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SpaceX's Successful Launch Was Apparently Not So Successful · Made of Stars

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Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
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space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
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phenomenon the scientific method, and expand the vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism
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and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk, go ahead. When made
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of stars, made of Stars sis. You could be from High Hollywood,
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New Mexico, Mars. Where are stars? We are made of stars?
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Joined bum a good friend, Doctor Sean cruising from Columba State University's Coca Cola
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Space Science Center. I'm Wes, Carol Mornan Sean, Good morning West.
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Good to be here today, and we start this week looking back at a
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couple of stories from last week. We'll begin talking about SpaceX because SpaceX had
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this amazing launch. They celebrated, it was a victory, and then we
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know that the rocket blew up in the air. The self destruct mechanism had
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to go off because it was starting to go astray, it was starting to
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have some problems. That's what it's there for, that's what the purpose is.
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But they celebrated because this gigantic rocket, the biggest ever, actually got
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off the launchpad into the sky, and we talked about all the damage it
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did to the launch pad. But that was on the day of. Now
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we're learning that the launch had maybe some damage to a lot of stuff near
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by. Yeah, so we, as you say, we celebrated with SpaceX
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on the day of the launch because we did our podcast almost immediately after the
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launch. And even though it didn't quite make its orbital goals, we know
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that SpaceX has this kind of iterative method to their engineering process where they know
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they're not afraid to blow a few things up and just try things again and
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again and again, and just make sure that they understand why things are exploding,
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you know, on the launch pad or in the air or wherever,
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and they fix the problems and they move on and they and they do develop
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things rather quickly under that model. Okay, So on the day of,
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we were kind of saying, well, all right, I see why SpaceX
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is more or less giving itself high fives today because they did just get this
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thing to fly. All the systems seem to more or less be working.
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Okay, And yeah, it didn't quite have a successful launch in terms of
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going to an orbital trajectory, but yet it flew. All right, Well
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that was then, this is now a week later, and now what's not
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what's coming out of the news is that, Yeah, so about that launch
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pad. When you launch a rocket that has twice the thrust of the mighty
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Saturn five rockets which sent Apollo astronauts to the Moon, you can't just use
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any ordinary, everyday launch pad, as if there is such a thing as
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every day ordinary launchpad. You know, just a launchpad you got laying around
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the house. I've been where in the backyard. I'm fully aware of my
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own absurdity as I'm saying this, this phrase, your average ordinary everyday launch
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pad that everyone has. You can't just use one of those because this thing's
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too big. Well, all right, so they have launch vehicles from that
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same launch pad in Bokachika, Texas. But not this vehicle, not this
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many engines, not this much energy and thrust and all of those things that
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we used to describe rockets. So anyway, when you're getting ready to launch
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that kind of a rocket, you have to make some launchpad modifications. Generally,
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if you use NASAs like an example, I mean, they've launched some
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big rockets. You might want to go check out those launch pads down at
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Kennedy Space Center, and you and I did actually mention this on the podcast
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last week, that you know, maybe they should have taken some design tips
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from their friends at NASA who put in things like, oh, flame trenches
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and water suppression systems, not to keep things cool, but to help absorb
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the sound shock which can which from rockets like that can do an immense amount
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of damage. Well, the Boca Chica, Texas launchpads of SpaceX don't have
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either of those features. They don't have a giant trench that kind of funnels
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the rocket exhaust out away from the launchpad, and they don't have the water
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suppression systems, which are not again not there to keep the launch pad from
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getting hot, as many people have a misconception, they're there to break up
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the acoustic waves so you don't shatter concrete. Well guess what happened. Concrete
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shattered and rocket exhaust blew that shattered concrete for thousands of feet away from the
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launch pad. Now that far away from the launchpad, it's moving out beyond
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the borders of the Boca Chica Spaceport for SpaceX and moving off onto the beaches
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and out into the nature areas and perhaps even into some of the nearby towns
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windows shattered dust settled on homes and schools. Don't really know what was inside
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that dust. Some people are claiming, some people being maybe the Sierra Club,
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claiming that hazardous materials might be included within that dust. The US Fish
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and Wildlife Service have noted in their measurements damage to sensitive habitats for sea turtles
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and for various birds that are endangered. All of these things we didn't really
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know the last podcast we did. But while they blew that launch pad up
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big time, they actually had to close the access road to both the launchpad
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and to the city of Boca Chica due to what was called launch pad safety
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concerns. Translate that to giant chunks of metal and concrete laying on the roadway.
