#227 – Space Bound, Again - Xtreme Xtraplanetary Xenonosocomiophobia

Chris Gammell: This is The Amp Hour Podcast, recorded December 8th, 2014. Episode 227, Extreme Extraplanetary Xenononsocomia Phobia.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics.

Dave Jones: Whose life sounds as hectic as mine at the moment. I know, right? Yeah. Yeah, we both just agreed. A couple of seconds ago, we'll keep this to an hour. Keep this to an hour.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we have to. Oh my goodness. We've got shit to do. We've got a lot. Too much life going on. What's going on with you?

Dave Jones: Oh, me. I've got to go to solicitors after this. I'm getting my EEV blog bunker. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Well, that's good. We talked about it on the show in the past. So you did get it. That's great. So I saw there's a video or what is going on with that?

Dave Jones: Yeah, I just shot a video when the agent let me in there. And for five minutes, I just shot like a 10 second video or something. It literally is my shortest video ever, I think. Wow. And I didn't even say anything. I just turned the camera on and peered around. Nice. Nice. There it is. Yeah. So that's great, man.

Chris Gammell: So what's the plan for that again? Just remind me of what the plan is.

Dave Jones: I don't know. I don't know. I just liked it and I wanted it. And it's a weird, funny, investment-y type thing arrangement I'm doing with it. I'll wait to try and explain it anyway. So as far as I'm concerned, it's almost free to me. Yeah, right.

Chris Gammell: Well, I meant more like on the – so there's a possibility that you might have machining equipment in there.

Dave Jones: You might be able to get like a milling machine or something.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, see, that's the thing.

Dave Jones: Well, the problem is like – because I know I could actually rent the thing out for a pretty penny, right? So it's like – like I'm not going to use all of it, you know? So it's quite a large storage. Anyway, the plan was like a storage, yeah, storage slash maybe do some work in there kind of thing. Not sort of all day kind of stuff, but it's got benches. So it's maybe, you know, I can work on some big stuff in there and kind of stuff that's messy that I can't work on here in the office.

Chris Gammell: Okay, so like the big – the noisy stuff. Yeah, we talked about that, I guess. The big stuff. You know, I can take apart my Sinclair C5.

Dave Jones: I can – yeah, I can use dual presses. I can use – you know, I probably don't want to grind and chemicals and all that sort of stuff in there because it is – you know, there's no ventilation. Well, there kind of is. Anyway, I have to look into all that. And, yeah, so it's not something I want to work in, you know, all day, but certainly go down there for an hour or two and, you know, hack around on the C5. Yeah, so if I get like a big teardown or something.

Chris Gammell: What's the commute time for that? I mean, like what – is it walkable? It's a three-minute walk. Oh, perfect, yeah.

Dave Jones: From my lab here, yeah.

Chris Gammell: See, because that's a big difference too. I mean, that's like –

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, no, no, no, it's huge. I can get some –

Chris Gammell: That's a lab, right? That's like walking from an office to a lab.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I can get some massive place. Oh, yeah, I can get some massive, you know, place that actually has ventilation, you know, but I'd have to drive to it, right? I'd have to drive, you know, 15, 20 minutes to get there, right? So I would never use it.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's great, man. Congratulations. I mean, now it's official. Congratulations. That's great.

Dave Jones: Oh, well, it will be, yeah. Yeah, well, of course, right, yeah.

Chris Gammell: If you're talking to a lawyer, you know, and all that other crap, you wouldn't be doing that if it wasn't official.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, yeah, so it'll take like a month or so to settle, I guess. It may not be done this year, you know, because everyone shuts down because it's coming up on Christmas time. It's the bloody 9th of December.

Chris Gammell: I know, I know. Well, it is here. And that affects everyone, right?

Dave Jones: I mean, like, that's interesting.

Chris Gammell: I remember back to like the, you know, obviously neither you or I have proper design jobs anymore. No. But I remember it's like, you know, basically you start getting fewer calls from, you know, the FAEs. You start getting fewer calls from salespeople. You start basically, you know, your resources start getting constrained in terms of if you, obviously, I had a layout person that I was working with. So, like, it's like, yeah, well, you know, Tony's going on vacation in two weeks. So, just be sure all your stuff's in. And, yeah, I mean, it's the same kind of thing as, you know, basically around Chinese New Year.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. Which is what date again?

Chris Gammell: Usually it's mid-February, I believe.

Dave Jones: Mid-Feb or something like that. Yep. Yeah. Did I ever tell a story about Altium working on Christmas Day?

Chris Gammell: I don't think you did. What is that story?

Dave Jones: Oh, okay. Yeah, this was Altium back where in the old office. And, yeah, like I'd only been there six months or something, I think. And it was Christmas. You know, and we had the trade show. We had the Embedded Systems Conference, I think, coming up. And we wanted to show off this new industrial product I was designing, right? It was, like, going to be our big flagship, you know, new hardware development platform. You know, it was, you know, how we've got the expensive development desktop platform. This was going to be, like, an industrial version of that. Oh, custom cases and all sorts of, you know. So, yeah, it was, you know, it was a reasonable idea, I guess. You know, anyway. Yeah, so I was tasked with designing that puppy. And we had a mechanical engineer as well. And, like, he was, you know, designing the cases and everything. I was designing, laying out the board. And it was, like, coming up to Christmas, I'm going, shit, you know, the Embedded System Conference is, like, or whatever show it was, is, like, in late January, right? And we, you know, I've just finished designing this board. And I have to get parts. I've got to order parts. I've got to order the eight-layer PCBs and get those. We've got to build the damn things up with all the BGA parts and everything, right? Oof, man.

Chris Gammell: That's, yeah, right. Right? So it's not like you're not necessarily hand-assembling this either then, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, no, no. These were, yeah, these were hand-assembled.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah? So doing, like, reflow on by yourself for BGA's?

Dave Jones: Well, yeah, like the first, yep. Well, the first one or two, I think we did. And then we, you know, but we needed a whole stand full of these things, right? We needed to make it look like we were ready to go with these things, right? It was, you know, kind of like smoke and mirrors, right? Perception is reality, folks. We've got these. Exactly. We've got these ready to go. And I can probably get a photo off the old Altium archives of the stand with these things, right? And up there. And, like, I'm still working on the design of this thing. And it's Christmas Eve, right? And I'm going, look, if I don't order the parts, like, on, like, Boxing Day, you know, the 26th, like, I was going through the mental timeline of, you know, like, I had to buy from DigiKey. We're never going to get them in time, blah, blah, blah. Right. And, like, it was so ridiculously tight. So anyway, I'm working all of Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day. And I remember there was, like, nobody there. So I thought, oh, screw that. Screw going into the office, right? All I'm doing is laying out a board. Yeah, you can work at home. So I do it from home. So, yeah, so I'm doing the remote connection thing, you know? And then so I thought, oh, yeah, I better order the bloody parts, right, as well. Otherwise, I'm going to be screwed, you know? I needed all sorts of, you know, mounting things to mount them on the stands and all sorts of stuff, not only the electronic components. And then I didn't have my corporate credit card. It was back in the office in my desk, you know? Like, I had a company credit card. So I couldn't order the damn parts. So I jump online and the only person left in the office on Christmas Day was the CEO, Nick Marches, right? Who, you know, the guy was like a workaholic, right? He would, you know, and he'd work, you know, he would cut code at 2 a.m. in the morning, right?

