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Space Junk, Ahoy! · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
0:14
Speaker 1: astro Clark, and there's Charles after Burn, Bryant okay, and
0:22
Speaker 1: Jerry Goose Roland is out there. Way do you call
0:26
Speaker 1: me after burning because I'm gassy? Yep, although we've been
0:31
Speaker 1: we've been tooting for a year straight and no one
0:33
Speaker 1: even no, I don't care except us. Have you ever
0:37
Speaker 1: set one of your ducks on fire? Have I ever
0:41
Speaker 1: lit a fart? I was hoping to not use that word,
0:43
Speaker 1: but yes, uh yeah, I used to. There was a
0:47
Speaker 1: period in my youth where I thought that was just
0:50
Speaker 1: about the funniest thing ever. And I still think it's
0:52
Speaker 1: pretty hysterical. I just don't do it. I never thought
0:55
Speaker 1: it was funny. I've always just been more wowed by it.
0:57
Speaker 1: You know. It's I'm mean, the notion of it, now
1:01
Speaker 1: as I've gotten older, is more funny than the act itself.
1:03
Speaker 1: The notion that we can expel flammable cats from our
1:06
Speaker 1: But it's pretty great. And then do you remember that
1:09
Speaker 1: cautionary tale that um that if you lit it, it it
1:13
Speaker 1: could travel up into your rectum and cook your inside
1:17
Speaker 1: some sort of a reverse thing. There must have just
1:20
Speaker 1: been like some I don't know, some department somewhere, some
1:24
Speaker 1: obscure federal agency that was tasked with coming up with
1:28
Speaker 1: fake cautionary tales to scare kids out of doing things
1:32
Speaker 1: that where they weren't behaving, you know. Yeah, And I
1:36
Speaker 1: think what my most cherished memories were the times where
1:40
Speaker 1: people swore that it wasn't possible, that oh that you
1:44
Speaker 1: couldn't light it, they wouldn't work. Yeah, So proving proving
1:48
Speaker 1: that was always sort of the most fun because it
1:50
Speaker 1: was just like hilarity ensued, and also you just got
1:54
Speaker 1: to be like in your face, like literally come down here,
1:58
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna light this in your face if you're
2:01
Speaker 1: just so sure it's not going to catch fire. And
2:04
Speaker 1: I always had a theory that it would get rid
2:05
Speaker 1: of the smell kind of instantaneously too. I think it
2:08
Speaker 1: just burned it out. I think it did. So it's
2:09
Speaker 1: really an efficient way of clearing the air. What are
2:12
Speaker 1: we doing? Well, we're talking chuck about space junk and
2:16
Speaker 1: actually not the band, the whole thing. What there's a
2:20
Speaker 1: immediately had to look it up because I was going
2:22
Speaker 1: to say a great band name, but there's a band
2:24
Speaker 1: out of Buffalo named space Junk. Yeah, out of Buffalo.
2:27
Speaker 1: I guess that. I guess that um that affords being mentioned. Sure,
2:33
Speaker 1: sure um, Okay, So space Junk, not the band, the
2:37
Speaker 1: actual stuff stuff floating around in space. It turns out
2:41
Speaker 1: there's a lot of it. And I actually have a
2:43
Speaker 1: little bit of an intro here. I'm gonna do a little,
2:45
Speaker 1: um a little. It wasn't the lighting, No, that was
2:50
Speaker 1: a pre showed tangent. Okay, I think it's that classification.
2:56
Speaker 1: No UM. Back in the seventies, there is a guy
2:58
Speaker 1: who worked for NASA called Donald Kessler, and he was
3:01
Speaker 1: an interesting cat in and of himself, but one of
3:04
Speaker 1: the claims to fame that he has is that his
3:08
Speaker 1: name became synonymous with a um an unstoppable chain reaction
3:16
Speaker 1: of collisions of space junk called the Kessler syndrome. And
3:21
Speaker 1: the Kessler syndrome that Kessler came up with is based
3:24
Speaker 1: on this idea that if you get enough stuff floating
3:27
Speaker 1: around in orbit around Earth, eventually this stuff is going
3:31
Speaker 1: to smash into other stuff up there because these things
3:35
Speaker 1: are traveling at very high speeds, and when they smash
3:37
Speaker 1: in another they're going to potentially break into more and
3:41
Speaker 1: more pieces, and then those pieces are going to go
3:43
Speaker 1: on and they're going to smash into other things, and
3:45
Speaker 1: so this chain reaction will begin to where there's just
3:48
Speaker 1: pieces constantly smashing into one another, and all of a
3:51
Speaker 1: sudden were trapped on Earth because we can't make it
3:54
Speaker 1: through the debris field we accidentally created. Hence the ks
3:59
Speaker 1: the Kessler sin drome has struck again like a like
4:02
Speaker 1: a far being lit in your face, but in the
4:04
Speaker 1: face of humanity as a whole. Yeah, and I think
4:07
Speaker 1: some some scientists these days say that parts of our
4:11
Speaker 1: orbit are already like that, right, Yeah, there, Yes, So
4:14
Speaker 1: Kessler was basically saying he made these predictions in the
4:16
Speaker 1: seventies um and he he said, based at the rate
4:21
Speaker 1: that we're going, will probably will reach a critical mass
4:25
Speaker 1: or in about thirty to forty years. And a lot
4:27
Speaker 1: of people said, well, we've reached that point, and I
4:30
Speaker 1: think Kessler is actually right. The thing is, we can't
4:34
Speaker 1: really see everything that's up there, so we have to
4:37
Speaker 1: make guesses and assumptions. We actually track a very respectable
4:40
Speaker 1: amount of space chunk considering that we're just down here
4:43
Speaker 1: on Earth, that we actually can track things going really
4:46
Speaker 1: fast that are really small, traveling really far above the Earth.
4:50
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of it that's just too small
4:52
Speaker 1: for our current technology to track. So we have to
4:54
Speaker 1: make guesses about what all is up there. And it
4:57
Speaker 1: looks like there's a lot of stuff up there, and
4:59
Speaker 1: it's possible we have reached critical mass and this this
5:03
Speaker 1: cascading collision, the chain reaction, it just hasn't started yet. Yeah,
5:08
Speaker 1: I mean, I was just about to correct myself when
5:09
Speaker 1: I said some people say it's already there, that I
5:12
Speaker 1: didn't mean. It's all just so people understand it's already
5:15
Speaker 1: like we can't travel through these places, but that process
5:19
Speaker 1: has started such that it can't be reversed, Like even
5:22
Speaker 1: if we stop launching anything, they're like, it's too late. Yeah,
5:25
Speaker 1: once that chain reaction starts, I mean, there's nothing we
5:28
Speaker 1: can do about it. I mean, we can't even get
5:30
Speaker 1: a lot of the space chunk that's up there out now.
5:33
Speaker 1: I can't imagine when they've started on a chain reaction.
5:36
Speaker 1: That's got to make catching it even even more difficult.
5:39
Speaker 1: So a lot of people say, well, let's do everything
5:42
Speaker 1: we can to avoid that cascade inclusion that Kessler syndrome
5:46
Speaker 1: from ever starting and a lot of people sitting out
5:49
Speaker 1: there chuck, I'm guessing are like, wait, what are you
5:51
Speaker 1: guys talking about with space Chunk? What is the space Chunk? Yes,
5:54
Speaker 1: I'm well versed with the band from Buffalo. I have
5:58
Speaker 1: all of their CDs. I got them all for free
6:01
Speaker 1: just walking past this one street corner many times over
6:03
Speaker 1: multiple years. But I don't know about the actual space junk.
