From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Our colleague Nol is not here right now, but we'll be returning shortly. They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decade. Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Uh, Matt, quick check in. We did something that's kind of unusual for us after all these years. We we took a holiday break and uh, you know, I think a lot of our fellow conspiracy realists know this. But you and Noel and Paul and I see each other on a pretty consistent basis. Like during the pandemic, we were probably the only non family members we talked to most of the time. Right, Yeah, I'm yeah, on a consistent basis for sure. Yeah, did you have adventures? That's what I'm getting at because I'm used to like us giving each other weird, sometimes relevant, sometimes just funny updates like four hours I don't have anything big. I got a Christmas tree in my house already. It's not real, it's cheap and it works. You know, you might like this. I can't remember I ever told you, but for several periods throughout my life, I've put up a Christmas tree and then just left it up all year because it looks nice, you know, not even a religious bent, but I think it. I think it brightens up a room. Yeah, especially for everybody looking at your house at night. There it is. Yeah. I want I want people to say, those folks are too wholesome for a break in. Let's go. Let's go somewhere else, somewhere that looks less Christmas. Ee. Let us know if that theory works for you, folks. Uh, not going anywhere with that, just checking in today's episode, just trying. We're trying to start off in a good spot. And I thought what better place for to uh to space campbell Um to start with than saying, folks, space is amazing. It's just it's the best. It's the best thing. Yeah. It's um real cold up there, not a lot of heat. Uh, it's um pretty empty like on the whole right, But the stuff that is inside the space is killer. It's worth your time. Uh, and you know we're in there too, which is kind of cool. That's true. That's true. Uh. Life is one big escape room. You can look at it that way, right, and everybody should be on the same team for the human mission to expand, right, That's one thing that all human civilization has wanted to do. We talked about this fascination in a previous episode on Mysteries of the Moon or I Think We Want with the title is the Moon messing with Me? Or something like that. The answer is probably yes, but maybe not in the ways you think. Uh. But as a result of everybody or every large government wanting to go to space, wanting to explore the furthest reaches of the map, we can say that despite the big emptiness, as you accurately pointed out, Matt, despite that local space around planet Earth is crowded. It looks like a horder planet if you saw it from far away as you listen to today a show, folks. I think it was in September. One of the best estimates we could find there are at least four thousand, five hundred and fifty human made satellites orbiting the plant that doesn't count the Black Night satellite, which other bag of badgers doesn't count the moon, and those are those are just the confirmed ones, right, those are the ones that we can go. You know, there was an official launch and they said they had that satellite on it. Man it you know, supposedly went up. What happens when there are unconfirmed satellites? So I wonder what what that number travels to. I was thinking about this been if you just in mad, if you close your eyes unless you're driving, don't do that. If you close your eyes and you imagine the point of view from one of these satellites that's orbiting the Earth and you just look down. If you may have seen spy satellite imagery before, or maybe on some Discovery Channel thing, you saw a few from space at that at that height, right, And if you imagine that singular point of view, and then you multiply that by four thousand, five hundred times, it's just weird to think about the number of potential p o V s there are from above. Not not that all of the satellites have even you know, uh technology that would allow them to see right, any kind of like visual technology, but still it's creepy to think about it is. And this goes to one of those questions that are you know, we're we're a no dumb questions show. Uh. And there there's one question that I think a lot of people have been afraid to ask, which is, with all these thousands of things in orbit around the same planet, how come they're not all crashing into each other continually? Right? It seems it seems like a bizarre string of coincidences. Uh. The The answer is kind of reassuring or terrifying. Space is just really really big at that scale. Satellites are infinitestimal in size. They don't have the power, uh too, they don't have a lot of them don't have the power to alter their orbit. That's a big thing. They may have the ability to alter their orientation, but they can't all of a sudden pick a different ring upon which they circle the Earth. And that's where you'd get into trouble. That's where it gets interesting. Yes, uh. And there are dead you could call them dead man made objects in space, like um old rocket bodies in low Earth orbit. But the thing is a lot of these have predictable orbits. So when you're launching a satellite. You can do the math and say, okay, here's how our satellite doesn't hit anything. Or you could say here's how our satellite