Latest / Made of Stars / Upcoming Moonbase Missions

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Upcoming Moonbase Missions · Made of Stars

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Speaker 1: Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
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Speaker 1: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
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Speaker 1: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
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Speaker 1: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
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Speaker 1: that's your own risk.
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Speaker 2: Go ahead.
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Speaker 3: When made of stars, made them stars, madies, When made
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Speaker 3: us stars, you could be from high they would New
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Speaker 3: Mexicomus where all.
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Speaker 2: Stars?
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Speaker 4: When we are made of stars.
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Speaker 5: I'm Wes Carrol, John Bama, good friend doctor Sean Cruising,
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Speaker 5: executive director at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center.
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Speaker 5: And I mean, I think if you just happen to
1:08
Speaker 5: not be in your normal office environment under normal circumstances,
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Speaker 5: maybe we wouldn't mention it. But I just it's worth
1:15
Speaker 5: mentioning that. You know, you're in Houston, and that's relevant
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Speaker 5: because of this show, right yeah.
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Speaker 2: I mean, so there's a lot going on, right.
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Speaker 5: So I mean, you may not actually be, you know,
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Speaker 5: at Johnson, but that's okay. I mean you're closer than
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Speaker 5: I am to Johnson. So we got some things to
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Speaker 5: talk about concerning NASA and concerning plans before we get
1:40
Speaker 5: to that.
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Speaker 4: Though.
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Speaker 5: Anytime there's something that is appealing on a mass level
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Speaker 5: to social.
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Speaker 4: Media to go, oh my gosh.
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Speaker 5: Can you believe whatever it is, usually it's way off base.
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Speaker 5: Usually it's very wrong.
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Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
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Speaker 5: You go outside and you can see, you know, Neptune
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Speaker 5: in your front yard with the naked eye, and it's
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Speaker 5: hovering near the moon or something.
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Speaker 2: Weird.
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Speaker 4: There's always weird. The moon is gonna be.
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Speaker 5: Turquoise tonight or whatever it is. And then we have
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Speaker 5: to say, no, take a breath. Here's the deal. And
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Speaker 5: this is kind of one of those things. A lot
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Speaker 5: of people are talking about this one. I don't know
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Speaker 5: how much misinformation is there. I haven't seen this one
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Speaker 5: blowing up to the level of a lot of misinformation.
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Speaker 5: But we have a cool SkyWatch thing that we can
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Speaker 5: talk about first and foremost, and that is you know,
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Speaker 5: it's like a sunset thing, right.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. And so first of all, if you're trying to
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Speaker 2: avoid maybe the kind of you know, cluttered part of
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Speaker 2: the Internet, go ahead and go to a good site
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Speaker 2: to get your information about what's happening in the sky.
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Speaker 2: And that good site would be spaceweather dot com. That's
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Speaker 2: one of our favorite sites. We took this story from
2:47
Speaker 2: spaceweather dot com today, and spaceweather dot com is going
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Speaker 2: to have some sky maps so you can actually figure
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Speaker 2: out where all of these objects are in the nighttime sky.
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Speaker 2: And what's happening is over the next couple of weeks
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Speaker 2: you're going to be able to see three planets all
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Speaker 2: gather in the evening sky together, and two of those
3:08
Speaker 2: planets will be gathering particularly close together. And it doesn't
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Speaker 2: hurt that these are the three brightest planets in the
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Speaker 2: nighttime sky at any given time. So we are talking
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Speaker 2: about Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury. Believe it or not, Very
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Speaker 2: few people have seen Mercury because it hangs out so
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Speaker 2: close to the sun. But the believe it or not
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Speaker 2: part is Mercury is actually number two, so it can
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Speaker 2: actually be brighter in the sky even than Jupiter. You
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Speaker 2: just have a hard time seeing it because you're always
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Speaker 2: looking into the twilight. So now Jupiter is number three
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Speaker 2: in that order of planets being visible in the sky.
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Speaker 2: So imagine Venus number one, Mercury number two, Jupiter number
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Speaker 2: three in terms of the brightest objects that are planets
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Speaker 2: in the evening sky, and they're all gathering together at twilight. Now,
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Speaker 2: what's good about this. This is evening twilight. That means
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Speaker 2: it's usually before the kids go to bed, right, and
4:11
Speaker 2: so you can actually go out as the sky is
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Speaker 2: getting dark, look to the west and notice these objects
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Speaker 2: gathering in the twilight sky shortly after sunset. And on
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Speaker 2: June eighth and ninth, you're going to be able to
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Speaker 2: see Venus and Jupiter particularly close together, as they're going
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Speaker 2: to have a tight conjunction. So the fun part is
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Speaker 2: if you start looking now and you go look every night,
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Speaker 2: you can actually watch this whole drama unfold as the
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Speaker 2: planets gather together. Remember they're not really that close to
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Speaker 2: one another. They're just along a line of sight as
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Speaker 2: viewed from the Earth, so it looks like they're getting
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Speaker 2: together in the nighttime sky from where we live, right.
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Speaker 2: So watch that happen over the next few nights between
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Speaker 2: Venus and Jupiter is they begin to get closer and
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Speaker 2: closer together, and then Mercury will join them in a
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Speaker 2: few days, and by the end of that first week
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Speaker 2: in June, you're going to have a nice trio of
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Speaker 2: bright planets gathering in the sky together, and maybe if
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Speaker 2: you've never seen Mercury before, this is the time because
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Speaker 2: the other two planets gathering close to Mercury will help
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Speaker 2: you find Mercury in that twilight as the sun's going down.
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Speaker 2: So this is the special event taking place. And if
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Speaker 2: you want again, if you want to have some nice
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Speaker 2: detailed star maps, go check out spaceweather dot com.
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Speaker 5: Am I correct, and assuming that Mars is number four
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Speaker 5: on that list, when you start talking about the brightest
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Speaker 5: in the sky.
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Speaker 2: Or it is it is, it gets a little bit
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Speaker 2: brighter than the planet Saturn, putting it in the number
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Speaker 2: four spot. Saturn can be brighter than Mars depending on
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Speaker 2: the relative positions of those two, but when Mars is
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Speaker 2: at its brightest, it jumps into that number four spot.
