Space Business Podcast #91 - dearMoon crew: Karim Iliya

Five, four, three, two, one, zero. All engine running.

Liftoff.

We have a liftoff.

Hey space enthusiasts. This is our second conversation with a crew member of the Dear Moon project. Just as a reminder, Dear Moon will be a Circumlunar starship mission. So this is an Apollo 8 style mission to which Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa or or MZ as he's known, has invited eight artists to join him. One of those lucky eight is the photographer, filmmaker and whale swimming guide Karim Ilya. We talk about his expectations and objectives for the mission. Enjoy. Again, as a reminder, we already had his crewmate, documentary filmmaker Brendan hall on the podcast and that episode was released in December. Check it out too. It's worth it. My name is Raphael Rodkin and I'm an investor and advisor to space companies. Just as a reminder, this podcast is for informational purposes only and nothing should be taken as investment advice. This podcast is sponsored by nanoavionics, a satellite manufacturer and mission integrator. Their technologies enable many space companies worldwide to offer services that improve life right here on Earth, such as providing global connectivity, conducting Earth observation, or contributing to scientific discovery. Check them out. And also check out my episode with the CEO and co founder. Sadly, I am not a rocket scientist, but I am an alumnus of the International Space University. ISU offers a number of educational programs about space worldwide. Check them out@isunet.edu. and just some final things before we start the episode about ourselves. If you enjoy the podcast, please leave us a five star rating on your favorite podcast podcast platforms such as Apple or Spotify. If you want us help expand our work, you can do so and Support us at www.patreon.com SpaceBusinessPodcast and we'll also put that link in the episode notes. And lastly you can follow us on Twitter odcastspace. Hey space enthusiasts, it's time for another episode of the Space Business Podcast and I'm really excited Today it's our second episode with a crew member of the DearMoon project. And just in case you actually living under some sort of space rock and haven't heard of DearMoon or you have not yet listened to our first Dear Moon episode. DearMon is a project financed by a Japanese entrepreneur, Yusaku Maezawa. He's an Internet entrepreneur and he's basically taking eight artists on a circumlunar mission on Starship sometime in the next few years. And the crew was just recently announced the beginning of December we had our episode with Brandon hall, which I'll also encourage you to look up. And today it's our honor to have the second dearMoon crew member, Karim Ilia. Welcome. Karim.

Hi. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Great. And Karim, before we kind of delve into dear Moon questions, I was quickly glancing over your bio again, and your bio says you are based in Hawaii and Iceland. So sounds to me like maybe you like volcanoes.

Yes, I do. I love volcanoes.

Actually.

I came out to Iceland and ended up extending my stay until I lived here for the volcano. I came out here last year when Fagda Dalfj started erupting. I basically booked a flight and got here as quick as I could to photograph it. And my family is in Hawaii, and so I'm split between the two countries. And while they are very different, they're also very similar, but I would say maybe obsessed with volcanoes and I guess.

Both Hawaiian, Iceland, they are very special places in many ways. Nature wise, geology wise. On Earth. Is that then kind of segueing to the Moon? Is that something that got you fascinated about the moon as a location as well?

Yeah, I've always been interested in space and particularly the Moon. And I think about how for millions of years, every. Every person from when, before we were even humans has looked up at the Moon and probably wondered about it. It's been our companion since the beginning. And so I've often looked up at it and thought, it's so close to us. When will we go back? And to. To think that now that I'll have the opportunity to go and fly around the moon and see the perspective of our planet from the Moon is. It's such a crazy thought that I haven't even been able to process yet. And I hope that I can photograph that well and share that with everybody back here on Earth.

What do you think you may find most fascinating about the Moon? Is it sort of the Moon itself and maybe some of the geological features? Is it an aspect that you mentioned of, you know, seeing the Earth rise like the Apollo astronauts did? Is it maybe even before you go to the moon on Earth that you may go back and study some of the, like you mentioned the many cultural references that exist of the Moon.

I mean, there's so many aspects about it. As a photographer, I'm very interested in the visual perspective of seeing our whole planet all together. I've spent much of my life trying to document the different pieces of our planet. Underwater volcanoes, different cultures, people, ecosystems. And so the ultimate dream is to be able to. To get out of the planet and see the whole thing and get a perspective of the whole place. And of course, the Moon is such an integral part of our planet. It has such an effect on all life on Earth, from people to animals to the tides. So so much of nature is governed by the Moon. And so it really, while it is almost a foreign object because it is so far away, it really is a part of this planet. It is our moon. And so I've been very interested in this whole planet as well as the moon. And to be able to see the two together is an unbelievable dream.

