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Space Bloopers and LEGO Moon Bricks · Made of Stars

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Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
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space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
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phenomenon, the scientific method, and expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar,
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asterism and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk. Go ahead. When
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made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made of stars,
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you could be from high they would New Mexicomus. Where are stars? When
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we are made of Stars'm West Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Shawn
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cruising from color I'm a State Universities Coca Cola Space Science Center. Hey Sean,
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morning, West could to be here today? You know what I think?
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I forgot to wish you a happy Asteroid Day. We did miss the
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big holiday. Well, we've had Independence Day on the brain because we're recording
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on Wednesday instead of Thursday because of Independence Day tomorrow. So we just and
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people do that. You know, they put out their Independence s date decorations,
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they start playing the Independence Day songs on the radio, and you know,
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you miss out on all of the Asteroid Day decorations. I don't even
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remember seeing them in Michael's or any of those stores. They just completely ignored
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it. It's like Thanksgiving, you know, they just blow right past it.
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It doesn't get any credit. So yes, happy Asteroid Day to you
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as well, my friend. Thank you. And you know what, I
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particularly love the asteroid bunting. Yeah, I hang on the front porch.
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H really, you know, anytime I get to hang the Asteroid Day bunting
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before fourth of July, I try to do that every year. Yes,
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the Asteroid Day corn ucopia that sits on the table. You gotta have that.
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You gotta you know, you have the big Asteroid Day feast. I
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hope you had a good one. I hope you took some time to reflect
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and say all of the things that you appreciate about asteroids as you were enjoying
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your family feast for asteroids. What is Asteroid Day? How did we how
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did we miss it? Let's talk about Asteroid Day. Yeah. I like
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to celebrate Asteroid Day with the family, and you know, give thanks for
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asteroids because without them, the Earth would just be a different place. I
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mean, we'd still be up to our armpits and dinosaurs. That's true.
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That's true. It would be really, that would be It'd be a lot
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of Jurassic Park every day, you know, hiding and kitchens and all of
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that stuff. We'd still be watching. I mean, I don't have to
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run from a t rex when I'm getting out of the car to go into
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work. I'm pretty thankful for that. Honestly, there'd be a lot more
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you know, glasses of water rippling. It would be a different place.
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It would be a very very different place. Yeah. Yeah, So people
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might be wondering what the heck we're talking about. There is actually a day
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of commemoration maybe is the right way to say it. A day of recognition
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perhaps, because on June thirtieth of the year nineteen oh eight, a very
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large something came in from space into our atmosphere and exploded over the Siberian forest
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in a place near the Tonguska River. Now you've been to Siberia, you
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know that's a lovely view. You like to stand on the banks of the
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Tonguska River and oversee the destruction from the nineteen oh eight meteor impact air burst,
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meteor asteroid, comet fragment. We don't know what it was exactly.
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What we do think we understand about that is that particular rock from space was
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loaded up with what we call volatiles, things that once the object from space
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begins to interact with the atmosphere of the Earth and heat up, these volatiles
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rapidly expand, and you know, some of us outside the vernacular of astrophysics,
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we call that an explosion. So there was a big explosion that occurred
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in the air, not hitting the ground, but in the air above the
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Siberian forest near the Tongusca River in nineteen oh eight on June thirtieth, and
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it leveled trees for hundreds of square miles. And if you imagine the pattern,
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this is an interesting thing. There was a circular pattern of destruction roughly
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sarch probably elliptical, an elliptical pattern of destruction where right below the air burst
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the trees were actually left standing vertically, but they were completely stripped of all
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of their branches. So this is how scientists ascertained that that was the direction
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of the vector of the explosion. That shockwave was straight down, and so
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that was not ground zero because it didn't really make impact, but that was
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the location on Earth below the air burst that took place. Then from that
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point outward in a radial direction, the trees were knocked over for approximately twenty
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miles in every direction. Now one might wonder, GOLLI g. What if
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that had happened over Manhattan instead of over a nearly completely unoccupied area of forest
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in the Siberian tundra. What if that had happened over La or San Francisco,
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or Moscow or Saint Petersburg or pick your city, London. Well,