Chris Gammell: Nice. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And so I had to get him to go to my desk, draw, to get my credit card and tell me the number and everything so that I could bloody order the parts online. And it was just, oh, it was ridiculous.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, but that's what Christmas and the New Year's Eve break, you know, it does to you. Like, it's not like a regular working, you know, period. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we had to find various people to do things, to do molds for the, finish off the molds for the cases and make this and make that and assemble our boards and get our bear boards made and, oh, man, it was, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It was a nightmare. And, like, every day counted, you know. Right. If you didn't order the stuff today, you were screwed. Right. Well, nothing's worse. It's a wonder. And we, oh.

Chris Gammell: Well, I was going to say, nothing's worse than, like, than when you kind of finally, you know, a lot of people, you know, obviously I'm still a cheapskate at heart, but, like, once you get to that point of, like, being like, okay, overnight shipping, I'm cool with this, you know, like, okay, $80, $100, $150, $200 for shipping alone. Yeah, I'm fine with that. Whatever. It's a business expense. No, that's nothing. It's no big deal. But the point when your heart really sinks is when you start, when you're fine paying it, but then you're like, oh, crap, is that going to be fast enough, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, I know. That is when it's really bad. We were paying, like, three grand or something to get an eight-layer board turned in 24 hours, right? And then FedExed, right? Yeah. Like, it was, like, three or four. Like, it was, like, for one board. For one board? Really? It was like, oh, yeah, I think they might have manufactured a second because they don't have time to, you know, like, they're, you know, to make these, to make an eight-layer board in 24 hours is practically, you know, it's beyond the limits of human capability. Yeah. I mean, yeah. You have to have everything perfect materially, right? Exactly.

Chris Gammell: You have to have the labor on staff. You have to have everybody there. Mm-hmm. You have to have everything going perfectly. And, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: And all the lines and every aspect of every line dedicated to you and available. Bang, bang, bang. So they can take it to the next step and the next and you don't have to wait.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: And, yeah, and it costs a lot of money.

Chris Gammell: You know, I know we had Colin on last week and we've obviously had, you know, you and I have been in manufacturing in the past. All I can think of is, like, man, I don't miss it. I mean, I know I should feel bad saying that. But, like, some days I'm just like, oh, God, that is, like, it's nice to look back at it, right? You're like, oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we got it done together. Yeah, exactly. It's like, no, I don't miss that feeling that, you know, like 9 p.m. you're, like, at work, like, trying the test again. Oh, God, I hope it works this time. I don't miss that. And, you know, I kind of keep thinking about that whenever there's, like, these, like, romanticized, you know, manifestos about manufacturing. And I'm just like, eh.

Dave Jones: And as we've talked about getting the staff working in the hotel room, you know, the night before the conference. I've probably got a photo of that, one of the out-of-the-out, you know, like the beds, you know, we've got the double beds in the room just filled with all the, you know, all the gear and stuff. And there's soldering irons. And we're, no, we really, you know, we had to go down to Fry's, you know, to buy a Heiko 936. And we had to solder up, you know, we got the flat flex cable pin out back to front or something like that. And we had to, you know, solder these flat flex, you know, swap all the pins, you know. And we, oh, man, we were doing this, like, hours before the trade show was opening. And, you know, like, it's like the trade show's opening at 10 and it's 8 a.m. and we're still soldering these cables. Let's hope they work, you know.

Chris Gammell: Well, it's interesting talking, I mean, I think we've talked about it in the past, but, like, I think trade shows have changed as well. Maybe not trade, I'm not sure. But, like, you know, I think we've talked about in the past about how the educational stuff has changed and at trade shows and stuff like that. But I am actually, I'm going to be, like, hosting, I'm going to be, like, exhibiting at a trade show in January. And, like, it seems, like, super chill. Like, I don't know. What one? Exhibiting what? Parts.io. Parts.io will be on display at Design Con. So I'll be showing that off.

Dave Jones: So you'll be standing there in a pair of hot pants.

Chris Gammell: I'll be that guy. Yeah, that is my future, Dave.

Dave Jones: Cool. Guys, you can just walk past the stand and, like, heckle him. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: You can just scoff at me and just flip me off and keep walking.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. And there will be a prize for the best photo of Chris Gammell just looking like absolute shit. Looking forlorn and fat and stupid. Yeah, yeah, that's it. That's it. I will personally put up a prize for the best photo.

Chris Gammell: One scope goes to the saddest looking picture of Chris.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But, I mean, it's totally different these days, I feel like. I mean, maybe not. I don't know. Like, that was ESC. But even, like, ESC doesn't feel, like, that urgent. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like people are demoing this stuff anymore. Because, really, your demo is when you decide to launch to the internet. It's a different thing. It's not launch at convention.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that wasn't the only outlet. You know, whereas back before the internet, kiddies. Yeah. Yeah, that was the only outlet. Right. You know? Right. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And it had to work because you had a week out of a year to demo otherwise. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right. And, yep. Yeah, whereas now, eh, you just do it online. Right. But, yeah, I guess a bit still. You see it with the Consumer Electronics Show, which is coming up. It is. Probably within a month, right? Isn't that the first week of January or something?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, usually it's, yep. Second week? Usually it coincides with the adult entertainment convention in Las Vegas.

Dave Jones: Really?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's like they're right up against one another. But, yeah.

Dave Jones: Ah, right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know. I always look at that stuff. And, you know, it's interesting. Mostly it's interesting because of the scale of it, right? I mean, that's the main thing. It's the fervor over this. But, like, all the stuff that's there, you know, like, it's like, oh, well, we're a consumer electronics company. And we're a sensor that's connected to your phone. And you go to the next stand and it's, yeah, we're a sensor that's connected to your phone. And, you know, it's like, oh.

Dave Jones: Well, the difference is, right, between the CES, the word consumer is the part that makes a difference. Yeah. Right? I mean, yeah, when Canon and Nikon release their new cameras at the CES, right, it, you know, it's front page news to nerds right around the world. Oh, what new camera is coming out, right? Right, right. Whereas, you know, whereas Altium release a thing at the embedded system conference and no one gives a shit. Like, two people walk up the stand. Oh, you got something new, have you? Oh, okay. What is it? Yeah. Like, nobody gives a toss.

Chris Gammell: Right. No, that strikes me often is, like, even just online, you know, you look at, like, just the scale difference of, so, like, EV blog, right? Obviously, you know a lot about that. But, like, you know, you're a very popular video blog about electronics, right? But then if you search the term electronics, right, it's such a broad term where it captures people that are interested in gadgets and all the other, you know, computer security and software and everything around it as well. It's like, you know, the actual people working on hardware, people working on electronics that are interested in the stuff that composes a lot of these consumer devices is such a smaller subsection of the overall. And it's... Yep. So, I mean, yeah, there's a much bigger group, especially that's interested in the CES stuff. There's all those gadget blogs that are out there. It's just, it's insane, you know? Yep. And there's some interesting technology, but...

Dave Jones: Yes, I am currently ranked, like, 7,500 in the world. Yes. With a bullet. With a bullet. For... I think I've dropped down. I think I've dropped down. For electronics? Um, no, for... Edo bloggers. Oh, wow. Channels. Very cool. Right? I'm, like, yeah, like 7,000. Well, I don't know, it was 5,000. Something happened, I'm dropping down. Oh, well. You know. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Publish more videos, man. Right. Right. That's all I've got to do. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Like, um, Alan.