You mentioned you've always been interested in space. How did that come about and what were some of the aspects of space that you found fascinating?

There was a slow progression from childhood with some moments that got me really interested in space. And one pivotal moment I. I had, I took a university course with a Professor Aparna Venkatesen in, in San Francisco. And it was, there's two courses I took with her, General astronomy and then planetary Astronomy. And so learning about the different planets and moons in our solar system, you start to hear about these places like IO, the first moon of Jupiter, which is the most volcanically active place. So I then start dre about what it would be like to stand next to a volcano on the moon of Jupiter and look up at Jupiter in the night sky. I think about what it would be like to, to go around Saturn's rings. What would it be like if our moon had turned into rings instead of a moon. You know, I often then started thinking about our place in our galaxy, our view in the galaxy, you know, because we are in the disk of the Milky Way. So I think of it like a plate and we are inside the plate. And then I start to wonder what would view look like if we were somewhere on the, on the edge of the Milky Way or above or below the Milky Way, like how would our view change and what do different parts of space look like? And it's a place that you can, your imagination can run forever and ever. And this is, you know, just getting off planet, seeing the moon up close, seeing the planet seems like the first step for humans to move towards exploring more of our universe. And hopefully that also gives us a better appreciation of what we have back here on Earth. Because there are a lot of hostile places in space and a lot of planets and moons that are not very nice places to live, let alone visit with our fragile bodies. And so if that can help us also gain a better appreciation of what we have here on Earth, I think that that would be very important for our species and us.

Agreed. I forgot now who said it, but somebody may have been one of the astronauts once said, yeah, space is basically trying to kill you in every imagina simple way possible. So yeah, it does make you appreciate that this is a very special place where we currently live. But it sounds almost like if all goes well with humanity's quest for space, like dear moon, it may only be a first step for you. And maybe if you have the chance to go to fascinating places like IO has a lot of radiation, but Europa, which is the Jupiter moon with the giant under ice ocean, or Enceladus with the ice volcanoes, you'd probably happily go from the sunset.

I would love to. And I think about if there are different time periods that I would like to be born in. And definitely where we are right now in life is an incredible time period. But if I had to pick another one, I would think I would love to go far in the future if this is something that happens where you can casually go and visit other planets, other moons, in the same way that now people can casually go to Europe or go to North America on holiday. To be able to explore these places would be so interesting. And I hope that we can do that while also preserving and protecting our planet. I don't think that going to space means that we're giving up on our planet. I think that it can help us appreciate it more and see what is out there. In the same way that when you travel to other places, you come back and you appreciate home more.

Yeah, no, understood, but that's actually usually a question I would have asked a little bit further on, but let's go there. But if you think about the moon and the future that humanity might build on the moon, and hopefully a mission like yours is part of the steps. We're currently taking a lot of steps, of course, the NASA Artemis missions, that we will establish a more permanent presence on the moon. It can take many forms. And then there's obviously lots of science fiction works we can also consult that had various visions of what settlement on the moon may look like recent movies or the Expanse TV series or the like. So. But if I take one of the places where you live, Hawaii as an example, would you prefer the moon to be the future moon, to be rather a sort of big island, the national park there, or Honolulu or both.

Oh, what a great question. Think definitely the route of a national park, nature preservation, where, where people can go and experience being out in nature. Which is a crazy thought to think about going hiking on the moon, but it would be incredible. Of course, you would need to have some kind of hub and it is a big place. And, you know, I haven't thought deeply about the. How you would build and expand and all of the potential issues that might arise from that in terms preservation, in terms of, you know, culture, light pollution all. There's so many things to think about that. That's a great topic to explore. And yeah, I hope that. I hope that I will be able to one day stand on the Moon, and I hope that more people in the future will be able to do that as well. It would be really incredible to see. I think the more that people see of our world and I guess, space, the more we can understand each other, be better connected. I think travel is good for people. Of course, there are the environmental implications of space travel and movement, but hopefully that's something we can also solve through technology and through being a bit more conscious about our place in this whole planet and world.