can hit stuff. Or you could do what both the US and China have done and say, let's just shoot one from the ground. Hold my beer. I want to show those folks across the pond something cool, right, yeah, yeah. Every time you send something up there, you're threading a needle yum, and sometimes you want that needle to make impact. That's weird to think about, and you know, it's it's so costly. We're probably gonna get into this, but it's so costly to shoot something that's nice and heavy, you know, off of the surface of the Earth and into orbit. Um, it would be it would make a lot of sense to have something that's just flying around up there or falling around up there. I guess there is there any way to say it that could maneuver and take something out from above or from the side, right right, from any given angle, right or inclination. Even. Yeah, the thing is all right. If you are not a fan of astronomy, if you don't work in a related field, then you're probably not thinking of all these satellites too often. If you're like most people in fact, statistically, you live in some part of the world where the light pollution is such that you can't really see a bunch of things right. You see the Moon, you can see some particularly bright stars, you might see planes and stuff, but you're not getting a full panoramic view of the Milky Way. There's just too much other interference between your eyes and the stuff in space. But there are a lot of mysteries up there, and closer than you might think. Today's episode is about something that you and I have kept our eyes on for quite some time, not too long ago, very recently, in fact, a very an incredibly special extraordinary spacecraft successfully landed it's sixth mission. It returned from nine eight days in space more than two years uh with no pilot, no crew on the ship. It's an unmanned craft called the X thirty seven B. And as we speak, well learn about the history of this thing. As we speak, no one in the public sphere knows what it was doing up there, very event horizons, or how null pointed out. To understand more about it, I think we have to dive a little bit into the history. So here are the facts. It's an old idea. Oh yeah, the o tv V O t V Orbital Test Vehicle seven B. Yes, it dates all the way back to n Yeah. Somebody saw the matrix and they thought, oh, we need this. Um. That's when NASA went to a company that we talked about a lot on this show. They are, I mean, they're an awesome company when it comes to creating new powerful technology. Look company called Boeing, and NASA was like, hey, guys, check it out. We want to build something. We think you're the ones to do it. We want something called an a L t V. This is this is also known as an Approach and Landing test vehicle. What does that mean? Oh, it can approach the Earth after doing its thing, and it can land. It doesn't have to crash into the ocean or you know, via parachute or whatever. This thing's got wheels and probably wings. Uh. And Second, but most importantly for this episode today, they wanted to make a vehicle that was based on the concept of the Space Shuttle. You you you remember that one though, the old STS space Shuttle missions from back in the day. They wanted to build it just like that, but this one they want to make it smaller, and they want to make it unmanned. No humans necessary on board. Yeah, right, that's the trickiest part of successful space exploration. Humans were not built for that. Humans are not built for that environment and literally any shape form or fashion. So there, it's kind of like the the old solution to the Gordian Not right, let's let's solve the problem by eliminating the problem to begin with. Right, So, oh, I thought you were gonna say, just make to make the rope smaller. So that's I like that. No, No, that's a good solution. We should have been there. We should have been in that meeting. Uh, the Gordian not meeting. All right, Well, so what they said is we'll take out the trickiest element, the human elements on board, and we also originally they wanted this thing to be small enough to fit inside an orthodox space shuttle's cargo bay. So kind of like the Decepticons was that the one guy turns into a boom box and he's got a sidekick that turns into a cassette tape his chest. I can't remember their name, but it's like that. It's like a little baby shuttle and Paul just let us know what it's called. Yes, Mission Control came through with the facts it was sound wave and sound wave was a decepticon. I believe Paul has confirmed. Paul, Paul is your savor of the show here today, man Fall. But yeah, yeah, it is really cute. It was like a little, a little baby shuttle. Yeah, exactly. Now, as as we know, that didn't end up being the case, right, But we're talking about the development process. So NASA knew they wanted this thing, this O t V, to have a high degree of maneuverability, and they wanted it to be reusable. One of the big differences between what we think of when we think of space shuttles and what we think of when we think of satellites is that space shuttles can steer right, they can go places. Again, many satellites are just going to be in that predictable pattern that was set for them, and they can futs are alter a little bit, but you know where they're going to be. Now, I just want to give a concrete example of that exact thing, and it comes from STS one, which occurred in it was the last official Shuttle