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It Took 60 Years But He Finally Went to Space · 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 expanded 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 them stars, made sizes. When made of stars,
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you could be from high they would New Mexicomus. Where a stars? When
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we are made of stars. I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend
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doctor Sean Cruising from Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center. Hey,
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Sean, come onre to Wes could to be here with you today. You
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are doing the show from Houston. That seems like a good place to do
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our show from. Maybe we should try to figure out a way we can
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always do the show from Houston. At least you know, one of us
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be there at all times. That's only appropriate, I think, I mean,
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it's it feels like that. You know, we we have mission control
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here in Houston and the headquarters of the human space flight program right here at
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NASA Headquarters Johnson's Space Center. Maybe I could be at Kennedy and you could
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be at a Houston and then we could you know, we could figure out
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a way to you know, that'd be a fun show to do. That
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would be fun. Spread us out, even spread us out even more.
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Well, let's talk about some launch stuff, because we've been tracking and following
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what's going on with Starliner. Last week's show, we said, hey,
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it may go, it may not. We know, there's always the possibility
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that when they say a launch is going to happen, especially a launch of
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this caliber with people on board, there's always that chance that the target dates
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aren't going to happen, and for safety's sake, sometimes that's in the best
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interest of everyone involved. So again we've had another delay. This hasn't happened
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just yet, but we have another date set June first is a possibility for
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the next launch opportunity. However, I don't think anybody should be surprised if
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that doesn't end up happening, because again, safety of human lives is the
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top priority here. Yeah, and this is we're talking about Starliner. This
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is a Boeing's spacecraft designed on the Commercial Crew program and they're having what they
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call the CFT, which is crew flight test. So there are two astronauts
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that are going to be on board this vehicle as it travels from the service
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of the Earth up to the International Space Station for the very first time,
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hauling people and so yes, as as Wes pointed out, NASA has a
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very high level of caring about this mission. They have a high level of
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caring about every mission, but particularly when their astronauts are at stake, there's
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a there's they want to make sure all of the eyes are dotted and teaser
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crossed. And right now, what's been happening on the star Liner vehicle itself.
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On the what they call the command module for the star Liner, they've
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had some problems with a helium leak. And what helium has used for is
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to pressurize the propulsion system that helps the vehicle maneuver once it gets up into
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orbit, and you really don't want any kind of a leak in your propulsion
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system. That's just bad. Now, I will tell you that as they
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were just a couple of weeks ago ready to fly this vehicle to space before
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the oxygen valve stuck on the on the Atlas rocket and had to roll a
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back to basically back into the hangar to repair it. They already knew about
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this helium leak, and at that time they had determined that the helium leak
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was present, but probably not substantial enough to cause too many problems. But
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once they had to roll it back for another issue, they said, okay,
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well why don't we go ahead and address that helium leak as well on
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the service module. And so they are addressing that now, and it's taking
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a little bit longer than they thought. They had a proposed launch date of
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this Saturday, which is as we're recording the show, May twenty fifth,
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was that proposed launch date. They're now just this morning coming out with a
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new launch date of June first. So last night, when I was actually
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starting the prep on the show, there hadn't been a new date launched.
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It was indefinite. But now this morning NASA, Boeing, and Ula have
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come out and said they think they can get things wrapped up and ready to
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go by June first, which as we're acording to the show is just about
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a week away, so so about another week and they'll have the helium leak
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taken care of, as well as the other problems with the oxygen valve.
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Leak, and so they should be able to go next week. But friends,
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as Wes said, we want them to exercise this level of caution because
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two astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, will be on board that vehicle,
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and we want everybody to be safe and have the highest level of confidence that
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the mission will be successful. And so so yeah, go ahead and take
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your time, star Liner. Go ahead, NASA and make sure Starliner and
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the rocket system are good to go. I mean, it's the outs of
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precaution versus the you know, much larger than pound of cure. It's a
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lot. I'm and you talk about this as far as it being you know,
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part of a navigation system, propulsion system. This is so basically this
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is isn't just you know, if it continues to leak, they'll all talk
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funny. I mean this is more important than that, right yeah. Yeah,
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So as you say, not that, okay, well, I just
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want to make sure because if they're flying up and they're radioing back and they've
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got the helium voices, that would just make the whole thing seem silly,
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and nobody wants it to seem silly. Yeah, I mean I think that
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you know, even as a joke, that would be a bad idea for
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astronauts to do that aboard an actual spaceflight. So let's not even let's not
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even joke astronauts. Yeah, we don't even take like the party helium up
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and just say hey and asked I think we have a helium leak in the
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high squeaky voice. I think that would be a mistake. It's not the
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high squeaky voice. And it also wouldn't mean that if it was, you
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know, leaking, then the rocket wouldn't go up as fast because less helium.