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Speaker 5: And it has that kind of reddish hue to it too,
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Speaker 5: so that's a little bit easier to pick out. Yeah,
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Speaker 5: And typically for me, like with my kids, they'll point
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Speaker 5: and they'll say, all right, is that Venus And I
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Speaker 5: can usually kind of go yes, you know, just based
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Speaker 5: on because I you know, often I'm tracking it just
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Speaker 5: when I'm out and I see where it is. You
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Speaker 5: get in this situation where it's close to Jupiter, it's
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Speaker 5: harder to pick them apart because you typically know one
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Speaker 5: of them is probably Venus, one of them is probably Jupiter,
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Speaker 5: But in this case, when they get close together, it
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Speaker 5: gets a little harder to tell them apart.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's a fun thing to notice. Also is
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Speaker 2: just how bright they are in this configuration. Venus is
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Speaker 2: going to be very ultra bright in the sky and
6:48
Speaker 2: it's just one of the most beautiful sights because it
6:51
Speaker 2: it is closer to the Earth and it just gets
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Speaker 2: a lot brighter than anything else up there except the
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Speaker 2: full moon in the sun. So it's just fun to
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Speaker 2: see it in this particular configuration.
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Speaker 5: More made of stars right after this. So the big
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Speaker 5: story this week, and we got a lot to talk
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Speaker 5: about with this. There's a lot to kind of to
7:33
Speaker 5: sort of parse through. As far as the information. It
7:35
Speaker 5: was a significant I think before we got started you
7:38
Speaker 5: called it a big information dump. That's it what it was.
7:41
Speaker 5: There's a lot to take in. We've been waiting for
7:44
Speaker 5: the kind of the details about all of this, and
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Speaker 5: now we have them. We'll go through some of this. Obviously,
7:52
Speaker 5: there are places to get a more detailed look at this.
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Speaker 4: If you really wanted.
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Speaker 5: You know, it's the difference between reading the book The
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Speaker 5: Martian and watching the movie The Martian, Right, It's it's
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Speaker 5: there's there's a lot of words in that book versus
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Speaker 5: the entertainment value in the in the movie. So we're
8:12
Speaker 5: going to be the entertainment value side of it. If
8:15
Speaker 5: you want to dive into go to NASA dot gov
8:18
Speaker 5: or space dot com for more more specific details in
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Speaker 5: it if you're really diving into it. But the plans
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Speaker 5: for the next Artemis missions, the plans moving forward concerning
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Speaker 5: Moon Base, and I know that there's been a lot
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Speaker 5: of talk about, you know, the like are they rushing
8:39
Speaker 5: these things or we go in too fast? And there
8:43
Speaker 5: is a feeling of urgency when it comes to like
8:46
Speaker 5: we have some momentum right now, so we kind of
8:49
Speaker 5: have to keep things moving while the momentum is there,
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Speaker 5: because you know, the object is in motion, right to
8:56
Speaker 5: get into some physics, the object is in motion, so
8:59
Speaker 5: let's keep it in motion.
9:00
Speaker 4: Right.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty clear that this administration really wants to
9:04
Speaker 2: make some things happen while they are still the administration
9:09
Speaker 2: in control, and so they are putting the foot to
9:13
Speaker 2: the floor, so to speak. On trying to get some
9:16
Speaker 2: things done with NASA with their mission to explore the Moon,
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Speaker 2: explore the lunar service again in more detail even than
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Speaker 2: we did back in the nineteen sixties, and by also
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Speaker 2: beginning the permanent habitation of a lunar base, which is
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Speaker 2: a it's an extremely important and interesting goal to set.
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Speaker 2: So we've been working on this for a while, actually
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Speaker 2: during several presidential administrations, even the well, i would say
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Speaker 2: the last four that counts the previous Trump administration, but
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Speaker 2: from George Bush to now, basically we've been working on, Hey,
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Speaker 2: let's go back and build a moon base. Okay, so
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Speaker 2: things are finally really happen opening we've gotten to a
10:01
Speaker 2: point of rapid acceleration in that plan. So I'm going
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Speaker 2: to be drawing down from a couple of sources. First
10:07
Speaker 2: of all, the NASA dot gov press release and also
10:10
Speaker 2: from space dot Com. And so the information I'm going
10:13
Speaker 2: to be sharing with you is coming from those sources,
10:16
Speaker 2: but you can get them in lots of different places.
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Speaker 2: So here's what happened. On Tuesday at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC.
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Speaker 2: NASA had an event that they called the Moon Base Event,
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Speaker 2: where they unveiled their twenty billion dollar phased plan to
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Speaker 2: construct a permanent moon base on the lunar south pole
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Speaker 2: by twenty thirty two. Now we know again we've talked
10:41
Speaker 2: about it many times on the podcast, this endeavor, but
10:45
Speaker 2: now we really got a lot of details that were
10:48
Speaker 2: laid out and that Tuesday event. And so the project
10:53
Speaker 2: is going to be utilizing the region of near continuous
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Speaker 2: sunlight and frozen water that happens to exist at the
11:02
Speaker 2: south pole of the Moon. So, first of all, the
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Speaker 2: near continuous sunlight, why does that happen, Well, it's a
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Speaker 2: little bit like why we have long days in the
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Speaker 2: summer near our own north pole, and so it's because
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Speaker 2: of the sun angle there. The sun's low in the sky,
11:21
Speaker 2: but it stays above the horizon for a very long
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Speaker 2: period of time. And in the high points near the
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Speaker 2: moonar south pole, you can actually have almost ninety five
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Speaker 2: percent of the days of the year are sunlight in
11:37
Speaker 2: those portions, which means you can generate solar powered electricity
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Speaker 2: at those points almost the entire year, which is really important,
11:47
Speaker 2: all right. And then also there's lots of frozen water
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Speaker 2: in the low points in that same region. Why, well,
11:55
Speaker 2: because those deep craters, because of that low sun angle.
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Speaker 2: If any comets or other material that we're carrying water
12:03
Speaker 2: collided in those craters in the early history of the Moon,
12:08
Speaker 2: all of that water is still there frozen in those
12:11
Speaker 2: dark craters because they haven't seen sunlight in a billion years.
12:16
Speaker 2: So that's a good place to go find large stores
12:19
Speaker 2: of ice water. H two. Oh, and you can use
12:24
Speaker 2: that frozen water for fuel, for breathing air, for all
12:27
Speaker 2: kinds of important purposes. So this is why that region,
12:32
Speaker 2: the lunar cell pole, is a particularly interesting area to
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Speaker 2: go and try to colonize and build, you know, an
12:39
Speaker 2: off world presence that is a stepping stone for eventual
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Speaker 2: Mars exploration. All right, So during the Moon based event
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Speaker 2: on Tuesday, Jared Isiacman, the director of NASA, outlined the
12:50
Speaker 2: details of the US moon base that will cover quote
12:55
Speaker 2: hundreds of square miles unquote near the lunar South Pole.
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Speaker 2: Lie such a big area, Well, it's because they're going
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Speaker 2: to be deploying some new transportation systems as well as
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Speaker 2: just some buildings and some habitats there. So the transportation
13:14
Speaker 2: systems include what are being described as hopping drones. Remember
13:18
Speaker 2: you can't fly a quad copter in the lunar atmosphere
13:22
Speaker 2: because there is none, so any drones on the Moon
13:27
Speaker 2: have to be able to just be rocket propelled. They
13:30
Speaker 2: have to have their own propulsion system for liftoff and landing.