mission, and that NASA, I guess part took in it was um a four person crew, so four human beings that had to you know, they needed all the things to make humans right. And they sent that thing up. It went into orbit, stayed there for a minute, then went in arrived at the International Space Station, and then left back to orbit, then came back to Earth. So it's just that maneuverability you're talking about. It It doesn't just get launched directly to the place it has to go to. Yeah, and there there's so much impressive math that goes on behind the scenes. Those folks are true rock stars of any of those endeavors. And early on NASA when they're talking with bullying about this type with phantom works specifically, they wanted this craft, which they would call the X thirty seven two rendezvous with satellites to repair satellites in space. If you can make that happen reliably without risking human lives, then you're looking at a profound breakthrough, right, This could extend the lives of satellites too, theoretically an infinite uh an infinite horizon. Oh yeah, Like if you could just hot swap components as you know, upgrades are available, that's incredible. I mean, you can just think of the platforms you could create for satellites. Then that like has a CPU that could be you know, exchanged as as they get stronger or something like that. That's yeah, that makes new better sensors whenever the next gen comes out, refueling all kinds of really cool stuff. You could turn every satellite into a ship of thesis, right, but that's not really creepy. That's just a good idea that's kind of difficult to pull off. It is difficult to all. It becomes a little creepy when you think about all the stuff that is up there, and if you're NASA, you're only a part of you know, a certain percentage of the things floating around, that's right, yeah, yeah, And then you have to also start thinking of weird things like jurisdiction, are there salvage rights? You know what I mean? Like it gets weird. It does get very weird very quickly. But it also avoids the enormous expense you mentioned of actually getting stuff up off the ground out of the gravity. Well, and you know, it would be great for everybody's budget. Honestly, I didn't realize how much Space Shuttle mission costs on average. Did you see that I saw a couple of stories. I want to hear. What's what's the current scoop? The official the official sources at NASA and the companies that actually launched the shuttles. The average cost for a mission was around four hundred and fifty million dollars. So every time him one is launched up there and the US officially again officially launched a hundred and thirty five of those missions. So oh wow, that's a lot of money. It's a ton of money. You know, you're doing the crossword and pen at that point, don't make mistakes. We're gonna pause here for a quick word from our sponsors and we'll be right back with more about the X thirty seven B. And we've returned, so we know they came in with these pretty ambitious ideas. And as anyone working on a group project can attest, every concept goes through some degree of change from conception and brainstorming to actually making the thing. It doesn't matter if you're talking about art or literature, or music or making a bridge, you know what I mean. The guy who invented the little table that goes in the center of pizza boxes, right, it's a really cool invention. They probably went through several other iterations of the table, So I'm only making that point to note that the changes that were made shouldn't be looked at as failures. They should be looked at as evolution. Right. So the changes with the X thirty seven B that's the most famous of these craft. Uh, they took a weird turn though, because let's see you said, NASA goes to Boeing and Phantom Works. But by September of two thousand and four, the X thirty seven project is transferred away from NASA to DARPA, which will be familiar to any long time conspiracy realist Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Uncle Sam's mad science department. So it goes to DARPA and then boom, it gets classified. Yeah, and it stays classified when the Force gets their hands in the in the cosmic cookie jar and they run things for a while. And then, as you remember, if you are based in the US, uh, we recently came out with something called Space Force. Feel free to laugh, but that's the real name. And Space Force is not a nine nineties Saturday cartoon. It is a real branch of the military and as of it's been at the helm of the X thirty seven project. We know a little bit more about the timeline, like how we got from that initial meeting to the actual very creepy X thirty seven. Oh yes, it is a Steve Correll vehicle available on Netflix though Space Force. Yeah. Um, so we know that. DARPA. Once they got ahold of it, they were able to complete most of it, let's say, building the actual vehicle itself, the what do we call it an a l TV And that was in two thousand six. That's when they completed that part and they were able to actually send that thing up, you know, high into the sky. Um. They call it captive carry and like that's when you take it up and then you let it come back down. See if those wings and wheels work. And they also ransom free flight tests like can this thing actually be flown? Um? And those seem to work out back in two thousand six, and NASA's second goal, their orbital vehicle concept was