president can set some stuff, but ultimately it's a combination of the president and Congress together that are going to tell NASA what they're going to end up doing over time. Absolutely. You know, the president proposes Congress disposes, as the old saying in Capitol Hill, about budgets. You know, the president proposes a budget, but ultimately they have to Congress to come up with the appropriations bills to cover that. Likewise, you saw in the 2010 debate about the efforts to cancel the constellation program. You know, they ended up did canceling the Ares-1 and the Ares-5, but they came up with a space launch system which looks a lot like the Ares-5, in many respects, and the Orion program continued. So if a Trump administration came in and said, well, we really want to cancel the space launch system, I suspect you will see members of Congress who have their own stakes in the program because of activities going on in their districts or states stepping up to fight that effort, with no guarantee that the Trump administration would be successful in any of these efforts. It will depend a lot on their relationships with the Congress and also what sort of priority that they put on space and how much effort they would put in to try and implement their plans if it faces any sort of congressional opposition. One of the things that will also be happening is we're going to be getting a new NASA administrator. Has there been any word, do you have any insight as to who that might be or who they're looking at at this time? Yeah, the rumor mill is really starting to spin up now with the election now in place. One of the first themes that's really emerged is a congressman from Oklahoma, Jim Bridenstine. He was just re-elected to his third term in Congress. He represents the Tulsa area. He serves on the House Science Committee and the House Armed Services Committee, so he's seen a lot of both civil and military space issues, and he's been very active on space policy. Back in April, he introduced legislation called the American Space Renaissance Act, which was a very broad-reaching space bill with a number of policy provisions regarding military space, civil space, and commercial space. And so he's definitely thought a lot about it, so he would be a very interesting choice to be a NASA administrator if that does go forward and if, in fact, he's interested in doing so. He's also apparently also being considered for the position of Secretary of the Air Force, so it may not be the only job that he has to consider. A couple other names you might hear. One of them is Mark Albrecht. Back in the George H.W. Bush administration, Bush 41 administration in the early 90s, he was Executive Secretary of the National Space Council, which was this interagency body that oversaw space policy, and the National Space Council hasn't been in existence since the Bush 41 administration, but one of the tenets of the Trump campaign space policy was to restore the National Space Council, and Albrecht is involved with some of the NASA transition issues as part of the Trump transition team, so he's got a role there. Another name you might hear is Eileen Collins. She is the former astronaut, flew on several shuttle missions, was the first female commander of a shuttle mission, as a matter of fact, now retired, but she spoke at the Republican National Convention very briefly in support of a reinvigorated space policy and in support of the Trump campaign, so that's another name you may hear. I suspect in the weeks that come you'll probably hear other names, how seriously they'll be considered or how seriously those people are interested in the position remain to be seen, but just because you're starting to hear names now doesn't mean that a selection is imminent. It may take weeks or months, like I said, as was the case with the Obama administration before the Trump administration finally settles on a pick for NASA administrator. There are a couple of questions in the chat room all kind of relating to themselves, all focused around kind of commercial space. Has there been any murmurings about what's going to happen to the commercial space side of NASA, the COPS program and commercial crew and whatnot? Not specifically to programs like commercial crew, but one of the priorities that the Trump campaign mentioned in their space policy was supporting space commercialization. Robert Walker in some of his op-eds that we published in Space News and some speeches that he made talked about turning over low earth orbit entirely to the commercial sector, bringing in new partners to help support the International Space Station. So I think if anything, a Trump administration would be more strongly supportive of commercial space, a commercial crew program, greater commercialization of the International Space Station and so on because that would allow them to free up resources to do deep space exploration whether that's the Moon or Mars or elsewhere. It sounds like they're also wanting to work more closely with our international partners on things like space station, possibly extending the life of space station. One of the things that's been missing up until now is China. We've not allowed China onto the space station. Have there been any talks of allowing them in to the space station program at all or is that no one said anything in that realm? Yeah, Walker has talked a little bit about that. He is supportive to some degree of enhanced cooperation with China, whether that represents just his opinion or a opinion shared by the broader Trump campaign remains to be seen. I think any effort to do so is going to face some congressional opposition because it's Congress that has imposed the strict limitations on cooperation between NASA and China and space in a series of appropriations bills such that NASA has to get permission from Congress in essence to do any sort of cooperation with China, even on issues like aviation and air traffic control or earth sciences or so on, let alone human spaceflight. So this kind of deviates a little bit from what we're talking about, but it is an interesting question from Space Cookie 84 which is, is there a way to isolate science and space from advancement from turmoil of politics because it only takes one bad administration to hamper what's been done so far? Or I think a different way of looking at that is it's very difficult for an agency like NASA who has very long-term 10, 20, 30, 40 year goals to have to shift every four to eight years into a new way. Is there any way to prevent that from happening? Not under the current structure. We do our appropriations on an annual basis and that's true whether you're at NASA or the National Science Foundation or NOAA or the National Institutes of Health to mention several agencies that do science and related research. And so it's each administration's prerogative trying to put their own stamp into place and their own policies into place onto these agencies. So trying to separate these agencies from politics isn't feasible because they are part of politics. They are part of policy. They are federally funded. They are run by either federal appointees or people who are nominated and then confirmed by the Senate. So one of the other, no, I'm bouncing around a little bit, but one of the other things that was mentioned is they want to require that all federal agencies develop plans of how they would use space assets and space development developments, as you mentioned a little bit earlier. What could that mean? All federal agencies, that's very broad. That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense in a lot of cases. Yeah, and that might be one of those issues that they really haven't thought through to that grade of detail in terms of how they would implement that. I think that would go back to this decision to reinstitute the National Space Council because one of the issues the National Space Council dealt with was sort of bringing together all the different space programs across the federal government, whether it's NASA, whether