6:08
Speaker 1: And it never occurred to me that the band space
6:10
Speaker 1: Junk is based on a real thing, right, so space
6:15
Speaker 1: junk I kind of always assume people knew what this was.
6:17
Speaker 1: But we've made that assumption before about things like I
6:20
Speaker 1: don't know trees, and people said, why don't you just
6:24
Speaker 1: grub what a tree is? Parrots? So, oh, by the way,
6:28
Speaker 1: thanks for all the parrot pictures from all over the world.
6:31
Speaker 1: Has been delightful. But space junk is you know, it
6:35
Speaker 1: can be a lot of things. NASA actually has a
6:38
Speaker 1: sort of a list that describes it better than we could. UM.
6:41
Speaker 1: A lot of it is abandoned spacecraft or spacecraft that
6:44
Speaker 1: doesn't work anymore, so we abandon it. Um. This can
6:48
Speaker 1: be big, full spaceships, or it can be parts of spaceships.
6:52
Speaker 1: Because as we'll learn and as you know, if you follow,
6:55
Speaker 1: you know, if you're a rocket enthusiast, like those things
6:58
Speaker 1: break apart, and we'll get to that, but there are
7:00
Speaker 1: many pieces that are quite large that are just sort
7:03
Speaker 1: of left up there until they come back down or
7:07
Speaker 1: they hit something else. Um. Some of this stuff is,
7:11
Speaker 1: like I said, parts of rockets that have broken apart,
7:15
Speaker 1: usually upper stage, because that lower stage stuff breaks off
7:19
Speaker 1: early enough to where it generally, you know, after a
7:22
Speaker 1: few years, may tumble back towards Earth, burn up hopefully
7:26
Speaker 1: so where nothing actually hits Earth, but that upper stage
7:29
Speaker 1: stuff is kind of stuck up there. Yeah. Yeah, that's
7:32
Speaker 1: that's one thing that you'll you'll find out about things
7:35
Speaker 1: that we place into orbit. The further away from Earth
7:39
Speaker 1: that this thing is circling the Earth, um, the the
7:43
Speaker 1: longer it's going to take to come back down to Earth.
7:46
Speaker 1: So that, yeah, because it's the force of gravity that
7:49
Speaker 1: pulls these things in orbit back down to Earth eventually. Right. Yeah.
7:53
Speaker 1: What else? Uh? What else do we have? Motor affluent? Yeah,
7:57
Speaker 1: so a lot of unspent fuel, a lot of cocket fuel,
8:00
Speaker 1: a solid fuel and then kids, I was looking it up,
8:03
Speaker 1: that includes ammonium nitrate appropriately enough, but it all yeah,
8:07
Speaker 1: um and enemy um. But it also includes gunpowder, black gunpowder.
8:12
Speaker 1: That's what they use as solid rocket fuel sometimes, which
8:16
Speaker 1: is like we've come really far, but also not far
8:19
Speaker 1: at all, you know. Um. So there's canisters of of
8:22
Speaker 1: gunpowder floating around up in space, which are particularly problematic
8:26
Speaker 1: because not only can they break things apart, they can
8:29
Speaker 1: really break things apart because they may explode when they
8:32
Speaker 1: impact things going as fast as they travel. Uh. And
8:35
Speaker 1: then the last thing, and we'll get to all the
8:38
Speaker 1: detail about all this stuff and why it's dangerous. But
8:40
Speaker 1: little bitty, little tiny things, little tiny flex of paint,
8:43
Speaker 1: even millions of them, can cause a lot of damage.
8:48
Speaker 1: I think there was, you know, reports from astronauts that say,
8:52
Speaker 1: you know that work on the Hubble that are like,
8:53
Speaker 1: this thing looks like it a car that's been through
8:55
Speaker 1: a hailstorm. You know, it's just like getting constantly pelted,
9:01
Speaker 1: and you think a speck of paint, who cares. But
9:03
Speaker 1: when these things are going twenty something miles an hour,
9:07
Speaker 1: it can cause some damage. Yeah. I think his famous
9:09
Speaker 1: quote back to ground Control was this thing looks like
9:12
Speaker 1: a seventy two nova. So when we when we The
9:20
Speaker 1: thing about space junk is that you have to remember
9:23
Speaker 1: is every single bit of it used to be here
9:25
Speaker 1: on Earth, and every single bit of it was launched
9:27
Speaker 1: by humans. That's just space junk. There's plenty of other
9:30
Speaker 1: stuff out in space, like asteroids and comets and pieces
9:33
Speaker 1: of rocks flying around. That's not space. Yeah, et s
9:37
Speaker 1: flying around, Um, that's not space junk. Space junk is
9:41
Speaker 1: specifically things that humans have launched into Earth. So there's
9:44
Speaker 1: this whole kind of air of um oh, I don't
9:49
Speaker 1: know the actual word for it, but that we've we've
9:51
Speaker 1: done this to ourselves, like we've created our own problem
9:54
Speaker 1: and now we we've made this bed that we have
9:57
Speaker 1: to lie in or figure out how to get out
9:59
Speaker 1: of because it's so human. Yeah, isn't it that, like
10:03
Speaker 1: let's destroy the Earth, let's start destroying space because we
10:08
Speaker 1: may want to live up there, so we might as
10:10
Speaker 1: well pre destroy it before we get up there to
10:12
Speaker 1: really destroy it. And it makes sense though early on
10:17
Speaker 1: in the space programs, you know, starting in the with
10:22
Speaker 1: the launch of Sputnik, that's when the whole thing started.
10:25
Speaker 1: But you know, it makes sense that we had the
10:27
Speaker 1: technology get things up there, but not to get them
10:29
Speaker 1: back down, and we knew that eventually their their orbit
10:33
Speaker 1: was going to decay, they would be pulled down into
10:35
Speaker 1: the atmosphere where it would probably burn up. So that
10:39
Speaker 1: made sense at the beginning of the space race. But
10:42
Speaker 1: as we got better and better at technology, the idea
10:45
Speaker 1: that we could just litter space became less and less acceptable.
10:51
Speaker 1: The problem is it didn't really go away, Like, there's
10:54
Speaker 1: still basically stuff that's being launched up there today that
10:58
Speaker 1: has no way of being brought back down. It's just
11:02
Speaker 1: like we'll just leave it up there until it runs
11:04
Speaker 1: out of its useful life and then hope for the best.
11:06
Speaker 1: That's kind of how a lot of stuff is being
11:09
Speaker 1: launched into space right now, and it's particularly galling because
11:13
Speaker 1: we have the technology to bring it back down. It
11:15
Speaker 1: just makes the whole thing more expensive, and I think
11:18
Speaker 1: that that's why a lot of um companies and countries
11:22
Speaker 1: don't include that. Yeah, there's a saying among contractors, a joke,
11:28
Speaker 1: if you will, among contractors who build houses and fix
11:32
Speaker 1: up houses. If there's something wrong and that that they're
11:35
Speaker 1: working on and there's the homeowners and around, they just say,
11:38
Speaker 1: I can't see it from my house. I've not heard.