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I mean, that's also not part of the way that it works either.
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So we just wanted to stress this is something completely different. It doesn't
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have anything to do with those two things. No, you're right about that.
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It is important though, to kind of talk about what is actually going
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on, which is this when when you're using propellant in your thruster systems,
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you're actually running out you're lowering the fuel in that tank, and therefore you're
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lowering the pressure and in microgravity you can't guarantee that that fuel is then going
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to flow in the right direction. So because of that, they add this
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helium, which is an inert gas to the fuel system to increase the pressure
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in that tank to guarantee that you have the proper fuel flows. So that's
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really what they're dealing with. And I think I said command module when we
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first started. It's in the service module. Let me just let me just
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do a self edit right there and just correct myself say service module. So
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this is where the propulsion system is that the helium leak is present. They
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want to make sure they have enough of that helium to properly pressurize their propulsion
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systems so they can maneuver the vehicle in orbit and bring it home safely and
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without all they voices that sound like some kind of a cartoon. It's hard
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not to associate, whether fairly or not, a star Liner and SpaceX because
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obviously we know we've talked about the history there in the fact that you know,
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Boeing was giving a little bit more money than SpaceX to to move forward
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with star Liner. So we'll just talk about SpaceX because they're they're still just
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doing the SpaceX thing and launching rockets. You know, whether it's fair or
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not, the comparison is going to be made, and certainly by making this
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comparison. We don't want to add any pressure to star Liner and Boeing to
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launch those astronauts in an unprepared manner, because we want them to take the
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nth degree of precaution in that respect. However, I think it is fair
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to say Boeing did receive nearly twice the amount of money to produce their vehicle
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at the same time that SpaceX received, by definition, nearly half the money
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to produce Dragon to be astronaut rated. And so so yeah, there's comparisons
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are going to be made, and we just have to look at SpaceX's record
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and say, Okay, they have had a successful spacecraft for years while we're
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waiting for Starliner, and they have also had a extremely prolific launch cadence,
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let's just say it that way, where they're launching their own payloads and the
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payloads of others on a really rapid basis. So there's a difference. There's
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just a difference in the results coming from Boeing and Ula versus what SpaceX has
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been a to do both on the astronaut carrier program going to space as well
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as just commercial payloads being launched on their rocket systems. So in that light.
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It's fair to point out, as part of the same story that SpaceX
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just had another successful launch, this time for the National Reconnaissance Office, which
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is a highly secretive governmental organization basically to spy on people. And so NRO's
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reconnaissance satellite constellation was just launched by a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket a few days
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ago. As recording the show May twenty first, that liftoff happened about one
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am Pacific time. It launched from California. That would have been an equivalent
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of four am Eastern time. And here's the thing. We don't know much
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about the satellites because the National Reconnaissance Office didn't put out a press brochure to
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describe all the systems in detail, because well, it's a secret satellite mission
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for the National Reconnaissance Office, So we don't really know about that too much.
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But we do know it's part of what they call a prolific proliferated architecture,
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and the proliferated architecture is simply this, We're going to throw up so
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many satellites in this constellation of satellites that even if a foreign enemy or some
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aggressor takes out a portion of these satellites. There's so many of them up
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there that the rest of them can continue to do the job in orbit.
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And so that's what a proliferated architecture is. And so a small number of
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assets being removed from that cluster of satellites would not limit the abilities of these
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reconnaissance satellites to do what they need to do for our for our security,
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our national security efforts. This is a crazy story. I just I want
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to paint this picture this way. So imagine it's the sixties and your name
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gets picked as one of the potential astronauts that will go to space, not
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just that you could become the first African American astronaut to go in space.