13:34
Speaker 2: Much think about the SpaceX Hopper, which was an early
13:38
Speaker 2: version of Starship. Back in the day, SpaceX was just
13:42
Speaker 2: launching something called the Hopper to get good at vertical
13:46
Speaker 2: landings and takeoffs with the same vehicle. All right, So
13:50
Speaker 2: think of that kind of a system. Also, lunar rovers. Yes,
13:54
Speaker 2: you can think of the classic lunar rover system that
13:57
Speaker 2: the Apollo astronauts used, but these are so upgraded vehicles
14:01
Speaker 2: that are being designed by different manufacturers to operate both
14:05
Speaker 2: in an autonomous mode and in a human driven mode,
14:09
Speaker 2: which is pretty exciting. So some of the industry partners
14:12
Speaker 2: now include Blue Origin, Astrolab, Lunar Outpost, and Firefly. We
14:20
Speaker 2: have talked about almost all of these contractors before on
14:23
Speaker 2: the podcast for their own various adventures, But now NASA
14:28
Speaker 2: is drawing in a large number of industry partners who
14:35
Speaker 2: are doing commercial space on their own and having success
14:38
Speaker 2: at that. NASA is offering instead of trying to do
14:42
Speaker 2: everything themselves, offering opportunities for these outside contractors to deploy
14:48
Speaker 2: technologies that they have already been working on and already
14:51
Speaker 2: have been proving. So, for instance, Blue Origin, they're mark
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Speaker 2: one lunar Lander. Yes, we know, that's the lander that's
15:00
Speaker 2: competing with Starship to be a vehicle to land human
15:04
Speaker 2: beings on the Moon. But NASA is now saying, hey,
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Speaker 2: Blue Origin, how would you like to use that vehicle
15:09
Speaker 2: right now for cargo and maybe before the end of
15:13
Speaker 2: this year. I think Blue Origin would very much like
15:18
Speaker 2: to do that. So they're going to take them up
15:19
Speaker 2: on that. Astro Lab an industry partner that's building a
15:25
Speaker 2: lunar rover that could potentially be crude by astronauts, but
15:29
Speaker 2: could also be driven around as an autonomous vehicle or
15:33
Speaker 2: you know, basically a drone vehicle on the surface of
15:36
Speaker 2: the Moon lunar outpost. It's Pegas's rover. Another competitor for
15:41
Speaker 2: the for the lunar terrain vehicle, the LTV, but it's
15:45
Speaker 2: it's going to go up there and be on the
15:47
Speaker 2: Moon as well. So two different kinds of rovers for
15:50
Speaker 2: two different kinds of purposes. Firefly Aerospace we've heard about them.
15:55
Speaker 2: They have something called the Electra dark orbiter that has
16:00
Speaker 2: been contracted now for lunar drone deliveries. It's those little
16:05
Speaker 2: hopping drones we were just talking about. You got to
16:07
Speaker 2: get them up there. Somehow Firefly has been named the
16:11
Speaker 2: industry partner to take those up there. So these aren't
16:14
Speaker 2: just these aren't just pie in the sky visions. These
16:19
Speaker 2: contractors have actually been engaged and they're hoping to be
16:23
Speaker 2: able to launch some of these missions west before the
16:27
Speaker 2: end of the year.
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Speaker 5: Well, and we have kind of a timeline on that.
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Speaker 5: But I just want to touch on one thing because
16:37
Speaker 5: we have talked many times about the importance of South
16:41
Speaker 5: Pole and what they want to do there on the
16:43
Speaker 5: Moon and some of this urgency as far as doing
16:48
Speaker 5: what we're trying to do in a some say rushed,
16:53
Speaker 5: some say ambitious, whatever you want to call it. We've
16:58
Speaker 5: talked a lot about the fact that we are now
17:00
Speaker 5: in another space race. I'm assuming China also would have
17:05
Speaker 5: their eyes set on the South Pole of the Moon,
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Speaker 5: Like this isn't a secret that this is a prime
17:11
Speaker 5: bit of real estate, so there is an importance to
17:16
Speaker 5: getting there first. I assume if we get there first,
17:19
Speaker 5: it certainly paves the way for a better mutual partnership
17:23
Speaker 5: in the future rather than just, oh, China got there first.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
17:28
Speaker 5: I know this is speculation, and I know, but it
17:31
Speaker 5: just feels like this is part of that as far
17:33
Speaker 5: as like wanting to get there first. And you know,
17:39
Speaker 5: when we start hearing the first thing I thought about
17:41
Speaker 5: this is going to cover hundreds of square miles, I thought, well,
17:45
Speaker 5: that really sounds like we're just spreading out. It sounds
17:48
Speaker 5: like we've picked out our campsite and we want to
17:51
Speaker 5: make sure we've got all of the rivers covered, all
17:54
Speaker 5: the bodies of water that we might want to use
17:56
Speaker 5: while we're camping.
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Speaker 2: I mean, there's no sense mincing words. Yeah, we are
18:03
Speaker 2: definitely racing both China and Russia to put a permanent
18:09
Speaker 2: presence on the Moon. There' are no sense mincing words
18:14
Speaker 2: here either. Those two countries are major global competitors of
18:20
Speaker 2: the United States, and not necessarily in a geopolitical friendly way.
18:25
Speaker 2: I don't think that's any secret to anyone. Yes, we
18:29
Speaker 2: work with Russia on our space program on a regular basis.
18:34
Speaker 2: We have managed to maintain a friendly relationship in low
18:38
Speaker 2: Earth orbit with the Russian space agency ros Cosmos. But
18:43
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that we are in a friendly geopolitical
18:47
Speaker 2: state with them. So yes, let us not mince words.
18:52
Speaker 2: Let us just realize that we are definitely in a
18:55
Speaker 2: space race with these countries that may or may not
18:58
Speaker 2: be friendly to us. So if there are resources on
19:04
Speaker 2: the south Pole of the Moon, like vast quantities of
19:08
Speaker 2: stored water, making NC two resource utilization possible, in other words,
19:16
Speaker 2: we don't have to take our supplies. We can go
19:18
Speaker 2: up there and find supplies like all that frozen water.
19:22
Speaker 2: You better believe we want to do that before the
19:25
Speaker 2: Russians or the Chinese get up there and claim those resources.
19:29
Speaker 2: So you better believe that that is part of the
19:33
Speaker 2: hasty timeline for trying to make all of these events occur.
19:38
Speaker 2: So part of the announcement included what are being referred
19:43
Speaker 2: to as three the first three moon base missions to
19:48
Speaker 2: the lunar South Pole region ahead of the Artemis astronaut landings.