Chris Gammell: Alan, yeah. He's been doing great videos. So, Alan Yates, who's been on the show before, and we will link him in. He does, he did this, I don't think it was last year, I think it was two years ago. Didn't, what was the last time he did this?

Dave Jones: Uh, was it? Yeah, it would have been two years ago, because I think he was too busy at Valve.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Last time, last year. Anyway, he's back. Yes, he's doing the advent of circuits. So, he's doing a circuit and a video to go with it every day.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: For December. And holy crap, if you know how much work's involved in actually doing that, then, you know, yeah, my hat's off to him.

Chris Gammell: Right. And obviously, I mean, he's always done great, great, great videos in the first place, but he's been doing, you know, it's a lot of, usually there, and he talks about it in this first video that we link in, linked on the subreddit, but basically, you know, they're more fundamental circuits, but like, it's stuff that like, I remember looking at the first advent stuff, it's like, it's like, oh, this is a fundamental circuit, and you know, he's doing like, higher frequency, you know, doing like RF style stuff with just like single transistor, but it's like, if you're not into that, that world of doing single transistor RF stuff, you know, it's, it's all, it's all Greek to me, you know, it's great, though. Right. So, highly recommend it. It's very cool. It looked like he did, so far he's done RF circuits, LED bar graph, Toreto stuff, what was this one, variable, something, something.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's a huge, there's always a huge mix in there. Yeah. So, anyway, it's hard to keep up, like, because sometimes they're, you know, 10, 15 minute videos, and he's doing one every day. I know. So, it's like, you know. Putting Dave to shame here. Yeah, I haven't got, I haven't, yeah, I haven't had time to watch them all. Yeah. Yeah. See, it's hard for me to do, you know, people go, oh, why don't I do videos like that? Well, it's, you know, everyone's got their own style. It's not easy for me to just, you know, copy his style, for example, or copy someone else's style. Right. You know, and some people say, well, why don't some other bloggers do videos like mine, you know, and vice versa? It's like, well, you know, everyone has their own style, you know, that's suited to, you know, that sort of shorter format kind of thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. There's another one from another Alan. Alan Wolke was doing one a while back. He's been doing a back to basics series as well. And he did one on biasing, kind of the simpler, like one transition type circuits. But, you know, if you don't get the biasing right on the BJTs, you're not going to have a very good circuit. But so he did a great video about that recently as well. So highly recommend that. And there's so much good stuff out there. But often the big problem with a lot of this stuff, it's like, you don't know what you really need until, you know, you're presented with the problem. It's like, oh, well, this circuit isn't working. You know, when you get to that problem where it's like, it's broken. You ever type that into Google? It's like, problem, broken, fix.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. And it doesn't matter as from a content producer's point of view, it doesn't matter what video you do, what subject it is. Yeah. It will be the subject somebody doesn't want. You know, it'll be, oh, that's great. But why didn't you do one on this? Right. Right. Goodness. You know.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: And then you'll go do one on that for that person. And then somebody else will come along and go, well, that's great. But why didn't you do one on this?

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yep.

Dave Jones: Oh, shoot.

Chris Gammell: I guess as long as we're on the subject of other people that have been on the show that have great video blogs, Ben Krasnau has obviously been keeping up with stuff. He did a couple answering questions a while back. So Ben's another, he's a former Valve guy. Yeah, I saw those. Now at Google.

Dave Jones: I just realized that. He's former Valve. I didn't know he had left Valve.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and he didn't really announce it until that point. So he's now at Google X doing, you know, whatever.

Dave Jones: Google X secret stuff you can't talk about.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, secret stuff. Right, right, right. So that's another good one.

Dave Jones: And I think he said he works on the team that evaluates stuff or something along those lines.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they have the rapid prototyping team as well.

Dave Jones: So they evaluated ideas or something like that.

Chris Gammell: So speaking of rapid prototyping, I'm headed out to California tomorrow. And then on Thursday, we're going to have another one of those events where like, you know, like a hardware meetup and stuff like that. But actually, so Sean Meehan, who's been on the show before, he was the one from Planet Labs. And we talked about how basically their experiments were on the Antares rocket. And then that blew up. Right. And then basically they got on the SpaceX rocket nine days later. He's going to be giving a talk about how to build and prototype and build hardware in nine days. Cool. And I'm super pumped to hear him talk about that. So if anyone's in the Bay Area, I'll post a link for that talk. And I'm going to try and get it on video too because I think it's going to be really, really good.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Chris Gammell: So he'll be there. And another person talking from TESOL, which is the JavaScript-based. I think we had actually disparaged it at one point. But much like many other things, I've come around to it. Basically, JavaScript running on a micro. Basically, you can run JavaScript on a micro to control things. Basically, it's a gateway drug into electronics for software people. So how they do all that.

Dave Jones: Are you giving a talk?

Chris Gammell: Ah, no. What do I have to talk about these days? Come on, man.

Dave Jones: So there's no heckling. Well, didn't you give a talk last time or something?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. I've talked before about KiCad and Parks.io and a couple of other things. But I'm out of things to say, Dave. Until you and I do our roadshow eventually. Of course.

Dave Jones: Right. The Amp Hour Roadshow.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that'll be a shit show. The Amp Hour shit show.

Dave Jones: I don't know. A couple of people might tune in. Yeah, maybe. Who cares? It's a junket. Yeah. The junket. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. So that's coming up Thursday. Yeah. I can pay myself to do it. Woohoo.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah?

Dave Jones: Yes. I can. What do you mean? Pay myself. It was a joke. Oh. I work for myself. Oh, right, right, right. Nobody's paying me to do it. Right. I work for myself.

Chris Gammell: My boss is an a-hole kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Yep. That kind of thing. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Oh, goodness. Well, speaking of space.

Dave Jones: Yeah, junkets take. And so I'm just saying junkets take on a different meaning when you work for yourself. You know, it's not a, you know, it's not that junket. It's not the same feel anymore.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. It's not wasting someone else's money. It's you. Yeah, exactly. It's your money. That's it. It's your money, your time. It's time you could be spending somewhere else. Yeah. That's right. I mean, that's working for yourself in general, right? It's always, there's always something you could be doing.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Chris Gammell: I think that's one of the toughest. I mean, obviously, I don't just work for myself anymore. I was doing that for a little while. But one of the toughest things about that is like, you know, do you go and, you know, develop the next circuit and things that are like longer term, right? This is something a lot of engineers have to deal with as well. It's like, you know, oftentimes as a researcher, as an R&D engineer, I was doing like, you know, I get to work and try and try newer, longer term things, right? You were doing that all team in other places as well, right? You get to try things that probably won't work. When you're working for yourself or when you're kind of a little bit more closer to manufacturing, you're stuck in that, you know, does it make money today kind of thing? And that, you know, does it make money or does it preserve money that's already coming in? And that's a much different situation you have to deal with. So not necessarily fun, but it's just, I mean, that's just the reality of, you know, working for a big company. That's, you know, like, I think the biggest thing about that is like, say you were like a NASA scientist, right? It's like, okay, I'm being paid by the goodwill of, you know, taxpayers and everybody else, like basically with the idea that eventually this will get sent into space and this is important research or research as general, right? That's kind of the main thing.

Dave Jones: Right. Of course.