So it sounds from everything we've talked about so far that when the initial call came along for Dear Moon and you saw it, of course you applied, right? It seems like something that you would naturally do.

Yeah, I. I actually had. Long ago, I told a good friend of mine, I said that one day I would take a photo of our Earth from the perspective of the moon, because that really is the. Seems like the ultimate feasible goal that you could hope for in your lifetime as a photographer. You know, photography, there's incredible places on Earth that I still have yet to go to, and I will never be able to see all of these places and photograph all of them. But the ultimate goal of what is potential possible is to. To photograph the Earth from the Moon. And I didn't really think that I would be able to do it. And so when 10 years later or so, she sent me a link and she said, here's your, here's your opportunity. And so I applied to it and of course I thought, well, yeah, me and everyone else, there's so many talented people here. And somehow I made it through each of the steps and was selected. And that was an incredible feeling.

For the initial step, which I believe was a short video, did you immediately know what you would talk about in introductory video?

Yeah. So there was, there was also some writing that we did before that got us to the video step and for the, for the video, I mean, I thought, I'm a filmmaker, so I should make a film. I should do it in a style that I would make a film. You Know with sound design and use good quality footage. But I also wanted to make something that didn't feel disconnected, that was a little bit personal. So I, it was a very short period of time and I thought about the idea. I would introduce myself, myself, you know, with just, with a selfie, with a GoPro as a selfie and then dive into the ocean. And then I transitioned that into a shot of a diver going into the ocean and then different, different scenery. And that moved me into the video to get a little bit of that, you know, kind of personal, intimate. I'm a real person and not just to produce video, but then to, to show and record me discussing my thoughts and what I do and who I am and how I feel in a very short span of time, which one minute put it into a video and yeah, I guess they liked, I guess they liked the video because I then made it to the next step.

And so you mentioned diving into the water. You are doing a lot of underwater photography and filmography as well. Right. And so of course, you're so already familiar with, you know, doing your, your photos and movies not only on Earth but also in the water, so in different environments. But now you're going to be yet in another environment which is going to be the microgravity environment. Have you thought about how many, how that may, you know, make you adjust the way you're going about it?

Yeah, I'm very interested in the microgravity and floating around in space. It's something that I've thought a lot about and I do a lot of free diving and scuba diving. And so while I don't want to be overly confident and say that I should be fine floating around, I do feel in some sense quite comfortable being in a three dimensional space where I can go in any direction. And when I'm free diving, if I need to, I can let go of my camera and it will just hover there in front of me and I can do something, adjust something, and then dive down further, go to the side. So that feeling of, of weightlessness, at least the closest thing we can experience reasonably on Earth. I'm, I'm quite comfortable in that environment. So I'm very excited to see how that translates to being up in space and photographing and maneuvering. Of course, I think about there isn't the viscosity to be able to push myself through the, the water. Yeah, when you're, when you're in the water, you can just, you can move your arms, you can move your legs and you'll, you'll go in a direction, um, but in microgravity. I think that will be very interesting to have to basically push yourself off of surfaces to get to the next surface.

Yeah. You know what? I haven't thought about it, but there's actually a lot of similarities, aren't there? Also, like, you know, I'm a scuba diver as well. Right. And so one of the things they hammer into you, as you know, very early is sort of like, stop flailing with your arms. They're useless. Just use your fins. Right. And then in space, I guess it's the inverse. You're going to use your arms to kind of get around. And for most people, the legs are. The legs are useless. And I guess it's even. I mean, famous last words. Maybe it's even a little bit easier than the diving part because you don't have any, like, nasty currents which suddenly come up and like, sweep you away.

Yeah. And if you're inside the rocket ship, you don't have to worry about breathing. You don't have to worry about your. Your equipment. You don't have to, you know, you don't have all of the bulkiness. I think it will be quite interesting. I do intend to get myself stuck for a moment, you know, without just floating in one spot and then see how. How much effort does it take with just air resistance to get myself back over to a wa. Think that that'll be exciting and interesting to see. Can I just, you know, blow air, wave my arms around? Like, is it.

How.

How do you get yourself back to. Back to a wall?

Yeah, yeah, I'm. I'm sure you guys are going to get ample training. I mean, you guys are certainly going to do the zero G flights on Earth and all of that. I'm going to be amply trained and trained in that. In terms of equipment, are you envisioning sort of using the same equipment you're using right now? I guess the Apollo guys famous famously used. Was it Hasselblads?

