Kevin Nolan

So what they've been working on really, I suppose, since around 2004, actually, is the idea of doing it sustainably so that you can go forever more.

People don't quite realise the origin of this did come from the actual Columbia shuttle disaster in 2004, when basically the second shuttle destroyed, remember Challenger in 1986.

Yes, 14 in total actually.

from both of them yeah so the thing is that for the fairness of George Bush Jr he actually called the bipartisan committee together they formed a thing called the Vision for Space Exploration and that was the origin of what was to become the space launch system for Artemis they just decided not safe enough we're not really going anywhere anyway in Earth orbit let's go back to doing as you say what we were originally intended to do and go deeper into space and it has just taken that long to do it now effectively each Artemis launch is somewhere between one sixth to one tenth the cost of the original launch

or Apollo.

Some people would debate that figure, but it's a lot cheaper.

They can do it forever more.

In fact, it's less expensive to do each of these launches than it was to maintain the shuttle itself.

So that's why they can do it continually.

Oh, fantastic.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, huge, historic in a sense.

Yeah, I mean, look, you know, it's tinged the course by the geopolitics, but it is a very joyous time.

It is a big celebration.

And like, you know, I mean, as we discussed before on your radio show, it's over 50 years since people went to the moon and that's why it's a big deal, you know.

It was.

I mean, look, I was very young when Apollo occurred.

And actually, as one of the statistics that I uncovered for this, 84% of the people alive today weren't alive for Apollo 7.