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So yeah, those kinds of things happened, and so anyway, it
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was a bit of a mess. So a few things, And it's interesting
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because we did focus on the launchpad. We talked a lot about the trenches
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in the water. But one of the things that we bragged on about this
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whole thing was the fact that, unlike some countries China, they had a
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plan in place for if the rocket went astray so that it did not cause
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damage to anyone nearby. Now, this is obviously a different type of damage
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than what would have happened had the rocket, you know, this really really
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enormous rocket gone astray and been allowed to crash somewhere. But still it is
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interesting that they are having this sort of blowback, if you will, because
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obviously, if you start, you know, damaging property and things nearby.
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And I think it is a fair question like what is in this dust,
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what is in the air from this whole process. So obviously, now the
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FAA has gotten involved, I guess the question is would they have been better
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off doing this launch at Kennedy? I mean, it's an interesting question.
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The first thing is, all in all seriousness, the technical aspects are,
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they don't have a launch pad that's equipped to take this rocket at Kennedy.
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Obviously they could build that, right So they have to build the infrastructure,
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They have to build a tower, they have to build the launch control systems,
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all those kinds of things. They have all that infrastructure in Boca Chica.
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They don't have it at Kennedy. But one could argue, well,
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maybe they should have went ahead and just put it down there. Yeah.
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Well, and I mean, just to be technical, they didn't have a
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launch pad that could handle this at Boca Chica either. Now they know that,
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Yes, they're aware of that. So I guess the question becomes,
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if this is going to become obviously a means of taking off from Earth in
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the future, they obviously have to rethink how they do launch pads. Do
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you think that there's a possibility they're gonna have to rethink location of the launch
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pad, I guess is what my question is, because obviously the people who
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live nearby will have a new set of concerns about something taking off from there.
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This big and I don't know. I'm just trying to put myself in
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a position. If I owned a beach house there, for example, and
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it was covered and you know, I found a piece of launch pad tile
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in the pool or something right as the family was all arriving for vacation,
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I would probably at some point go no, no, that I really want
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this thing launching so close to my beach house in the future. And I
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assume that they have some voice in all of this. Yeah, so okay,
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so there's a lot to unwrap there, right, So Let's let's begin
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unpacking that all of that talk by saying this, the day before this launch,
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Elon Musk had a somewhat prophetic quote which was his success criteria for the
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Starship test flight, which was, quote, don't blow up the launch pad
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unquote. That would be Wednesday, April nineteenth, one day prior to launch.
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And as we now know, exactly what happened, was he blow up
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the launch pad? Okay, so maybe maybe he kind of realized that this
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was a I mean, we all thought it was just like, oh ha
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ha, that's funny. No, he might have really been thinking through the
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potential ramifications of all this. Right. A second thing to unpack is this,
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as West and I are recording this podcast this morning, this is breaking
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news. These stories are not even twenty four hours old yet, at least
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in the space media. So I'm I'm quoting from stories from space dot com
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and SpaceNews dot com that are less twenty four hours old, So we don't
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know everything. We're just getting a first look to say, oh, yeah,
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this is a bigger deal than what we maybe joked about last week.
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We thought some cars in the parking lot might have had a broken rearview mirror
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or something. No, no, no, this actually is far more extensive.
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So, again to quote space dot com, they're reporting that the FAA
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is now launching an investigation quote after raining potentially hazardous debris on homes and beaches
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unquote. So that was as part of the statement from the Federal Aviation Administration
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as to why they're launching an investigation. So raining potentially hazardous debris on homes
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and beaches sounds bad, right, And then so more quotes from from the
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government are saying that the explosion, the explosive launch spread plumes. This is
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a quote quote spread plumes of potentially hazardous debris over homes and the habitats of
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endangered animals. So there's that the FAA will oversee this mishap investigation of the
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Starship Super Heavy test mission, says FAA officials. So again we're saying this
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is less than a day, so we don't know, right, Like Elon
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was talking about, Ah, we can rebuild this launchpad in a month or
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maybe two, and we'll launch this thing again. But now all of those
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ramifications have come out, all right, from a different story, from a
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different source. This is SpaceNews Dot com again less than twenty four hours old.