never actually built the way they wanted it originally, but it did serve as the inspiration, the thematic predecessor for the space plane that today is called the X thirty seven B. Right now, there are two operational X thirty seven b s in the world. There might be more, uh in some stage of manufacture. There might be more hidden a wave somewhere. We really don't know. We know about the two that operated or are operating because you can see them in the sky. Uh. Darp it got to this by creating. First, they created the X thirty seven A. The X thirty seven A is a really badass looking glider. It doesn't have a propulsion system. And I think a lot of us here the phrase glider and immediately think of just a paper airplane. That's you know, that's one of the easiest gliders to make. But this is not that. It's like calling a tiger a house cat, honestly, because these are these are no fully awesome things, and glider technologies come a long way. But Matt, as you know, we talked about this in the notes. I'm at least much more excited about the thing that was launching the glider, which I did not know was a real thing. Oh yeah, this guy, I've seen this thing before. It looks like a glider itself to me, am I looking at the right thing you are. It's got the weird uh series of bubble looking like round window looking things. It's almost like, what's that kind of uh that kind of watercraft a catamaran, like a triple thing like on I think of water World, Folks think think of that guy's boat on water World. This is like an airborne version of that. And you can see where it can carry something down below it and then it would just take it up into the sky and then drop it off wherever you wanted to go. I want to clarify something just because I think maybe the way I said it was not the best. Um, we're talking about all of these institutions that were in charge of the X thirty seven program, let's say, the development of this tech um and how it's changed hands a whole bunch of times. You have to remember that the third party, no matter who in the U. S. Government is controlling it, the third party building it is always the phantom works, right, So like it's just who are the people in charge of the suits just changed? Right? Yeah? Exactly? The work continued, Uh the word continuing. The budget went from different organizations, right, That's kind of what changed. As testing and development continues, we said, the Air Force gets involved and they come out and they kind of do that bender from Futurama thing. They say, we're gonna build our own, our own creepy spacecraft. It's our own variant. It's gonna we're gonna call it the X thirty seven B because we're mad creative, and we're going to design this for long, long space tracks. And what they meant by long at that time was up to two hundred and seventy days in a row, which is still a long time. It's longer than most of us listening today have spent in space. So we can't knock it that hard. But we can also as will see, each successive mission spent more and more time in the ink, uh, and then the other things. Now it's classified, and now around two thousand six or so, people in the public sphere start asking more and more questions. Right, it's not just niche aviation nerds or space nerds, uh, it's mainstream journalists are are saying, hey, this is a lot of money, what's going on? And this eventually, this eventually compels the Secretary of the Air Force at the time, in two thousand six two UH to make a public statement that sounds really legit until you think about it. Oh yeah, The secretary said that this program, the X seven B program, would be focused on quote, risk reduction, experimentation and operational concept of evelopment for reusable space vehicle technologies in support of long term developmental space objectives. Oh good, so we've solved it. Yeah, sure, long term developmental space objectives perfect. Which could be anything that is that that is not happening this week? Yep, could be repair all the satellites. That could mean that could be uh, could be figure out how to launch telephone pole sized tungsten rods directly into enemy territory? Is that gonna be a rail dropper? Not a rod God Rod or Rod of God or whatever they call it. Rot of God sounds like the nickname is some guy who plays pool in Florida that was gonna be a wrestler or and or a adult film star. Yes, yeah, well it's still real work. Uh So what we're saying is this description from secretary sounds great until you realize just how vague every phrase in that sentence actually is. Risk reduction can be defined by any any number of cleverly spun uh definitions. Experimentation is a big word that leads a lot of things, and operational concept development for reusable space vehicle technologies. That's probably the most specific and the least sketchy, but it still is a big phrase that has a lot of stuff under the umbrella. So when you hear that and you unpack it and you start asking what does long term objective mean here and you realize this is a little bit of word wizardry, a little bit weasley, then you have to ask yourself what do we actually know about this thing? And to answer that, uh, we're gonna we're gonna pause for word from our sponsor, check with our pals and Illumination Global Unlimited, and see what we can say on air. Okay, we're back. That was an intense phone call, man. Yeah, yeah, they've been calling a lot. It's something with my