11:42
Speaker 1: That's kind of what's been going on here for years
11:45
Speaker 1: with I mean not only space agencies, but private companies
11:48
Speaker 1: as we'll see, uh, Amazon and Tesla and all kinds
11:53
Speaker 1: of companies have plans to put a lot of a
11:55
Speaker 1: lot more things into space. And it made me wonder, like,
11:59
Speaker 1: who's regulating this stuff. We'll get to all that, But
12:01
Speaker 1: what's kind of cool is since seven when sput Nick
12:06
Speaker 1: was launched into space, nor AD started cat cataloging this
12:11
Speaker 1: stuff and numbering them and naming them, and sput Nick
12:14
Speaker 1: is object number one. And you know they did, they
12:18
Speaker 1: do a really good job of keeping track of a
12:19
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff. Like you said, considering we're down
12:22
Speaker 1: here and it's up there, it's not too bad. Things
12:26
Speaker 1: started breaking apart though, and getting smaller and colliding with
12:30
Speaker 1: one another, creating hundreds and thousands of more smaller bits.
12:34
Speaker 1: But we kind of, you know, our technology progress where
12:36
Speaker 1: we could go smaller in our tracking abilities. And so
12:40
Speaker 1: now the US Department of Defense started cattle logging anything
12:44
Speaker 1: basically larger than I think a softball. I've seen grapefruit too,
12:50
Speaker 1: so yeah, basically that size. If you're not familiar with softballs,
12:53
Speaker 1: but you're crazy for citrus. It's grape fruit size too.
12:57
Speaker 1: If you don't know either one of those, I'm sorry.
12:58
Speaker 1: That's the best we can do. Maybe two of your
13:01
Speaker 1: fists bawled up like good and I don't know how
13:03
Speaker 1: big your fists are A good size snowball. Okay, somebody's like,
13:08
Speaker 1: I'm from the Tropics, I don't know any of this stuff.
13:11
Speaker 1: I'm from Buffalo. I know about snowballs and space jumps
13:15
Speaker 1: and that catalog Chuck. By the way, it is pretty awesome.
13:18
Speaker 1: It contains not just sput nick and all every satellite
13:21
Speaker 1: ever created in every grapefruit size UM piece of debris.
13:26
Speaker 1: But there's some other really interesting stuff in there too. UM.
13:29
Speaker 1: The cremated remains or the canister containing the cremated remains
13:34
Speaker 1: of Gene Roddenberry is one of them. The created star
13:37
Speaker 1: trek UM, the Tesla roadster that UM SpaceX launched up.
13:43
Speaker 1: That one. Yeah, especially when you start learning about the
13:46
Speaker 1: space junk, you're like, this is not a good idea. Yeah,
13:49
Speaker 1: what we don't need to do is just do like
13:51
Speaker 1: pr stuff in space and then you know, like like
13:55
Speaker 1: UM astronauts have lost entire boxes of tools on spacewalks
14:01
Speaker 1: before UM and they're just out there floating around wrenches
14:04
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. They're all in the catalog. They
14:07
Speaker 1: cut that stuff tethered. You gotta tether it. Yeah, sometimes
14:10
Speaker 1: that gets loose or they forget to tether it. Astro nuts.
14:13
Speaker 1: They have hard days too, that's right. They have their
14:17
Speaker 1: their B game on some days. But yeah, anything as
14:21
Speaker 1: small as a softball. They're about twenty thou pieces orbiting
14:24
Speaker 1: the Earth right now. And then there are about half
14:27
Speaker 1: a million pieces the size of a marble or larger
14:31
Speaker 1: that NASA is tracking. And then the paint flex just
14:35
Speaker 1: good luck with that. There's millions of that and no one,
14:37
Speaker 1: no one keeps track of it. Yeah, paint flexes, well,
14:40
Speaker 1: just because we can't. We definitely would if we could,
14:42
Speaker 1: but we just don't have the technology right now because
14:45
Speaker 1: there's so so there's three orbits. I don't want to
14:48
Speaker 1: do an episode on satellites one day, but just briefly,
14:51
Speaker 1: but there's three orbits lowerth orbit, Middle Earth orbit UM,
14:54
Speaker 1: not to be confused with the shire and um uh
14:59
Speaker 1: g O sink in this orbit which is way up
15:01
Speaker 1: there UM, and that's where your communication satellites are there,
15:06
Speaker 1: GEO stationary. They basically if you stand in a spot
15:09
Speaker 1: and could look up and there was a satellite ahead
15:12
Speaker 1: of you or above, you would be there twenty four
15:14
Speaker 1: hours a day, every day of the year. It's it's
15:16
Speaker 1: it's it's moving in in line with one spot around
15:21
Speaker 1: the Earth, and to do that you have to be
15:23
Speaker 1: really far out. The stuff that's further closer to the
15:25
Speaker 1: Earth travels the fastest, and it seems that lower Earth
15:29
Speaker 1: orbit is the most crowded too. So the things that
15:32
Speaker 1: are in lower Earth orbit are traveling the fastest, and
15:35
Speaker 1: there's the most of them because it's the easiest to
15:37
Speaker 1: get to. Right, I feel like that's a pretty good
15:42
Speaker 1: setup if you include our two lighting stories. So maybe
15:46
Speaker 1: we should take a break and talk a little bit
15:48
Speaker 1: about some of the things they're doing to mitigate this
15:51
Speaker 1: right after this. All right, So, there's a lot of
16:22
Speaker 1: space junk out there, a lot of collisions happening. Um.
16:26
Speaker 1: When satellites collide, like I said, they can create just
16:30
Speaker 1: a very much bigger problem by creating lots more smaller pieces.
16:34
Speaker 1: And there are a few countries. The USA is one
16:37
Speaker 1: of them, China's one, India's one that we have used
16:40
Speaker 1: missiles before. They're called anti satellite weapons a SATs to
16:45
Speaker 1: physically damage a satellite, and basically what they do it's
16:49
Speaker 1: very you know, we all kind of laughed when Armageddon
16:52
Speaker 1: came out about sending people up there to drill holes
16:56
Speaker 1: and then drop bombs in it. But when you look
16:59
Speaker 1: at some of these things that we've thought to do,
17:02
Speaker 1: they're all kind of rudimentry like that, Like let's just
17:04
Speaker 1: send something in there and ram it into a satellite. Yeah,
17:07
Speaker 1: shoot a missile at that thing the old fashioned way. Yeah,
17:10
Speaker 1: that's called a kinetic kill model, which is it's exactly
17:14
Speaker 1: that you shoot a missile at a satellite or something
17:17
Speaker 1: up in space and you blow it into smithereens a
17:20
Speaker 1: is a yosemite. Sam would say, right, so, um, you
17:24
Speaker 1: don't want to do this, but a lot of countries do,
17:27
Speaker 1: like you listed, Um, they have not only just the technology,
17:31
Speaker 1: but have actually done this, have run these tests. And
17:33
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of a two show of twofold
17:36
Speaker 1: Show of Force where you're showing that like I can
17:39
Speaker 1: launch really technically sophisticated stuff up there that I don't
17:44
Speaker 1: want anyone else to know about, and then I can
17:46
Speaker 1: destroy it before you could ever possibly find out about it.
17:49
Speaker 1: Or I don't like your satellite and what it's doing.
17:52
Speaker 1: I'm going to shoot that thing out of the sky.
17:54
Speaker 1: I just showed all of you that I'm capable of
17:56
Speaker 1: doing it. So so it makes sense, so I guess
18:00
Speaker 1: in a geopolitical way, but up in space it makes
18:03
Speaker 1: zero sense because when you blow up a satellite or something,
18:07
Speaker 1: you blow it up into thousands of pieces of um
18:10
Speaker 1: that grapefruit, softball snowball size um uh debris, and then
18:17
Speaker 1: millions of smaller pieces, and all of a sudden, the
18:20
Speaker 1: population that catalog of space chunk just increased by ten
18:23
Speaker 1: or fifteen or twenty um depending on how big the
18:27
Speaker 1: explosion wasn't how much debris it created. Yeah, and you
18:31
Speaker 1: might think, because there have been satellites launched basically continuously
18:35
Speaker 1: for you know, many many decades now, that they're banging
18:39
Speaker 1: into each other at a decent rate. But that's actually
18:42
Speaker 1: not the case yet as far as actual satellite collisions.
