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Selects: How Space Stations Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hello friends, this is Josh with this week's select Our
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: June twenty sixteen episode on Space Stations. I like to
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: think of it as a far out look at living
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: in space. I hope you enjoy it thoroughly.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. This is Stuff you
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: should Know.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, you sounded like Steve Rule. We were just talking
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: about Steve Rule, and that was very Brulesque, brew Esque,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: not burlesque.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: All right, brewlesu brew Less. You're saying you should do
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: a movie. I'm surprised you have.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: I could watch a continuous loop of brules Rules over
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: and over and over. Yeah, and people thought, you don't
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: be Dune was an homage to that, which.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Or omasure a ripoff, depending on who's well it was.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: It was neither, but it it was reminiscent of it
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: in good ways. But I don't think that that meant
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: it ripped it off, or that you were paying tribute to.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: It's definitely not intentional. It was just, you know, two
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: great sidental.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Two great things that go great together.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Sure, why can't there be both.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Like Reese's cups.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they go great with kit cats.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Oh man, they'd be good. Sure, just take two full
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: kit cats and put two Reese's cups in the middle
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: like a sandwich.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Uh huh. I think you just came up with something
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: the news more the rec cat chuckers.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: Have you ever looked to the sky at night, seen
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: some stars flying by and thought, why don't we live
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: up there? Uh? Sure?
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Have you ever seen the ISS cruising?
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: No? I used to. Apparently you can. I used, Yes,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I used to get either text or emails. I can't
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: remember that. Would you just put it in your zip
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: code and it sends you texts alerts when the ISS
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: is going to be flying overhead.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say one of the
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: lead astronauts would just text you be like, Josh, lo up,
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: what are you doing? We're over your house right now.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: But I mean, basically it's not from the astronaut, but
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: it's the same thing. It's saying, like, look up in
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: this direction at this time, and you'll you should be
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: able to see the ISS pretty neat. Yeah. I don't
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: think we actually ever went out and looked at it,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: because it was always at like three in the morning
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: or something like that.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this really like thrills me to no end. Once
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: I started looking into this, like I never paid a
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: lot of attention, and it really just dawned on me,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Like people are living in outer space.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Continuous full time. The International Space Station has been continuously
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: inhabited since it was launched in nineteen ninety eight.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. In fact, they just took their one hundred thousandth
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: orbit of Earth. That's really neat in May of this year.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Expedition forty seven began in March.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: That's so cool, man, And like we just it's like
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: you were saying, you don't really stop and think about it,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: but we're living in space now. Yeah, humanity is extended
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: at least into Earth's orbit, right, that's where we're living.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: And we just kind of seemed to take that for granted.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: But that wasn't always the case as actually, And I
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: think the reason why we do kind of take it
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: for granted is because the conception of living in space
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  Speaker 1: that we're at right now is remedial compared to where
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: everyone expected it to be in like the mid seventies. Yeah,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: when the idea of space colonization was at its peak. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I mean NASA Ames Research Center was conducting summer studies
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: is what they were called, where they would just get
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the public really jazzed about living in space. And the
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: best you can say, or the least you can say,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: is that it bore some pretty awesome artists renderings what
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: space colonies will look like.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it seemed like every other issue of Popular Science
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: was just some cool new picture of like, you know,
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  Speaker 2: one day we're going to be living out.
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  Speaker 1: Here, right exactly, but the one day seemed a lot
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  Speaker 1: closer than it does now, right.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: But at the most you can say that that space
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: calony fever that was going on in the seventies definitely
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  Speaker 1: laid the groundwork paved the way for where we are now,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: which is living in space. We just don't have like
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  Speaker 1: Stanley Kubrick esque space hotels that are big rotating wheels
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  Speaker 1: at the moment. Doesn't mean we're not going to, yeh.
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  Speaker 1: It just didn't happen as fast as everybody thought it
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  Speaker 1: was going to. And I was trying to figure out why,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: and apparently it's because of the Shuttle program. Like this
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: space colony fever was based on the idea that launching
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: the Space Shuttle was going to be way cheaper than
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: launching any of the rockets had been previously. That didn't
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: pan out to be the case. Yeah, And that there
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: would be something like like it.
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  Speaker 2: Was going to be like a space taxi. I remember
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: those words, sixty.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Like at least sixty launches a year, which didn't pan
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  Speaker 1: out to be the case either. But they thought that, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it was just we're gonna be going back and forth
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  Speaker 1: to space for like next to nothing all the time,
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  Speaker 1: and that we would be colonizing space pretty quickly. That
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  Speaker 1: didn't pan out. The Space Shuttle program didn't pan out
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: to be that as cheap or as frequent, and so
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: this dream of space colony or this enthusiasm for space
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  Speaker 1: colonization was kind of lost. But luckily it wasn't lost
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: by the actual engineers who were in charge of putting
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: people in space and figuring out how to live in space.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: And that whole idea is probably still coming. It's just
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: a little further down the road.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And there are many, many, many, hundreds and hundreds of
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  Speaker 2: people that helped make this reality over the years, but
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  Speaker 2: a lot of this can be laid at the feet
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  Speaker 2: of mister Verna von Braun, who was the architect of
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: the US space program, and he was the big champion
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: of space stations early on, like in a real viable way.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Well, he was like the Carl Sagan of his day.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: He realized that he had a quote he said that
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  Speaker 1: we can publish scientific papers and treatises till hell freeze
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  Speaker 1: is over, but if we don't get the attention of
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  Speaker 1: the taxpayer, we're going We're not going anywhere.