Chris Gammell: Basically, the money is coming from some kind of foundation, basically saying you're working on things that do not have some direct revenue stream, but it's still important. Right. If you don't have that, then there's no revenue stream in the future. Whereas someone who's, you know, writing an app for tomorrow or working on a manufacturing test stand for tomorrow, that's very closely tied to, that's very close to the money. Or if you're a salesperson, even taking it even further, if you're a salesperson, you're very, very close to the money and it's tied to that revenue stuff. So that's just the...

Dave Jones: Well, that's the thing with me and my blogs. I mean, I can't just go work on, well, I can, but let's just say, like, I can't just go work on something that interests me with that has no tangible benefit to the blog, you know, because that's just wasting time. That's just dicking around, you know, wasting time on...

Chris Gammell: Well, and even when you are doing interesting things, right? You're doing interesting things like your mud run. Even then, you're still thinking about, you know, how can I...

Dave Jones: Exactly. How can I make it? How can I get value out of this? Yeah, exactly. By, you know, doing that. So, you know, I'll shoot a video. I'll upload. It's content. It's extra, you know, even if it goes on my secondary channel.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, I'm thinking, you know, if I find something in the dumpster, I'm just, you know, I might, you know, like if I've got a, you know, I just, well, I did a dumpster dive, actually just shot it now. I'm going to put it on my main channel, but even if I do that and I spend a couple of hours, you know, cleaning up something I got out of the dumpster, I'm going to shoot a video on it. Right. Because otherwise I've just wasted that time just dicking around.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, and it's hard when your hobby is your business, you know, that makes it like extra hard and confusing. Yeah, definitely. You know, there's no line there, you know, whereas before the blog, right, I can go, oh yeah, that's hobby stuff. I can just piss away as much time as, as free time as I've got. Right. You know? Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: No, it changes things. So yeah, that is important. And I think that's important for people to realize as they get into the, you know, if they're interested in doing video blogs and similar stuff, it just changes the relationship with stuff. I think anything like that, you know, eventually becomes a job. So there's the good and the bad, right?

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I still wouldn't give it up.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, of course. So, so what was the result? So I saw your mud run and you dragged this poor scope through the mud. What was the ultimate result of the autopsy? Did it live?

Dave Jones: It, it lived. Yeah. It was fine. It was like it, it had never gone through.

Chris Gammell: Okay. So I was watching your video and you talked about the strap and you talked about the, the, the foam floaty thing. And people should watch this obviously. Were you serious about that? Cause it looked like it was duct taped foam on there.

Dave Jones: Do you think I was serious?

Chris Gammell: I thought you said it kind of deadpan, but I figured you were full of crap. But I always figured. That's my style. Yeah. Of course I'm full of crap. But no, I mean, it sounded like, it didn't even sound like you were kidding a little bit. So that's what I meant.

Dave Jones: Like, so I, I guess you fooled me. That's the whole point of doing it. It's like the April's fool's jokes. Why? At, at the end of it go, ha ha, April fool's, you know? It's stupid. Right? If you're going to, if you're going to sell a joke, sell it.

Chris Gammell: I guess so. You know? I trusted you, man. I trusted you.

Dave Jones: And that's what makes it so freaking hilarious. I, like. Ha ha. I tricked you.

Chris Gammell: You trusted me.

Dave Jones: That's what gets me through the day. Little things like that get me through the day.

Chris Gammell: Let's talk about formulas that may or may not be real now.

Dave Jones: Exactly. I mean, you know, I'm always throwing in little things like that, you know?

Chris Gammell: Sure.

Dave Jones: And, and, and, and if, and if somebody bites, you know, somebody goes, oh, but that, that can't be true. I just start cacking myself and get, yes, got him. You know? Yeah. Ah, that, that just makes my day. You know? Otherwise I'd be. So that's your new hobby, huh? No, I'd kill myself, I think.

Chris Gammell: Yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. There's, there's an official flotation pack for a tech. I don't know.

Chris Gammell: I don't know.

Dave Jones: And it's made out of dodgy foam and duct tape.

Chris Gammell: If you want, if we want to start talking about all the silly things military electronics do, we could talk about that. But, uh, I recall, I recall not so fondly a sales guy telling me about a connector that costs $900 at an old place I used to work. We used to work on military and like firefighter electronics and stuff like that.

Dave Jones: That's nothing.

Chris Gammell: I know. That's nothing.

Dave Jones: I've worked on products where they, where the, where there's $2,000 a connector.

Chris Gammell: Right. And I mean, like, I get it, I get low volumes, I get like, you know, testing and certification and everything else like that. But I'm just saying like, that's crazy. I mean, right. I mean, like, like.

Dave Jones: Well, it's not, it's what it costs. It's what it costs. Yeah. You know, when you have to manufacture a hundred of these connectors, right. And you have to pay some professional big company, you know, I'm talking Molex, you know, yeah. And they have to go through the full qualification procedures for all those. Yeah. They're going to charge you a couple of grand per connector or a couple of hundred bucks per connector. Damn right they are.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I don't know. I mean, yeah. I mean, I, I get the economics of it, but it's just like when you say it like that, instead of saying like, well, it was 50 grand of NRE and then like 10 bucks a connector, you know, like it's just, it's just how you're doing your accounting really. So that's, I mean, that's the difference. Okay. But yeah.

Dave Jones: Fair enough. Hmm. Anyway, yes, the scope, um, survived like, and it looks like it never had water in it to begin with, or it did like it's got some pre rust in it, right. It's got rust from before I took it through the mud run. Yeah. Um, so, but yeah, apart from that, it looks like no water got into it yet. You look on the video and the damn thing is submerged on my back under the water.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It must've, there must've been water in there. And I thought like the mud would have caked everything. Yeah. Right.

Chris Gammell: You know, so that brings up an interesting conversation about, uh, so, so did you used to do on your products, did you ever do like, um, like moisture testing and temperature testing and stuff like that?

Dave Jones: Oh yeah.

Chris Gammell: So what, what. Tons of experience. Yeah. So what was, oh yeah, I guess the stuff that was underwater. Oh yeah. Excluding the stuff that was like designed to be underwater. What about like just general, uh, design? What kind of testing did you have to do for that?

Dave Jones: Oh, you'd put them in a humidity, uh, chamber, you know, like actually a cycle test them at humidity and, uh, all that sort of jazz. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So like extended life testing stuff like that. Way back in, you know, even back in 1994 when manufacturing, uh, flat screens for key corp, right. You know, we'd put them in huge thermal chambers. We'd have a couple of hundred of these flat screen monitors in these huge, big thermal and humidity chambers. Yeah. And we'd be, you know, cycle, soak, uh, testing them. Yeah. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And, um, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, I've, yeah, we've had to do that as well. I mean, we did that at Keith Lee and AVB and everywhere else too. Uh, the one that was interesting to me was actually at the military place I worked. They actually did like submerged testing where they had, you know, the big O-rings and then internal, the product, they had the O-rings and they actually submerged it to a certain depth. And then basically, you know, did like, I don't know how they measured the water seepage and stuff like that. Yep. But yeah, that's, uh, that's interesting stuff I think, because I think the water, the actual like waterproof testing is different, but like the humidity testing, the temperature testing, that's something that I never really was, uh, exposed to until I got out of school. You know, I, I knew the effects of temperature and I knew the effects of humidity, but I didn't realize that they actually tested that stuff because so much of that is, it's not actually empirical, obviously it is measured, but it's, you know, it's still based upon, you know, statistics and how many units you actually, like you mentioned, there's a whole set of units that are in there and stuff like that. And that, that actually does end up affecting things. So, uh.