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Sometime yesterday late afternoon story came out on SpaceNews dot com that quotes the
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US Fish and Wildlife Service quote they have documented impacts from the April twentieth Starship
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Integrated test flight that lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas to the neighboring Lower
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Rio Grand Valley National Wildlife Refuge. That's not good, right again, documented
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impacts to the National Wildlife Refuge in the Lower Rio Grand Valley. So once
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you begin to engage that stuff, it's just not a matter of how quickly
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you can, you know, hand out some tens and twenties to the local
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residents and clean up your own launch pad. No, no, no,
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Now we're talking about federal lawsuits and environmental damage and not to mention all the
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personal lawsuits that are now likely going to becoming. Once again, to quote
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the SpaceNews dot com story, it says this, the biggest impact from debris
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from the launchpad was well, I'm sorry, let me back up, I
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mean, let me not get this wrong. Let me back up and say
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this again. From SpaceNews dot com. Ust and debris from the late from
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the test reportedly rained down on residents in ports Isabel, Texas. Port Isabel
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is a town roughly six miles from the launchpad. Wow right again, SpaceNews
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dot com. Port Isabel residents reported broken windows in their businesses and ash like
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particles covering their homes and schools. The biggest impact from debris from the launchpad,
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damaged by the thrust of the super heavy booster. Impacts from the launch
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include numerous large concrete chunks, stainless steel sheets, metal, and other objects
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hurled thousands of feet away. That according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
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So once again, the damage far in scope in terms of geography,
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far beyond the boundaries of the spaceport there in Boca Chica, moving out into
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the neighborhoods and wildlife areas. And we just simply don't know west right now,
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how many you know, how many one call? That's all? I
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mean, you know how many lawyers are going to get engaged? Now?
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Yeah, the strong arm of the law or whatever, right, we got
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to have some you know, some liability coverage. There are going to be
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lawsuits and the other complication that comes from this. You know, you start
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talking about the mission that Elon Musk is kind of laid out as far as
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wanting to go to Mars. There's obviously talk about colonizing Mars, and there
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have been environmental people that are concerned about that. They're concerned about, you
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know, what kind of an impact we could have there. So giving them
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an opportunity to try to shut this down before it really gets off the ground
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certainly would be another interesting component of this. Now they've got to obviously rebuild,
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a rethink, and rebuild the launch pad. So it's interesting now that
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I suppose whenever they do get around to another launch, they're actually testing the
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rocket and the launch pad, which is interesting, right, Yeah, I
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mean, yes, it is interesting. And you know, some of these
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things that Elon tweets, I mean it's ironic maybe that Elon might be in
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trollable because of tweets. Then we can go, we can we could do
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a whole podcast just on that suthing alone. Let's not do that one here,
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so but but okay, but but think about this. Sometimes legal culpability
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has to do with what you knew ahead of time. And so the day
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before he issued this statement on Twitter saying don't blow up the launch pad back
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in October of twenty twenty, a different tweet from Elon Musk said, quote,
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aspiring to have no flame diverter in Boca, but this could turn out
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to be a mistake unquote. So years ahead of this launch, when they
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knew they were building this massive rocket, they already were commenting publicly that it
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might be a mistake not have a flame diverter or what we called a flame
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trench. And then you know, you could throw it on top of that,
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you know, possibly a sound suppression system, although that wasn't clearly stated,
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but sometimes you know, these liability suits or things like that will will
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hinge on what was known ahead of time. And gosh, that's pretty damaging.