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  Speaker 2: And how do you do that? You start putting people
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: on the moon and start building space stations.
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  Speaker 1: Well, even more basic than that, he started he wrote
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: like popular articles and popular magazines to get the public's
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  Speaker 1: imagination prime for that kind of thing.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, And his idea was it was not just like hey,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: look at a neat thing we can do. It's you know,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: you have an Antarctic outpost. You have back in the
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: old days, he had an out west outpost. He was like,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: we need an outpost. We need a place where people
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: can live and work and as their base station.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Essentially, sure, space is a frontier, but you watch a
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: star trek knows.
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  Speaker 2: That the final frontier, right, Well, that's.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: What we think, That's what we thought back then. I'm
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: sure there's other frontiers, new dimensions to explore. Sure, that
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: kind of thing.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Well, let's just talk about why. What are some
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: of the reasons we should do this. You mentioned just
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: capturing the public, and it certainly would do a lot
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  Speaker 2: to rally people around spending funds on you know, space travel,
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  Speaker 2: NASA allocating funds towards this kind of.
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  Speaker 1: Thing, right, you mean space tourism.
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  Speaker 2: No, no, no, not space tourism. But just initially, you know,
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  Speaker 2: they needed the support of the popular American opinion.
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  Speaker 1: Right, which is why Von Brown said, I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: like reach out to the public directly through Colliers magazine.
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  Speaker 1: He did a three part he hosted a three part
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  Speaker 1: show on like the Wonderful World of Disney about living
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  Speaker 1: in space, and we really got people jazzed about this
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  Speaker 1: back in the fifties. Yeah, then it peaked again in
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  Speaker 1: the seventies, Like I was saying.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, but one of the big reasons that you would
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  Speaker 2: want to have a working space station is, aside from
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  Speaker 2: the convenience of you know, having it up there and
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  Speaker 2: not having to go back and forth every time you
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  Speaker 2: want to do so, right, is things are different up
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  Speaker 2: there and you can do different things without gravity. That
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  Speaker 2: you can't do here on Earth, like research, Yeah, like
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  Speaker 2: remarkable things.
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  Speaker 1: So it turns out gravity has a weird effect on
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  Speaker 1: crystals and the way they form flaws them like inevitably.
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  Speaker 1: But if you're out there in microgravity, there are far
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  Speaker 1: fewer flaws, and the crystals tend to form more perfectly.
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  Speaker 1: So you can do things like make really good semiconductors,
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  Speaker 1: right for microchips. Sure, you can also crystallize drugs better
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  Speaker 1: to make them more potent. You can really knock your
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  Speaker 1: socks off.
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  Speaker 2: So research up there that can make things better here,
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  Speaker 2: right a point.
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  Speaker 1: Not just research, but figure out how to do it there,
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  Speaker 1: and then build on that by building a manufacturing facility
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  Speaker 1: for semiconductors out in space. Yeah, man, and then bring
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: them back to Earth and be like, watch how fast
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  Speaker 1: this baby ghess.
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  Speaker 2: Another thing that no gravity or micro gravity does is
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  Speaker 2: it makes flames, you know, flames here on Earth with
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  Speaker 2: our stupid gravity pulling it in every direction, makes a
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  Speaker 2: flame very unsteady and unpredictable, makes studying combustion more difficult.
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  Speaker 1: Remember when we talked about fire.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, fire in space is very consistent and perfect.
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  Speaker 1: It's around. Yeah, it's so cool.
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  Speaker 2: So you could you could potentially with h with a
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: perfect flame like that, then perfect flame that's got to
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: be a song.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Eternal flame is what you're thinking of.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: No, I'm saying perfect flaim Now you're thinking of eternal flame.
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  Speaker 2: Such a josh ism. That's one of my favorites. Microgravity, though,
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  Speaker 2: you can have that eternal flame that is perfect and round,
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  Speaker 2: and you can study combustion in a more pure fashion,
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  Speaker 2: and you could build a better furnace maybe or find
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: out how to reduce air pollution by making things more efficient.
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  Speaker 1: Right, And this is just like two things that you
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  Speaker 1: could do in space.
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  Speaker 2: I'm sure there are a thousand things we could list, right.