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And ultimately you don't get picked. Right, you're almost there. You've got
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the opportunity of possibly doing this, and then it doesn't happen, and then
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you think, oh my gosh, I didn't get picked. That would have
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been great. And then you live a lifetime probably disappointed, probably sharing the
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story I almost got to go to space. Oh my gosh, I was
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part of the whole thing, and I didn't get to go. And then
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you know, sixty years later, you get an opportunity to go to space
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and become the oldest person to ever be blasted into space. Ed Dwight has
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a crazy story, now does he. I mean he had a crazy story
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anyway, but now he's got a really crazy story. The story just got
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crazy. So yes. In the shall we call it societal strife of the
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nineteen sixties, there was an Air Force pilot by the name of Ed Dwight
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who was an African American, and he was being championed by the President of
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the United States as a candidate for NASA's early Astronaut Corps. Now this is
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John F. Kennedy. If you think about the role of John F.
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Kennedy and what he did to shall we say fuel NASA's space program, somebody
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might have listened to him. I don't know why his recommendations weren't taken seriously
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on who should be chosen for the Astronaut Corps, but there was a very
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specific process taking place, and there were probably other factors involved as well.
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I hate to think of it that way, but there probably were. And
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so Ed Dwight, air Force pilot, African American, was not selected for
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the nineteen sixty three class of astronaut, and so he never got to go
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to space. That is until last week when he did go to space.
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So Ed Dwight, nearly sixty years after applying to be a member of the
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astronaut class of nineteen sixty three, finally did get to go to space with
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Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin aboard one of the new Shepherd rockets. Now it's
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suborbital space flight, let's keep that in mind, but it is to an
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altitude to technically become a space flight participant, or, as we like to
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say on this show, astronaut, because we see very little difference in those
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two things. Anyway. So Ed Dwight, now ninety years old, got
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to experience a few minutes of weightlessness with five other passengers aboard a Blue Origin
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capsule, roughly a ten minute flight in total, and he called it a
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life chaine experience. By his own words, quote, I thought I really
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didn't need this in my life unquote. Now you can imagine somebody who had
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been rejected for a program that they thought they were qualified for nearly sixty years
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ago. As Wes just pointed out, he's had sixty years to tell that
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story and all the ramifications involved with that. I'm sure he decided he really
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didn't need spaceflight in his life. However, when presented with an opportunity to
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go with Jeff Bezos in Blue Origin to Space, not that Jeff actually went
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by the way Jeff's already been, I'm just saying that's his company, Dwight
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changed his tune and had a new quote. He said, quote, but
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now I needed in my life. I am ecstatic unquote Dwight becoming the new
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record holder for the oldest person to ever reach space because he's nearly two months
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older than our friend and colleague, star Trek actor William Shatner was when he
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flew back in twenty twenty one. And I say friend and colleague because you
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know, we actually have our names on a Georgia Association of Broadcasters plaque along
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with William Shatner, thanks to some of the great Dragon Con pregame show interviews
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that my colleague West Carroll has put together, William Shatner being one of those
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interviews. And so we're kind of sorry to see will go down. I
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have to just say, yeah, I as a friend the of that show
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and this show, and it's great. And you mentioned the Dragon Con pregame
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show and that we're starting to get into that season of time as we're about
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to hit Memorial Day weekend and everybody kind of thinks of summer as Memorial Day
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to Labor Day. That's when dragon Con happens. So but yes, the
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dragon on Pregame show podcast. Wherever you're listening to this show, you can
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find my interview with Williams. Shower from a few years ago. What was
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interesting about it as I interviewed him about Dragon Con and at that point he
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probably knew there was a good chance that he was going to go to space,
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but they weren't talking about it yet. They hadn't released that info yet
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about that. So you know, I had my interview with him, I
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was at dragon Con with him still didn't know any of that, and then
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you and I covered obviously his trip to space and how it was amazing just
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to think about, you know, Captain Kirk going in his ninety first year
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of life and now, strangely enough, they have come up with a really
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this is a cool story though, I mean, you hate to see Bill
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go down, but Ed Dwight certainly deserving of getting to cross that line,
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and it's pretty good stuff there for him, that's pretty exciting hard not to
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feel great for him, you know, and you want to see somebody like
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this if you're going to have to replace William Shatner as the oldest person to
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go to space, this is the kind of story you want to see happen,
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right, Yep. Absolutely, it's important, you know, from exposing
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some kind of racial barriers that took place back in the sixty Perhaps it's interesting
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to note that Star Trek was among those shows helping to try to break down
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those barriers. Absolutely, Yes, there's that kind of an interesting connection too,
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as kind of a side note. But yeah, we're really happy for
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Ed Dwight. Glad he had a great trip. We're going to be reading
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for more reports on his experiences as he went to orbit as such a senior
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citizen type person. Obviously, William Shatner had some very interesting comments after his
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flight to space. It'll be interesting now to hear more about what Ed Dwight
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thinks about his flight to space such a senior person once he has a chance
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to do a few more interviews. And that's a really interesting point because Shatner,
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at first he was wowed by it, and then it turned into a
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very like boy, this really makes me feel small and insignificant and all these
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he had sort of a negative turn on it, and you got to wonder
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if somebody like ed who you know, had the opportunity in front of him
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and it didn't work out, and then he at ninety gets a chance to
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do it. Whether or not, this is a very I would think this
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is a very different experience for him, just because it was sort of that
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brass ring that was always just out of reach for him, and he probably
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never in his wildest dreams, thought I'm gonna get a chance to do this
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at ninety. I mean, I can't even think that this is something that
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he would have ever thought, Wow, this, you know what, I'm
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gonna put this off and I'll check this box. I'll take care of this
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on my bucket list. But I'm gonna wait until ninety to do that.