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Right, that's a pretty damaging couple of quotes right there. Yeah,
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it very well, It very well could be. And it's fascinating to me
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how far ahead these people are thinking. I mean, you know, when
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we were at Kennedy and watching them, you know, rebuilding launch sites and
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things, just taking in how long all of that process takes, for everything
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that they're doing, and understanding why everything takes so long, and just knowing
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how far ahead I mean, he was possibly talking about this launchpad, this
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launch you know, that's what a year and a half ago, two and
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a half years ago, I guess it's twenty twenty October. So yeah,
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uh, now I understand a little bit more about why. After the launch,
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the headline I saw said, uh, you know, Elon loses,
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however, many billions of dollars in value of his companies, And I thought,
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well, they had a successful launch, what are they They obviously knew
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more about that than we did. Then. Yeah, and I'm not a
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legal expert, that's not what I do. Yeah, I'm barely an expert
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in my own expertise field, which is a very narrow sliver of astrophysics.
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So I'm just a commenter. But my comment is that seems bad, right,
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And so you we have often compared the pace at which SpaceX has been
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able to progress, and you know, we might have we might have tossed
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a you know, a sarcastic elbow or two in the direction of the more
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traditional space companies, and particularly at NASA, going while you, guys,
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how come you're not landing vertical rockets? How come you're not well? Okay.
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So the other side of that worry, though, is at some point
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it's not about overcoming technical barriers. It can become about overcoming legal barriers or
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governmental barriers, and that could be what is going to bog down this,
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at least this mission of SpaceX for quite some time now. In my amateur
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eyes, is that now they have at least a couple of different avenues of
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pursuit through two different government entities, the Federal Aviation Administration and then you know,
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environmental. It could be EPA, or it could be US Fish and
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Wildlife Service, but some kind of an environmental agency of the US government.
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Not to mention all of the private potential suits that may come out of this,
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that could just really slow them down for a very long time. They
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may have all the technical aspects of this figured out fixed, ready to go
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long before they're able to launch again from Boca Chie because of all of this
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stuff. So so yeah, well we'll keep reporting on this. You know
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I've tuned into the podcast. Well we'll talk about this again. It's an
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interesting situation in some ways, in my eyes, is an unfortunate situation because
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it seems avoidable based on these statements. And you know, we we like
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SpaceX when we're not fanboys, but we like them. We like to see
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what they've done. They've done some amazing things technically, but this seems to
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be a pretty sizeable mistake. Last week, we were recording at about the
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same time that a very unique and rare type of eclipse was taking place,
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and that's our other story that we can update now because pretty cool images came
20:45
from that rare eclipse. Yeah. I think a relatively small group of people
20:52
even got to see this eclipse last week because it was only over some very
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remote islands and pieces of Australia that you had to really travel to some crazy
21:04
destination to get to to be able to see it. And there just aren't
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that many people in the world that probably were able to get to it because
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most of this happened out over the ocean, all right. So this eclipse
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last week was a hybrid eclipse. It was mostly what we call an annular
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eclipse, where the moon's just a little too far away from the Earth to
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be able to perfectly cover up the Sun like it does in a total eclipse,
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and so you see this ring of fire around the outside is how it's
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been described. That's an annular eclipse. But then in the middle of these
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eclipse, it's like the moon crossed that threshold for just a very short period
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of time, and there was about one minute of actual totality. So this
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has to do with the geometry of the Earth Moon orbits and the Earth Sun
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orbits, and they all lined up in just a weird way where it was
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mostly an annular eclipse but for one minute entered totality, and some folks from
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the physics from the Institute of Physics and Old Pava got right in the line
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of totality and took some amazing pictures which are today, which is April twenty
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seven, because you're gonna need to know for the future if you want to
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go backwards. This is April twenty seventh. On spaceweather dot com. These
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images are featured, and spaceweather dot com has a great archive, so if
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you're listening later, just go to their archive. You can go back to
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April twenty seventh and see this beautiful picture of this eclipse that is actually in
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totality. I would try to say these guys names, but I'm sure I'm
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gonna just mess them up, so I'll give it a world anyway. So
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Peter Horleck, Joseph Kujal Milan Lavitch. We're on Pebble Beach, Australia on
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April twentieth, saw the Moon pass in front of the Hybrid Eclipse SOUN and
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took pictures right totality during the total phase. But that's not well, that
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is an interesting part. That is an interesting part. But the most interesting
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part is when they took these pictures what the corona around the Sun looked like.
