Art of the Question

Chris Prophet is a science fiction and space development writer who covers SpaceX and the emerging space economy on his Substack. He is the author of SpaceX from the Ground Up, a guide to the company now in multiple editions, and SpaceX Evolution, which he has serialized for free on his Substack. His weekly analysis breaks down each Starship test flight in plain, economical language. In this episode he unpacks Flight 14, the first time Starship reached orbit, and what Flight 15 could bring, including an attempt to catch the ship itself with the launch tower's chopsticks. He also explains why SpaceX pivoted from Mars to the Moon and what its planned megabase in Louisiana means for the future of launch. Expect to learn what made Starship Flight 14 so significant, why SpaceX risked expensive Starlink satellites on its first orbital flight, how Starlink is changing air travel, why cryogenic propellant data matters for refueling in orbit, how SpaceX plans to build an orbital petrol station, whether the heat shield tiles can survive repeated flights, how the chopstick catch on Flight 15 could work, how the cost of the booster compares to the ship, why engine failures did not end Flight 14, why Elon Musk pivoted from Mars to the Moon, what the planned Louisiana megabase will look like, and what a permanent settlement beyond Earth could become. Chris Prophet online: Substack: chrisprophet.substack.com Book: SpaceX from the Ground Up, available on Amazon Book: SpaceX Evolution, free to read on his Substack 0:00 Introduction 1:09 Why SpaceX matters 2:56 The new space race 7:25 SpaceX's origins and reusability 8:23 Why Flight 14 was significant 13:00 Starlink payload on Flight 14 19:09 Starlink at 30,000 feet 21:54 What the headlines missed 25:25 Cryogenic fuel explained 28:41 An orbital petrol station 33:47 Dragon and crewed flights 35:28 Heat shield tiles 38:32 Flight 15 and the chopsticks 41:22 Booster versus ship costs 43:37 Engine failures on Flight 14 48:10 The pivot to the Moon 54:40 Moon versus Mars timing 57:44 New propulsion and partnerships 59:03 The Louisiana megabase 1:04:32 Settling the Moon and Mars 1:08:24 Would Chris go himself 1:11:49 SpaceX and politics

Shem Malmquist is a veteran airline captain, accident investigator and system safety researcher based in Florida, with about 45 years of flying for airlines. He has flown mostly very large aircraft all over the world, including as a Boeing 777 captain, while also working on accident and safety investigations and aircraft certification. He holds a PhD focused on systems safety engineering and system-theoretic methods for understanding accidents, as well as a master's in human factors, and has taught at the Florida Institute of Technology's College of Aeronautics. In this emergency episode, recorded the day after a Learjet 60 crashed in Greenacres, Florida, killing all nine people on board, he explains what is and isn't known so far, from the reported icing and turbulence to the NTSB's early evidence of a breakup before impact. He co-authored the seventh edition of Commercial Aviation Safety, Angle of Attack about Air France 447, and the 2025 book Simulation Training: Processes, Challenges and Solutions. Expect to learn what we know and don't know about the Learjet 60 crash, whether ice is dangerous at cruise altitude, why business jets fly higher than airliners, why air traffic control asks planes to descend, who decides whether it is safe to fly into weather, how air traffic control radar differs from cockpit weather radar, how severe a storm must be to threaten an airplane, whether a dive can rip parts off a plane, why pilots sometimes have to push rather than pull in a dive, whether a Learjet carries a cockpit voice recorder, how charter flights differ from airlines and whether investigators will ever find out what happened. Shem Malmquist online: Website: https://malmquistsafety.com Blog: https://airlinesafety.blog LinkedIn: Shem Malmquist Book: Simulation Training: Processes, Challenges and Solutions (CRC Press, 2025) 0:00 Introduction 0:49 Shem's career in aviation safety 5:26 First thoughts on the crash 6:50 What we know so far 8:23 Ice at cruise altitude 10:02 Why business jets fly higher 11:09 The Flightradar24 data 12:38 Why ATC asked them to descend 15:19 The irregular speed data 16:33 Who decides if flying is safe 20:14 ATC radar versus cockpit radar 23:03 How dangerous are storms 25:48 Breakup before impact 28:39 Why pilots push in a dive 30:26 Did the Learjet carry a recorder 31:06 Charter flights versus airlines 32:53 The Hop-A-Jet flight attendant 34:07 What the NTSB will look for 36:30 Voice and flight data recorders 38:07 What the pilots may have seen 41:03 The weather radar training gap 43:55 Will we ever get answers 45:15 Turning crashes into safety lessons 46:24 Where to find Shem's work