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the destruction would have been similar, you see, but people would have been
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involved in a big way instead of caribou. So there is a day of
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commemoration of this event that certain segments of the population remember on June thirtieth,
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and we call that now Asteroid Day. Now, who are the visionaries that
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first helped establish asteroid Day, Well, they include a very famous astronaut,
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as it turns out, Rusty Schweikert from Apollo nine. Rusty Schweikert from Apollo
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nine. Apollo nine was a mission that helped prepare all of the procedures and
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protocols necessary for Apollo eleven to land on the Moon. They basically it was
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a dress rehearsal. It included Commander David Scott, by the way, who
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he was the commander of a Palla fifteen on that mission. Dave Scott with
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Rusty Schweiker, also helped pave the way for the Apollo moon landings. Now,
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why do I mention Dave Scott because we have a collection of David Scott
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artifacts at the Coca Cola Space Science Center. Dave and his brother Tom have
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been very generous and donating those artifacts to us. So I'd like to just
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commemorate the fact that Dave was on that mission. All right. Well,
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Rusty Schweiker became a famous astronaut with the Apollo nine trip. Later in his
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years after his Apollo missions, after he retired from NASA, he began working
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with a group of people to say, hey, we really need to think
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about large asteroids coming in from space and causing major damage and what exactly are
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we going to do about it? And so he became a defender of the
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Earth through something called planetary defense. So planetary defense is our thought process and
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our engineering designs that allow us to be in a position, in a posture
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to be able to actually do something about a giant asteroid if we locate it
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and it's coming in to destroy one of our cities. So this is why
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Asteroid Day was established. So it's really more about I guess awareness and possibility
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and all those sorts of things. I mean, we joke about it being
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sort of a holiday, but I do think it would be fun if it
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was a holiday and we could find a way to, you know, honor
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some of the come up with some of these traditions. Our holidays have all
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these random, weird traditions sometimes and we think, why do we drag a
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tree inside the house for Christmas? And those sorts of things. So it
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would be sort of like, you know, maybe if we could really get
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this off the ground as more of a holiday feel, it would be like,
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you know, why do we have an ice axe on the wall on
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June thirtieth? You know, those sorts of things. I mean, perhaps
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we could throw a large boulder off off the roof, you know, just
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I mean, I'm not talking about a boulder that would crush your car,
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but you know one that you might use for landscaping in the garden. About
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how about watermelons off the roof and then when it cracks open, you could,
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you know, then all the kids, it would be like a pinata.
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Kids run in, grab the watermelon, start eating it. It would
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be great. I mean, let's I think that we should use this show
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as a vehicle for establishing new asteroid Day traditions. I'd like the glow.
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I'd like to think that by twenty twenty five asteroid Day could really catch on.
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We may take us a little more than a year, but maybe we
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could get there with the watermelons and the ice axes. I don't know,
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can we get our hands on plenty of ice axes that we can hang on
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the wall and decorate. I don't know, you know, maybe your evergreen
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tree would have to have, you know, none of the branches on the
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bottom. You know, it would be an interesting we could do that.
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I like that being of the tree. Yeah, that was in honor of
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the Tenguska event. I mean, this has real possibility. I think we
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should pursue. We live in the age of social media, my friend,
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I think we can make this happen. We're gonna start working on this right
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away. All right. Well, speaking of explosions, let's let's move to
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China because they had an accidental launch. How do you accidentally? I mean,
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I guess when I was a kid, I had one of those little
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toy rockets, and I was very careful about not accidentally launching my toy rocket.
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You know, you put the engine in there, you set up your
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your fuse, you got your butt, you're ready to push the buttons.
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You want to make sure everything's connected properly. Uh, you go through a
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certain series of and this was me as a kid, you know, I
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mean as a kid. How does China and I mean this isn't this is
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a company more so than you know, the actual China, but I mean
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Chinese companies China. I mean, is there really a huge difference uh overall?
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I don't know. But how do you accidentally launch a rocket and there
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happen to be people just watching and videoing when this thing happened. I mean,
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apparently we've learned that it's easier than one might think because they did it.