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Because I was part of the twenty seventeen eclipse expedition over the United States
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and we photographed the Sun's corona on that very spectacular event, still really cool,
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but the Sun's corona looked nothing like what it does now. This thing
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looks like an absolute starfish and it's very highly enhanced in terms of its size.
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It's also very spiky, and the Moon perfectly blocking out the photosphere of
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the Sun allows us to see this really rare event. The corona of the
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Sun, which is the outer layer. It's very very bright, but it's
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also very bright in X rays, which thankfully don't come through our atmosphere,
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so we're not really seeing this in X rays. We're seeing it invisible light.
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But it is an absolutely lovely sight to see the super spikey Corona.
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Now, why is it so weird and spikey like that. It's because of
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a story we did just a couple of weeks ago talking about how total I'm
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sorry, how the solar maximum is coming a little bit early during the solar
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cycle. The Sun is very near solar max, which is its period of
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maximum activity in an eleven year cycle. That's happening right at the same time
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we got to see this eclipse, and that makes that super spiky starfish looking
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Corona so evident in these images on spaceweather dot com. Just as a side
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note, as someone who reads names professionally a couple of times a year as
24:41
the official name reader at graduation at Columbus State University, I will tell you
24:47
this. I can't speak for all of the names that you said, but
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I can guarantee you got one at least right It is Pebble Beach, Australia.
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Coming up. After a quick break, we're going to talk about a
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Japanese company moon Lander. A lot of high hopes for this thing and then
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it just vanished. We'll get into that right after this. So you're excited.
25:30
You've got your lunar Lander, you launch it. You're so hyped about
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this thing is gonna go, It's gonna do its thing. You're this private
25:37
company in Japan and this is a first for you, and you launch it
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and it's just about to get to the surface, and then I don't know
25:47
where to go. So I will say this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna
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I'm gonna talk about this as a news story, and then I'm gonna talk
25:55
about this as an inside baseball story. I'll try to keep that part short
25:57
and entertaining, but let's talk about it as a news story. First,
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there's a company called ice Space, which is a Japanese startup. They built
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a lunar lander called the Hakuto R. How did I do on that name?
26:11
That is that? All right? Not a professional name? Readerble Beach
26:15
story, pebble Beach, Well done, peble Beach. So Hakuto R.
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Anyway, So they had this beautiful flight to the Moon. It entered moon
26:26
or lunar orbit just right. The lander was executing everything it needed to do
26:33
to softly touch down on the lunar surface. It was feet away from becoming
26:40
a successful landing. And then all of a sudden silence, Yes, oh
26:48
what happened to our lander? So Ice Icepace CEO uh Ta Kashi Hakamata,
26:56
how did I do on that? Well done? That's that's Pashkamata. He's
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gonna call me up and go No, man, stop saying my name.
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Takashi Hakamata, the CEO of Icepace, have this quote. We have to
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assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface. So ground
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controllers at the Hakudo Our Mission control center in Tokyo are still trying to re
27:18
establish contact just in case the thing did happen to come down and land safely.
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But again another quote from Hakamada says, we are very proud of the
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fact that we have achieved many things during this mission. One we will keep
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going and never quit the lunar quest. So that kind of sounds like,
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I mean, they're accepting the loss, is what it sounds like to me.
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And it's presumed that the Hakudo Our mission has failed literally feet from the
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surface of the Moon. Now there is an unofficial report out there saying that
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the likely cause is that it ran out of fuel. Oh man, are
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you telling me you only put three quarters of a tank in? We needed
28:06
the full tank go all the way up to f don't stop at the three
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quarters, you're already at the gas station. Go ahead and fill it all
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the way up, just top it up, just go ahead. This isn't
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a time to go Yeah, give me a seven dollars worth on pump six,
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like, this isn't the time. It's raining outside and your sleeves getting
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wet. But go ahead and fill it all the way up to f Anyway,
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Yes, it looks like apparently either some kind of a software glitch caused
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them to burn through the fuel a little more quickly than they anticipated, or
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they simply just underestimated what kind of fuel it would take. But it looks
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as though the Hakudo our mission from Icepace, the Japanese Moonlander is lost.
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A very sad day, and that that occurred on Tuesday of this week,
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the twenty fifth of April. They were so close. I mean, they're
29:02
the Titans one yard away from winning the Super Bowl right exactly exactly now.