Dave Jones: Oh yeah. Like, and, and it'll have, um, uh, effect on the manufacturing of your boards. You know, if there's a certain flux residue left on your board, then that could interact with the moisture if it's a high humidity environment, right? And it changed from batch to batch. So you might test these during, during your qualification and right. Everything's fine. Yep. Everything's hunky dory. And then you go manufacture the things and then, you know, every second batch would fail. Well, because that one was contaminated. So the moisture, you know, or it was, or they're, they're at a high dust environment and then you mix dust with moisture and way, you know.

Chris Gammell: Now you have mud.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. You know, so there's, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think a lot of that stuff too, like later on, uh, some of the boards I worked on ended up doing like conformal coating and stuff like that too. Basically just saying, well.

Dave Jones: Yeah. We're done conformal coating. That's horrible stuff.

Chris Gammell: It is. Uh, yeah. People don't know what that is. Basically it's like an, it's like a, a lightweight epoxy. Basically you spray the whole board. You mask off parts that aren't allowed to be, uh, sprayed down. But then the idea being that you basically seal in every connection that you can by covering it in a very light layer of plastic effectively. And that kind of keeps out the moisture from soaking in. It keeps out dirt from soaking in. And that, uh, in.

Dave Jones: Or often it can keep the moisture in because one, you can, you know, heat it up, cool it down and the moisture stays in there if you don't apply your conformal coating correctly. Oh, interesting. Yeah. There's an art to, there's an art to applying conformal coating.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But yeah, and that doesn't really matter. And actually the, I think the thing that ends up affecting engineers the most in that case is actually, uh, rework. Because then you're like, uh, is this board conformally coded? Oh, reworking. Oh. And then you get a melt away that shit. And yeah, it's terrible.

Dave Jones: Have you ever tried to probe through a conformal coated board? You know? Oh no.

Chris Gammell: Jeez.

Dave Jones: You know, you're stabbing it with a sharp probe. Duh. Pierce through you bastard. You know, when you can't probe, you know, you can't get your scope probe on these pins because they're. Right. You know, you just scrape off the bloody conformal coating. Yeah. That sucks. And, and then, and then you're never sure if there's actually no signal there or whether or not you're just not making contact. Even when you scrape it off, it's still, you know, it's.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, it's horrid. Yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. But I mean, sometimes, you know, you got to do that. I mean, obviously the, like, I never did auto stuff, but the auto guys have to deal with tons of that kind of, you know, that crazy, you know, they buy the crazy temperature parts and stuff like that. Yep. I was doing mostly industrial where they had to, where, you know, it could experience those elevated temperatures and humidities and stuff like that. Because I mean, you think about it, like, you know, you go to like a, you go to a Shenzhen and you design test equipment for a Shenzhen. And then they're sitting in this factory during monsoon season and it's, you know, 90 degrees Fahrenheit and 90 to 90% humidity. And it's like, yeah, you think maybe at a spec. I mean, your cow might not do as well as you thought she did unless you actually plan for it. So it's, uh, it's kind of crazy.

Dave Jones: Reminds me of the story I was talking about with the CEO of the alarm company, the Australian alarm company, the other month, uh, Hess, um, they were right. I was talking to him about the, and I was talking to their head, their head designer there. Right. I think I mentioned this on my text blog. Okay. Anyway, um, uh, they, like I said, look, why don't you fit these mobs? Right. Because the, the board had these footprints, you know, the alarm inputs and they had these mobs, which weren't fitted. And I said, why don't you fit these mobs?

Chris Gammell: For like protection? You're saying? Like mobs for protection?

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, um, and he said, oh no, that's only for the, uh, uh, Southeast Asia market. And I go, why? Oh, I know the answer.

Chris Gammell: Wait, wait, is it because their power grid is so unreliable they have spikes on it?

Dave Jones: Uh, no.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: Kind of related. Um, no. Thunderstorms, monsoons. Oh, really? Just, okay, that was my second guess. They had really severe lightning storms in those regions, right? So they see, you know, like, you know, for the Australian market or the US market, right? We just have little piss ant thunderstorms, right? You know, we don't, you know, our regular input protection is enough to handle that. So we don't need to spend money fitting the extra mobs for those markets. Right. Why waste the money, right? Only for those, yeah, so only for those Asian markets where they have those massive, you know, and they get them like every day, you know, like four o'clock every day, bang, thunderstorm, bang, bang, bang, you know? And yeah, so they have to fit the extra mobs for those markets. So, you know, and, um, they've never had to conformally coat boards, but you know, moisture is more of an issue in those sort of markets and things like that. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's crazy.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Do you think any designers were like, oh, well, maybe some crazy person will drag this through a mud pit at some point?

Dave Jones: And have it survive. I was amazed. I know, that's, that is, that is amazing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So you're going to, you're going to sell that one? You're going to sell that, that, uh, that particular unit?

Dave Jones: Some people have asked them, you know, well, who's, who's going to buy it? You know?

Chris Gammell: Probably EEV blog fans and no one else. I, I, I wouldn't buy that on eBay or something. Yeah, probably.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. It's dodgy ads. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and it's foldy. It's basically foldy because I had a fault before I took it through.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: The canyon.

Chris Gammell: You know, because there's always people complaining, oh, why did you take a perfectly good scope through? You ruined it. I can't afford, I worked all my life and I can't afford to scope that good. And you just go, ruin mine.

Dave Jones: That's how they talk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They sound exactly like that. Yeah. It's like, just shut up. All right.

Chris Gammell: Even if it was, bloody hell. I was thinking about it. So, so I got my, a bunch of my test equipment from fixing it and I was thinking about that today and it, it really wasn't easy. I mean, like, like, and a lot of people talk about it, but like, man, that is, that is a hard one way of doing test equipment. Right. I mean, like, you learn a bunch about it, but you know, there's no guarantee it's going to work. There's no guarantee it's going to, you know, keep its cow and stuff like that. It's like buying, you know, it's like being like, oh, I bought a race horse. Eh, they cut one of the legs off the horse though. You know, it's like, yeah, it could run faster than the other horses or as fast, but it's probably going to have some issues.

Dave Jones: And, and, and that's not helped by, uh, you know, bloggers who, you know, publish these videos or text articles in the forum or whatever. Right. Hey, you know, I bought this scope and I repaired it, you know, it was real easy and, you know, and yeah, well, that's great. Cause you usually only hear the stories from the people who, who have fixed them. Like you don't hear from the people who, you know, who, you know, gambled and spent, oh, I'm going to buy this scope for 500 bucks on eBay and see if I can fix it. And then don't. And then they, you know, nobody's going to admit they wasted 500 bucks, you know, for a scope and they couldn't fix it. Right. Because it had some unobtainium bloody tektronics part or something that was blown.

Chris Gammell: Oh, there's nothing worse than like, it's not even the unobtainium, it's the unobtainium, right? Where you don't know what the actual part number is because it's the internal part number. Oh my God. Yep. That's the worst. And especially when it's like, you know, it's like these old school designs and old school schematics where it's like, this part is part number four. Oh, okay. This part over here is part four A. Shit.