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So as with many as with many rockets, stages, you know,
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rockets often come stacked like you know, three layered jello. They come you
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know, with a capsule on the top, and then they have a second
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stage which ignites once you get to orbit, and then they have the on
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the bottom is the main what they call the main stage. It's the it's
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the thing that actually lifts you out of Earth's gravity gets you at least close
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to space. That's when your second stage takes over and launches your payload or
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the third stage to whatever destination low worth orbit onto the Moon, maybe even
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to Mars or the deep Solar System. Anyway, they're stacked up like like
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well, so what they do occasionally in rocket science is that they'll put that
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first stage on a test stand so it looks a little bit like a launch
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pad, but they lock that sucker down. They make sure that all of
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the safety devices that they have in place are capable of holding that rocket stage
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in place when they fire the engines. And the reason they do that is
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because they don't really want it to go to space. They just want to
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fire the engines to make sure the engines are working in the way that everybody
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thinks, well, all right, there's a Chinese company called Space Pioneer.
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Let me say that against Space Pioneer. Pioneer meaning you go places that other
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people haven't gone before. I think that happened. I think that occurred.
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So this is not the Chinese Space Agency, which you know, you and
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I have talked about the Chinese Space Agency before on the show, and we
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may get back to it again. Today. But anyway, this is not
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the Chinese spacing so it's a commercial company. Now, commercial companies in China.
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We could have that conversation maybe on a different podcast, but all right,
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so here we go. Space Pioneer. They have a first stage called
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the tion Long three, and the Tion Long three, oddly enough, has
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nine engines. Nine engines. Where have I heard that before? Oh,
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the Falcon nine? Yeah, maybe I heard. Doesn't SpaceX have a really
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famous rocket with nine engines? Yes, they do, it's called the Falcon
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nine. So this lift capacity of the Space Pioneer rocket, called the tian
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Long three, very similar to SpaceX, like eerily similar to the SpaceX Falcon
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nine. All right, well, here's one thing that is not similar.
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Space Pioneer was conducting what they call a static fire test, which they had
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the thing locked down on their test stand when all of a sudden gollie g
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the rocket took off. They didn't really intend that to happen, but lots
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of spectators around the vicinity a place called yon G County in the Henon Province
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of China. That's my best pronunciations this morning, anyway, that works for
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me. Yes, the Henon Province in China. There were people who knew
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they were going to do a test, and so they were like had their
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phones out and they were, you know, at a great distance videoing the
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making videos of the test, of the static fire test because they heard a
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big rocket engine was going to fire. Sure, And this makes more sense
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to me because you know, on the surface, from the headline, it's
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like, oh, they accidentally launched a rocket. The test was going to
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happen ll and then there happened to be people there videoing it. So it
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makes a lot more sense that there were people there videoing it, because it
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sounds pretty suspicious if they just happen to be pointing their phones in the direction
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of a rocket sitting on a pad and suddenly it takes off. Okay,
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So that helps me a little bit. So now I understand that a little
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better. So, but it was supposed to be strapped down. It wasn't
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supposed to get into the air. Yes. Indeed, you and I have
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had conversations about possibly, you know, driving down to the Greater Mississippi Gulf
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Coast area to see if we can see one of the mighty RS twenty five's
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being tested. Those are the engines that power the SLS or the space lump
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system. The thing about Mississippi is there aren't really any mountains around in Mississippi.
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In Mississippi, so you can't like get on a hillside that overlooks the
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test stand to see the RS twenty five. You could maybe just like get
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close enough to hear it fire, but you can't really see it unless NASA
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invites you onto the premises. Haven't been yet invited on the premises for a
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test of a rocket engine, So so okay, so we can't quite recreate
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the situation. But in in the Heenon province, apparently it's kind of hilly.
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There's some hills around, and so on a neighboring hillside there were various
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people with their you know, iPhones or maybe the Chinese version of an iPhone.
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Oh no, wait, that is an iPhone. Anyway, they had
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their iPhones out and they were they were making recordings of this rocket test where
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they could actually see it from the neighboring hillside. So there's there's the difference
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between you know, that part of China and Mississippi anyway. So yeah,
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all of a sudden, during the big rocket test, something went shooting up
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into the air. Oh, it was the rocket. It got away.
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As a child, I you know, occasionally dropped the string of my kite
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and my kite went flying off, and I would go running across the prairies
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of Colorado trying to catch the string so my kite didn't get away. But
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I've never done that with a nine engine faulk of nine class first stage booster.