19:54
Speaker 2: They are, of course moon Base one, Moon Based two,
19:57
Speaker 2: and moon Base three, because this is how we name things.
20:01
Speaker 2: So the moon Base one mission is actually targeted for
20:05
Speaker 2: launch no earlier than the fall of this very year.
20:09
Speaker 2: So they say no earlier than you know right away
20:12
Speaker 2: is basically what that sounds like to me because the fall,
20:15
Speaker 2: let's face it, in terms of space mission timelines, that
20:18
Speaker 2: is a really short timeline. So the fall of this
20:22
Speaker 2: year twenty twenty six marks the mission that will have
20:26
Speaker 2: Blue Origins Blue Moon Mark one lander called Endurance, delivering
20:32
Speaker 2: NASA payloads to the surface of the Moon Moon Base two.
20:37
Speaker 2: The second mission also scheduled for later this year, although
20:42
Speaker 2: they didn't really explicitly say the date. This mission would
20:45
Speaker 2: deliver more than eleven hundred pounds of cargo on astrobotics
20:51
Speaker 2: Griffin landern. And that's a company we hadn't yet said,
20:54
Speaker 2: but that's yet another aerospace company having some level of
20:57
Speaker 2: success being tagged by now because their program is mature.
21:03
Speaker 2: Let's say so for the astrobotics Griffin Lander, and so
21:07
Speaker 2: that lander will be carried to space and put on
21:12
Speaker 2: the surface of the Moon, carrying eleven hundred pounds of cargo.
21:15
Speaker 2: Part of that will be astro Lab, yet another company.
21:18
Speaker 2: We did talk about them earlier their flip rover Flip.
21:23
Speaker 2: That rover is again capable of autonomous operation, but also
21:29
Speaker 2: capable of carrying human astronauts around the surface of the Moon.
21:33
Speaker 2: These mature mobility systems that will inform future lunar terrain
21:38
Speaker 2: vehicles or the LTV operations. So they want to get
21:41
Speaker 2: that astro lab vehicle up there and test drive it
21:45
Speaker 2: with nobody on board, so that when they finally do
21:48
Speaker 2: get astronauts up there, it's not an untested vehicle platform.
21:52
Speaker 2: We already know it's working, all right. And then of
21:55
Speaker 2: course there's Moon Base three, and you might think, okay, well,
21:57
Speaker 2: that one's probably targeted for next year. No, no, it's not.
22:01
Speaker 2: They would also like to get that one up later
22:04
Speaker 2: this year. So, in other words, from the fall of
22:08
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six till the end of the year twenty
22:10
Speaker 2: twenty six, NASA is targeting launching all three of these
22:16
Speaker 2: Moon based missions. Moon Base three would have Lunar Vertex,
22:23
Speaker 2: that is a vehicle being carried by Intuitive machines and
22:28
Speaker 2: their Nova Seed Trinity lunar lander. Remember, Intuitive machines have
22:32
Speaker 2: landed payloads on the Moon. They just tend to tip over,
22:36
Speaker 2: and you know, that's been kind of unfortunate. They also
22:39
Speaker 2: had a car on one of their missions, but when
22:43
Speaker 2: they're Intuitive machines tipped over, it landed directly on the car.
22:47
Speaker 2: That was kind of unfortunate too. Anyway, So they want
22:50
Speaker 2: to get that vehicle up there and study the lunar
22:53
Speaker 2: surface evolution. That's what the Lunar Vertex mission is going
22:56
Speaker 2: to be for. They want to know how the lunar
22:59
Speaker 2: serves is changing, how rapidly it's changing. And let's not
23:03
Speaker 2: forget that when Artemis two astronauts flew around the backside
23:06
Speaker 2: of the Moon, they saw multiple micro meteorite impacts, and yeah,
23:12
Speaker 2: you want to know if that's happening down there in
23:15
Speaker 2: that south polar region as often as the Artemis two
23:18
Speaker 2: astronauts were able to see it happen in their short
23:21
Speaker 2: time on the backside of the Moon, because you got
23:24
Speaker 2: to know if the astronauts are out there walking around,
23:26
Speaker 2: are they going to get pelted by a meteorite.
23:30
Speaker 5: Some of these quotes to come out of this are great.
23:32
Speaker 5: Jared Isaacman, administrator of NASA, said the Moon base will
23:36
Speaker 5: be America and Humanity's first outpost on another celestial world.
23:41
Speaker 5: It's just I mean, obviously that's the case. It just
23:45
Speaker 5: sounds good the.
23:46
Speaker 2: Way he said it.
23:48
Speaker 5: You start thinking in terms of it's not just America.
23:51
Speaker 5: We have been doing this thing for the world, and
23:55
Speaker 5: we've talked about that with this last Artemis mission, where
23:59
Speaker 5: you know, so it's easy to go, Okay, well, we're
24:03
Speaker 5: trying to do this for all humanity, and it is
24:05
Speaker 5: a difference between that and some other countries that are
24:08
Speaker 5: clearly just doing it for that country.
24:12
Speaker 2: For all mankind. There was actually a motto of the
24:16
Speaker 2: Apollo program and yeah, maybe not that gender sensitive now
24:22
Speaker 2: for all human kinds. Anyway, that's not the point. The
24:25
Speaker 2: point is I don't believe that if the Russians had
24:28
Speaker 2: beat us to the moon back in the nineteen sixties,
24:31
Speaker 2: they'd be saying we're doing this for all mankind. They
24:33
Speaker 2: might be saying we're doing this for Mother Russia. So anyway,
24:38
Speaker 2: the point of that is I like Jared Isaacman and
24:42
Speaker 2: the way he talks about things because it's inspiring. And
24:47
Speaker 2: I believe that that inspiration seems like a small thing,
24:52
Speaker 2: seems like just a pr battle, but really those kinds
24:56
Speaker 2: of words stick in people's memories, and that it makes
25:01
Speaker 2: young people want to be a part of those kinds
25:04
Speaker 2: of ventures, which we absolutely need to inspire that next
25:09
Speaker 2: generation of scientists, engineers, and space explorers. Just part of
25:14
Speaker 2: the mission of the Coca Cola Space Science Center where
25:16
Speaker 2: I work at Columbus State University, and when Jared Isiawin
25:19
Speaker 2: says things like the moon base will be America's and
25:23
Speaker 2: humanity's first outposts on another celestial world, I think that
25:27
Speaker 2: language is inspiring. I'd like to share you just a
25:30
Speaker 2: little share with you just a little bit more of
25:32
Speaker 2: the quotes from Jared Isaacman from Tuesday. He went on
25:35
Speaker 2: to say these things quote Every mission, crude and uncrude,
25:39
Speaker 2: will be a learning opportunity as we return to the
25:42
Speaker 2: lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay and master the
25:46
Speaker 2: skills required to live and operate in one of the
25:49
Speaker 2: most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable. We will go for
25:54
Speaker 2: the science. Will we for all we stand to gain
25:58
Speaker 2: from an economic content, logical perspective, for the innovations that
26:02
Speaker 2: will make life better here on Earth, and to prepare
26:05
Speaker 2: for where we will inevitably go next. Unquote I'm just
26:10
Speaker 2: gonna jump in here and say I think he means
26:12
Speaker 2: Mars there, friends, right, He's talking about Mars when he
26:15
Speaker 2: says that. Okay, going back to the quote, quote, we
26:18
Speaker 2: are grateful for President Trump's leadership, the bipartisan commitment from Congress,
26:23
Speaker 2: our industry, and international partners and the dedicated NASA workforce
26:28
Speaker 2: whose expertise enables us to achieve achieve the near impossible unquote.