Dave Jones: The, um, the tektronics scope has that, you know, this TDS 220, you know, when I did the teardown, I thought, oh, you know, can I find data on this part? No. Yeah. Can't find shit. No. You know, it's got some custom part number. It's manufactured by National Semiconductor. I think something exists out there, maybe a block diagram for it or something, but you know, it's like, no.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. The best you're going to get is like, this is based off this part. And then you go and find that part and try and see if you can, you know, shoehorn that in there. But yeah, that's, that's tough. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So we're saying don't try and fix your own teeth. No, I mean, like, that's the thing.

Chris Gammell: Like, I think a lot of it's romanticized because it is. I mean, like, it's good. Like, it's a good way to learn, but like, it's not the good way to start learning. Right. So like, you know, Jim Williams talks about his farm of 86 docilus scripts and what he had. You know, he basically, that was his hobby. And that is a really, and so Kent Lundberg, who's been on the show as well, he talks about fixing, he was, you know, a prodigy of Jim and stuff like that and stuff like, but it is a great way to learn. But I think the key point is persistence, right? I mean, like, that's ultimately what it comes down to. It's like, you have to, if you want a piece of test equipment, go buy a piece of test equipment. If you want a project, go buy a $50 scope to fix up. I mean, like, that's the difference, I think.

Dave Jones: Exactly. And then be prepared to spend serious time at it. And that's why, you know, people say, oh, why don't I do that? I haven't got a whole week to devote, to tracing down, to figuring out how this scope works, you know, figuring out how this circuit works and tracing everything out on the board. And it's like, you know, I mean, I wish I did. Yeah. And then I'm not going to have the part. So then I've got to go order the part on that hunch, right? Oh, is it that? Oh, no. Okay. I've wasted another week waiting for that part.

Chris Gammell: Well, and I think that's the thing, like, is like, that is the normal timeline, right? I mean, like, these are projects that persist for months at a time, right? I mean, like, that's what people, and if people are listening and thinking, yeah, that still sounds like me. Like, it's a month kind of thing. You know, you're going to be working at it. And if it's not months, it's not, you know, it could be because you're a brilliant troubleshooter, but it's probably because you got lucky and, you know, they had dried out caps, right? And like. That's right. And power to you, but like, when you find that, you know, troll of a scope that has, you know, one faulty transistor that happens to just have a slightly different beta than it should, and that's the most sensitive circuit, you're screwed. I mean, like, come on. Like, that's just a hard thing to find. You're going to learn a shitload when you go through that, and that's good. Totally. But, yeah, you know, good luck with all that.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: Get out your screw, get out your curb tracers, folks. I mean, like, yeah, it's going to be tough, you know? Yeah. But, yeah, you'll learn a bunch. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And that's why I'm, you know, I thank my lucky stars when, you know, that I was troubleshooting the Back to the Future time circuit the other day, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I had this, like, you know, one in a thousand shot of this pin being a dry joint that I actually reworked this chip. And then, so the odds of actually getting the exact sequence of fires that I got, and then the other channels looking like exactly the same fire motors, what was caused by this rework of this actual clock pin being open and blah, blah, blah. You know, there was a whole, you know, it led me down this garden path. And, you know, you couldn't have scripted that. Right. Right. Exactly. It was just so lucky to get that. Otherwise, it would have been a dumbass repair, right? Simple, oh, blow and chip. Yeah, the smoke escaped. I replaced it. Everything works. And, you know, and it's a boring ass video. Yep. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: You know? I mean, that's the downside of shovel shooting.

Chris Gammell: Everybody wants, like, the stuff that looks exciting.

Dave Jones: Everyone wants the, yeah, everyone wants the Agatha Christie, you know, mystery. Right, right. Thriller, right?

Chris Gammell: My wife watches those terrible crime drama shows, and I walk in and I'm like.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, the NCIS.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. I'm like, it's always the second person. So, they show the person they think it is, and then they show the second person they think it is, and then they find the third person, and the third person, so they go and investigate a bunch, and it turns out it's the second person.

Dave Jones: Right. It's a formula. It's a formula, yeah.

Chris Gammell: It never fails. I'm like, I just walk in, I'm like, it's the second person. And then she's like, yeah, you were right. Oh. That's why I don't watch those stupid shows. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. So. It's pointless, folks. Either you're going to luck out, or, you know, you're going to get lucky.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, and that's the thing. I mean, like. And it's going to be easy as anything.

Chris Gammell: I mean, troubleshooting in general is like that. I mean, like, sometimes you're going to get, you're going to chase a ghost for two months, and sometimes you're going to find it within a week, or a day, or an hour. And you're not going to remember the week or the day or the hour, right? You're going to remember the ghost. Yep. Because when you finally find what it actually is, that's the good story, that's the one that's memorable. Exactly. If you find it in an hour, it's just, it's not troubleshooting. It's like, it's just fixing something. It's just like, oh, it was this. Yeah.

Dave Jones: That fuse looks blowing. Oh, I'll replace that. Hey. Hey.

Chris Gammell: These caps look kind of dry.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: This diode looks kind of dark. Yeah. Okay, well.

Dave Jones: There's no five-volt rail here. Oh, I think it might be the 7805 regulator block.

Chris Gammell: Oh, this is brilliant.

Dave Jones: Funny that, yeah. But those are the good things.

Chris Gammell: I like a genius, you know. Cherish, cherish those, because when you find the stinkers, you're not going to be that happy. So, speaking of things they're hoping to not troubleshoot, how about this frigging Orion launch, huh? I wanted to get to this. That's the best segue I could get to.

Dave Jones: I sat up watching, oh, and I had to go to bed, and it was like, oh, God. So, you know, like, this was the first time it was scrubbed, right? And I sat there, and it was like 1 a.m. in the morning. I go, no, I've got to go to bed. And no, and it turns out, yeah, it was scrubbed. And then the next night, I watched it live, and they got it the first go, I think. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think it was. It was super early here, so I actually didn't catch it. I think it was like 6 in the morning here.

Dave Jones: But then I had to go to bed. Like, I couldn't stay there for the whole four hours to watch it, you know, actually come back. So, I saw the launch. Oh, right, right, right, right. I didn't see anything past that, you know, because it was going out, doing a loop.

Chris Gammell: We will post both the launch video and the landing video, and they're both spectacular, you know, like usual, space and shit, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, so that's pretty exciting. It's pretty great. And it's basically the furthest a human capsule, even though there are no humans in there, has been since Apollo 17.

Chris Gammell: Really? Right. So, yeah. Did you know this was coming? Because I didn't understand why I hadn't heard anything about this. I'm sure it was there, and I just didn't notice.

Dave Jones: Because the whole Orion project and the whole NASA, you know, Mars plan and everything else was such a, you know, balls up.