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  Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, some of the early
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: ideas for space stations were These were concepts that used
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: like moon mined minerals and materials and assembled in space
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: so that you didn't have to launch them from Earth. Yeah,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: so this whole idea of like creating things in space
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: was even used to form the basis of these places
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: where we would actually live while we were doing this stuff.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: It's pretty cool.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It also offers a unique perspective on the Earth.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: If we're talking about landforms and oceans, your atmosphere, speaking
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: of which they can take much better pictures looking in
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: the other direction into deep space because they don't have
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: that pesky atmosphere in the way, right, So lots of
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: great reasons to be up there, not the least of
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: which is something you mentioned earlier, space tourism, which is
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: going to happen at some point, right, Like people are
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: looking into who is this one company? Galactic suite. Yeah,
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: they're still at it.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Well, none that I saw there really still says they're
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: planning on launching in twenty twelve.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Oh I thought that they. I thought they were still
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: kind of I mean obviously not on that timeline, right
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: unless they.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, their site is still up, somebody's still paying
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: for the domain. That doesn't mean but it still says
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: like they're gonna be They're gonna head for the star
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the stars in twenty twelve. And then I found another
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Russian one that was looked pretty promising, but their site
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: apparently was not updated since twenty ten. But a company
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: called Bigelow Industries very recently had SpaceX Fairy capsule up
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: to the ISS. It was an inflatable capsule that was
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: a habitat module that was meant to be a prototype
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: for a space hotel, and they couldn't get it inflated.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: It was in They just aborted the mission. But like
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: people are still working on the concept of space tourism
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: like today.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Well, I know, the Galactic Suite said, They're like, we
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: think it'll cost four million dollars for a weekend stay,
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: and our data suggests that there are about forty thousand
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: people in the world that can and will pay for this.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: So maybe their site hasn't been updated because they got
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: scared with the end of the World twenty twelve thing.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Maybe and while they were hiding in a cave somewhere,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: somebody played a prank on them and they're still too
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: scared to come out and update the site.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Maybe Well Richard Branson, you know, he's trying to fly
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: people into space. Still.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I looked at that. I was like, wait a minute,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: does this Alaskan Airlines merger? Did that kill Virgin Galactic?
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: And apparently not, It was just Virgin America that Alaskan
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Airlines took over, apparently in a hostile takeover, But Virgin
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Galactic's still at it.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, Well that's good. I guess if you're loaded and
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: want to ride in the space.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're Ashton Coucher or Jada Perry.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: They were on the list, right, Sure they have disposable income. Sure,
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: and the couch up there, the coach either one. I
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: feel like I should take a break and regroup and
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: then we'll start talking about Space Station's past.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: I'll take one with you, all right, let's.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Talk about the first one, Josh. We had a great
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: episode on the space race. It was pretty much a
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: two love that one, a two nation race between the
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: US and the Soviet Union, And they beat us in
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: a lot of ways as far as first to the
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: punch Man.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: They really did. You know, they don't get enough credit
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: around these parts for the stuff that they did as
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: far as space goes, because they definitely did beat us
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. Sure, like we beat them
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: to the moon basically.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which we pointed out, and our show really got
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: us going, sure and led to our advancements.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But also what was it There was another show
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: we did recently, Sputnik led to super Balls. But do
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: you remember we were talking about the super Bowl? In
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: the Super Bowl episode, how Sputnik like made America, post
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: war America wake up and be like Hey, stop being
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: coddled and lazy.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we need to get back to innovation.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, innovating again. And it was Sputnik that did that. Yeah,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: that's right.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Nothing like the threat of Communist Russia or Soviet Union
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: to get people going.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: We're being left behind.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: So back then they were the Soviet Union, and they
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: were the first, as we said with the Saliot one
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: station nineteen seventy one. Dude, they had people living in space. Yeah,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: the year I was born. It's crazy, yep. And it
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: was actually a combination of a couple of a different
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: system won the Almas and the Soyas. The Almas was
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: a military system and the Soyas was the actual spacecraft
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: that varied people to and fro.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: They're still using that things. How American astronauts to get
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: to the iss is on Soyu's rockets?
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Oh really?
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: What number they had?
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: I wonder? Oh who knows? Yeah, who knows? A lot?
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: They launched them a lot from the Kazakhstan.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: I think, Oh really, h huh, very nice.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: So yet one on.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Forty ft long had three main compartments, your standard compartments,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: which are like dining in recreation, food and water storage.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: You gotta have your toilet exercise equipment, and then your
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: sciencey stuff.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's science the stuff. That's a big deal, sure,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: because not only are they looking at how to make
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: crystals better, they're also studying the effects of microgravity on
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: the human body, which we're still getting a handle lot.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we should do an entire episode on how space
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: affects your body. Okay, I think that would be like,
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: I think I got three or four episode ideas out
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: of this one article.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, we should do one just on the ISS too,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I think so. But well, just kind of briefly, one
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: of the things that they've found so far about living
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: in space is that your bone mineral density decreases by
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: one percent a month, which are like one percent, there's
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: still ninety nine percent left, who cares. Yeah, right here
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: on Earth, if you were in a senior adult, you
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: lose about one percent of bone mass a year.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: So that's pretty significant. And another thing that they found
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: out was that the living in microgravity, when you're here
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: on Earth, your fluids and blood and stuff tend to
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: accumulate in your lower extremities. Right in microgravity, it tends
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: to accumulate up in your upper body and your upper