26:37
Speaker 2: It's reminiscent of Kennedy quite honestly, right, I'm happy that
26:42
Speaker 2: we have It's not that the other NASA administrators haven't
26:45
Speaker 2: had some flowery language, but this doesn't feel flowery to me.
26:50
Speaker 2: This feels very intention driven, and it's not just platitudes.
26:55
Speaker 2: It's a plan, and that just makes it so much
26:59
Speaker 2: more real for me. You add these plans and these
27:04
Speaker 2: pieces of language on top of the recent success of
27:07
Speaker 2: both Artemis one and Artemis two, and you say, yeah, yeah,
27:12
Speaker 2: I'm believing this. We're really going You add to that
27:15
Speaker 2: the successes of all of these contractors and the fact
27:19
Speaker 2: that they're bringing them in in a large number, Blue Origin, Firefly, Astrolab,
27:23
Speaker 2: Lunar Outposts, Astrobotics, Lunar Vertex, all of these companies coming
27:29
Speaker 2: together to work on this particular important endeavor for humankind.
27:34
Speaker 2: And let's not make a mistake for the United States
27:37
Speaker 2: of America. As we talked about from strategic perspectives, I
27:41
Speaker 2: really just am excited about this next generation of space
27:45
Speaker 2: exploration that we are watching unfold right before.
27:49
Speaker 4: Our eyes more made of Stars. Right after this.
28:12
Speaker 5: Last time we talked, SpaceX was delaying their Starship Version
28:19
Speaker 5: three launch and that test flight that they had planned,
28:24
Speaker 5: and not long after the show they were able to
28:27
Speaker 5: go ahead launch. They obviously had that horrible accident. They
28:30
Speaker 5: were going through their due diligence as far as investigating
28:35
Speaker 5: for exactly what happened. Then they were able to launch.
28:39
Speaker 5: They managed to do it soon after our show last week,
28:42
Speaker 5: and then successful test and then a big boom, which
28:49
Speaker 5: of course got the FAA's attention and said, well, we're
28:52
Speaker 5: going to have to figure out what's going on with.
28:54
Speaker 4: This big boom. Now.
28:56
Speaker 5: When I saw the footage and I saw everyone celebrating
28:59
Speaker 5: even after the big boom, I thought, well, again we're
29:02
Speaker 5: talking about SpaceX. Sometimes big boom for them is less
29:07
Speaker 5: important than the successful part of the test, which happened
29:11
Speaker 5: before the big boom.
29:13
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so, just tagging onto the last story, you
29:18
Speaker 2: might have noticed that one of the vendors I did
29:20
Speaker 2: not read their name was SpaceX. Does that mean that
29:27
Speaker 2: Jared Isiigman when he was speaking was deliberately leaving them out? No, friends,
29:33
Speaker 2: It does not. It does not mean that Jared Isagman
29:37
Speaker 2: himself was actually at the successful launch of the Starship
29:42
Speaker 2: Version three, and yes, it's a bit of editorializing to
29:47
Speaker 2: say it was a successful launch, particularly in light of
29:50
Speaker 2: the fact that there's now an FAA investigation. We'll get
29:53
Speaker 2: to that in a moment, but let's just talk about
29:56
Speaker 2: it for a moment. So on May twenty second, twenty
29:58
Speaker 2: twenty six, launch from Starbase in Texas, SpaceX's Starship did
30:04
Speaker 2: have a test flight which they consider largely successful. So
30:10
Speaker 2: I'm now drawing from sources from SpaceX dot com themselves
30:14
Speaker 2: their own website, but also from spaceflight noow dot com.
30:17
Speaker 2: Let me tell you the successful components. They launched it,
30:23
Speaker 2: all right, So first of all, it is a nearly
30:26
Speaker 2: four hundred foot tall largest rocket humanity has ever built.
30:33
Speaker 2: A successful launch of that vehicle, friends, so every time
30:38
Speaker 2: that launches, that is a major success that you just
30:42
Speaker 2: can't underestimate the importance. It is one of the heaviest
30:46
Speaker 2: cargo lifting vehicles on planet Earth from any manufacturer. So
30:51
Speaker 2: if you can launch that baby, of course we're going
30:54
Speaker 2: to consider it a success. So yes, liftoff was achieved
30:58
Speaker 2: second hot fire state with their new version three platform.
31:03
Speaker 2: Remember they were testing out a new version of both
31:07
Speaker 2: the booster and the ship itself. Hot fire staging is
31:11
Speaker 2: where the upper stage ignites its engines and actually pushes
31:15
Speaker 2: away while still physically attached to the lower stage. If
31:21
Speaker 2: you want the alternative to that, the stages would separate,
31:27
Speaker 2: none of the engines firing, and then the second stage
31:30
Speaker 2: would fire once it's at a safe distance away from
31:33
Speaker 2: the booster. What hot staging mean or hot fire staging means,
31:37
Speaker 2: is that second stage, or in other words, in this case,
31:41
Speaker 2: the ship of starship actually fires its engines while the
31:45
Speaker 2: lower stage is still connected and still firing its own engines.
31:50
Speaker 2: So you're firing a rocket while still connected to a rocket. Successful.
31:58
Speaker 2: That's not unimpressive. That is very important and allows for
32:04
Speaker 2: additional cargo capacity, which means more twinkies and more water
32:11
Speaker 2: for campers on the surface of the moon. Okay, the
32:15
Speaker 2: third point, atmospheric reentry of both components was successful. So
32:21
Speaker 2: yes they went up and yes they came back down
32:24
Speaker 2: coming through the atmosphere successfully both pieces. Okay, it means
32:31
Speaker 2: they didn't burn up, means the heat shields worked, means
32:34
Speaker 2: all of their maneuvering of those vehicles through the air
32:37
Speaker 2: allowed them to enter in what is more or less
32:40
Speaker 2: a safe reentry. Before ship re entered the atmosphere, this
32:46
Speaker 2: is the second stage, by the way we call ship.