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Now I have to tell you the quick inside baseball story, which is this.
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I have a very good friend that I worked with for twenty six years
29:14
here at Coca Cola Space Science Center. His name is Scott Norman. He's
29:17
our space historian in twenty nineteen, Scott Norman and I from his office watched
29:22
two other companies, one from Israel and one from India, attempt to land
29:27
landers on the surface of the Moon. And as Scott and I were watching
29:32
these together, a scenario played out, and the scenario was that everything was
29:37
going perfectly, it was coming down to the final stages, and they lost
29:41
contact feet from the surface and those vehicles slammed into the Moon. So the
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second time it happened, Scott and I decided we are never watching a lunar
29:53
landing together again, just because it felt like bad juju, because it was
29:59
so similar. And we watched the second when we were like, didn't we
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just see this? You know, We're watching the Port Indian Mission Control Center
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and the Prime Minister of India is there in the room, and everything's coming
30:10
down and it just augurs into the surface of the Moon. And we said,
30:14
okay, we can never watch a launch together because the Israeli one had
30:18
already done that, And so we did not watch this launch together. Out
30:22
of superstition. Scott watched it from his own office. I was somewhere else.
30:26
I just wasn't even I was waiting for Scott just to tell me what
30:30
happened and still the same result. So officially on this show, on our
30:34
podcast, I am blaming Scott Norman of the Coke Cool Space Science Center for
30:40
these three consecutive miss landings on the surface of the Moon. Israel, India,
30:45
and now Japan can all blame Scott Norman and his bad juju for this
30:52
apparent string of moon landing failures. Let's let's blame Scott and not the age
30:56
old adage that space are hard. Let's just let's just let's just blame Scott.
31:03
That's more fun. I mean, it is. It is rocket science,
31:06
but for some reason it's just more satisfying for me personally to blame Scott.
31:08
Just hang it on him. That's right. I'm gonna do that.
31:11
One last story this week, Tess turning five. That's a milestone at five
31:18
years of service for tests. We just talked about it. Space are hard,
31:22
right, I mean, it's a difficult environment to work in and the
31:26
test spacecraft has been doing it for five years successfully, just celebrating its fifth
31:32
anniversary. Tests. In case you don't know, is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey
31:37
satellite. It's looking for other worlds. It's the finder of worlds around other
31:42
stars, ladies and gentlemen, and the first one of those satellites to be
31:45
tremendously successful at that was the Kepler spacecraft. Tests is the follow up,
31:52
much more sensitive, much more accurate planet Finder. The follow up the sequel
31:57
as it worked to Kepler, and has done an amazing job in its five
32:01
years since April of twenty eighteen. April eighteenth, to be exact, was
32:07
the launch date. So TEST has spent these five years looking for exoplanets around
32:10
other stars. Here are some of the successes. First of all, Tests
32:15
has managed to map out searching for these transiting exoplanets. By the way,
32:22
a transiting exoplanet is when where we're lined up just right where that other planet
32:25
orbiting another star moves directly in front of the face of the star and blocks
32:30
the light out from coming to Earth. So that has to be a very
32:32
critical alignment. So Test has searched ninety three percent of the entire sky and
32:39
has mapped out over that time all of the stars in that ninety three percent
32:45
of the sky that are in this perfect alignment at least down to its sensitivity
32:51
levels, and has found in that time sixty four hundred candidates for exoplanets.
33:00
Then on top of that, it's gone back and confirmed out of the sixty
33:06
four hundred a subset of three hundred and thirty of those planets confirmed. Sounds
33:10
like a bit like MythBusters confirmed. So exoplanets confirmed, three hundred and thirty
33:16
of them, ladies and gentlemen. So this is already an astounding accomplishment by
33:22
this spacecraft. But it's still going. Just because it's turn five does not
33:25
mean it's quitting. They're trying to map out the rest of that seven percent
33:29
of the sky and then maybe go back and look at some of those other
33:31
areas in more detail. All right, Well, among the three hundred and
33:35
thirty planets that it confirmed were two very very interesting planets around one star.