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So it's just a good story. Speaking of senior citizens, and he's not
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as senior, but we have NASA's oldest active astronaut still going strong. He's
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a senior citizen technically, but he's not retired heading back to space. So
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this is an interesting segue. And what it really shows me is that space
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and the space travel endeavor in the year twenty twenty four, it's really kind
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of for everyone, right, I mean, if people in their nineties can
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go to space. And again, this next story that we're going to talk
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about, which is about Don Pettitt, who at sixty nine years old,
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is still an active NASA astronaut, so not just a spaceflight participant, but
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an actual professional astronaut for the National Aeronauts and Space Administration at sixty nine years
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old, this is just ushering in a whole new era of what can be
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possible for people to go to space. Right, there's a much broader window
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of time if we think about the movie The Right Stuff. Looking at those
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very early US astronauts, Man, they had to go through every kind of
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physical rigor test, and only the strongest and the and the most persistent physically
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we're able to withstand all of the pressures and testing for that first group of
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astronauts to go to space. And now here at the other end of my
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lifetime, we're seeing these astronauts who are whoor elderly and maybe not in pinnacle
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physical condition. I mean, I wouldn't want to have a fist fight with
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William Shatner, but you know, I'm just saying he's probably not what he
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was when he punched out the Gorn in the Star Trek series, So so
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it's safe. I think that's a safe assumption. I mean, again,
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I'm not trying to pick any fights with Shatner. I really don't want any
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of that action. No, but I think that's a safe assumption. I
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know it's it's different to say that you want to fight him versus saying he's
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probably not in the same condition he was back then. I mean, are
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any of us really you know, I'm certainly not me, not in my
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prime anymore. I know that. And my only point here is more people
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can go to space. And in an unrelated article I read this morning was
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talking about the broadening of the space industry. The space industry worldwide is expected
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to go to a trillion dollars by the year twenty thirty. The space economy.
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That's more than the gross domestic product of the Netherlands, for instance,
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And so part of what's driving that space economy, A portion of it is
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space tourism and the fact that people are going to be accessing space for either
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research purposes or simply pleasure. Rides to space that have nothing to do with
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governmental space agencies, and so it's just really an interesting time and the stories
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we're going over right now kind of confirm that. So let's go back and
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we'll spin back around to talk about Don Pettitt. Don Pettitt is going to
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launch later this year. He's going to go to the International Space Station for
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half a year, a six month stay roughly aboard the International Space Station.
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Don Pettitt is a chemical engineer. He's sixty nine years old. He's going
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to be launching into space with two cosmonauts from bichen Or Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
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That launch is currently scheduled for September eleventh, twenty twenty four. So he
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will become the second oldest NASA astronaut to ever reach space, after only one
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other guy, John Glenn, legendary astronaut icon of the early Space program where
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he really did have to be physically fit. But John Glenn went back to
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space aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in nineteen ninety eight when he was seventy seven years
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old, and he is still the oldest human being to ever orbit the Earth.