Yeah. Yeah, they did. I hope that I can bring a variety of equip. I do both photo and video. I would love to shoot film and bring some Hasselblad cameras up there as well, as well as just my, my regular digital setup or whatever is the current newest model that will do the best at the time. And yeah, I think it's important to. To continue to photograph in the way that I'm most dialed in. Comfortable and able to work in changing scenarios, different light. But yeah, I would like to bring. I would like to bring a Variety of equipment up there so that I can shoot some teleph shots and get some, you know, close ups from, from space, as well as some wide angle to get the, the whole scenario. Part of what's exciting about this is also, it's, it's documenting out the window, but also documenting from inside, getting in spacecraft, getting an inside look at this whole process, the, the training, the, you know, the other crew members, and trying to capture that emotion as well so that people can connect to those images. And this trip and these moments, I want to be able to try and have people feel in a way that they are up there as well. And that is a very difficult thing to achieve. But I will try my best.

We haven't really spoken much about your current terrestrial work and your history there. Can you just give us a summary of what most of your work, what the philosophy behind it is, what you're focusing on, if there is a connecting thread, what that threat would be and then how you would envision extending that, that if that is what you're envisioning to, to space.

Yeah, I photograph a huge variety of things. And when I was a kid and I first started taking pictures, I remember many people would tell me that I had to pick one thing and focus on one thing, you know, specialize in one thing. And I wasn't very interested in that because there's so many beautiful things on this planet. There are whales that swim and interact and fight and give birth and socialize with their calves. There's volcanoes, there's Northern Light. There's people in different cultures that are doing interesting things. I also like to document the daily life around me of people and to show that, you know, the daily life of somebody who works in an office in Japan is very different than the daily life of a fisherman or person who lives on a small island in the South Pacific. And these things are very interesting for other cultures, for people to look at what, what, what is happening on the other side of the world. There's incredible men and women and animals and plants. And so much of my work has been to basically try and document this moment in time on our planet and all of the nature around it so that I can try and show a picture of how it all fits together, how the ecosystems and the people and the culture and society all work together. And so going up into space, if I can expand on that and use that as an opportunity to tell the full picture and connect the dots, that's the, that's the goal is to capture a snapshot of life on Earth in all forms and to inspire people and show people the beauty of this planet. I spend a lot of my effort and time doing, trying to do conservation through photography. And there's, there's many different ways to do that. For me. I try and show the beauty of animals, to show that there's. They're multidimensional, that they have personalities and lives and that, you know, a bug, a small bug that lives some somewhere is just as important as a giant blue whale or as a person. Like, we are all in this together and we all deserve to be here. And if I can show people that these landscapes and these places are worth protecting, then hopefully we can put a little bit more pressure on our politicians, our corporations, the people who are making the decisions about this world in order to try and help preserve this place and make it a little bit better than when we got here, so that future generations can enjoy that. And that, of course, gets into, you know, a deep topic about what we're doing here. But that's. That is the, the goal of my work is to. To document our planet in the hopes that we can protect it, preserve it and make it better than when. When I got here.

And I mean, to some extent, you know, if all goes well, you're. You're entering a really sort of a tradition of photographs here that have really changed humanity's, I think, perception in that sort of more preservationist direction. Right, so the earthrise picture, the blue marble picture, the pale blue dot picture. Right. Is that sort of the tradition you're looking to continue?

Ideally, absolutely. These images, you know, I've heard that the earthrise photo, amongst those other images as well, basically helped kickstart the environmental movement. And so while it seems counterintuitive to go up in a rocket ship to space to take a picture of the planet in order to get us to. To, to care about this place. The reality is, is it does change people's perspective, perspective and perception. And, and if I can contribute to that and I can capture even one image that can help change people's perspective for the better about this place, then my goal in life will be complete.

So, currently, before you're going, of course you are looking the other way, or the only way, the only thing you can do is look the other way. You can look up at the knife sky. Is that something you also do? And do you look at the night sky, the moon, and what's going through your head? Like, how do you look at it? Are you looking, for example, and thinking, is there life out There. Are you thinking like, oh, it's infinite vastness. Are you thinking like, oh, this is. It's all dead, just nothing there, and I'm happy I'm here, or what is going through your mind?