33:42
That star is Ti seven hundred, and around that star they confirmed Ti seven
33:49
hundred D like Dason dog and t Oi seven hundred E like e is an
33:57
Ingelbert humperdink. So those two planets identified by tests and then confirmed later by
34:05
tests are orbiting their parents star in the Goldilocks zone, and both of those
34:14
planets happen to be approximately Earth sized. Now that's the one thing that Kepler
34:20
couldn't do very well because of sensitivity issues. Kepler found a lot of big
34:23
planets orbiting really close to stars, but Tests has the capability of finding much
34:29
smaller exoplanets orbiting further away from their parents stars in the Goldilocks zone, which
34:35
means the just right distance away from that parent star, so that liquid water
34:39
could potentially exist on the surface. So these are like two of the ultimate
34:45
gold type planets that we want to identify. And this system TI seven hundred
34:52
a mere one hundred light years from Earth. Now, don't get me wrong,
34:55
one hundred light years. I wouldn't want to walk that distance if I
35:00
had a flat tire, I wouldn't want to walk a hundred light years to
35:02
the nearest service station. However, in terms of the cosmos, that's right
35:07
in the backyard. That's right in our own neighborhood, right here within the
35:12
Milky Way. So the interesting thing is these are Earth sized Goldilocks planets relatively
35:20
close to our own Earth. All of these are amazing achievements from the Test
35:24
spacecraft, and we wish it a happy fifth birthday and congratulate Ingelbert Humperdink for
35:30
getting a connection to Test. Today. Let's talk about what's going on at
35:36
the Cocola Space Sign Center in the coming months, because summer is practically here.
35:40
Kids are testing this week in the Muskogee County Chattahoochee Valley area, so
35:45
that means it's almost the end of the school year. Yeah, I mean,
35:50
anytime I can give Inglebert Humperdink some social media, you know, I
35:53
want, I want hits to his site. I haven't been on his site
35:57
ever, but you know, I guess he has one. You know,
35:59
you can up after the show. I don't know that I've ever heard anyone,
36:02
you know, use that particular call sign from the military side. You
36:07
know, he is an Ingelbert Humperdink. But you know it's good. There's
36:12
the first everything. Yeah, So right right now, as you say,
36:15
we have kind of passed the spring break era here for our local school districts
36:20
and they are moving, as you said, into testing. But some other
36:22
schools have different rhythms, different calendars, so we have massive school groups here
36:27
today. The school groups here today told me they woke up at five Well,
36:31
no, I'm sorry. They met at the school at five fifteen am
36:36
to leave to drive here. And so we're trying to give them the very
36:38
best time possible. And there are four massive white tour bus out in front
36:43
of our building and we're very grateful to have them here visiting today. And
36:47
ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to come down and visit the Coca
36:51
Cola Space Sign Center like these students are, check out our website because you
36:54
can find out lots of information about our showtimes in our omnisphere theater, planetars,
37:00
you can find out about the artifacts in our exhibit gallery. You can
37:02
find out about other activities that take place here at the Space Science Center,
37:07
special events that might be happening. And don't forget the Space Shuttle Odyssey,
37:12
a virtual ride to space in a space shuttle where you can actually see the
37:15
cargo bay doors open and see the Earth from orbit. It's a spectacular experience.
37:22
And all of these things can be yours with a simple visit to the
37:24
Coca Cola Space Science Center in Columbus, Georgia. Want to know more about
37:29
that information, don't go to Inglebert Humperdink's website because he has nothing about our
37:34
showtimes. I haven't even visited the site, but I'm pretty sure that's true.
37:37
So but go to our website instead, which is www dot cc SSC
37:45
dot org. And yes, that's harder to type in than Inglebert humperdink.
37:49
So let me see if I can help you out just a little bit and
37:52
say those initials can be thought of as the initials for the Coca Cola Space
37:57
Science Center c C s SC. But people that somehow that confuses people,
38:02
So I just say, Charlie Charlie Sam Sam Charlie dot org could be Christopher
38:08
Cross, Christopher Cross, Starship Starship Christopher Cross. I mean, if we're
38:12
gonna really do throwbacks, we could go that direction. But then there's a
38:16
Christopher Cross. Would be good works, great show again this week, We'll
38:22
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