18:46
Speaker 1: In February two thousand nine, the very first one happened,
18:49
Speaker 1: um the cosmos with a K, so you know where
18:53
Speaker 1: that one's from. The twenty Cosmos out of Russia collided
18:58
Speaker 1: and it was defunct, collided with I think a private
19:01
Speaker 1: one from a US company called Irridium, which sounds like
19:05
Speaker 1: a total sci fi movie, bad guy company. I know,
19:09
Speaker 1: I don't actually know. It doesn't strike me like that.
19:11
Speaker 1: I get what you're saying, but I think it's a
19:12
Speaker 1: very pleasant word. Okay. It makes me think of the
19:16
Speaker 1: rainbow centrum vitamin logo kind of oh, Ridium find it
19:22
Speaker 1: very Yeah, Well, one guy's evil corporation, there's another guy's
19:26
Speaker 1: rainbow fighting. That's right. Uh. They were traveling at a
19:31
Speaker 1: speed relative to each other about twenty two thousand miles
19:33
Speaker 1: an hour and blew them up into you know, two
19:38
Speaker 1: thousand pieces at least four inches in diameter, and then
19:42
Speaker 1: like you said, thousands and thousands and millions of tinier
19:45
Speaker 1: and tinier pieces. Right. So this is the first time
19:48
Speaker 1: that was two thousand nine where they where two satellites
19:51
Speaker 1: rammed into each other as as far as we know,
19:54
Speaker 1: and I think it hasn't happened again yet right now.
19:57
Speaker 1: But the thing is is, because there's so many satellites
19:59
Speaker 1: up there and we're launching so many more, that um
20:03
Speaker 1: that that it's going to happen again. It's just inevitable
20:06
Speaker 1: that's going to happen again. Because you'll notice, you know,
20:08
Speaker 1: while the Iridium satellite was operational, that Cosmos one was
20:13
Speaker 1: in operational, meaning there's no way to control it or
20:16
Speaker 1: move it. So the only way to avoid this collision
20:19
Speaker 1: is for the Iridium controllers to move their's and I
20:22
Speaker 1: guess they didn't have the warning or what why they
20:25
Speaker 1: didn't move it, because there's as we'll see, there's a
20:28
Speaker 1: there's collision maneuvers where you just basically move your satellite
20:33
Speaker 1: out of the way if you think it's gonna gonna
20:35
Speaker 1: hit something. But that didn't happen with this one. And
20:38
Speaker 1: so because there's so many satellites that are defunct out
20:41
Speaker 1: there that are traveling in opposite directions that really high speeds,
20:44
Speaker 1: of course this is going to happen again. And the
20:47
Speaker 1: Union of Concerned Scientists says that there's something like thirty
20:51
Speaker 1: three I know they're great, UM thirty three hundred and
20:55
Speaker 1: seventy two active satellites in orbit and at least three
20:59
Speaker 1: thousand and more inactive satellites in orbit right now, So
21:03
Speaker 1: it's definitely going to happen again. Yeah, I think the
21:07
Speaker 1: Union of Concerned Scientists logo is I looked it up.
21:10
Speaker 1: It's just UM a silhouette of two uh folded arms
21:15
Speaker 1: with lab coat sleeves, scowling scowling arms. So yeah, it's
21:22
Speaker 1: gonna happen again. I think there was one ESA official,
21:25
Speaker 1: the European Space Agency, and this is paraphrasing, but said,
21:29
Speaker 1: it's basically what we're doing. It's like every time a
21:32
Speaker 1: ship goes out to see just leaving it out there,
21:34
Speaker 1: like eventually this is going to be a real problem.
21:37
Speaker 1: And I know that it's hard to imagine because it's
21:40
Speaker 1: in space, but let me liken it to the ocean
21:42
Speaker 1: and boats and it might get the your thick skulls. Yeah, um,
21:46
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's it's basically a tragedy of the commons
21:49
Speaker 1: that we're seeing right now. Um, but the commons are
21:53
Speaker 1: becoming more and more crowded as the days go by.
21:56
Speaker 1: That thirty three and seventy two active satellites in orbit,
21:59
Speaker 1: I think that as of the beginning of the end
22:02
Speaker 1: of that was a thousand more active satellites than there
22:06
Speaker 1: were in two thousand nineteen, like exponentially. And one of
22:11
Speaker 1: the reasons why it's picking up exponentially is that, um,
22:15
Speaker 1: a lot of companies. I think there's at least eight
22:17
Speaker 1: companies right now that have proposals to release um what
22:21
Speaker 1: you're called mega constellations or swarms of satellites, and you
22:25
Speaker 1: would you would need a swarm of satellites because these
22:28
Speaker 1: things in lower Earth orbit travel so fast that if say,
22:31
Speaker 1: like you're connected to one for your cell phone, it's
22:34
Speaker 1: suddenly gone. So they handed off to the satellite behind
22:37
Speaker 1: them and behind them and behind them, so that you'd
22:38
Speaker 1: be continuous service. So the more of swarm of satellites
22:42
Speaker 1: you have, the more connected you could be. And so
22:45
Speaker 1: some of these proposals like um SpaceX is starlink swarm UM.
22:51
Speaker 1: It aims to to create like global coverage of satellite
22:55
Speaker 1: internet service, so everyone everywhere in the world will be
22:59
Speaker 1: able to connect to really high speed WiFi because of
23:02
Speaker 1: this swarm. So there's a benefit to it. But at
23:04
Speaker 1: the same time, the SpaceX constellation requires twelve thousand satellites.
23:10
Speaker 1: There's only called the swarm. There's only thirty three hundred
23:13
Speaker 1: up there right now, and Elon Musk is saying that
23:16
Speaker 1: he's going to add another twelve thousand just with his swarm.
23:20
Speaker 1: So all of these satellites that are going up in
23:22
Speaker 1: our in the process of going up, are about to
23:25
Speaker 1: make the whole thing a lot more crowded. So yes,
23:27
Speaker 1: the likelihood of a collision just is increasing, um by
23:32
Speaker 1: by orders of magnitude every year from what I can tell. Yeah,
23:37
Speaker 1: and you know, obviously one of the big risks here,
23:41
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about all of them. Something falling on
23:44
Speaker 1: to Earth and hurting people is one of the smaller risks,
23:48
Speaker 1: even though that has happened when sky Lab very famously
23:52
Speaker 1: fell out in the Western Australian outback. Um, but we'll
23:56
Speaker 1: get to that. But that that's not the biggest risk.
23:58
Speaker 1: The biggest risk is for for damage and collisions up there.
24:02
Speaker 1: And we've got a lot of astronauts up there, we
24:04
Speaker 1: have people living on space stations, we have people working
24:08
Speaker 1: on that Hubble telescope. I mean, what't that was the
24:11
Speaker 1: movie Gravity, right? That was space junk that caused their
24:14
Speaker 1: whole thing, right, Yeah, they basically depicted a Kessler syndrome
24:17
Speaker 1: chain reaction. Um, I guess the localized one in that
24:21
Speaker 1: movie from from I had totally forgotten about it, but
24:23
Speaker 1: I kept seeing references to it, so yeah, I kind
24:26
Speaker 1: of remember it now, Like in that why she had
24:28
Speaker 1: to take shelter somewhere with the ghost of George Clooney. Hey,
24:33
Speaker 1: who wouldn't though, you know, did he even exist in
24:36
Speaker 1: that movie? I don't remember. Yeah, is there a theory
24:39
Speaker 1: that he was not real? No, I just didn't remember
24:42
Speaker 1: if like he if like at the end they were
24:44
Speaker 1: like and he never really existed, So he was there.