Yeah, I spend a lot of time looking up at the night sky. Here in Iceland, we have the northern lights, and so that really can get your mind going and your imagination moving. And the wonderful thing about the northern lights is whether you know what causes them or not, it is equally interesting. The science of it is. Is just as amazing as if you were using your imagination. And so I spend a lot of time, you know, sometimes I'm looking at the moon and thinking about that place. Sometimes I'm thinking about other planets that are within our solar system. Other times I go on a larger scale and I start to think about our universe, and then, well, if there's, you know, if we're in a universe, is there a multiverse? How does that fit, you know, where. How abundant is life in other places? Is it. Is it quite common? You know, is it something that is very, very rare? My own personal perspective is there has to be more life out in the universe. It would be totally insane with how many stars there are and how many planets there are, that there's no other life. But of course, then I wonder about, you know, if there was intelligent life that came to Earth, but they did that 100 million years ago we were not. And if they come 100 million years from now, we will not be around either. Maybe we will, but. So it's one of these things where the vastness of space and the vastness of time is so big that I do hope we encounter other life within our lifetime, at least, you know, microbial life or wildlife, let's say alien wildlife. That would be incredible. So I just don't know. Every day I look up and I wonder, my brain goes to a different thought and think about different things, different dimensions.

What you just mentioned there, it sort of brought up a fascinating potential question in my mind, which is like, there could be theoretically alien careems, alien photographers out there, right? And by the way, they may already be taking pictures. And we just don't know, right? Either because we don't have technology to detect it or, you know, I had a guest previously on his podcast, Dr. Pete Worden, a former NASA administrator and front of these centers, and he's currently planning a mission to send very small cameras effectively to Alpha Centauri. And the plan is there to take pictures on a very rapid flyby and then I asked him, Pete, if aliens did the same thing with Earth, would be even detect. And he was like, probably not. So that's like a long winded way of saying maybe that's already happening. But my question was going to be, I know this is hard to sort of put yourself in those shoes, alien shoes, literally. But if you were an alien photographer and you came to Earth, what do you think is worth taking pictures of? I mean, you're taking them from orbit, right? So you can't go into like great detail. But it could be something, I don't know, like natural feature or. I don't know.

Yeah, that's a great question. I guess it would just depend on what is different from where you come from. The home world you come. Yeah, exactly. If your home world has, you know, volcanoes and oceans, then maybe that's not that exciting. Maybe the architectural features are interesting. You know, I think we do this anyway when we travel. We photograph the things that are different from our own society and where we're from. I guess I often think about what kind of things do we have on our planet that other planets don't have. And then what kind of things might other planets have that we don't have? We could easily not have northern lights and we never would have even have thought of that or imagined it, or things like lightning or volcanoes. There's so many incredible natural phenomena. Even I think about snow versus rain and, you know, or waves and how you can get on a surfboard and ride a wave there. I would imagine that on other planets there are so many things that are so strange and foreign to us. I would love to photograph on another planet and just see what natural phenomena. Of course the wildlife would be incredible to photograph. But then again, we have such strange wildlife on this planet. That almost alien. Like when you think about octopus or squid or bugs, when you really stop and you know, we, we're so big and so we encounter bugs in our life and we look at them and we're like, oh, there's a bug. But if you really get up close and look at an insect, how strange it is. There's a reason why we sometimes in, in science fiction and in stories, we basically make the bugs bigger and then call them aliens.

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, that is after looking at many of your photographs and of course many of your photographs do feature basically majestic wildlife, which is obviously that is sort of the obvious thing. For all we know that's missing in space. Is that something that bothers you? It doesn't matter. Or how do you think about the absence of life in the world of space?

It makes sense in the places that we've looked that there's not going to be much life. Mars, for example, without basically no atmosphere, no water. I mean, we say, okay, there's water on Mars, but it's not like running rivers and lakes and things like that. And so, you know, you know, it's almost as if we are looking at some of the most hostile, dry places on Earth and wondering why there isn't an abundance of wildlife there. I mean, if we found the equivalent of, you know, an ocean or a jungle or a rainforest, then maybe it would be abundant. But when we look at, you know, we have. We haven't been able to access those kinds of places yet. So, of course it's going to be hard to find life and complex life if there is on places like Mars or Europa. But, yeah, I hope that we, you know, as technology progresses and we can look outward a little more. I was just watching the movie Avatar last night, which. Which really expands the imagination of what a fertile world might look like on another planet. And of course, that's all, you know, it's. It's science fiction and fantasy. But, yeah, I think. I think there's got to be other life out there and other complex life out there. And what does that look like, the variation? There can be so much variation because there's so much variation just on our planet.