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: chest and in your head and your brain's like, ohh,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: I'm bathed in this stuff. I need to shut down
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: production on fluids, including blood, so that when astronauts get
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: back on Earth, they tend to be fainty oh wow,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: because they don't have enough blood for a while until
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: their body's like, WHOA, something weird just happened. I need
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: to start making blood.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: And they say, I'm fainty because of space.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: Somebody give me some tang. My blood sugar is low.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: The other thing they found out was that in space,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: no one can hear you scream.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they try it, fifteen after every hour. All the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: astronauts scream as loud as they can and nobody can
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: hear them.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: And that, of course, was a famous tagline from the
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: first Alien movie. Oh really, Yeah, I remember seeing the
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: ad with the big egg in space, no one can
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: hear you scream.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: I was just thought, that's terrifying.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna watch it. Yep. Oh. One other thing that
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: they're learning about effects and gravity. So Scott Kelly, the
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: astronaut who famously just spent a year on the ISS. Yeah,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: he has a twin who's also an astronaut.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow, I leave.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: His name is Mike, and Mike has been studied here
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: on Earth.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was about to say, you got to split
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: those guys.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Up over the same over the same year that Scott has,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: and now they're comparing him. Apparently Scott came down and
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: he was like an inch or two shorter than his
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: identical twin that way. That was just one thing, but
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: they're they're examining them on a genetic level to see
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: what differences have happened, so you can get a better
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: handle on what living in gravity does to the human body.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: So he said, them shorter and more fainty for starters.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: He just fell dead away and they just slapped his
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: face and poured tang down his throat.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I think what's lost on a lot of people
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: is that these are real. I mean, human experimentation is
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: going on, and who knows what the long term effect
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: is going to be. These people are really like sacrificing potentially,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: you know right, I mean not just being away from
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: family and stuff, but who knows, faint he might turn
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: into something really bad.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Well, not only that, they're also exposed to solar radiation
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: and just space radiation that the Earth's atmosphere protects us
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: from they're exposed to it, and apparently there's a huge
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: possibility their lifetime risk of cancer just goes through the
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: roof from moving out there. So yeah, there's a lot
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: of questions we have that it's good that we're not
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: all just living out in space because we can. We
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: got a lot of stuff to figure out beforehand.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Heroes, sir, is what I say. So the Soya's ten
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: crew for that very first Saliot space station that Russia had,
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: they were supposed to live up there, but they couldn't
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: dock correctly, so they could never enter the space station,
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: so they never could even get in. Big disappointment.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Yea, they just went. They just hung their heads and
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: put in reverse in the little module went.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: P yep, that's Earth. So the Soya's eleven crew actually
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: successfully lived there for twenty four days in nineteen seventy one,
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: which is remarkable, but very sadly they all perished upon
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: re entry coming back to Earth.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They're capsule depressurized and their capsule at the time
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: was designed for them to wear suits, so they were
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: all asphyxiated.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just like died instantly, right pretty much.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, they would have like lost consciousness almost immediately.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: So after the eleven, Soy's eleven, they launched a different
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: space station altogether, the Solio two. That one didn't even
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: get up into orbit, so they were like, ah Yit
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: went through three, four, and five in pretty quick succession,
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: and each one basically they got better at getting people
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: to and from and they could stay up there longer
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: and longer.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: I think the last one was launched in nineteen eighty
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: two and it was up there until like nineteen ninety
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: two or nineteen ninety four, and they actually used it
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: as like when they launched the Mirror, which we'll talk
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: about and I think nineteen ninety six, so I guess
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: it was up there then they were going back and
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: forth between sali At seven and the Mirror. Yeah, I
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: guess probably going like, oh we can we can use
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: this vodka over here. You got to go get it
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: from Solute and take it over to the Mirror. So
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: it was up there for a while. They got there,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: they figured it out, and one of the big differences
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: between the early Solutes, Chuck and the later ones was
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: that there was a docking a secondary docking module.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The first one's only had one parking space essentially, right.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: And so you had the parking space for the crew
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: that was there, and if they needed supplies, well ts
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: for them nowhere to park. But if you had a
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: second docking port, then you can use well, they used
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: an unmanned ship called Progress to ferry supplies from Earth
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: to the solute stations.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm surprised that it took them up to the
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Salute six to realize they needed another parking space, because
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: You're gonna forget something, right, you left the iron on
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: back home.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: We're stuck up here. No one can visit us exact well,
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: like you said, though, they figured it out, which is wonderful,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: and that all led to the United States in nineteen
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: seventy three lunching their very famous Skylab one space station.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Which is the best patch of any NASA related, any
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: space based anything. Skylab one is the best.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Skylab was awesome, but it got off on a
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: very bad start, on a bad foot because upon launch,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: like just getting it out there, it had these two
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: main solar panels. One of them was completely ripped off,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: the other one didn't extend out like it should have,
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: and so this thing almost burned up completely initially because
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: it had very little power and they couldn't control the heat, right,
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: it couldn't cool it.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: The interior of the capsule went up to like one
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six. Yeah, so they said, hey, guys,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: that's hot. We needed to go up there and fix this.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: And they actually there were three different crews that were
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: sent to Skylab on Apollo capsules. Yeah, and the Skylab
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: module itself was actually designed roughly initially by Warner von
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Braun out of a Saturn five moon rocket.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: The third stage of it became Skylab, and I think
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, not the
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: one at Dullest, but the one that's in like the
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: like around the mall.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: I think it has a replica of Skylight you can