32:48
Speaker 2: Ship was able to deploy a number of mock satellites
32:53
Speaker 2: in a maneuver that looked a lot like a PEZ dispenser.
32:57
Speaker 2: It would open up a small slot and just dispense
33:00
Speaker 2: PEZ capsules, little flat spacecraft into lower orbit. That all
33:06
Speaker 2: went well, and the fifth thing a controlled splashdown of
33:11
Speaker 2: the ship itself. That second stage component, it came in
33:16
Speaker 2: for a nice soft splash down in the Indian Ocean,
33:20
Speaker 2: mimicking what it would need to do to be able
33:22
Speaker 2: to land astronauts safely back on land, back on the Moon,
33:28
Speaker 2: something like that. So before we start talking about any
33:31
Speaker 2: of the hardships experienced by this flight, we really need
33:35
Speaker 2: to say, yes, there were numerous very important successes for
33:40
Speaker 2: starship version free version three, or the flight twelve, the
33:45
Speaker 2: twelfth flight of the starship platform. Okay, deep breath, Now,
33:52
Speaker 2: what didn't go right? If the FAA is launching an investigation,
33:56
Speaker 2: what didn't go right? Well? This this portion is not
34:01
Speaker 2: part of the FA's investigation, but on the second stage
34:05
Speaker 2: or ship itself. One of their six engines didn't fire correctly,
34:11
Speaker 2: so one of their six raptor engines failed. But in
34:15
Speaker 2: a way, that was also a successful test because it
34:19
Speaker 2: showed the capacity of the remaining five engines to get
34:23
Speaker 2: that vehicle to orbit in the desired manner. So yes,
34:27
Speaker 2: an engine didn't work correctly, but also yes, the other
34:32
Speaker 2: five engines were capable of taking that payload the rest
34:35
Speaker 2: of the way to space, which is a fail safe
34:38
Speaker 2: that is built into the system. So yes, a failure,
34:41
Speaker 2: but yes, a successful test of a backup.
34:44
Speaker 5: It's almost it's almost a redundancy test, right, It's an
34:48
Speaker 5: extra engine, and it could happen in the future, and
34:50
Speaker 5: it's good to know.
34:51
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean, that's certainly a win there.
34:54
Speaker 2: If human astronauts are on board and one of the
34:56
Speaker 2: engines fails, you want to know that, as you just said,
35:00
Speaker 2: you have the redundant engine capacity to get those astronauts
35:04
Speaker 2: all the way to where they need to be into
35:06
Speaker 2: a safe orbit around the Earth. That was what was
35:09
Speaker 2: demonstrated when the engine failed. Now here's what happened that
35:14
Speaker 2: the FAA is saying, wait just a minute, we think
35:19
Speaker 2: we might need to look into this one because when
35:21
Speaker 2: the booster, we call it the super heavy Booster, when
35:24
Speaker 2: the super Heavy Booster was coming back down for a
35:27
Speaker 2: planned splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico America. I
35:32
Speaker 2: don't know one of those two that gulf below Florida. Anyway,
35:36
Speaker 2: when it was coming back down there, here's what happened.
35:39
Speaker 2: It was coming down, it was having a controlled entry.
35:43
Speaker 2: It did its maneuver to go horizontal to help slow
35:46
Speaker 2: it down. During that time, they shut off the engines.
35:49
Speaker 2: They tried to restart them. They had plans for Version
35:53
Speaker 2: three to actually have more fuel capacity, allowing those engines
35:57
Speaker 2: to restart simultaneously and quicker, but that's not what happened.
36:02
Speaker 2: So in the final phase where they would restart those engines,
36:06
Speaker 2: turn the booster vertically and bring it down for a
36:08
Speaker 2: nice soft landing, the engines failed. So if they had
36:13
Speaker 2: been bringing this booster back to Starbase and trying to
36:18
Speaker 2: catch it with their giant Mechazilla tweezers, booster would have
36:22
Speaker 2: been coming back in at a high rate of speed
36:25
Speaker 2: and would have exploded the launch platform. This is exactly
36:29
Speaker 2: why SpaceX decided, yeah, maybe we'll go ahead and bring
36:33
Speaker 2: this one down over the Gulf of Mexico rather than
36:36
Speaker 2: trying to bring it in for a soft landing over
36:39
Speaker 2: our launchpad with this new version of the rocket. Turns
36:42
Speaker 2: out that that was, if not clairvoyant, it was at
36:45
Speaker 2: least wise. So they brought the vehicle down over water
36:49
Speaker 2: and it splashed down correctly.
36:51
Speaker 5: My Google map says Gulf of America, so I don't
36:54
Speaker 5: know what you're talking about.
36:55
Speaker 2: So yeah, so it's you know, it's somewhere between Mexico
36:58
Speaker 2: and America and it's a golf and Google mapps calls
37:01
Speaker 2: it Gulf of America. So all right, so there it is. Yeah,
37:04
Speaker 2: that's where the crash occurred, because yeah, it's a hard
37:09
Speaker 2: splash down is what SpaceX referred to. Well, we ended
37:12
Speaker 2: up having a hard splash down. The FAA said, oh
37:14
Speaker 2: wait a minute. Federal Aviation Administration says, no, that was
37:17
Speaker 2: a crash. That was You can't get away with the
37:21
Speaker 2: hard splashdown language. It was a straight up crash. It
37:25
Speaker 2: was a mishap, and so they filed a mishap investigation
37:31
Speaker 2: and now SpaceX will be leading the investigation. But the
37:36
Speaker 2: statement from the FAA on Wednesday, this is the twenty
37:39
Speaker 2: seventh of May twenty twenty six says that the FA
37:44
Speaker 2: wants to complete a thorough assessment of the operation of
37:48
Speaker 2: Starship Flight twelve mission before it allows the next booster
37:55
Speaker 2: to relaunch, which is flight thirteen. The particular booster in
38:01
Speaker 2: question is tail number Booster nineteen, and it resulted in
38:05
Speaker 2: quote what they call a mishap. So the rest of
38:08
Speaker 2: the quote goes on to say, quote, the FAA is
38:11
Speaker 2: requiring SpaceX to conduct a mishap investigation. The FAA will
38:16
Speaker 2: oversee the SpaceX led investigation, be involved in every step
38:20
Speaker 2: of the process, and approve SpaceX's final report, including any
38:26
Speaker 2: corrective actions. Unquote. All right, sounds rather ominous from the FAA,
38:32
Speaker 2: but let's be honest. This is not the first time,
38:34
Speaker 2: and SpaceX has been investigated by the FAA, and sometimes
38:38
Speaker 2: they resolve these things in incredibly short time periods.