Yeah. And we were. I mean, there's actually a whole other episode, this podcast with Dr. Graham Lau, an astrobiologist. But, you know, one of the things that he very clearly says, and I would agree with him, is that we may also be too limited in our. Because we only know one type of life, and we're so used to it, there might be totally different types of lives. And some of the science fiction has explored that. Right.

But let's shift gears a little bit.

And talk about the mission. So, you know, after you found out that you were selected, what were your thoughts? For example, Seeing excitement. Actually, let's take a step back. The moment you found out you were selected, what was that like? And I already. I think it was in your short video on the side. It was sort of a funny story of you jumping in fields in Argentina or something like that.

Yeah, I was on a film shoot where, funny enough, actually, the film shoot, it was a nature documentary that it will be coming out in a few years. And so our schedule was very much based entirely on the tides, which, you know, from the moon. So when we were sleeping when we were eating and when we were filming was based on the, on the tides, which meant that every day our schedule, our meals and our sleep was shifting. So I'd never done this before. Truly, truly living by the tides. So it seems like a very fitting place then to find out that I had been selected for this trip. So I, I actually came back early from the shoot because I had more, what I thought was a one final, you know, interview or call. And so I was very prepared for. Okay, you know, this is maybe, you know, I'm getting closer. This is the, this is the last one. And so, no, there was nobody on this farm except for the, the old Argentinian lady who cooked and cleaned and. Yeah, when I found out, I was just in this vast, quiet, empty space with nothing around, and I, I just went running and running through the fields and jumping around. It's such a hard thing to process these emotions because you, before, you can't get your hopes up too high or else you're going to get crushed because there, there was approximately 1 million applicants. And, you know, going each step of the way, you think everybody who has made it this far is so talented and incredibly qualified that I could easily be cut out now and very, very satisfied and happy with how far I've got. So I didn't build my hopes up too high because I didn't want to have that let down. So then to actually hear that the release of energy and feeling is just. It was, it was such a crazy experience. And of course then I had to keep it a secret.

Yes, I wasn't aware of that. But Brandon, at the last episode, you guys kept it a secret for like a year or so.

Yes, of course.

Must have been tough. Tough to some extent. Right. Were you allowed to tell your, like, closest family members? Yes, we.

We were allowed to tell very, very close family and, and friends, people that we could know and trust. But it's also, it's one of those things where, you know, there's many secrets you can share with people and they're not going to go and tell the world. And if they do, nobody cares. Whereas this one, there were people, friends who I. Good friends. I really wanted to tell them, but they, they were. They worked in the space industry, either with satellites or as astronomers, astrophysicists that are quite, quite respected in their community. And so I couldn't. These are people who I was most excited to tell but unable to tell because I thought, you know, if I told them and they told their friends, then it is out in the world.

So, and when MZ was in that final call and he told you that he was offering you to come along, were you prepared to say yes immediately? Like you had kind of thought about everything, sort of the responsibilities, the potential risks?

You were ready? Yeah, I was, I didn't, I didn't, wasn't prepared for that being the moment that I found out. So I was completely caught off guard. But I also have thought deeply about the risks of space travel to the limit that I understand how rockets work and how space travel works. But you know, there's many things in life that I do and I think about the risks and the dangers and that might even be, you know, getting in a car and driving on the freeway in Los Angeles is insane. And every time I'm doing that, I think about how I could just crash and explode into, you know, fiery death. And so that stresses me out. But then other times I find myself in the water in the middle of whales that are smashing into each other. These are bus sized animals and I'm in the middle of it and they're flying past me and I'm thinking, okay, I hope they see me. And I have to try and dodge some fins or going and photographing active volcanoes and lava spurting out. And so it's about assessing risk to reward. And sometimes I do things that are quite risky, but the reward is high. And other times I opt out of things that are not that risky, but the reward is so low that it's just not worth it. And so for me, space travel, it's one of those things where the safety and the technology is becoming incredible and getting better and better. But of course it is still strapping yourself into a rocket and flying outside of the planet, massively dangerous. On the scale of, you know, yeah, space travel is not, not the, the world's safest thing. But the reward is so incredible, at least for me. And the opportunity, both from a personal emotional perspective as well as what I can do to, to document that and share that in my life and career is just the, is beyond anything that I can comprehend. And so when it comes time to actually, you know, buckle up and get in, I'm sure that I will be nervous, but at the same time it'll be, it'll be worth it. And I'm very excited to do that.