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: walk through.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Oh cool, which is so awesome, dude, I would love
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: to do that.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: But so the three crews that got sent up there, chuck.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: They managed to kind of like put Skylight back together
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: with duct tape and bubble gum.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that first one, Skylab two, they just sent them
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: up a week and a half after the fail well
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: not fail lunch, but problematic launch. And it's so funny
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: how some of this NASA stuff is so simple. They said,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: go up there and essentially take this big sunshade like
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: it looks like an umbrella and pop it open right
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: to cool it down. And then see that solar panel
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: that didn't stretch out far enough, stretch it out.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: See that stretch it out.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: And they did. Commander Charles Pete, Conrad Paul White's and
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Joseph Kerwin essentially saved Skylab.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right off the bat. And not just them. There
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: were again, there were three crews that kind of did
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: one after the other. Oh yeah, they didn't overlap, but
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: they finally got the thing working. And I think the
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: last crew spent eighty four days in orbit.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the first one spent twenty eight, the next one
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: fifty nine. In the final one eighty four days in
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: the seventies, and I remember, and this is a big deal,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: you know, this is the first time they were testing
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: these long duration man missions to see, like, you know,
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: can we go to the Moon because it takes a
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: while to get there and back right.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: That was the thing. Like, the only data we had
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: was on Moon missions, which is about a two week mission. Yeah,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: so we didn't have any data on what happened to
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: people longer than.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: That, Yeah, can we can we set up shop there,
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: colonize the moon.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Even so, they called anything over two weeks a long
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: duration spaceflight.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: And I remember in nineteen seventy nine, I remember being
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: a little eight year old kid, and I remember hearing
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: about because this is you know, in the seventies when
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: families would sit around and watch the news and it's
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: like how you got all your information? Yeah, And I
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: remember sitting around and hearing that Skylab is coming back
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: down to Earth in an unpredictable way, and I remember
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: being sort of scared and thinking like, wow, this is
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: a little weird and kind of a big deal. Yeah,
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Like even a little eight year old Chuck knew like
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: something didn't seem quite right.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of people who were really anxious
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: about it, because NASA very famously said that everybody calmed down,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: there's there's a one in one hundred and fifty two
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: chance that somebody will be killed by Skylab.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, they think like one in one fifty two.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: You want to hear numbers from NASA like one in
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: a million or one in a billion, one in one
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty two.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, I know, two hundred people. I know
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty three people. It also forced NASA
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: to admit, we were so excited about getting this thing
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: up there, we didn't really think a lot about how
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: to control its descent, because that was essentially the story.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: They were like, we can't we don't really know how
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: to guide this thing back down.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: They said it would quote cost too much to have
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: designed in a way to bring it down safely.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think they were they were in a hurry.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Well. Also, the problem is is they thought that it
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: would just its orbit would decay a little bit and
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: then fall into basically that orbit of space chunk circling
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: the Earth and would just stay there indefinitely. But it's
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: orbit decayed more than expected because there was solar flare
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: activity that NASA hadn't anticipated, and so all of a sudden,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Skylab's on a collision course with Earth. NASA saying it'll
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: it'll probably enter somewhere over this thousand kilometer stretch of Earth. Yea,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: it includes Australia, So heads up Australia, right, And there
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: were lots of like Skylab parties.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's America. In the seventies, people went like
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Skylab crazy disco parties.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. The San Francisco Examiner actually offered ten thousand
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: dollars to anybody who could bring in a legitimate piece
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: of sky Lab within seventy two hours of it crashing. Yeah,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: and some kid actually collected.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah in Australian. Yeah, he got on a plane. He
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: had a little piece of sky Lab because where'd end
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: up crashing.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: And the espernce Australia when you're.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Perth, Yeah, I mean mostly in the ocean. Yeah, but
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: they did get a pretty good amount of debris in Australia.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like the sizeable parts.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: But it's Australia. They're tough. They're like everything tries to
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: kill us. Yeah, your silly space station can't do it.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: So yeah, this kid flew over in San Francisco and
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: said here, pay up, here's a piece of sky Lab.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. His name was Stan Thornton. He was seventeen, and like,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: without even thinking twice about it, he grabbed it, hopped
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: on a plane and went to San Francisco, like you said,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and the Examiner paid him, Yeah, which I did. The
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: West Egg inflation calculator, Oh that's about thirty three thousand
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: dollars in today's money. Not bad, No, I hop on
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: a plane for that.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: That's a salary of a first year teacher, right badly. Yeah,
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: you can also buy pieces of sky Lab today if
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: you've got some dough and an Internet connection.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Alleged pieces of sky Lab.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: Well, sure, just like anything, it should be not verified.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: What do you call it? Verified? Authenticated?
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, authentic.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Supposedly NASA's instead of exerting its domain over pieces of Skylab,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the debris that was found in saying you give a
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: back that some people sent their pieces to NASA, NASA
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: authenticated them and sent them back mounted saying this is
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: an official piece of Skylab. Are the people who mailed
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: it in? Good peeps, not bad? Good peeps wearing brown
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: polyester pants up to their chests.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: All right, buddy, let's take a break and let's go
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: for a little jog around our gravity office. Okay, then
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: we'll talk about mirror and iss. All right, all right.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: We talked about the Soliet, which was the Soviet Union's
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: big first success and some failures, but overall I think
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: they saw it as a success.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Right And at the same time, a couple of years later,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: America had SKYLAMB and then the Soviets said, we can
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: do better than what we're doing. We can do better
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: than anybody else. We're going to create the mirror.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And by the way, skylight was not supposed to
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: be permanent. No, that was never the intention, but mirror was.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Was it supposed to be permanent mirror?