24:46
Speaker 1: She was just remembering him later or imagining him there
24:50
Speaker 1: later on, right, I think so? I mean I only
24:53
Speaker 1: saw that once. Same here. Yeah. But Um, even stuff
24:57
Speaker 1: like we said, as small as a paint flack, if
25:00
Speaker 1: going twenty two thousand miles an hour, one centimeter paint
25:03
Speaker 1: fleck can inflict enough damage as a or the same
25:08
Speaker 1: amount as a five dred and fifty pound object going
25:10
Speaker 1: about sixty miles an hour here on Earth. And if
25:13
Speaker 1: that goes up to ten centimeters, it would be comparable
25:16
Speaker 1: to a seven kilogram TNT blast paint flex paint fleck.
25:22
Speaker 1: Marble's pretty amazing stuff if you think about it. Um.
25:27
Speaker 1: And actually they've had to replace windows on the Space
25:30
Speaker 1: Shuttle back when the Space Shuttle was in operation in
25:32
Speaker 1: the US. UM, and they they there just be like
25:36
Speaker 1: deep gouges and streaks um taken out of the windows.
25:41
Speaker 1: And when they would analyze and they'd be like, that's
25:44
Speaker 1: paint paint fleck did that. Yeah, And you know the
25:48
Speaker 1: I S S And a lot of our work happens
25:50
Speaker 1: below where most of this stuff is. But it's still
25:54
Speaker 1: a danger. It is a danger. So one of the
25:56
Speaker 1: reasons why it's a dangerous because again, um, the the
26:00
Speaker 1: I S S is it. It's two hundred and fifty
26:03
Speaker 1: miles above Earth, four hundred and three kilometers above the
26:05
Speaker 1: surfaces in lower Earth orbit UM. But it is one
26:09
Speaker 1: of the most vital pieces of space technology that's up
26:12
Speaker 1: there right now. UM. So we want to protect it.
26:14
Speaker 1: We want to keep the I S S safe. UM.
26:17
Speaker 1: The problem is is that there's a lot of stuff
26:20
Speaker 1: above it, and when that stuff eventually comes back down
26:23
Speaker 1: to Earth, it might pass by the I s's coming down,
26:28
Speaker 1: and then the stuff that's also in lower Earth orbit
26:31
Speaker 1: around the I S S could run into it from
26:33
Speaker 1: the side or from the opposite direction UM, or like
26:36
Speaker 1: at a ninety degree plane. So the I S S
26:39
Speaker 1: is constantly under threat. And NASA's UM and I think
26:43
Speaker 1: the E s A. A bunch of different agencies that
26:46
Speaker 1: use the I S S have come up with procedures
26:49
Speaker 1: for basically moving it if if there's a high enough
26:52
Speaker 1: chance that that a collision will occur. And when we
26:55
Speaker 1: talk about high enough chance, we're saying, like one in
26:58
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand chants is enough reason to move the
27:02
Speaker 1: I S. S out of the way. Yeah, And they
27:05
Speaker 1: came up with a pretty um I mean, it seems
27:09
Speaker 1: pretty obvious, but it's a pretty smart way to determine
27:11
Speaker 1: if it's dangerous or not. They said, we need to
27:14
Speaker 1: get an area around these things where we can determine
27:18
Speaker 1: if it's you know, basically a close call or not.
27:21
Speaker 1: And we're gonna call it the pizza box because that's
27:23
Speaker 1: what it looks like. And everybody loves pizza. Everyone knows
27:27
Speaker 1: what pizzas. Do we have to describe that? Please? No,
27:31
Speaker 1: we have an episode on pizza, so go listen to.
27:32
Speaker 1: There's some guy eating a grapefruit. Is like, never heard
27:35
Speaker 1: of pizza. But it's shaped like a pizza box, is
27:38
Speaker 1: flat and it's rectangular. Uh, it's about thirty miles across,
27:42
Speaker 1: a mile deep, thirty miles long. And the idea is that,
27:46
Speaker 1: you know, imagine the I. S. S or whatever important
27:50
Speaker 1: satellite in the middle of this pizza box in space.
27:54
Speaker 1: And they say, if anything, if we predict anything will
27:57
Speaker 1: come within the bounds of that pizza box, then that
28:00
Speaker 1: means that we have to get together and and decide
28:03
Speaker 1: what to do, at least not necessarily take the action,
28:06
Speaker 1: because then you've got to determine the probability of collision.
28:10
Speaker 1: But that's when it gets their attention, I think, right.
28:12
Speaker 1: So if they figure out that there's a one and
28:14
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand chants of UM of collision and moving
28:20
Speaker 1: the I S S isn't going to just be like, well,
28:22
Speaker 1: the mission scrap now because we needed the I S
28:25
Speaker 1: S three ft to the left, um, and now we
28:28
Speaker 1: can't do anything, so just forget it, just forget the
28:30
Speaker 1: whole thing. Um. They will move the I S S.
28:34
Speaker 1: If there's a one in ten thousand chance of collision
28:37
Speaker 1: um and it won't jeopardize the lives of the crew,
28:41
Speaker 1: then they'll move the I S S. Mission be damned, Um,
28:45
Speaker 1: they don't take that lightly. And then one other thing
28:48
Speaker 1: they might do if they don't have time to move
28:50
Speaker 1: the I S S, they'll put the crew into whatever
28:55
Speaker 1: capsule brought them there. If the soy Use rocket that
28:58
Speaker 1: that brought them there is docked, or if one of
29:01
Speaker 1: SpaceX is Dragon capsules is docked. They'll they'll say, go
29:06
Speaker 1: in there and hang out until this this uh predicted
29:09
Speaker 1: m collision passes, but hang out there like it's like
29:13
Speaker 1: a lifeboat basically. Form. Yeah, that's the one. The only
29:16
Speaker 1: one that confused me a little bit. I mean, I
29:17
Speaker 1: get the idea that that's a a good idea to
29:21
Speaker 1: be sort of in the escape pod, but that escape
29:24
Speaker 1: pod can also be crashed as well. Yes, good thinking.
29:27
Speaker 1: You would make a very fine NASA flight engineer. Because, um,
29:31
Speaker 1: I was reading an account of Scott Kelly, one of
29:34
Speaker 1: the Kelly twins, the astronauts who are just so great. Um,
29:38
Speaker 1: Scott Kelly was up on the I s s once
29:39
Speaker 1: as a commander. I think when you're spending that year
29:42
Speaker 1: in space, and um, there was a predicted collision that
29:47
Speaker 1: was enough to tell them to go sit in the
29:49
Speaker 1: Sayers rocket And they said, but don't close the hatch
29:52
Speaker 1: because it's possible that the the capsule could get hit
29:55
Speaker 1: and you might need to get out of the capsule
29:57
Speaker 1: really quick too. But then you know, if the I
30:00
Speaker 1: Sess this hit, you can close the hatch very quickly
30:02
Speaker 1: and and um disembark. I guess, so, yes, yeah, I
30:07
Speaker 1: wonder if they like, they did that for the very
30:11
Speaker 1: first time. They said, just go get in the escape pod.