Yeah, that makes sense to me. And actually the moment, the second after I asked you this question about the risk, actually now you said it yourself, but it went to my head was like, why am I asking this question? Is this a guy who hangs around volcanoes. But there you go. Since you found out, or since you had the certainty basically of being a crew member, anything specific you have done, I don't know, types of research or something like that to prepare yourself?

Good question. Since I found out, I actually haven't delved too deep yet into all of the things that are there to learn about space travel. Maybe part of that is I'm very excited to learn from. One of our crew members is Tim Dodd, who runs the YouTube channel Everyday Astronaut. And he is just such a wealth of knowledge that I'm so excited to hang out him and learn directly from him.

Oh yeah, you don't have to learn anything. I think, for example, about starship. I think he's probably like the world's best walking starship encyclopedia.

It's truly amazing how much he knows. So, yeah, I've done a lot of dreaming and a lot of imagining and I am of course reading up a little bit about the moon and about the starship. But for the most part it's almost like I want to learn that directly from Tim. As we go through the process of training and there's just, there's so much to it, there's so much to think about. There's so many facets to explore that each aspect I learn about becomes, is more and more interesting.

Yeah. And I'm sure it's going to be Tim who's amazing, but probably also a whole bunch of other very qualified people. I'm sure they're going to roll in for the training. So that's the point. I'm going to really envy you guys for this. It's going to be just. The training is going to be probably an amazing experience.

Yeah. Learning from the SpaceX team, meeting astronauts and people who've experienced this and the whole process is so exciting and incredible. Even aside from going up into space, getting the rocket and seeing our Earth and our moon, just everything around it is such a unique opportunity as well. I'm very excited about the training.

I mean, were there any. I understand you guys have already given access, even until now, to some astronauts and so forth. Is there any sort of key remaining burning questions you have that have not been answered yet?

I have so many questions about so many things about the rocket and how it will be about takeoff and, you know, but part of the fun is also experiencing it in real time. When I, when I travel to other countries, I often try and do as little research as possible and I don't see and figure out where I'm going to Go. I just. I just like to get there and then experience it while I'm there. And this might be also what I do in this scenario. While preparing myself as much as possible in terms of being able to photograph and film to understand those things, I do find. Find a certain joy in just having it be a novel experience right in the moment. I never watch movie trailers. I don't want to know if I'm going to watch a movie. I just want to go right into it, knowing nothing. And, of course, you can't do that with space travel. You have to. You have to go through training. There's a lot that you should understand. But in terms of, you know, the actual experiences of what it's like and the emotions, I want to have as raw and unique of an experience as possible while still being prepared for it.

That does make sense to me. So kind of summing it all up and summing it all up in a lot of things we talked about, and we touched upon a few aspects already. But what do you think would be the ideal outcome for you for this mission? Other than coming back safe and sound, of course?

The ideal outcome for me in this mission would be to document the whole story through photographs and video to show people, to really capture this trip and on a bigger level, to capture an image that will change people's perspectives back here on Earth so that we might do a better job taking care of this planet, the people and the nature that we have here. That's the ultimate goal. If I can get an image that will help me in my work, to be able to shift our perspective, to make this place better and to preserve and protect this planet and to appreciate it. That would be the dream.

Yeah. It's funny, actually, you may or may not notice my usual job other than doing this podcast, I actually have a space, a venture capital firm, and a long time ago, I came up with the motto, which is basically. It's in Latin, but it's basically like two space for Earth, because, I mean, that's where we live at the end of the day. So I very much agree. I think literally it's to the stars for Earth, and I should really remember it, but it's in Latin. I'm not good at Latin, So there you go. Karim, one fun question, which I also asked Brandon, and Brandon, poor guy, he got it without any advance warning, is about items that you may want to take along on this trip. And the specific things I want to ask you about is one book, one item of food, and a song. And if you Want to sort of add another type of personal item that you think is important. You're also free to do that.