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, so were the later Soliots. Okay, so the mirror
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: definitely was meant to be a permanent one.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: All right. Well, the first crew cosmonauts Leonid Kazimr, solely
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: off Solo y Off nice, it's a great name. I
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: think it was just those two dudes. They shuttled between
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: the Saliot seven, which is being retired, and Mirror, and
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: there was some like you said, there was some crossover there, right,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: an overlap.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: They had to get the vodka.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they had to get the vodka right. And they
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: spent seventy five days on the mirror, and it was
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: continually manned over the next ten years. And you know,
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: manned and built. It's not they build these things out
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: there or assemble them out there, I guess we should say.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: But they don't just launch a space station.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Were right, like the ready to go.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: They carry pieces of it out there. Right, just like
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: iss and they put them together.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Although I think, as we'll see later on, I think
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: the Chinese launched a full space station.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Oh really, yeah, of course they did.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: I think they did, but we're talking twenty thirteen. Come on.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: So the Mirror had twelve twelve main parts, which we
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: won't go over all those because we don't like to
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: just read lists. But you know, it's something you would expect.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: It was a g whiz space station. Yeah, a lot
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: of everything.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: You need stuff, a lot of modules, living quarters, transfer compartments,
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: docking places. They had more than one parking space. They
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: figured that old mess out. Yeah, you know, it's like,
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: you know, we should have guests.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: And they did have guests. They had American guests. Actually,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: they sure did, which was pretty cool. It wasn't until
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: the nineties after the Soviet Union dissolved, and actually there
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: was a cosmonaut a board Mirror when the Soviet Union
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: dissolved on December twenty sixth, nineteen ninety one. His name
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: was Sergei Kirkvkev kir Ko keV. It's harder to say
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: than you would think. Yeah, And he was known as
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: the last Soviet citizen because apparently being in space made
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: him immune from the dissolving of the Soviet Union.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Oh really, yeah, not really.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: But that's what everybody said about him, whether he liked
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: it or not.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: Well, the Mirror had some problems kind of later in
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: its life. There was a fire one year and then
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: the supply ship was called the Progress I think you
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: mentioned it actually crashed into the Mirror trying to park
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: and it's a little parking space, which damaged it. And
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: at that point they said, you know what, we should
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: just make this thing space junk, even though you thought
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: it was going to be permanent. The US is talking
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: about this iss station they want us to come help
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: them with and that was a big campaign to keep
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: the Mirror alive called Keep Mirror Alive, and private corporation
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: stepped in said no, let us take it over. Let's
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: privatize this thing. And they said, niett not going to
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: do it.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're not gonna just hand over a space station.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Okay, No, we're going to crash it into the Earth.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Right If I can't have you, no one can't.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Pretty much, so they had a little bit more advanced
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: capabilities in Skylab had as far as directionally and in February
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: two thousand and one. They slowed those endinges down and
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: it re entered the atmosphere on March twenty third, two
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: thousand and one, burned up, broke up, and again tried
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: to kill Australia.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: I know Australia is like what the age?
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: I know, why is everyone trying to land their space
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: junk on us? But it was about on AE, thousand miles
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: east of Australia in the ocean. Has anyone found these things?
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: That's what I was wondering.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Mirror is near at the bottom of the ocean. I'm
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: sure somebody's found some parts of it.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Pretty neat. Yeah, talk about like space wreckage at the
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: bottom of the ocean. That's a movie.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Who was it? Was it Jeff Bezos that went and
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: got like one of the Apollo really stages that had
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: been scull than the ocean recently? Probably? I think I
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: was Jeff Bezos.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Or James Cameron. We talked about him too much though, hm.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: So that brings us to iss nineteen eighty four, Ronald
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Reagan said, you know what, I was about to do
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: a Reagan, but I thought the better.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: I think everybody wants to hear your Reagan.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: No, I don't want to do it, he said, let's
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: he said, hey, man, let's get an.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: ISS station going dead on Reagan. Is that good?
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll call it the International Space Station. And it's
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: going to be super expensive, so we need some help.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: Let's partner up with fourteen other countries, Canada, Japan, Brazil,
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: and then the European Space Agency, which is the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: Netherlands and Mark, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden. And he said,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: as a good faith measure, let's invite the Soviets. I
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: don't know if that was all.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Well, no, it was Russia by then.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you're right, Yeah, you're right.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: And the Russian said, sure, why not. Weren't doing anything.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: And not just being friendly, but you know they they
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: were probably the second leading well I don't know by
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: that point there were other players.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Well in space science.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but they were still pretty highly regarded.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Sure yeah, big time. Yeah, yeah, probably more than they
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: get credit for again over here, agreed. So they started
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: putting the ISS in orbit in nineteen ninety eight, and
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: the first people showed up from it was launched for
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: They were launched from Russia. Yeah, in two thousand and
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: they spent about five months there like basically getting everything
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: up and running man taking all of the little desecant
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: packets out of everything, like they do not eat things
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: that keep stuff dry.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: What is that silica jel?