warranty on my vehicle. I I don't get it right right. Yeah. You know, if only everyone could be as organized and tenacious as the good folks who want you to get a warranty for something, then the world would be a better place. Maybe a little more intense, but a better place. The thing is, we can blaze through part of this because you know, even if this ends up being a two parter, not a lot of it is going to be spent on what we know about the X thirty seven B as a craft, as a project, as a series of missions, because there's not a lot out there. They're serious about the classification, and there's not a Snowden esque or a Chelsea Manning esque figure. There's no Julian Assange leaking this stuff out yet. So we can give you like, um, we can give you basically the meta data of these missions. We can tell you how long each of the six missions were. We can tell you the again pretty vague statements by authorities about what happens there. Um. You can find a lot of the external specs for the craft online, like that's that's not a secret again because everybody can see it, which makes it different from some other secret space vehicles. Uh, but you're not going to find a lot about the content of the missions or the content of that payload. That's the that's sort of the holy grail of all the conspiracy surrounding this. Yeah, you can get some information that is super vague, like we're testing this one thing about fuels and and converting energy from the sun into energy we can beam back down to Earth. Yeah yeah, yeah, stuff like that. You can get information like that, and it's pretty cool, but mostly it's a black box in there, and it's a relatively tiny black box. Oh yeah, yeah, we should talk about that, like the Okay, so the whole thing picture of the X three seven in your mind. Take one of those sts craft and just shrink it down, make it all Kauai and cute ce in your head. Maybe some googly eyes maybe the best way. He starts to think about the Space Shuttle. So let's go back to the Atlantis Space Shuttle, last one that was ever flown or you know, launched. Its length is a little over a hundred and twenty two ft. What about this thing? Uh, this would be around twenty nine ft or a little under nine meters. Wow, that's quite a bit smaller. What about the wingspan? Space Shuttle is seventy eight feet roughly, right, and this one has a wingspan of a little less than fifteen feet, So smaller by every measure. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, we don't have to go through all the specs, but let me just give you this number. The weight at lift off for the Space Shuttle is around four million, five hundred and twenty one thousand pounds, and on the launch pad. The scrappy little X thirty seven B weighs in it eleven thousand pounds, very much a welter weight in the world of space races. Dude, there's your money right there. Yeah, you're saving so much already because you don't have to bring all the all the crap that humans need. You know, this is okay. So this is a comparison for the parents in the crowd. If you've ever been the guardian of a very young child and you have to you have to go through this series like this series of checklist whenever you go on a long trip, right, I know, you remember those days where it's like, is it like launching a ship? Almost? Do you have to go through and make sure like you got the snacks, You've got the definite stuff we need to stuff that you have no idea yet, you have no concept yet. But you'll get there. You're gonna I have a faith you're gonna get there one day. Don't put that on me, brou But but yeah, so, so you're confirming that comparison holds. We can also say, uh yeah, from any given perspective at this point, this is a good idea, right, because again we've removed the most onerous part of any space exploration, which is taking Terran's long for the ride. We also know that this, uh, these two x thirty seven's, if you put them all together, they've done six orbital missions. And six doesn't sound a lot until you realize this means they have spent a combined three thousand, seven hundred and seventy four point four days in space. That's more than ten years altogether. Wow, that's just incredible. You know the only thing I have had to compare to here is that Space Shuttle been and I think about STS one, the last one that was ever flown. It only lasted from July until July one. That's all like, seriously, twelve ish days up in space. And that's what you get for four hundred fifty million dollars. And that's still amazing. It's amazing. But if you're a large military, you know, let's say an institution or a combination all those things, or the Pentagon, and you're thinking, well, what's what's the bang for the buck thing we can get right here? Oh wait, wait, how long have these things been flying? How many years in space? Okay, yeah, we'll take that exactly. And and the X thirty seven. Look, it's neat to watch. You know, we're again, we're a couple of space nerves ourselves. So we can separate some of the problems for at least long enough to say, how cool is this? Like a space shuttle, your typical X thirty seven B will take off vertically and it is propelled by a rocket, so it leaves the ground just like an STS. Uh. It can maneuver on its own. That's one of the big winds over satellite. And eventually when it lands on Earth, it lands kind of like a conventional plane, much less graceful than a typical plane designed