Even though you gave me advance warning of these questions, it is a very difficult question to answer, I think, in terms of a book, the first one that popped to mind, and it might come off as a little bit cliche, but I would want to bring the Alchemist with me, which, if you haven't read it, or for those who haven't read it, I'm not going to spoil anything. Yeah, but it's a. It's a beautiful story that can be read for the smallest children who don't even know how to read, or as a very old person and everywhere in between. And you'll get something different out of that book. And it's, you know, it's a story about a journey and coming back. And I think that that's very much what we're. What we're doing. And another book I guess I would want to bring would be the Little Prince, which is. Which is one of those stories that can be read at any age in life and that you'll learn something about yourself and about the world from it.

Yes. And it features volcanoes and it features.

And space.

And space, yeah.

Yes. In terms of a song, it's so hard to think about what. What song you would want to listen to. The good thing is, is that the. The trip is about a week long, and so I should be able to bring a variety of songs, but I would want to from around the world, different, different cultures, you know, traditional music, traditional Mongolian music, traditional Irish music amongst, you know, just different cultures, to be able to listen and. And appreciate the diversity of humans and music that we have back on Earth. And one of the crew members is musician Steve Aoki. I'm sure he will be making. I imagine he will be making some music in space, which I hope so.

We all hope so.

Really interesting. You know, I don't know how much music has been made in space, but that's exciting. And in terms of food, what food would I bring? I mean, I don't know what we're allowed to bring.

Imagine there's no. No restrictions.

No restrictions. I mean, I love burritos, berries, also fresh food.

Probably.

I don't know how. I guess it's. If it's just a week, there'll be refrigeration and so. But again, you know, seeing videos of astronauts and the food that they make, I'm quite interested to actually eat food that people eat while up in space. You know, seeing. Seeing an astronaut. I watched a video, she was making a burrito and, or tacos and you know, had to squeeze it out of the bag and the tortilla could just float around. I'm very interested to see how that whole process goes about. And I know as a kid we had, you know, in school they would give you, they called it astronaut ice cream and it's dehydrated ice cream.

I know.

I don't know whether that's really what astronauts eat up in the space or whether that's just to sell it. But yeah, I look forward, I look forward to all the different aspects of how to do everyday things in space. Whether that is eating, exercising, bathing, brushing your teeth. How do you do those things? And I've seen some videos, but it'll be very interesting to experience it, learn how to do it and gain a greater appreciation for the things that we have back here on Earth. Whether that is creature comforts.

Exactly.

And also the natural elements like wind and rain and you know, smells like, of the smell of trees which we won't get up on the, on the starship rocket as far as I'm aware there. I don't know if there will be trees on like a can version. That's what I would bring a tree with me.

I wouldn't let you do that. But that would be very nice to have sort of some trees there. I mean starship is very big. So you never know, there might even be enough space. Yeah. For a little Karim. Very, very, very interesting answers. Yeah. I love, I love that you brought up the alchemist because that is like again, I'm not gonna, like, I'm not gonna give any spoilers. Right. But it's about this ancient concept of basically the hero's journey. Right. That you go out somewhere. Cause you're on a mission. You are literally on a mission to do something. But then you realize the whole point is actually to come back and to where you were and use it there, which is what you guys are gonna be doing. And you know, it's gonna be amazing. And I know this is a really busy time for you guys. So thank you so much for taking the time for coming, coming on today. And I hope your training is, as I said, gonna be really super exciting and it's gonna be an starting today and then I'm probably never ending. Right. Because it's such a life changing event. And then if you ever want to come back and talk about it in the future, you're very welcome. But best of luck for now for.

That journey thank you so much. It was great to talk to you.

And that's a wrap for another nominal episode of the Space Business Podcast. Once more, if you enjoyed this, please leave us a five star rating on your favorite podcast platforms such as Apple or Spotify. You can follow us on Twitter odcastspace. You can see support us at www.patreon.com spacebusinesspodcast. Lastly, if you have any feedback, including ideas for guests and that may include yourself. If you have an interesting space story to tell or interested in being a sponsor, drop us an email@sparebusinesspodcastmail.com See you for the next episode.