Chris Gammell: This is what happened when they canceled the shuttle, right? They mentioned that, yeah, it was when Bush was in office and they mentioned this kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Yeah, and then Bush called for it, you know. He said, yeah, let's go to space and let's get the budget, you know. So, so Congress came back, you know, they did a plan. NASA came back, right? They had this plan, right? I think it was called the 30-day plan or something, right? So, they got this plan together in 30 days. Okay. I'm sure I've, deja vu, we've spoken about this before. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I think we were actually a show at that point, and I think, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it was, yeah, Mars or something. Anyway, they came back with this plan, they gave it to Congress, and it's going to cost 500 trillion billion gazillion dollars or something, right? And because every department of NASA, every person said, oh, we want our idea to be included. So, NASA bent over backwards so that it was such a convoluted scheme for going to Mars that, you know. Yeah, right, right. It just turned out to be way too expensive and complicated, and it just all went downhill from there. And, you know, Congress didn't approve it, so they approved some half-assed thing. And, you know, oh, it's just, it's a big balls-up. Right. It's a big mess. So, that's why you haven't heard much about it. There's not much excitement. Okay. But it has gone on, and they, you know, they are developing the Orion capsule. Of course, that's just the capsule part. Orion is the capsule, and then they've got the new heavy lift rockets that'll make the Saturn V look like a, you know, a party popper. Right. Right. And that's the big thing, because that's what's necessary to get stuff to Mars, right? That's another big thing.

Chris Gammell: I mean, that's the big thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's exciting. Anyway. I think all of this is basically like, I mean, I was super excited just like anything space these days, I'm excited about. I mean, obviously, we've talked a lot about the privatized space stuff. I mean, I mentioned, you know, I mean, Sean's been on the show, and we've talked about Elon Musk and SpaceX, everybody else, a bunch. Uh-huh. Who cares how we get there? I don't care how we get there. Honestly, I don't give a shit. I just want space, more space. And I think that's good for the industry, too. I mean, like- I do.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but I give a shit. Yeah. I'm sorry. I just, you know, I want the best, most efficient plan to get us to Mars. Wait a second, though.

Chris Gammell: Which is which?

Dave Jones: What?

Chris Gammell: Well, which in your opinion? The best or the most efficient? Is it the privatized or is it the nationalized?

Dave Jones: Oh, that doesn't matter.

Chris Gammell: Is it the Musk or is it the NASA?

Dave Jones: Where the money- It's not necessarily where the money comes from. It's basically there's two schools of thought. There's Mars Direct, which let's just do it, you know, Apollo line. Let's just set 10, do it before the decade is out.

Chris Gammell: Put some frigging rockets behind you, yeah.

Dave Jones: Exactly. And just get there. We can get people there. And I'm, you know, well, I'm a big supporter of both camps. I'm kind of torn. Anyway, there's Mars Direct and then there's the Buzz Aldrin plan, which is, you know, let's slowly build it up. Let's go back to the moon first and let's use that as a base. Yeah, build launch points, that kind of thing. Yeah. And then let's not, and let's go to Mars, but let's not land on Mars. Let's land on Phobos and use Phobos as a staging point for then actually landing on Mars. Interesting. And I've read Aldrin's book on this and he's got some awesome ideas and you think, yeah, this guy's really thought about it, you know. And I'm, oh, look.

Chris Gammell: I have to read that, eh? Yeah, the more I read, the more I confuse.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, Aldrin's book. I'll have to get the link and link it in. Yeah. Yep. And there's a book on the Mars Direct one by Robert Zubrin. Okay. I think is his name. And yeah, yeah. So he's the big proponent of, anyway, both are being investigated and there's, you know, money being spent on both. Well, yeah. We talked earlier about the research stuff. It's like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: There's no right answer, folks. Sorry. No. It's like, this is like pure research because it's like, well, no one's been to Mars yet. There's nothing to base this on, you know. It's like, yeah.

Dave Jones: But then again, no, like, I'm just a fan of, let's, you know, for NASA to get, you know, like 3% of your GDP or something. Cool.

Chris Gammell: Well, thanks, Dave. You're very generous with our GDP.

Speaker ?: I do.

Dave Jones: Thank you. Well, it's currently half a percent, right? It's currently half a percent. I'm totally in on it, too. If they doubled it to 1%, they could do everything, right? Yeah. If they doubled it.

Chris Gammell: I think part of the problem is that gets so political so quickly. It's just that's always the problem.

Dave Jones: Yes, and then, as we saw with the plan that they put together, it can get pissed away on it because every department in NASA has their own dream idea of how to do it. Yeah. Right? And then if there's nobody in charge saying, we're going to do it this way and that's it. Yeah. You know, then money just tends to get pissed away. Right. I'm a big supporter of also going back to the moon as well. I think, why aren't we, you know, why don't we have an output? You know, we can do some cool science on the moon.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, definitely.

Dave Jones: You know, we could have huge radio telescopes on the far side of the moon. You know, why aren't we doing that? Holy shit, it's only four days away.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Yeah. I think just in general, too.

Dave Jones: Whereas Mars is six to nine months each week.

Chris Gammell: I mean, you think about just the investment side of things, too, right? I'm big on investing. I mean, I think even when you say, like, pissed away, stuff like that, I think as long as there's reviews on programs and stuff like that, like, scientists want to do good work. It's not like this is, like, it's like, if you have good purchasing, I think, honestly, it comes down to the purchasing side of things because it's, like, where the money could...

Dave Jones: Everything comes down to purchasing.

Chris Gammell: No, no, no, I think that it could... I think that's the biggest area for potential waste and stuff like that because, you know... Like, an engineer wants to build stuff and, you know, basically someone has to eventually actually, you know, go and make that stuff. Eventually, the money gets passed down and that's where the biggest opportunity for fraud and stuff like that happens where they say it's going to cost a million and then, you know, nothing gets delivered. Yep. So that's ultimately where the kind of the rubber hits the road.

Dave Jones: And each hammer costs $10,000. Right, right, exactly. Or a hammer, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: And there's a lot of overhead, but I think ultimately, I think that, you know, if it's all in the guise of research, like, that there's always side benefits. You know, there's always this messy side of research that, I don't know, there's no logic to it, but it's going to be good on the whole, I think. So...

Dave Jones: Do you think that if we sent humans back to Mars that it would be a big deal? Like, as in, would the public go, oh, you know, would the whole world stop and watch again? Or do you think everyone would go, oh, yeah, whatever?

Chris Gammell: No, I think...

Dave Jones: I mean... I don't care. I've got... I'm just going back playing with my app on my smartphone.

Chris Gammell: I think with nothing else because other people would think it's a big deal.

Dave Jones: I'm talking general public, though. Yeah. I'm talking your general sheeple.

Chris Gammell: I totally think... Yeah, you think so? I think so, yeah.

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Because, I mean, I have no idea what would happen. I suspect, I would hope that would be the case.

Chris Gammell: Well, of course I hope that too would.

Dave Jones: But I wouldn't be surprised if people just didn't give a rat's ass.

Chris Gammell: How could you not care about that, though? That's so... That's no longer... That's not moon travel anymore. That's interplanetary, right?

Dave Jones: No, it's moon. No, no, no. I'm sorry. I'm talking moon. Oh, moon again? Not Mars. Yeah, no, I'm talking moon.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, moon would be big because of historical precedents, but I think Mars would be big because of interplanetary.