it was in the Defense Department or elsewhere and making sure that they are aligned to some degree and that there's no duplication of effort. You'll hear that, I think. Continue from the Trump campaign and desire to make sure that there is no duplication of effort among these agencies, that there's no waste of funding or so on. And that's done to some degree already through the White House and through the space policy that's oftentimes handled by the National Security Council or the Office of Science and Technology Policy. I think you may see a greater emphasis there, but again, asking all of these federal agencies how they intend to use space, maybe sort of more of a make work exercise than any sort of substantive policy directive. So it sounds like the budget's going to generally... No one's expecting the budget to really increase as well, right? So it kind of sounds like it's going to be generally the same path forward for human spaceflight with a reduced path forward on Earth sciences. Yeah, I mean, Bob Walker has mentioned in conversations that he wasn't expecting great increases to NASA's budget. Exactly what NASA's budget is going to look like or even the federal budget's overall is one of the uncertainties that is part of this transition process, given all discussions on topics ranging from massive infrastructure investments to removing or replacing Obamacare.  So that remains to be seen there. One of the issues that comes up when you mention Earth science is the idea that... And this is not new to the Trump campaign, but it's been mentioned by a number of other Republicans in Capitol Hill in the past is a belief that there are other agencies doing Earth science and that NASA should be focused on space exploration and that those efforts should be handed over to an agency like NOAA. Well, if that happens, then the funding, presumably, for those programs would have to be handed over to NOAA as well. So it would not be as if you're freeing up money within the NASA budget. You're simply redirecting where that money goes and it may turn out that NOAA may have to go back to NASA as it does already with a number of its weather satellite programs and works with NASA to actually carry out some of these satellite programs because NOAA itself doesn't have the same degree of satellite expertise that NASA does, which is why the two agencies often work together on programs like the GOESR weather satellite that will be launching a week from today is a NOAA program but done in close cooperation with NASA. So even if a new administration attempts to divest Earth science from NASA, those other agencies may have to go back to that expertise within NASA to carry out those programs. There's a lot of talk that the Trump campaign kind of wants to or Trump presidency and wants to kind of kill off Earth sciences entirely, but that's not the whole story like you mentioned. It's actually just shifting the focus to another agency and even if that agency has to go back to NASA and they have to work together, that doesn't mean that we're getting rid of Earth sciences or more to the point it doesn't mean that we know anything yet about Earth sciences. It's too early to tell. Would that be a fair statement? I think too early to tell is a good explanation for that and for a lot of the other policy issues too. Simply given it's been only a few days since the election that the transition efforts are only now ramping up and there's been so little details about space policy in general that trying to for example figure out what's going to happen to a specific program as a result of the campaign and the election really remains to be seen in many respects and also keep in mind that all these changes will have to go through Congress and in recent years for example the house has attempted to cut funding for NASA's Earth science program. The Senate has come in and restored that and you may see that continuing in the years to come that the Congress particularly the Senate which is almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats may be willing to compromise or temper some of the more extreme proposals that may come out of a Trump administration. What about military space? Has there been any rumor or talk about what's happening in the military space? Well you know the Trump campaign mentioned in their policy they're very concerned about threats to our military satellites posed by Russia and China in particular both have tested or suggested they may be testing anti-satellite weapons of some kind China famously tested an anti-satellite weapon nearly a decade ago and created a tremendous amount of debris they've been continuing testing but in not quite the same destructive way since then so I think you may see more of an emphasis on technologies to either prevent such attacks or to mitigate their effects they've talked for example about the use of small satellites which has been a topic that the Obama administration has been supporting in recent years making greater use of them to deal with any threats to the larger satellites that they have another technology area they've mentioned is hypersonics the concern there is that Russia and China may be developing hypersonic technologies for missiles that could defeat missile defense systems so you may see an emphasis on military development of hypersonic technologies but that could also have civil and commercial applications as well I think the takeaway is that really it is too early to tell at this point however for people that are worried that there are going to be these huge sweeping changes it doesn't really sound like it there might be possibly some shift in like how things are done but generally it's the same path forward at least that's what it's starting to look like as you mentioned again we're only a few days into it at this point there's potential for sweeping changes down the road but certainly not immediately as was mentioned simply because of the timing of the budgets there will be a 2017 budget likely in place by the time Trump takes office in January a 2018 budget proposal will have to come out shortly thereafter so there's going to be some time for them to develop a policy and even if they develop a policy that attempts to make major changes in much the same ways the Obama administration did in 2010 with their effort to cancel the constellation program there will be a debate in Congress and no guarantee that those changes will go through so it's a lot of wait and see and keep close tabs on what's going on in terms of what sort of people are involved with the Trump transition when it comes to NASA military space as well as some of the policy positions that they may make in the weeks and months to come Alright, before we go to break, we're trying something new with our guests we've got six really quick questions these are not related to politics at all these are all just your personal answers to these questions first thing that comes to mind when I ask you each of these here we go, first question is Moon or Mars first? Moon first Liquid or solid propellant? Depends on the application I like that answer That's what I say, that's what I say, it's a constant debate here What should the name of the first vehicle going to Mars be? That's a good question I would call it Armstrong 1 Armstrong 1, I think Blue Origin would probably agree with you When do you think humans will first land on Mars? Probably in the late 2030s In that orbital area whenever that opens up? One of those windows that opens up around then Maybe surprises When do you think humans will set foot on the Moon again? I will say 2025 2025? Alright, and last question, why space? Because I think it's essential to our future and to both our survival and our growth as a species Awesome, Jeff, thank you so much for joining us Where can people find more information about you, space news and space politics? Well, go to our website, spacenews.com It's updated all the time with the latest coverage on both the transition and all the other space issues taking place today