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and pulling off all of the cellophane from everything.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Uh huh, Well they left it on the lampshades, which
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I thought was tasteless.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: Oh well, it's shiny.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: So they've been living up there. Like I said, they
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: just launched the one hundred thousandth I'm sorry, the forty seventh,
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: but one hundred thousandth orbit of Earth, and we'll do
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: one on the iside.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: I really think we should.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: But I did look a little bit into their day
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: to day life. They work about ten hours a day
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: Monday through Friday, about half that on a Saturday, and
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: then they take Sunday off and then the rest of
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: the time is you know, relaxation, emailing your family, hanging
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: out pool side, facetiming. They have sixteen sunrises and sunsets
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: a day, which is decidedly weird on your body, so
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: they generally just keep those windows closed so they can
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: get on a rag skeedu and apparently the food isn't great.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: They don't love the food, no, and they have to
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: overspice it. I didn't know this. One of the things
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: space does is reduce your sense of taste. I've heard
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: that in microgravity. I think it makes everything tastes like Yeah,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: so apparently they like really overspice everything to try and
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: make it palatable. And they have to be really careful
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: of crumbs because oh yeah, remember Homer Simpson.
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: Do you remember one of the great.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: All time scenes when he opened the bag of chips
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: in space? Great great scene and then pooping and peepe.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Gotta go somewhere.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: They have two toilets, only two, and oh.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: There's usually only three or four people up there.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Well there's six right now?
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Oh six? Yeah, with two toilets. Yeah, how many hair dryers?
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Who knows? They keep their hair short though, because.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Because there's very few hair dryers in space.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: Well, there's no showers.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: M hmm.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: I mean they can wash themselves. They have like water jets, but.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Not the same Yeah, not the same, man. I'll bet
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: that first shower when they get back down to Earth
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: feels so good.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But there's two toilets. They use a fan driven
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: suction system and you have to latch yourself to the toilet.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I've heard that too, And there are restraining
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: bars to ensure there's a good seal, because you know
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: what happens if there's not a good seal and microgravity,
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: things will float away. And then there's a lever that
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: they hit, a suction hole slides open and a big
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: stream of air carries a waste away. The solids are
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: collected actually into an aluminum container, and the they are
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: then transferred to the progress to take away the little
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: shuttle ship like, here's all our poop.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Progress is like thanks, yeah.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: I wonder what they call it progress? And then the
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: peepee is evacuated by a hose that's attached to the
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: front of the toilet.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Do they drink it?
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: They do? I was getting there, but sure, I'm sorry.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Now it's recycled. It's a recovery system and they eventually
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: recycle it back into drinking water.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Tastes like chicken and.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: The toilets for PEP are an comically correct. They have
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: these funnel adapters, So men and women have different adapters
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: because you know, they have different parts.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Yes they do. They do have different parts.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: That like a second grader I just you don't think
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: about this stuff. Like. That's the first thing I thought.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, man, how they eat, how they poop?
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: Do they watch movies?
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Do they watch movies?
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah? That the they just sit back. I think it
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: was the Atlantic had a great photo spread of photos
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: that this new mission is taking of space and the
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Earth and you know all that stuff. But then pictures
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: on board, and one of them they were had this
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: huge flat screen watching the.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Revenant, watching the Revenue.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Huh yeah, wow, that's what it looked like.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: I could see these.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Two guys on a horse. It was hard to tell
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: because it was in the background, but I think it
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: was a Revenant.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: That are cloudy with the chance of meatball.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: Probably not the movie gravity.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I know they were probably like it could
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: never happen. Remember when Nils deGrasse Tyson lost his mind
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: about gravity, he went on a Twitter ran about it. Yeah,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: then then we should talk about the Chinese, because I
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: think it's been unfair not to. The Chinese launched something
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: called Tiangong one back in two thousand and three. They
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: became the third nation on the planet to launch a
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: human into space, and they launched their space their space
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: station in twenty eleven, and there's been two missions to
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: the space station. I think it's no longer active, but
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: it's still up there, but the Chinese admitted this year
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: that they've lost contact with the space station. It's no
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: longer under their control. So it may end up coming
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: back down to Earth and we'll have a new Skylab
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: party for it. But the two missions included China's first
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: two women asked intronauts, Lou Yang and Wang Yaping, and
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: they were in twenty twelve, in twenty thirteen, and they
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: did I mean, they lived in space for a while,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: just like yeah, everybody else had. But the Chinese don't
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: participate in the ISS. I don't know if they've not
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: been invited or if they decline an invitation, but they're
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: doing their own parallel thing, which I get the impression
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: that's making people nervous.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: Interesting. Well, I know it's important that they've had women astronauts,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: female astronauts on the ISS, because you know, you need
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: to see what space does to them. And I just
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: wonder if they're going to like get to the point
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: where they're like, well we need to if we really
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: want to call an I space, we need to see
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: what happens when a baby is up there, or give
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: birth in outer space, or have a ten year old
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: or a seventy five year old.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: And a ten year old aboard a space station for
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: a year.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh man, no, thank you.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: There's one other thing I wanted to mention. There's talk
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: about saving a lot a lot of money with a
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: space station by putting it what's called the lagrange point.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: And there's lagrange point L four and L five, and
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: they are the little these spots between the Earth and
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: the Moon to where the gravity between the Earth and
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: the Moon is counterbalanced. So all it does is just
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: go in orbit around the Earth and the Moon and
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: it will stay in that orbit forever because gravity's not
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: pulling on it one way or the other, so you
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: don't have to use fuel to keep it in that
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: orbit forever. Right. And this is actually like an early
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: idea that I think Arthur C. Clark was the first
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: to put it out there in nineteen sixty one. And
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: these lagrange points are like the orbit's like ninety thousand
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: miles across. You can put a bunch of space stations
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: in these things and just leave them out there. And
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: there's actually something called the L five society that came
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: about that is all about this kind of thing.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: I bet their parties are wicked crazy.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well they plan to disband on a space station
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: in the L five band at some point in the future. Really,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: when they all come together there for the first time.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Sounds wonderful.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, one more thing, Valerie Polyakov.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, record holder right.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Yep, four hundred and thirty eight days. He did a
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: board mirror in nineteen ninety four to nineteen ninety five. Man,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: and he'd done like two hundred and thirty eight days
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: before then.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Crazy. I bet he's super fainty, you know all the time.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: He's Russian, though, he can take it.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: You got anything else?