30:14
Speaker 1: I'm simplifying things of course for Star Wars fans. And
30:17
Speaker 1: they go get in the space pod and close the
30:19
Speaker 1: door and they go they go, all right, we're all
30:20
Speaker 1: good now, right, And then they look at each other
30:23
Speaker 1: and they're like, not really, yeah, that it was were
30:25
Speaker 1: just in another thing. It was an interesting account they were.
30:28
Speaker 1: They were just kind of he said, it was a
30:30
Speaker 1: little tense. But then the time the predicted time of
30:34
Speaker 1: collision came and went, and you know, they were finally like, okay,
30:37
Speaker 1: can we can we get out now? But he said
30:39
Speaker 1: it was a little a little like it was very
30:41
Speaker 1: quiet and they could just hear themselves in one another breathing,
30:44
Speaker 1: and that was about it. But I mean, this dangerous
30:46
Speaker 1: work and they understand this. But the goal is to
30:49
Speaker 1: bring them all back always. But you know, when you
30:52
Speaker 1: go into you know, it's like being a fire firefighter
30:54
Speaker 1: or something. You know that there's a risk that you
30:58
Speaker 1: might not come back. There's gotta be oh yeah, for sure.
31:01
Speaker 1: I just want that to be as minimal as possible. Yes,
31:03
Speaker 1: And they take extraordinary measures to make sure that that
31:07
Speaker 1: it's as minimized as possible for sure. Should we take
31:11
Speaker 1: another break? I think so, man, and we're going to
31:13
Speaker 1: come back and talk about what to do about this
31:15
Speaker 1: space junk problem. Okay, So, um, we I think have
31:47
Speaker 1: established that space junk is kind of a problem, and
31:50
Speaker 1: not just for the I S S, not just for satellites.
31:53
Speaker 1: I think one thing we kind of left out is
31:55
Speaker 1: if these satellites, you know, crash into each other, there's
31:58
Speaker 1: somebody's dish TV gone, how are you gonna watch? Are
32:02
Speaker 1: you gonna watch the Big Game? Then you're not. So
32:05
Speaker 1: space chunk affects US one and all, um, and there's
32:07
Speaker 1: all sorts of other things that could happen. Um, if
32:10
Speaker 1: our satellites start going out, it's not something we want.
32:13
Speaker 1: We also don't want the crew of the I S
32:15
Speaker 1: S to get hurt. But also eventually in the future
32:17
Speaker 1: when we go back to the Moon and then when
32:20
Speaker 1: we travel beyond the Moon, um, we're gonna be needing
32:23
Speaker 1: to go in and out of Earth's orbit and we
32:26
Speaker 1: don't want there to be some crazy to brief field
32:28
Speaker 1: that we have to navigate around or wait to pass
32:31
Speaker 1: or whatever. So this is something we need to to
32:34
Speaker 1: mitigate right now, and it is just beginning to be
32:38
Speaker 1: something that um, some of the space agencies, not all
32:42
Speaker 1: unfortunately in some countries, and some companies are starting to
32:45
Speaker 1: take seriously and figure out how to mitigate. Yeah, I
32:48
Speaker 1: mean think about space tourism and on these companies, they're like, hey,
32:52
Speaker 1: how'd you like to fly up there for a hundred
32:54
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and risk being plowed into by paint flex
32:59
Speaker 1: Right a paint fl being taken out by a paint
33:02
Speaker 1: flight is just undignified. Uh So the u N gets
33:06
Speaker 1: involved a little bit and they say, hey, how about everyone,
33:10
Speaker 1: all you companies sending satellites up there, why don't you
33:13
Speaker 1: promise to remove these things at least twenty five years
33:18
Speaker 1: after the end of their mission. And everyone said, sure,
33:22
Speaker 1: we'll do that. U N. Um, how are you going
33:26
Speaker 1: to enforce that? And the un says, I don't know,
33:28
Speaker 1: we're asking nicely, though, all the space agencies kind of
33:32
Speaker 1: slowly encircled the u N and then grabbed it and
33:34
Speaker 1: gave it a wedgie. But people, I'm kind of joking,
33:38
Speaker 1: But people in these agencies they do know it's a
33:41
Speaker 1: problem they and they are coming up with things kind
33:43
Speaker 1: of Armageddon style. I mean literally space Next is it
33:47
Speaker 1: with you in that movie? I just always thought it
33:50
Speaker 1: was the dumbest thing, Like, how am I supposed to
33:53
Speaker 1: believe this? That this is how they're gonna solve this
33:56
Speaker 1: problem by just blowing this thing up by drilling holes
33:59
Speaker 1: in it and putting bombs in it. And then the
34:01
Speaker 1: more I read about stuff like this, the more I
34:02
Speaker 1: think that's an actual idea that they could do. Yeah. Yeah,
34:05
Speaker 1: I mean we're like maybe a decade off from space mining,
34:09
Speaker 1: I would guess, like mining asteroids. I just I feel like, uh,
34:14
Speaker 1: I don't want to give Michael Bay credit for coming
34:18
Speaker 1: up with a plausible thing, because I just still want
34:20
Speaker 1: to say he's ridiculous. But it's not because they have
34:24
Speaker 1: space nets and they have space harpoons and space magnets
34:28
Speaker 1: and these are some of the things that they actually
34:30
Speaker 1: use to drag these things, uh close enough to where
34:35
Speaker 1: it falls out of orbit and then ideally burns up. Yeah,
34:38
Speaker 1: like removed debris, right, yeah, removed debris was it was
34:44
Speaker 1: kind of cool. The European Space Agency said, you know what,
34:48
Speaker 1: we have this defunct satellite up there called the Vistat,
34:52
Speaker 1: and why don't we just put a bounty on this
34:54
Speaker 1: thing to see what people can come up with and
34:56
Speaker 1: just say, you know, go hog wild and see what
34:59
Speaker 1: you can see what you and do. Bruce Willis, Yeah,
35:01
Speaker 1: you gotta tell them about Embasat and what it is
35:03
Speaker 1: and what it's doing right now through space. Well, I
35:07
Speaker 1: mean it's it's like a it's about the size of
35:09
Speaker 1: a school bus and it's like it's being driven around
35:12
Speaker 1: by a drunk yeah, like auto after he took some
35:16
Speaker 1: rooms or something, totally spinning uncontrollably through space. It's like
35:20
Speaker 1: actually one of the more dangerous things up there in
35:23
Speaker 1: the space debris fields right now. Yeah, So they put
35:26
Speaker 1: out this call said, who's got a good idea, feel
35:29
Speaker 1: free to try it on the embasat if if you
35:32
Speaker 1: want to get close to it. And uh, a group
35:35
Speaker 1: from Surrey University came up with that removed debris system
35:39
Speaker 1: where it was basically a ballistic module that attacked this
35:43
Speaker 1: stuff with a harpoon and a net and pushes or
35:47
Speaker 1: pulls it out of orbit and basically just kind of
35:50
Speaker 1: speeds up the process. It's not like they literally drag
35:53
Speaker 1: it back down to Earth and you know, stand on
35:55
Speaker 1: it and get their picture taken. But they disrupted enough
35:59
Speaker 1: to speak, eat up the process that would inevitably happen anyway. Yeah,
36:03
Speaker 1: it's kind of close to that though, Like there's the
36:05
Speaker 1: test that they ran in two thousand and eighteen, Like
36:08
Speaker 1: the net was successful, the harpoon was successful. But then
36:12
Speaker 1: there it's supposed to also deploy a drag net to
36:14
Speaker 1: like slow the thing down and then make it, you know,
36:17
Speaker 1: fall towards Earth. Um. But the drag net didn't didn't go,
36:21
Speaker 1: but everything else did. Um. And then there was another company,
36:24
Speaker 1: a Swiss company called clear Space that was working directly
36:28
Speaker 1: with the ESA to launch clause little clause that go
36:32
Speaker 1: seek and find um space junk, clamp onto it and
36:37
Speaker 1: then just basically drag it down and uh, to its
36:40
Speaker 1: own death. Kind of like you know, the the guy
36:44
Speaker 1: that you just were you you pushed off the cliff
36:46
Speaker 1: and he grabbed onto your ankle and then at the
36:48
Speaker 1: last second he took you down with him, and you
36:50
Speaker 1: both go. That's what this claw basically does to this
36:53
Speaker 1: poor space chunk. Yeah. The magnet thing kind of and
36:59
Speaker 1: we did a show in Magnets and I remember it
37:00
Speaker 1: kind of broke my brain. But is there such a
37:03
Speaker 1: thing as a magnet? That when it attracts things. There
37:08
Speaker 1: to that question, when it attracts things that stick to
37:12
Speaker 1: the magnet, those things also become magnetized. Oh that's a
37:16
Speaker 1: great question. It's got it, because you know what I'm
37:18
Speaker 1: getting at here is basically a magnet that just keeps
37:20
Speaker 1: growing and growing and growing and just spinning through the universe,
37:23
Speaker 1: collecting everything in its bath until it's this giant thing. Chuck.