for flying in Earth's atmosphere. But it hits a runway, you know, it's got the wheels, and it lands and no one, no one is there. I mean, of course, there are hundreds of people on the ground who are freaking out and hoping they don't wreck the cool toy. But they're doing a great job and it's amazing. Uh. And now I think we set it up. Man, We got to talk about that that holy grail of this thing, the golden goose, that payload, that little payload area. Yeah, because on the shuttle you've got like most of the shuttle is a payload area that opens up, and your big equipment is inside there and you can want release it into orbit. That was really one of the main things that did. Uh. The same thing with this X thirty seven B. It's just much smaller in scale. It can open up and then you've got basically the equivalent of I don't know, I guess your standard pick up that's rolling around, your regular sized pickup truck. You can open up, you've got that and you can launch. You know, Satellites come into a lot of sizes. Some of them are very very small, so you could fit a number of them in there if you wanted to. Yeah, yeah, get it up there. Basically you're taking a pickup trucks worth of stuff between a hundred and fifty five miles above Earth. It's no small feet. Even though it does sound weird to talk about all this money, all this research and to tell you it is essentially to get about a truck's worth of stuff off the planet. But did it six times, you know, for years at a time. Pretty cool. We can also confirm two official purposes of the project. These are the only official purposes that have been stated. Developing reusable technology. Right, that's huge. Every private or public entity that is exploring space today is going harden the paint on making reusable stuff because early space launches were so incredibly wasteful. Uh. And then their second thing is we want to be able to operate our experiments and we want to return those experiments to Earth so that we're not just reliant on whatever remote surveillance or communication we have with the craft. I almost called it the entity, So I just rewatched event Horizon again. Every time we talk about this thing, I'm like straight to Event Horizon. Uh. Sometimes aliens, sometimes the Alien franchise. Yeah, what if it catches something up there in its cargo bay, just hanging out? Love it bis things up man. Maybe not everything is terrible. Maybe it's a cool. Maybe it's like a virus that does something good for the planet, like a real ferbi, like a real furbiby just so just so. Or maybe it's maybe it's something that is just shockingly irrelevant, right, something like lax a lox very irrelevant. What's it gonna do? Just tell people, tell people that everything's Oh god, can you imagine the the corporate funded oppositional media to that, Like he claims to speak from the for the trees, Then why is he from space? You know what I mean? And then like a photo of him, a photo of him at Cape Canaveral, all of a sudden goes to black and white and the music shifts down and then it does that grainy close up. Can you imagine the Lorax with like TMZ after him? Oh god? The Lorax has never publicly denied allegations that he's taken non consensual pictures of of cheet defeat or something. No, no, no, we're keeping it in, keeping it in. But yeah, yeah, So that's the thing that kind of speculation, as much fun as we're having with it, only continues because we don't know what's in the space truck. Basically, uh, the Air Force describes these things. So you set this up so perfectly when you said, you know, for every mission, you can typically find a vague description what they would call a high level description of what they're doing and from. For them, it's always testing stuff. Let's test flight systems, let's let's see how well our insulation and thermal protection works. Things like that. You know, the stuff you would expect and the stuff that is you know scientifically fascinating, but narrative wise, it's a turn off for a lot of people who think there's something more to the story. Well, do you want to talk about what we I don't know what people think might be happening up there? Oh? Man, absolutely, because that's the rest of this episode that might be a series. What we know is dwarfed by what we don't know here, and that goes for everybody who's not read on to some aspect of this classified project. The vast majority of the project's activities are secret. For several years, uh not knowle Mission Control doc Holiday and I and and and those of us listening at home have been asking the same questions, and tons of journalists have been asking these questions. Scientists, engineers, the leaders of other countries are freaking out about this space truck, and they're saying, what the hell is that thing actually doing out there in the ink? Rightly, so, it's it's a very reasonable question. But here's where it gets crazy. What do you think should we start with? Uh? The maybe one of the original reasons satellites were so enticing to governments across the planet because you can spy with them. Yes, a spy in this guy. We mentioned this in earlier episode as well as a recent Strange News segment. A lot of the speculation around this argues that X thirty seven B is kind of is definitely a testing ground for reusable but it's more importantly a testing ground for new era of surveillance and spy tech. Not the cool toys from like the eighties or