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: I got nothing else?
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's it for space stations for now.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about him, you can
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: type those words in the search part house stuff works.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: And since I said search part's time for listener mail.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: I'm going to call this oh Chuck's graduation post. So
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: I put out a post about my nephew graduating high school.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah it did he really?
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: Noah Is graduated from high school. And also Noah the
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: same year, my niece Reagan graduated college from Mayordith College,
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: moving to New York City like a good girl.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: And my other niece Abby moved on matriculated into high
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: school from middle school.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Nothing better than matriculation.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: Nothing better. So I went to Noah's graduation and it
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: really like affected me much more than I thought it
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: would because I haven't been to a graduation since my own.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like and I didn't walk in the college one,
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: so I literally have not been to a ceremony since
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine. And it just stirred up all these
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: amazing feelings.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, I thought you mad.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: No, it was really really neat just to hear these
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: kids and their speeches. And I put a Facebook post.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: I was like, you know what, we're great, don't people.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Millennials get a lot of crap, But like, talk to
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: a seventeen year old for a little while, who's doing
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: it right, and we're headed in the right direction like
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: this very empathetic, carrying, like forward thinking generation.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: So it was a really neat things. So I just
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: congratulations to all the graduates. Yeah, especially well, if you're listening,
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: then I guess you are a listener. What all your stuff?
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: You should know listeners that have been with us like
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: throughout high school.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: We appreciate you. A girl named Hannah, I want to say,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: wrote in and asked for any advice for graduations.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: Oh that's right, and she mentioned you in this speech.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so pretty mit relations to her as well.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: Pretty great stuff.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: But you're right, all stuff you should know. Listeners who
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: are graduating or matriculating, congratulations.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, very big accomplishment. So this is from Brandy and Kansas. Hey, guys,
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: want to thank you so much for that Facebook post
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: about Noah's graduation and how you have so much hope
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: for the up and coming generation. I'm really excited about
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: the world changers coming up and so rare to hear
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: someone come out and say how awesome they are on
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: that thread. Have you considered it doing a show on
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Kids Today fallacy. It's a well documented phenomenon where each
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: generation downplays the bad things our own generation didn't believes.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: The ones that follow are lazy, spoiled, entitled. There are
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: quotes literally dating back two thousands of years ago of
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: this very thing. And the music stinks too, I'm sure
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: that's the other part of that. Yeah or no, no, no, yeah,
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: the music today's stinks are rives better I would love
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: to hear you explain this nonsense. Help people stop being
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: so crotchety and instead recognize their role in helping to
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: shape the future generations. Second request, come to Kansas. You
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: guys make fun of us enough and it's time to
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: pace a visit. We top some lists for the most
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: beautiful sunsets and landscapes and also have cities on national
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: lists of places to live. It takes more than a
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: beautiful sunset to get us to.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Do a live show and listicles.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: We make fun of Kansas because of our good friend
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: Aaron Cooper and our buddy Isaac McNary is really the
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: two people that we're targeting when we make fun of
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: Kansas and the governor, And it's all out of love
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: because Isaaca and Aaron are great. And we met Aaron
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: at our show in Denver and he's just as nice
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: and cool as I thought he was gonna be.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: And we met our pal Tyler Murphy too.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: And Mett Tyler and his friends Timothy and Sarah, and
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: our friend Jane Janab was in the audience, and our
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: old buddy Greg Storkin was in the audience.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: It was something else.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Denver was like these some of our oldest, oldest
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: fans were inattended, so that it was a great show.
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: It was wonderful. Anyway, we're not coming to Kansas. Thanks
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: for a great show. Guys, only have a few episodes
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: left to go before them got up and then I
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: will enter the pitch of despair, so at least satisfy
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: one of my requests you can help pull me out,
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: and that is Brandy and Manhattan, Kansas.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Brandy, good luck in the pit of despair.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with this and
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: you can send us an email to Stuff Podcasts at
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart rate, you visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.