37:28
Speaker 1: That is the very title of the third album by
37:30
Speaker 1: Buffalo Space Chunk. It was a long one, not as
37:34
Speaker 1: long as Fiona Apples, but I think it's second place.
37:39
Speaker 1: Her new album is great, by the way. I haven't
37:40
Speaker 1: heard it, but I imagine she's a genius. But I
37:44
Speaker 1: don't know. It's probably silly idea, or maybe just a
37:46
Speaker 1: magnet big enough to collect enough stuff and then blow
37:51
Speaker 1: that thing up, I would guess. I mean, I don't
37:53
Speaker 1: think it's silly idea. I think magnets probably are the
37:56
Speaker 1: wave of the future for this stuff because um, harpoons, claws,
38:01
Speaker 1: all of these things work for say, intact satellites, large ones.
38:05
Speaker 1: And by the way, the e s A backed off
38:07
Speaker 1: of its imfacat bounty because it realized very quickly where
38:11
Speaker 1: many years off from being able to take something that
38:13
Speaker 1: large out of orbit. Um, but it is, it's still
38:19
Speaker 1: hurling uncontrollably through space the size of a school bus. Um.
38:23
Speaker 1: But the the that's still like large pieces that these
38:27
Speaker 1: things take. And as we said, like smaller debris is
38:31
Speaker 1: a real real problem up in space. So I could
38:33
Speaker 1: see it being something like magnets or um whale sharks
38:39
Speaker 1: filter teeth kind of thing, but up in space that
38:42
Speaker 1: somehow collects debris in a bag. I don't know exactly,
38:45
Speaker 1: like yeah, basically like treating it like krill. We need
38:48
Speaker 1: a we need a robot space shark space whale whale
38:53
Speaker 1: sharks years ago, of course. Can you imagine ever forgetting
38:57
Speaker 1: that that was so long ago? Crazy? It really was.
39:01
Speaker 1: It was a good decade, right, No, it had to be.
39:04
Speaker 1: I'm just sort of marveling that we're still doing this.
39:10
Speaker 1: You got a long time left too, So wake up,
39:13
Speaker 1: I hope. So are you telling me to wake up
39:15
Speaker 1: for everyone else? Everybody else? Okay? Um, there are also
39:19
Speaker 1: de orbiting. I mean we have successfully in other companies
39:22
Speaker 1: have successfully de orbited satellites. It is a thing. We
39:25
Speaker 1: don't leave everything up there um SpaceX. I remember, you know,
39:30
Speaker 1: very famously, they have the Falcon rocket that was able
39:33
Speaker 1: to come back down to Earth and be and docking again.
39:37
Speaker 1: It was super cool Don doing. Everybody's talking about him
39:44
Speaker 1: that day too, and he loved it. Yeah, he made
39:47
Speaker 1: the news. Um. Yeah, so that's actually a new best
39:49
Speaker 1: practice is basically reuse stuff. Just get it back out,
39:53
Speaker 1: and even if you can't reuse it again, like SpaceX
39:56
Speaker 1: does with their boosters, at the very least make part
39:59
Speaker 1: of launch satellite the um like like de orbiting the
40:03
Speaker 1: upper stage of the rocket like immediately. There's no reason
40:06
Speaker 1: to just leave your rocket parts up there anymore. Like
40:09
Speaker 1: you can you can attach stuff to it, propulsion systems
40:12
Speaker 1: to get it back down into Earth's atmosphere to burn
40:15
Speaker 1: up if if you're not going to reuse it. So
40:17
Speaker 1: that's a definite best practice that's emerging for sure. The
40:21
Speaker 1: Falcon worked though, right, didn't that thing land safe? Dude?
40:24
Speaker 1: I saw it with my own eyes. Yeah. I saw
40:27
Speaker 1: the heavy M boosters land with my own eyes, and
40:30
Speaker 1: he synchronized them. They came down at the same time,
40:35
Speaker 1: landed at the same time after launching a rocket in
40:38
Speaker 1: his face. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean that's really
40:42
Speaker 1: cool though, and and uh, I gotta hand it to
40:45
Speaker 1: that guy. He definitely thinks of things that don't see
40:49
Speaker 1: impossible and somehow is able to make some possible, I know.
40:51
Speaker 1: And that's I mean, that's another thing too. Like he
40:53
Speaker 1: just like he there's a lot a lot you can
40:56
Speaker 1: say about his personality, but some of his problems solving
41:00
Speaker 1: skills make things seem like so it makes it look
41:03
Speaker 1: like you turn to everybody else and be like, why
41:06
Speaker 1: haven't you been doing this this whole time? Too? Like,
41:08
Speaker 1: for example, is the starship the things can start faring
41:12
Speaker 1: people the Moon and beyond. Eventually one of its things
41:15
Speaker 1: is going to be when it comes back down to
41:17
Speaker 1: Earth is to collect space chunk on the way or
41:20
Speaker 1: um the Starlink satellite, SpaceX and Starling satellites, they're all
41:24
Speaker 1: going to be able to autonomously move based on debris
41:28
Speaker 1: tracking data here on Earth, so they'll just be able
41:31
Speaker 1: to move themselves. Um. There's just like just basic stuff
41:36
Speaker 1: that seems like why haven't we been doing this all along?
41:39
Speaker 1: And I mean it's a it's a good question, you know. Uh,
41:43
Speaker 1: it's been a while since you've fanboyd on Elon Musk.
41:45
Speaker 1: I know, I've had some ups and down. Uh. You know,
41:50
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier that in seventy eight Skylab fell in
41:53
Speaker 1: Western Australia, and uh, what we can't do as humans
41:58
Speaker 1: to say, well, you know fell in the Australian outback.