Scott Solomon is an evolutionary biologist and teaching professor of biosciences at Rice University in Houston. His first book, Future Humans, made the case that humans are still evolving today. For his new book he spent years following the researchers who study what space does to the human body, from NASA's Space Radiation Lab at Brookhaven to astronaut training in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab. In this episode he explains why a permanent settlement on Mars could set humans on a separate evolutionary path, and how few generations it might take before Martians and Earthlings are no longer the same. His latest book is Becoming Martian: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds, published by MIT Press. Expect to learn how eight months in space weakens muscles and bones, why deep space radiation is more dangerous than what astronauts face on the ISS, what NASA's first bed rest study revealed, whether humans can safely give birth on Mars, why universal C-sections could change the size of the human head, what space experiments on fish and pregnant rats tell us, why species on islands often shrink, how evolution can happen in just a few generations, why Earthlings and Martians may not be able to meet safely, whether Mars settlers will have to go vegan, and why we should answer these questions before anyone is born on another planet. Scott Solomon online: Website: solomon.rice.edu Book: Becoming Martian (MIT Press), available wherever books are sold Audiobook: Becoming Martian, narrated by Scott, out November 3 0:00 Introduction 0:57 Why write Becoming Martian 3:28 Are humans still evolving 5:15 The eight month journey 10:43 Muscle loss without gravity 13:34 NASA's first bed rest study 14:36 Radiation experiments on rats 19:41 Shielding a ship with water 24:34 Reproduction in low gravity 26:49 Pregnancy and bone fractures 31:42 C-sections and bigger heads 34:34 Animal studies in space 38:25 Growing up on Mars 40:43 Mars as an island 41:55 Big heads, small bodies 43:09 How evolution speeds up 47:36 A new human species 52:28 Ten generations to diverge 56:31 Could a Martian visit Earth 1:00:32 The ethics of Martian children 1:01:24 A vegan diet on Mars 1:04:27 Lab grown meat and insects 1:08:27 Genetic modification and eugenics 1:13:33 Why we should wait

Asher Soryl is a philosopher and bioethicist from New Zealand whose work focuses on well-being, suffering and the ethics of wild animal welfare. He studied wild animal welfare during his master's degree and PhD, including a research visit to the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford. There he met Anders Sandberg, and a three-hour conversation about whether spreading life through space would be a good thing turned into a joint paper. Published in Acta Astronautica in 2025, it weighs the ethics of directed panspermia, the deliberate seeding of other planets with microbial life, and argues for a moratorium until we understand the consequences. Asher is now moving to California to join a biotech startup developing better ways to reduce suffering. Expect to learn what directed panspermia is and where the idea comes from, how cheap rocket launches make seeding other planets feasible, whether someone could secretly seed life in space, why some argue spreading life is a moral duty, how rare life might be in the universe, whether microbes can be conscious, why nature may contain more suffering than joy, how parasites shape the scale of animal suffering, why pain may be stronger than pleasure, whether seeding life could wipe out alien microbes, whether humans should play God with nature, and why Asher and Anders Sandberg call for a moratorium. Asher Soryl online: Paper: To seed or not to seed: Estimating the ethical value of directed panspermia, Acta Astronautica (2025), doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2025.03.025 0:00 Intro 0:54 How the paper came about 3:54 What is directed panspermia 6:58 How feasible is it today 11:48 Projects beyond our lifetimes 17:54 Who is working on it 19:18 Seeding life in secret 23:46 The case for spreading life 26:11 Is life rare in the universe 32:43 Can microbes be conscious 36:39 Signs of life on Mars 39:36 How many habitable planets exist 42:00 The welfarist case against 48:33 Suffering in nature 53:49 Parasites and hidden suffering 56:06 Engineering happier ecosystems 57:43 Is pain stronger than pleasure 1:02:49 Contaminating alien life 1:09:08 Should planets be left alone 1:12:28 Playing God with nature 1:16:30 The case for a moratorium 1:20:56 Asher's work on reducing suffering

Adam Green is a professor and cognitive neuroscientist at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he directs a lab studying how the brain produces creative ideas. He earned his PhD in cognitive neuroscience at Dartmouth, did postdoctoral training at Yale, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Creativity Research Journal. He co-founded the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity and, with James Kaufman, leads the Creativity Ontology Project, a collaboration of 200 creativity researchers working to pin down what the word creativity actually means. His lab helped turn creativity into something measurable through semantic distance and showed that electrically stimulating the frontopolar cortex can make people more creative. His recent study of hundreds of thousands of college application essays found that after ChatGPT arrived, students' life stories became more alike even as they looked more creative on the surface. Expect to learn how creativity can be defined as a process rather than a product, how semantic distance turns creativity into a number, what happened when researchers zapped the frontopolar cortex with electrical stimulation, why a walk or run in a familiar place helps ideas come, why creativity feels so rewarding, why creativity may be humanity's biggest evolutionary advantage, whether anyone can learn to be more creative, why almost every creativity intervention works, how a strict constraint gave us Green Eggs and Ham, whether AI can truly be creative, how ChatGPT made college essays more alike while fooling the experts, and why thinking for yourself is worth more in the AI era. Adam Green online: Lab: cng.georgetown.edu Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity: tsfnc.org 0:00 Intro 1:07 Defining creativity 8:27 Internally directed attention 10:53 The Creativity Ontology Project 12:20 Measuring creativity with analogies 18:50 The brick test 19:57 Zapping the brain for creativity 23:15 From observation to intervention 25:43 How to be more creative 28:38 Why walks spark ideas 31:13 Why creativity feels good 35:23 Why creativity is so desirable 39:21 Malevolent creativity 40:43 Can anyone be creative 41:44 Creativity is a state 44:35 Creativity anxiety 46:37 Constraints and Dr. Seuss 52:04 Can AI be creative 56:12 Using AI in creative work 1:00:44 Start with your own ideas 1:02:08 The college essay study 1:06:57 AI blind spots and homogenization 1:08:37 Socratic learning with AI 1:10:05 Thinking for yourself with AI 1:11:50 Where to follow Adam's work