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But Space Pioneer has making them a true pioneer. I am not aware
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of anyone else who's ever had a main stage booster just get away during a
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static fire test and go flying up into the air. But we have cell
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phone video of this particular event taking place by the Goung citizens in the Heenon
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Province, and they were kind of taken by surprise because, you know,
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the rocket kind of flies up out of their camera shot. I don't think
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they were expecting it to go in the air, Oh, but it did.
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So then they panned upwards with their phones and they watched it go up,
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oh, I don't know, a mile or so into the air.
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Where the safety protocols and at least they had these in place shut the engines
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down. And then now you have a big rocket that's approximately a mile in
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the air, still full of fuel that no longer has engines firing. So
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then gravity does its work, and you see this on the cell phone video
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as the mainstage booster kind of tips over. Is that yah picture roll?
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I can't remember anyway, So it yaws over, it does whatever it does,
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and it comes down horizontally sideways where it falls out of the camera shot,
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and then you just see a little glimmer of flash of light from the
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lower part of the camera shot, and then you hear a few seconds later
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a really big boom because that baby exploded on the ground approximately one point five
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kilometers, which is almost a mile away from the test stand where it was
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never supposed to launch in the first place. So yeah, there you go.
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That's what happened to Space Pioneer. Now your description of the video from
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the phone's accurate. I just want to give another just an exam something that
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maybe people can use as a way to because we've all seen sports where the
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player kind of fakes out the cameraman, and I think one of the best
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examples of that would be I think Broncos Cowboys. You know, they've got
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the ball like on the one or two yard line, everybody knows this is
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a run. What people didn't know was that it was Peyton Manning who was
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going to bootleg and run around to the left. And not a single person
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in the entire stadium except Peyton Manning knew that that was happening. So think
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about that if you ever saw that famous clip of Peyton doing the slowest bootleg
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around the corner to the corner of the end zone, so slow in fact,
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that an entire Cowboys defense who had no idea what was going on,
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still almost got to him around the other side of the field, but he
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was trotting. He knew the fake happened, but yeah, the cameras had
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no idea what was going on off camera, So just think of that as
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an example of what was going on. I love your analogy, and I'll
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take it a step further. Imagine being the Dallas Cowboys defensive coordinator and you're
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watching this unfold and you see with your eyes the ball in Peyton's hand and
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no defensive players anywhere near, because no one believes that Peyton Manning will ever
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run a bootleg, especially not at that time in his career. Yes,
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exactly, how do we relate that to this story. Well, imagine being
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the head of the Space Pioneer company and you're watching your boosters sail off into
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the air and there are no defensive players anywhere near to make a tackle.
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That baby's going to space or something. It's going up and it really wasn't
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supposed to. So yeah, that's I can see the similarity. Oh and
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by the way, when it came back down, it exploded, So I
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don't think that happened with Peyton Manning, although the scoreboard somehow exploded. You
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know, maybe this is where my analogy is getting stretched. But the Henan
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Province officials stated that there were no casualties reported. There were no casualties reported,
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unlike maybe the football game, where you know there were consequences. There
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were, but and there's probably gonna be consequences for Space Pioneer. But thankfully
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it looks like nobody was hurt in this rather ridiculous and interesting episode was Space
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Pioneer. Millions of Cowboys fans were hurt, I think, and shocked,
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as they should be. I think the Broncos fans were shocked as well.
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But all Giants fans celebrated, Oh absolutely, Giants and Eagles, and back
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then they were still called Redskins fans certainly all celebrated in Unison. So there's
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that. So speaking of things falling to Earth, we have to mention this
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because as much as we talk about all the great things that we talk about
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all of it, but we talk about the success rate of launches and things
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for SpaceX, we know that occasionally some things don't go well, some things
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don't go as planned. It's not quite a rocket launching all by itself and
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deciding hey, you're supposed to be strapped down, but you're going to launch.
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But let's just again all of this stuff that involves space and rockets.