42:01
Speaker 1: It's very sparsely populated, so it's all good. Probably there
42:04
Speaker 1: are people there, and there are ecosystems there, and it
42:07
Speaker 1: is nature and the planet and it's it is a
42:11
Speaker 1: big deal. Just because it didn't fall on New York
42:13
Speaker 1: City or you know, downtown l A or something doesn't
42:16
Speaker 1: mean it wasn't a problem. It was a problem. And
42:19
Speaker 1: I think in twenty nineteen um NASA said that as
42:23
Speaker 1: much as six of that I S S is going
42:27
Speaker 1: to survive re entry when it eventually comes back down
42:30
Speaker 1: to Earth. So when you have something like the I
42:33
Speaker 1: S S whose ultimate fate is up in the air
42:36
Speaker 1: still literally, um, you you have to plan to deorbit it.
42:41
Speaker 1: Like you can't just leave something that big up there. Uh,
42:44
Speaker 1: it's it would just create too much space debris. And
42:46
Speaker 1: other space stations like the Mirror and China's Tiangong too,
42:51
Speaker 1: I think one and two space labs both were brought down. Um,
42:55
Speaker 1: and some of this stuff is going to survive. Like
42:59
Speaker 1: you said, the space stations, UM, part of that is
43:02
Speaker 1: going to survive. Some of the Mirror survived, some of
43:04
Speaker 1: the Tiangong survived, and you don't want that that re
43:08
Speaker 1: enactment of sky Lab. UM. So they've figured out that
43:12
Speaker 1: if they crash land these things into like a really
43:15
Speaker 1: remote part of the ocean, probably it will be fine.
43:19
Speaker 1: And there's a point in the ocean in the in
43:21
Speaker 1: the South Pacific Ocean called Point Nemo, and UH, NASA
43:26
Speaker 1: and the other space agencies have been landing, crash landing
43:29
Speaker 1: de orbited enormous stuff there for decades. But it wasn't
43:33
Speaker 1: until that UH survey engineer UH named vourier uh Luca
43:41
Speaker 1: Tala nice, thank you is Croatian. I believe UM use
43:48
Speaker 1: this brand new software and triangulated the furthest spot from
43:53
Speaker 1: land in the world. And he said, it's basically Point Nemo,
43:58
Speaker 1: this area that this ace agencies have been using already
44:01
Speaker 1: for decades. They had it basically right on the money. Yeah, So,
44:05
Speaker 1: I mean it's four miles away from the nearest land mass.
44:08
Speaker 1: It's supposedly the one point on Earth further away from
44:12
Speaker 1: any other piece of land. And UH a little fun
44:16
Speaker 1: tidbit about those that exact degree of longitude and latitude
44:21
Speaker 1: is that HP Lovecraft wrote about the Old Ones where
44:25
Speaker 1: the Old Ones live and actually gave coordinates. UM. That
44:29
Speaker 1: we're really really close to these actual calculated coordinates. UM.
44:35
Speaker 1: It's kind of great to think about that. But I
44:37
Speaker 1: also think if you, if you had a good enough
44:40
Speaker 1: flat map of the Earth, you could probably stand back
44:44
Speaker 1: in eyeball what looks like it's furthest away from anything,
44:47
Speaker 1: and you're probably close to Point Nemo, because that's what
44:50
Speaker 1: NASA did. Yeah, that's basically what they did. And so
44:52
Speaker 1: this area Point Nemo, I mean, the fact that it's
44:54
Speaker 1: called Point Nemo makes you think, like, man, they've been
44:57
Speaker 1: crash landing spacecraft in space Station and there for decades.
45:02
Speaker 1: This must just be like the most amazing place to
45:04
Speaker 1: go tour in like a sub. But the thing is,
45:08
Speaker 1: when you crash land something like space Station, the debris
45:11
Speaker 1: field that creates is coming into the ocean could be
45:14
Speaker 1: almost a thousand miles long UM. And it's not like
45:19
Speaker 1: they hit the target every single time, So it's actually
45:22
Speaker 1: like a really huge, enormous tens of thousands, if not
45:27
Speaker 1: millions of square miles wide UM. Area. That's what Point
45:32
Speaker 1: Nemo is. It's kind of a misnomer, actually, yeah, because
45:36
Speaker 1: I think people like, when is it going to start poking.
45:38
Speaker 1: It's a little head above the ocean surface, like a
45:42
Speaker 1: big stack of junk under there. Pretty cool though, it
45:46
Speaker 1: is very cool. And also if you're like, well, what
45:48
Speaker 1: about the fish, do not worry. It turns out the
45:50
Speaker 1: Point Nemo is one of the least bio diverse parts
45:53
Speaker 1: of the ocean around. And get this, Chuck, you want
45:58
Speaker 1: a little cherry on top of our sunday here, I
46:01
Speaker 1: would love that. I always love the cherry. Invisible has
46:05
Speaker 1: not done an episode on Point Nemo. In your face,
46:10
Speaker 1: Mr Mars, that's awesome. There's a recent episode that they
46:16
Speaker 1: did on the movie theater Megaplex History. That's really great,
46:21
Speaker 1: of course. I mean it's invisible. Yeah, you got anything else?
46:26
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? All right? Well, if you want
46:28
Speaker 1: to know more about space junk, to start reading about it.
46:30
Speaker 1: There's a lot of really great articles out there. Uh.
46:33
Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for listener mail,
46:38
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this what the writer called it. My
46:41
Speaker 1: husband is jealous of Josh and Chuck. I hope you
46:44
Speaker 1: guys are both well. I wanted to share with you
46:46
Speaker 1: the Stuff you Should Know is having in unpleasant effect
46:49
Speaker 1: on my marriage. You see, my husband works nights, and
46:52
Speaker 1: while I'm a strong independent person who could hold my
46:55
Speaker 1: own I still like to have a little background noise
46:57
Speaker 1: to soothe me to sleep. Most nights, that means falling
47:00
Speaker 1: asleep to the dulcet tones of maybe how the Black
47:03
Speaker 1: Panther Party worked, or or a gami uh colin folding goodness.
47:08
Speaker 1: Every morning, when my husband gets home, he begrudgingly acknowledges
47:11
Speaker 1: the other men in the room and pauses my app However,
47:15
Speaker 1: we hit a breaking point recently when he returned to
47:17
Speaker 1: find the Stuff You Should Know in complete compendium of
47:20
Speaker 1: mostly interesting things book open on his pillow with me
47:24
Speaker 1: snuggled against it comfortably. Enraged, he tossed it on the
47:28
Speaker 1: floor and we exchanged words. So yeah, you could say
47:32
Speaker 1: my husband is super jelly of Josh and Chuck. All
47:35
Speaker 1: that to say, here's a big thank you for keeping
47:37
Speaker 1: me company and helping me, helping this gal sleep tight
47:40
Speaker 1: every night. Lots of love to my main squeezes ray
47:44
Speaker 1: she hers from Phoenix, All right, ray um. Hopefully that
47:49
Speaker 1: was mostly tongue in cheek. I think so, I hope so.
47:53
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a problem in anybody's marriage,
47:56
Speaker 1: you know, No, just our own, right. Um, Thanks a lot, Ray,
48:01
Speaker 1: and sleep tight as always. Hopefully you guys can work
48:04
Speaker 1: it out. Maybe just get him to read the Stuff
48:07
Speaker 1: you Should Know a book and he'll be like, no,
48:08
Speaker 1: I want the book tonight, And that's what your problem.
48:11
Speaker 1: That's the easiest thing is to convert him exactly. Uh.
48:15
Speaker 1: And we have ways. You can sign up for our
48:17
Speaker 1: brainwashing newsletter if you want some tips, that's right. Well,
48:22
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us like
48:23
Speaker 1: Ray did, or sign up for our brainwashing newsletter, you
48:26
Speaker 1: can send us an email send it off to stuff
48:28
Speaker 1: podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
48:35
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