nineties, but actual spy tech. Better sensors, right, better cameras, writ better telemetry and and SIG and interception, that kind of stuff. Well, yeah, think about it. If you've got new tech that you want to send up there, but you you know, you've got a budget, a fairly hefty budget, but it's not insane, and you want to make maybe a smaller version of the big thing you want to create, or you want to test out your tiny optics thing, whatever it is, whatever tech you've got, send it up on one of these guys, and you can you can have a full year long test or longer if you want to see how well your new stuff does when it's just orbiting around for a while. That's that could be invaluable. Yeah, that's the thing. It's the most mysterious truck badge in the galaxy right in the universe right now. Uh. And I know maybe I'm leaning a little too hard into the idea of a truck bed, but it really is about that size. And that means that outside of a few a few confirmed experiments like the idea of converting solar energy or seeing how seeds grow right in space, uh, we can't say much else. We can say we know that there are also certain there are no humans in that in that cargo bay. Like imagine spending two years in the back of a pickup truck. Yeah, that's a lot of just like just a line of soil and green that goes in to like in one end and then recycles. I don't know how that would work. I don't think it's a space coffin. Yeah, but if so, when you're thinking about this raft and spy technology, you have to imagine it could be spying on the ground, right, It could also be spying on the other things that are orbiting around up there. So imagine if you parked this thing within the vicinity of another satellite that let's say a rival country owns and operates, they would probably see the X thirty seven B saddle up next to it. And be like, did do you just hanging out around oman? Everything's fine, We're cool. They would notice. But again, it how I guess you could prove somehow, Uh if you did some kind of forensics, like network forensics on the machine itself that's in the sky. I just don't know how you'd be able to prove it that easily. If you if the X thirty seven B was like straying up next to one of these things and hacking into it, let's say, yeah, you would. You the burden of proof would be higher, but it would be enough for folks who felt like they were being attacked or spied upon to react swiftly. You know what you would do. This is what you would do, Ben, It's brilliant. If you really wanted to do that action, you would. You'd take the original concept of putting the X thirty seven B inside the big shuttle. It would just be a nesting doll situation where now you've got the smaller X thirty seven B, but inside it's cargo bay is an even tinier version of it, and you can then have the X thirty seven B, you know, be in an operational location at all times and the little one could leave and go do its spying wherever you wanted it to do, and you could always say, as the government, no, the X thirty seven B was wa over here above the UK. Uh. Yeah, divide and conquer. I see what you're saying. Yeah, And then you would then it would just be down to the diplomats in the check exactly, the great diplomats, the great pr firms of geopolitics. But I mean, that's honestly, that's not a bad idea. And it sounds like maybe we're thinking a little bit out of the box, ro out of the truck bed here, But we assure you we're just spitballing, and our conversations are nowhere near as strange as the real conversations that have happened with billions of dollars on the table and just some gibrony taking a sharpie on the white board and it basically drawing a space cartoon and saying what if we tried this? And people are seriously considering it. I mean, do check out, folks, Please do check out our episodes on just all the Paul beat me here, Please all the weird that the US government specifically has poured millions of dollars into right, they saw a hat and they were like, maybe it could spy on folks. I don't know. Did I want to be? I want to be the weird guy that strolls into skunk works or phantom works or whatever they call it these days. At Bowing, it's just like, guys, but what if you put an even smaller one in it, a smaller cat. This man is a genius, I know. I want. That's what we want to be. We want to be the idea guys for DARPA, the idea guys in those in those rooms with the high muckety MUCKs. I want to be able to to uh make unreasonable requests that I don't necessarily have to back up because it's all R and D. I want to walk in and be like, uh, I need four thousand toes by Thursday, and I want the only question to be like, well, what kind of toes? Human toes or any toes. I don't have time to break this down for you, national Security, just say like it's like tagging base. Just say national security and run away and wait for the toes. So many pictures in my head about toes right now, just like yeah, sorry, now with the with the cheetah feet thing. That's too much. That's a no, no Elbows. It doesn't matter. You could go ahead and say I need every model T that's still runs, and I need it by Friday, and I don't have time for your insipid questions. You're gonna be the best almost evil billionaire, you know, right on the edge. Just like I'm not sure what he's doing with all those bottle t s. He's doing something. Well. I think I think we would need to move as a unit, because then we can