38:43
Speaker 5: I think of it like this, this is kind of
38:45
Speaker 5: the way, and then tell me if this is a
38:46
Speaker 5: good analogy for it. So if your sports team will
38:51
Speaker 5: just say, in football, if your team wins a big
38:54
Speaker 5: playoff game and then on the ride home, one of
38:57
Speaker 5: your star players is involved in a car accident that
39:00
Speaker 5: looks a little suspicious and like rams into a tree
39:04
Speaker 5: or something, and then the police show up, and then
39:07
Speaker 5: the player says, well, I was so excited about how
39:12
Speaker 5: we played in the game that I just you know,
39:14
Speaker 5: adrenaline in things. And then I crashed into the tree.
39:17
Speaker 5: And then the police go, yeah, I get it. Could
39:20
Speaker 5: you just blow into this for me?
39:26
Speaker 4: You know.
39:26
Speaker 2: So what we're saying is this is the FAA's version
39:29
Speaker 2: of a breathalyzer test for the booster of the super
39:32
Speaker 2: heavy vehicle.
39:33
Speaker 5: I mean, I know it's not an exact metaphor for it,
39:36
Speaker 5: but it just kind of has that feel of like,
39:38
Speaker 5: look this you may be calling it what you're calling it,
39:40
Speaker 5: but you know, we still have to do our due
39:43
Speaker 5: diligence here, and we want to.
39:44
Speaker 2: I mean, strained metaphors are our stock and trade on
39:47
Speaker 2: this particular podcast, true when we can tie them to
39:51
Speaker 2: the National Football League. So anytime we can do that,
39:54
Speaker 2: have a strained metaphor and tie it to the NFL,
39:57
Speaker 2: I'm all in favor.
39:58
Speaker 5: Yes, indeed, So you know they're gonna do what they
40:01
Speaker 5: gotta do. We've seen them, as you pointed out, facing
40:05
Speaker 5: some oversight from the FAA before. I remember once it
40:11
Speaker 5: was like, hey, they've been what are we gonna do here,
40:14
Speaker 5: and then it felt like an hour later they were
40:16
Speaker 5: launching again, So I think they'll be okay.
40:19
Speaker 2: So the incident that you talked about there is specifically
40:23
Speaker 2: the Falcon nine rocket system, which has been SpaceX's unbelievably
40:28
Speaker 2: reliable launch platform, and that particular investigation only lasted four days,
40:34
Speaker 2: So four days is a pretty short period of time,
40:37
Speaker 2: although in that four days, SpaceX might have launched twice
40:41
Speaker 2: in that four day window, so you know, for them
40:43
Speaker 2: it may be kind of a long shutdown, but historically,
40:46
Speaker 2: for the review of rocket platforms or pretty much any
40:48
Speaker 2: FAA investigation, four days is a microscopically short period of time.
40:55
Speaker 4: More made of Stars.
40:56
Speaker 5: Right after this, let's transition from SpaceX's b f R
41:21
Speaker 5: and talk.
41:21
Speaker 4: About f rbs. It's one of my what you did,
41:26
Speaker 4: It's one of my favorite segues ever. We got a
41:29
Speaker 4: Ferbie story.
41:31
Speaker 2: I was an award winning sege my friend or it
41:37
Speaker 2: should be or it should be yes, okay, So Ferby's.
41:40
Speaker 2: What are furbies? Well, they're another thing that Wes and
41:42
Speaker 2: I like to talk about on this show because we
41:44
Speaker 2: get to call them Ferby's. So it's just fun. But
41:49
Speaker 2: the acronym is FRB, not b fr FRB, and it
41:53
Speaker 2: stands for fast radio burst. And what turns out that.
41:57
Speaker 4: What does b FR stand for never mind? Never mind
42:02
Speaker 4: sands for a large.
42:03
Speaker 2: Rocket of fast radios or something like that.
42:07
Speaker 4: I don't like that.
42:08
Speaker 2: I don't know, but.
42:10
Speaker 4: Fast radio burds, that's what we're talking about.
42:12
Speaker 2: Let's just go ahead and talk about fast radio versus
42:14
Speaker 2: at the moment, all right. So furbi's are one of
42:16
Speaker 2: the most interesting objects out there in the universe because
42:20
Speaker 2: they are extraordinarily mysterious. And they're mysterious because first of all,
42:24
Speaker 2: they are one BFR blast of radiation, and then they
42:30
Speaker 2: are also extraordinarily short in time, and so it's like
42:37
Speaker 2: really bright flash and then all the astronomers in the
42:39
Speaker 2: world try to turn their telescopes over and look at it,
42:41
Speaker 2: but it's already gone. And then there's another really bright
42:46
Speaker 2: flash of radio over there on the other side of
42:48
Speaker 2: the sky, and astronomers try to turn all their telescopes
42:51
Speaker 2: over there, but it's already gone. See here's the problem.
42:54
Speaker 2: They're hard to track down. So there was an instrument
42:57
Speaker 2: build in South Africa called the Meerkat, and yes, it's
43:03
Speaker 2: probably another strained acronym that Rea just won't even get into.
43:06
Speaker 2: It's just fun to go ahead and say meerkat. So
43:08
Speaker 2: the mirkat is a radio telescope that's capable of looking
43:13
Speaker 2: at large pieces of the sky simultaneously. That way, when
43:18
Speaker 2: one of those really bright flashes of radio a mission happens,
43:25
Speaker 2: that meerkat telescope knows kind of where it's at, and
43:28
Speaker 2: so it allows for telescope operators to turn their telescopes
43:32
Speaker 2: to that exact position in much greater speed, in much
43:38
Speaker 2: less response time to try to figure out what it
43:41
Speaker 2: was that just flashed so brightly. Okay, well, now meerkat's
43:45
Speaker 2: been around for a number of years. Astronomers are getting
43:48
Speaker 2: very good at using that Meerkat data to try to
43:52
Speaker 2: extrapolate the exact position of these really bright radiobursts that
43:56
Speaker 2: lasts for only thousandths of a second. And so when
44:01
Speaker 2: one went off recently, in fact, it was called FRB
44:04
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four zero three zero four B. One can
44:10
Speaker 2: imagine that that is from the year twenty twenty four,
44:13
Speaker 2: in March, and on the fourth day of March. Right, Okay,
44:17
Speaker 2: so that catalog number B, that letter B is the
44:21
Speaker 2: second one that happened that day. Okay, so now we
44:23
Speaker 2: have FRB twenty twenty four zero three zero four. When
44:27
Speaker 2: that one took place, there were a team of astronomers
44:31
Speaker 2: from the University of Sydney that had access to the
44:35
Speaker 2: James Webspace Telescope and they flipped the jwst over to
44:39
Speaker 2: the location of where that furby took place. And guess
44:44
Speaker 2: what they found with humanity's most powerful telescope. They found
44:48
Speaker 2: the host galaxy, a tiny galaxy at the edge of
44:54
Speaker 2: the visible universe, somewhere around ten billion light years from Earth.