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Don Pettit, at least on this flight, will eclipse John Glenn in
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that record. John Glenn will maintain that record. So Petit will, though,
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spend six months aboard the orbiting space station at a time when relations between
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US and Russia are a little tense. Our two countries are not cooperating on
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almost anything else except spaceflight, so it's an interesting time now. Don Pettitt
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has been up before. He's had three other missions to space, and so
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he's a veteran of several space flights. He's also probably a very good emissary
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on behalf of NASA with the Russians as he's working out in Star City on
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the outskirts of Moscow preparing for this launch a board of soy use in September
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of this year. So hats off to Don Pettitt becoming the oldest NASA astronaut
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to go to space this September, it looks like. So we'll be watching
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and following the story as it develops. I was just checking while you were
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talking about it, because I was curious about what he turned seventy while he's
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up there. If he's there exactly six months, he won't quite make it
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to his birthday, which is in late April, so who knows, though
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he could end up there a little longer than six months, and maybe he'll
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turn seventy while he's up there. But I just thought that one might have
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might have a Frank Rubio situation. Yeah, that's always a possibility. Coming
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up. After a quick break, we got a couple of stories about some
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images within our Solar system and then some beyond. We'll talk about that next.
25:48
Lately, it seems like when we talk about, oh, we got
25:49
some great new images in space, we typically are talking about James Webb.
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And that's not the case this time. It's not the James web isn't still
26:00
doing amazing things right now. We just have some fresh images from Juno and
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Euclid. This is very good. First we'll start with Juno, but the
26:12
images from Euclid are pretty remarkable. Yeah, so new stuff coming out this
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week from the Juno mission. New stuff coming out today as we record the
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show from the European Space Agency. We'll talk about that in a moment,
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but right now, JUNO probe around the world Jupiter, which is investigating more
26:37
closely the moons of Jupiter. We know these is the Galilean satellites. They're
26:41
the four largest moons around the planet Jupiter. The Juno Probe is taking a
26:45
really close look at these Jovian moons. And we've talked about several other stories
26:51
from Juno on the podcast in earlier episodes, but this is a new one
26:56
because it's talking about the frequency which activity occurs on certainly maybe the most interesting
27:04
moon of all the moons around Jupiter, Europa. And the reason it could
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be the most interesting moon around Jupiter is because it has liquid water salt water
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oceans below its icy crust. We had some confirmation of that from Juno a
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little earlier on when Spectroscy showed some briny plumes of salt water escaping from the
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surface of Europa, and now there is a new set of evidence of more
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recent ejections from below this icy crust. So an interaction between the subterranean water
27:45
oceans and the surface of the moon. This is something called the platypus.
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And why is it called the platypus? Well, I guess the controllers with
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JUNO as they photographed the thing. It kind of looks like a cartoon platypus.
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Check out the images for yourself if you want to, you can check
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them out on space dot Com today. Great story there about this particular event.
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But there are these features that are on the surface of Europa that are
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being seen now in great detail by the Juno spacecraft and imaged that indicate that
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injections of material from below the thick layer of ice out onto the surface are
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common. One of these is this platypus feature, which is also called a
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chaos feature, And the chaos features, along with elongated fracture patterns, are
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now being witnessed on the surface. And here's the interesting thing. These kinds
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of features should not be very long lived because it's already known that the surface
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ice on Europa is constantly shifting and moving because it's floating atop a liquid water
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ocean. So any of these kinds of features are pretty quickly smoothed over by
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that flowing ice on the surface of the moon Europa. So if you're seeing
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large patterns, again called a chaos pattern, it's basically jumbled ice blocks,
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boulders, ridges, kind of brown stains on the surface, all from the
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ejection of material in a plume and a geyser like plume out from below the
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ice layer. If you're seeing those kinds of features, they don't last long,
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so they must have been created recently. This indicates a high stress level
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on the shell, the icy shell that's decoupled from the rocky interior of the
29:44
Moon because of this liquid water ocean layer in between. So it's a whole
29:48
interaction between the surface ice and the water down below. Number one, making
29:53
the evidence even more and more strong that that liquid water ocean exists. And
29:57
number two giving us an idea that there is a constant interaction that brings some
30:04
of that material from that icy ocean up to the surface and allows us to
30:10
be able to see it for short periods of time. So this is another
30:12
way, another indicator in how we can study what's in the chemical makeup of
30:18
that liquid water ocean without having to actually go down through the ice, because
30:22
materials from that liquid water ocean are occasionally brought to the surface through these kinds
30:29
of processes. All right, let's talk about these new views that we have
30:34
of the universe. Let's get out beyond our solar system. And this is
30:38
the European Space Agency's EUCLID. We don't talk a lot about EUCLID, but
30:44
we're talking about EUCLID today. Yeah, so it's kind of awkward to talk
30:49
about beautiful pictures on a podcast, because we're not a video podcast, we're
30:55
not actually showing these pictures. So the first thing I'm going to encourage you
30:59
to do, even if you're just a casual space fan, go to the
31:03
website for the European Space Agency, which is www dot EESA, dott e
31:14
SA, the initials for European Space Agency dot it because it's an international organization
31:22
www dot e SA dot INT. And if you go there today, you're
31:26
going to see images that were just released today. As we're recording the podcast.