Dave Jones: Look, I think Mars is... So many people, so many hands in so many pies that it's never... That humans back to the moon will happen before humans back on Mars will happen, I suspect.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think my general feel on it is some activity is better than no activity, so let's get some activity. Aye, totally. Yeah. I mean, like, and honestly, if public funds aren't available to do it and private funds are, fine. I don't care. I mean, like, you know, Elon, Richard, everybody else, you know, Bezos, everybody else, like, you got time and money to build rockets. It's frigging awesome because you're hiring engineers, you're doing research, you're lowering costs, right? That's, and that's a big thing, right? You know, you talk about innovation and stuff like that. There's the big stuff, which is like, oh, well, we need to develop an ion drive. Okay. Maybe that's 30 years away, if ever. That's not necessarily, you know, like, there's always incremental stuff that's just as important where, you know, maybe it's, you know, developing better electronics for a control system that goes onto a rocket, you know? And that lowers the cost of, because you save 2% on fuel, like, that could be a big difference. And, like, these things all add up. And, yeah, man, it's all about activity. You know, it's just like, as long as the politicians aren't sitting on their hands and saying, well, we can't do this, blah, blah, blah. If anyone's spending money on space, that's a good thing. That's my output.

Dave Jones: And it's also all about marketing. I reckon, here's my call, I reckon Elon is going to do, I reckon he won't be able to pass up the opportunity to do an Apollo 8-style moonshot, i.e. send, you know, humans back there, orbit the moon, and come back.

Chris Gammell: Oh, that'll be interesting.

Dave Jones: That would be a huge publicity coup. I reckon, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: I mean, like, hey, we're going to test this capsule in space. Hey, we may as well go, we may as well shoot for the moon and come back, you know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, no, that's a good call. I bet that's definitely possible. I mean, have they sent anyone on the Dragon capsule yet? I mean, they've sent cargo, but not people yet, right? Yep. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. But then they need their rocket to actually get it to the moon, you know, it takes extra power to... Anyway, in my opinion, if I've never said it before, in my opinion, the most pivotal event in space ever was not Apollo 11, it was Apollo 8.

Chris Gammell: Huh, interesting. Because of that?

Dave Jones: Because Apollo 8, they were the first... A, Apollo 8 was the first manned Apollo mission, right, after the Apollo 1 fire, right? So, and they decided, well, it was just supposed to be Earth orbit, right? It was just supposed to be, you know, go up in orbit, test a few things, right? And they went, no, screw it. If we're going to fire this bloody big candle, why not go all the way to the moon? And they went, you know, and everyone just went, why can't we do it? And everyone shrugged their shoulders and went, I don't know. And they went, bugger it, let's do it. And so they shot them to the moon, Apollo 8, all this untested shit. And it was the first time we actually left Earth, you know, not just go up and orbit Earth. We actually left. Yep. Right? So, to me, that's the biggest milestone in space.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Exploration. That's definitely putting your balls on the block, right? I mean, like, that's like, yeah.

Dave Jones: Because Apollo 11 is actually, did you know that Apollo 10 went all the way to the moon, they descended in their lunar module, and they got within, like, 5Ks of the surface and then went back up? Oh, no, I didn't know that. Like, they almost did it, right? Oh, really? They almost landed, right? It was practically the Apollo 11 mission without the one small step for mankind, you know, without actually setting foot. They got within, like, 50Ks of the surface.

Chris Gammell: Wow. That's crazy.

Dave Jones: You know, it was practically, it was an entire dress rehearsal, anyway, for Apollo 11.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, it's awesome.

Chris Gammell: That is awesome.

Dave Jones: And that's our show. We pissed it away talking about space.

Chris Gammell: That's not our show yet. We got, come on. It is. It's done. No. No, it's done. I've got to go. No, come on. Wait. I have shit to do. What about Maxim? Ah, Maxim, I'm paying the ass. I wanted to ask you about this. Actually, I only wanted to ask you about this because it was... Mike is snappy. So, you were ranting about blah, blah, blah. You know, they weren't delivering, whatever. But actually, there was another post over on the Reddit ECU thread from a throwaway account from a guy that used to work at Maxim directly. Oh, really? Yeah. It was pretty interesting. Basically, he was basically talking about... You know, so we've talked about before in the show about the, you know, the theories and the reasons that, you know, people can't get parts and stuff like that and how things have changed. But basically, this guy was a throwaway and he said, yeah, it's basically, it's exactly what, you know, you and I have talked about on the show before. It's like, it's just their alliance is for the big vendors, right? So, it's the Apples and the Samsungs of the world and stuff like that. And basically, you know, all of the resources taken up by these big companies with the big top line dollars and the differences, and I think this is interesting for us because, you know, it shows that money talks, right? I mean, like, it's basically when you're in, you know, a million part designs, you can, you know, basically all of the money and the focus is going to go towards those high level designs versus, you know, the smaller stuff. And if people are complaining they can't get parts, it's like, well, show me the money. If you were paying, you know, we were talking earlier about the $2,000 connectors, if it was a $2,000 chip, that'd be different than a $5 chip that gets specced online, that kind of thing. So, I thought that was really interesting. And we can link all this stuff in, of course. But I thought it was worth bringing up.

Speaker ?: Okay.

Chris Gammell: Anything else we should bring up? Because I'm sure I could bring up one or two others, but...

Dave Jones: No. No. I'm serious. I gotta go.

Chris Gammell: He's gotta go, folks. Important shit to do. Oh, come on. What else we got here? Yep. Hang on. NASA, Novena. Oh, Novena's going to KiCad. That's interesting. Circuit Hub's going to Hubstock. These are all just... Reagan!

Speaker ?: Daddy!

Chris Gammell: Oh, he's really gotta go. He's got kids showing up at the podcast. Wow.

Dave Jones: Look, you wanna hop up here? Yeah. Hop up.

Chris Gammell: This is adorable. Hang on, we... Do I get to talk to Sagan? Have a special... Do I get to talk to Sagan?

Dave Jones: Yeah, we've got a special guest in the house. Say again?

Chris Gammell: Tell me you can talk to a dumb yank. So, let's see what else. So, Novena's on KiCad. Circuit Hub's got the Hubstock thing. Check all those out.

Dave Jones: Say hello to everyone. This is a microphone. Say hello.

Dave Jones: You wanna tell them all about your Play-Doh? No, you've gone shy.

Chris Gammell: Oh, he can't even see us. He's gone shy, Dave? Come on.

Dave Jones: Look, this is Chris. I'll put your headphones on. You wanna listen to Chris? No. No? All right. Don't worry, my nephew doesn't like me either. No, sorry. That's okay. Right. Yeah. Sagan, would you like to play with the oscilloscope?

Chris Gammell: Yes.

Dave Jones: Yeah? You like playing with the oscilloscope, don't you? Yes. That's good. Yeah? That's good. Is it your favorite?

Speaker ?: Yes.

Dave Jones: Which is better, an oscilloscope or a multimeter?

Dave Jones: Multimeter. A multimeter's more fun than an oscilloscope, is it? Yes. More to me. Why is that?

Chris Gammell: More things to turn.

Dave Jones: Why is that? Less breakable. No, there we go. Never work with kids and animals, folks. Oh, God. Now he's caught up in the headphone leads. Oh, no. This is not good.

Dave Jones: Anyway, that's the show.

Chris Gammell: I think we figured out why Dave has to go. Okay. Well, Dave, I will talk to you next week, and we'll hopefully have a guest then.

Dave Jones: All right. See ya. All right, man.

Chris Gammell: Talk to you. I mean, sure, that was probably the most contrived amp hour title we've ever seen. I mean, I didn't even use an E in front of either of those first two words, extreme and extraplanetary. What is this, like a 1990s web TV show? But no. Mostly, it was all about using that word, xenonosokomiophobia, which means a fear of foreign pickpockets. Oh, what a great word. What a great word.