45:02
Speaker 2: Let's remember that the universe is only thirteen billion light
45:05
Speaker 2: years old, so that means that this fast radio burst
45:10
Speaker 2: actually occurred when the whole universe was only three parts
45:16
Speaker 2: out of thirteen old, in other words, three billion years,
45:19
Speaker 2: when today it's thirteen billion years old. So this was
45:23
Speaker 2: something that occurred an extremely long time ago. And so
45:28
Speaker 2: this event gave astronomers a peak at this incident that
45:33
Speaker 2: took place, and when they look back to that approximate
45:37
Speaker 2: time in the history of our universe, it aligns with
45:41
Speaker 2: something that astronomers have nicknamed the cosmic noon. Cosmic noon?
45:47
Speaker 2: Does that mean halfway now that means the time when
45:51
Speaker 2: the star formation processes in all of the galaxies in
45:55
Speaker 2: the universe seemed to be ramped up to an extremely
46:00
Speaker 2: high rate, and so that cosmic noon was a time
46:05
Speaker 2: when all the galaxies were building the brand new baby
46:08
Speaker 2: stars at the greatest rate that they ever did in
46:11
Speaker 2: the history of the universe. And also a furbie occurred, so.
46:17
Speaker 6: They said, wait a minute, it looks as if a
46:22
Speaker 6: fast radio burst phenomenon might actually be tied to the
46:28
Speaker 6: star formation process.
46:31
Speaker 2: Hmmm, what could that be? Well, maybe that's when one
46:36
Speaker 2: of those big massive stars that don't tend to live
46:39
Speaker 2: very long, like a blue super giant, was formed, died
46:45
Speaker 2: in a very short time, left something called a magnetar,
46:49
Speaker 2: which is a neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field,
46:52
Speaker 2: but had lots of weather stars around from which it
46:54
Speaker 2: was drawing material and caused a super energetic event that
47:00
Speaker 2: we now know as a ferbie. Is that what happened?
47:06
Speaker 2: We don't know yet, but all of those clues give
47:10
Speaker 2: us a new alignment of circumstances that are helping astronomers
47:15
Speaker 2: investigate this most mysterious process in the universe. So if
47:21
Speaker 2: you like ferbies, if you like supermassive explosions like supernova.
47:29
Speaker 2: If you like weird objects in the universe that are
47:32
Speaker 2: very exotic, like a magnetar, a neutron star with an
47:35
Speaker 2: extremely powerful magnetic field, then you might be able to
47:38
Speaker 2: tie them all together into a bow and have them
47:41
Speaker 2: be adjacent phenomenon that cause these really mysterious things that
47:46
Speaker 2: we see called fast radio bursts.
47:51
Speaker 5: You guys have officially kicked off summer mode at Columbus
47:54
Speaker 5: State University's Coca Cola Space Science so that these things
47:57
Speaker 5: are a little different. There not as many school groups
47:59
Speaker 5: and things, but you do have plenty of things for
48:03
Speaker 5: kids and families to do over summer break. I know
48:06
Speaker 5: there's a lot of people that aren't traveling anywhere for
48:09
Speaker 5: vacations this year because of expenses of things. So if
48:14
Speaker 5: you are here in Columbus, Georgia and you're looking for
48:18
Speaker 5: things to do to get kids not looking at smaller screens,
48:22
Speaker 5: but looking at other cool things, and you want the
48:24
Speaker 5: benefit of that free air conditioning that comes with cost
48:28
Speaker 5: of admission at the Coca Cola Space Science Center, you
48:31
Speaker 5: guys have plenty for them to do.
48:33
Speaker 2: We do have some screens, but they are more experiential
48:38
Speaker 2: than the small ones you might have at your home. So,
48:41
Speaker 2: first of all, if you're saying, hey, you know we've
48:44
Speaker 2: been to that Space Science Center, we saw their stuff.
48:47
Speaker 2: Oh no, friends, if you haven't been very recently, you
48:51
Speaker 2: have not seen all of our new stuff. Let me
48:54
Speaker 2: tell you about all of the changes that just have
48:56
Speaker 2: happened in the last school year. With this the last
49:00
Speaker 2: school year, we have completely changed the inside of the
49:05
Speaker 2: exhibit gallery of the Space Science Center and we have
49:07
Speaker 2: added some new things. We have a brand new set
49:11
Speaker 2: of Mars rovers and this game is different than any
49:14
Speaker 2: of the Mars rover games that we had in the past.
49:17
Speaker 2: You're actually driving around rovers on a simulated Mars terrain.
49:22
Speaker 2: You're actually making measurements as either an engineer or an
49:26
Speaker 2: astrobiologist or a Mars geologist on the surface of a
49:31
Speaker 2: simulated Mars terrain, and you're actually learning about real science
49:36
Speaker 2: from that simulated Martian surface. That's a great exhibit. Also,
49:40
Speaker 2: we have two new simulators. We do have a Mars
49:44
Speaker 2: simulator that you can drive around the Perseverance rover and
49:48
Speaker 2: actually fly the Ingenuity helicopter. We also have another simulator
49:52
Speaker 2: where you can build your own rocket and launch it.
49:54
Speaker 2: Into space. We also have a really cool new set
50:00
Speaker 2: of exhibits that are what they were our Cyberfighters. There
50:05
Speaker 2: are flight simulators, but we have a brand new customized
50:09
Speaker 2: game proprietary just to us at Space Science Center. It's
50:13
Speaker 2: called Atherean the Abyss Protocol, and it is a space
50:18
Speaker 2: pirates game that you can come down and fly on
50:21
Speaker 2: our motion based flight simulators. And we also have a
50:25
Speaker 2: brand new show in our Atmosphere theater. It's called Dinosaur,
50:30
Speaker 2: a Survival Story. So all of these things, if you
50:34
Speaker 2: haven't been down in the last year, you have seen
50:36
Speaker 2: none of those. They are all brand new things. Come
50:39
Speaker 2: out and enjoy all these new experiences with your kids,
50:42
Speaker 2: just in time for summer. A great place to spend
50:45
Speaker 2: a really too hot day to be outside inside a
50:49
Speaker 2: nice air conditioned but yet interactive environment at the Coca
50:53
Speaker 2: Cola Space Science Center of Columbus State University. If you
50:56
Speaker 2: want to know more about our hours of operations and
50:58
Speaker 2: our showtime, check out our website. Visit www dot cc
51:03
Speaker 2: SSC dot org. Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org.
51:07
Speaker 5: Shan and I thank you for listening, and we will
51:09
Speaker 5: do this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus
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