31:30
Just a few hours ago, the European Space Agency put out their very
31:36
first demonstration images from the spacecraft called Euclid. Uclid is a space telescope similar
31:45
to Hubble Space Telescope and James Webspace Telescope, but with a very different ability
31:52
and a very different set of purposes. The different ability that Euclid has that
31:57
those other telescopes don't have is while Hubble and James Webb are looking at highly
32:05
magnified regions of the sky trying to see the very small details from very distant
32:10
objects, the Euclid spacecraft is saying, yeah, we don't really care about
32:16
zooming in so much. We want to get wide sweeping shots of vast swaths
32:23
of the sky and see beautiful details and colors and intricacies in those images.
32:30
And so it's a much wider field of view. It covers much broader strips
32:38
of the sky in every image, and it just gives you a different view
32:43
of large scale features within our galaxy and also within our universe. So that's
32:51
the intent. It's got a few different instruments on board. One is a
32:55
visible light visible light megapixel camera six hundred bangkapixels by the way. Another one
33:01
is a near infrared spectrometer, and the third one is a photometer. The
33:07
near infrared spectrometer is designed to come up with the chemical makeup of objects that
33:12
are within the field of view, and the photometer is designed to measure the
33:16
intensity of light coming from distant objects. All of these things can help detect
33:22
the red shifts of distant galaxies. It can actually watch for the movement of
33:28
objects when we take time sequences to help us understand better the processes involved with
33:34
both dark matter and dark energy. And it's going to be used as kind
33:38
of a co instrument along with the forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to investigate
33:47
some of these really interesting mysteries of the universe and looking at how the universe
33:53
itself evolved in its earlier stages. You guys have officially transitioned into summer at
34:00
the co Cola Space Science Center, with a lot of the kids now officially
34:04
on summer break. There may still be a few schools in our area that
34:07
are still in school, but I know that you guys are in full swing
34:12
with some stuff you're doing with Callaway Gardens and a great opportunity to get a
34:15
really good look at the sky. Yeah. So we're going to have six
34:21
different nights that we have astronomy programming out at Callaway Gardens. That's in conjunction
34:27
with the education staff at Callaway. We'll be offering these programs as a co
34:30
sponsored set of programs and it's called Oh My Stars. That's the name of
34:37
the program, Oh My Stars, And you can come out and check out
34:39
the nighttime sky with the telescopes from the co co Cola Space Science Center along
34:45
with our astronomy team led by doctor Rosa Williams, our observatory director at the
34:50
Space Science Center, and the students who are in our Earth and Space Sciences
34:53
program from Columbus State University. So it's a perfect time to come out and
34:58
view the nighttime sky and utiful dark sky out away from city lights at Callaway
35:02
Gardens Overlook Pavilion and just have a fun family summer experience out there under the
35:07
stars. For more information on those programs, you can check it out on
35:12
the website. Also, while you're there, check out our website for the
35:15
showtimes in our newly upgraded Omnisphere Theater. A great thing to do when it's
35:21
super odd outside, come inside and enjoy some air conditioning, learn about space,
35:25
have a great interactive experience on our exhibits, and check out the newly
35:30
upgraded Omnosphere Theater at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center. Where do
35:34
I find out all the great information? Well again on the website. The
35:37
initials for the website are ccs SC dot org. Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot
35:45
org. That stands for Coca Cola Space Science Center dot org, CCSSC dot
35:53
org. Sean and I thank you for listening, and we'll do this again
35:57
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