have each other's backs. You asked for something crazy, and then they'll be like, to Ben, green light this, and then you'll say absolutely. And I'll do the same thing when they say to Matt, green light this, and I'll say absolutely. He texted me earlier, he was like, we need all the dirigibles. Oh John Hodge would be so upset. Oh yeah, no, we gotta keep one for the Hodge uh, which is barely is Dick Nave. But look, folks, this is going to have to be a two part episode for us. We have only scratched the surface. We did need to give you the history and the development as far as is known in the public sphere. Uh, And we gave you really an overview of the publicly available knowledge about X thirty seven B. But we only got to one of the theories, and it's by far the most tame theory. So please tune in for our next episode where we returned to space Ghost Part two, the X thirty seven B. I don't know why I called it space ghost. It kind of is, well, sort of, it's on a spiritual journey. You know, spiritual journeys last for a while, sometimes year, sometimes a lifetime. Maybe the X thirty seven B is just on a real long spiritual journey and maybe you know, now that I think about it, there is a great point map because, uh, could you say that an object or an entity remotely controlled or steered is possessed? Like, what's the difference there other than the religious connotations? Whoa man, I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to ask whatever is animating this avatar. We'll see what they come back with. And in the meantime, we want to hear your thoughts. Are you or have you ever been affiliated with the X thirty seven B with Boeing and Phantom Works or something like it, like Lackeys skunk works. What can you tell us about it, you know, without violating your n d A S or your personal safety. Uh, just a peek behind our proverbial curtain here, folks. We got a lot of responses on our series for security clearances and federal classification. We we hit a nerve at a good way. We want to thank everybody who took the time to write in. We also, uh, we also just have to say, be surprised by how many people end up touching projects like these just because of the magnitude. So let us know. We try to be easy to find online Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. If you don't like those, because you listen to our episodes on big data and surveillance, we got your back. There are a couple other ways to contact us. Oh yes, there are so many. The first one is to contact us fourth dimensionally through the book Holidays are here. It is time you should get one. Get a couple, alright, some for your for your friends and family. Spread the stuff. They don't want you to know. Every everybody will like it. Spread it like a lower X virus, you know, especially if you like this episode on the kind of government you know, projects and things like that. That's really what the book focuses on. So if you like this episode, definitely check the book in audiobook out. Oh yeah, yeah, the audio book slaps as well. Or at least we really enjoyed that experience. Uh. You can also if this isn't a bridge too far, you can also always just drop this line. If you happen to be in Atlanta, in our hometown haunt. Uh and who knows we might be able to like grab coffee or something like that. I don't know, Matt, what do you think that too far? I think too much of a door? I think let's do it. Ben. Who's your friend? You have a friend who came to the book event who makes custom t shirts and hats and things like that. Oh, Harold, Yeah, yeah, he's awesome. He made a post with a I think it was a design for the local the other day where it said underneath the design that was created, it said, at least we never served seltzer seltzer No, I like a seltzer, an alcoholic seltzer or whatever. Right. I can't even remember how many hard seltzers there are, but I assume there are a lot. Uh, maybe I don't know, or they're more satellites in the sky or more Seltzer brands, probably still more satellites. Surely, surely you can't do the idea of Seltzer more than four thousand times. Well okay, well, if you work in the Seltzer biz uh, and you get you want to go off record, why not? Why not give us a call? Uh Matt, you especially uh me, maybe ten percent, But that does the work listening to these phone calls. We get these amazing messages. We text each other about them. And the only uh pro tip that I would give before we tell you our phone number is that be careful because sometimes the abyss calls back. Yeah, every once in a while, I spoke to some wonderful people over the Thanksgiving break. There lots and lots of people, specifically one person who's having I think right around now when this episode comes out, having an anniverse sory. So congratulations, uh to you, sir and too. I won't say your name, I won't say any of their names. Congratulations and happy anniversary. Happy anniversary to you and to everyone celebrating an anniversary in fact, but to you especially, We're not going to say your name to preserve your anonymity. Well, we know you're listening. Have a good one. Yes, you can call one three st d w y t K three minutes. It's a voicemail. Let us know if we can use your name and message on the air. If you don't like voicemails and phones, why not instead send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production of I heart Radio. 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