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It's hard. I mean, there's a reason that people call it rocket science
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and say, you know that it's difficult. It is. It's as difficult
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as brain surgery apparently. But sometimes when things are supposed to come back down
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from the sky or from space and they expect them to burn up in the
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atmosphere, we know sometimes that doesn't happen. I I just realized that I
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think our show has as a theme it's almost like a bloopers reel today looking
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at these stories, I'm thinking, yeah, this is like a like a
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whole series of bloopers. I mean, do you have Asteroid Day? And
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by the way, we neglected to mention that Asteroid Day they awarded the first
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ever Asteroid Day Prize, which they are giving to a researcher for being able
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to help locate near Earth asteroids coming at us from the direction of the Sun.
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So anyway, that was a cool story. But I mean, so
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there's Asteroid Day, which you know certainly wasn't a great day, and then
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there's the Chinese space company that let their rocket go. And now we're going
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to talk about SpaceX having debris coming down from the crew Dragon that landed on
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a glamping camp near Asheville, North Carolina. What I mean, so you're
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out at your what they have like custom yurtz or something like that. I
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don't know what do they have about there? That's what it sounds like.
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I mean, but it sounds like, you know, camping with really really
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nice bathrooms. What it sounds like to me that exactly you may be sleeping
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outdoors, but your bathrooms are indoors and they bring you, you know what,
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champagne and caviar to your yurt, strawberries and chocolate and things like that.
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It just get brought to you. Yeah, I don't know. I'm
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not sure the glamping thing. Although I've been accused of glamping myself because we
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tend to camp in places that do have bathrooms with showers, I don't quite
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think of that as glamping, but I do understand that's not rough in it,
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as they say. But to me, glamping is a little different than
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than what we do. But anyway, well, this is Asheville, North
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Carolina. So already, I mean we're setting the you think of the Ashville
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area, you know, you think of the major attractions like the builtmore in
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Ashville. I mean, I have a dear friend. It just brings up
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a certain image. I have a deer friend who happens to be named Will
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Smith who lives in that area. And it's not that guy. It's not
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this, but it's another Will Smith. And it's not either of the baseball
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players either. It's a different guy altogether, but he lives in that area.
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I'm familiar with some of the he's more he's less of a glamper though,
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he's much more of a roughen it guy. I mean, there are
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those in the Greater North Carolina area, for sure, But I visited Ashville
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too, and it feels, you know, it's luxurious. How about that
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it's a place where people go to pamper themselves. And in the greater Ashville
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area, there's something called the Glamping Collective. That's the name of the shall
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we call them an outfit, the organization, the Glamping Collective. Now,
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if you're going to book a room or a yurt or whatever you've got going
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on there at the Glamping Collective, perhaps of all your expectations, the one
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you don't have is space debris falling on you. I mean, I just
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don't think that's It's probably not on the brochure. Probably something that you take
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for granted won't happen. I mean, as we all do. Anytime I
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go camping, I take for granted that nothing is going to fall on us
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while we're camping. Maybe a tree, but even that, you kind of
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assume these trees aren't about to fall on us. Yep, yep. I've
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selected camping spots in some pretty, you know, rough places. I mean,
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I've camped in Yellowstone, Heck, I've camped in Mongolia, you know
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so, But trees don't follow on you in Mongolia because there are no trees
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Okay, well enough with the bragging. We get it. You've camped in
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some cool places, all right. I've camped in some cool places. And
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never when I selected my campsite, have I ever thought, oh, I
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don't want to put my tent up here space debris might fall on me.
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Yeah, it's never been a thought. No, it's not something that you
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ever probably has ever crossed your mind. It has never crossed my mind.
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However, on May twenty second, in the Greater Heywood County area of North
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Carolina, near the great City of Ashville, the Glamping Collective had a crew
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out clearing the path no one would stumble upon the tree branches on their path
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or whatever they were doing. And the crew found some weird thing laying across
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the path of the glamping collective, and so they collected they collected the artifact,
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whatever it was, and they brought it back and they said, what
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is this thing. It's about the size of a hood of a car,
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and it's carbon fiber weave. And they said, this doesn't look like anything
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that we have here at the glamping Collective. I wonder where this came from.
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Well, that line of inquiry led them to eventually asked NASA. Hey,
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did you guys, did you guys lose anything from space because this shure
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looks like a little piece of a spaceship. Well, gollie g it turns
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out that it was a piece of the SpaceX Dragons, what they call the
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trunk hardware. So SpaceX Dragon, like you know many fine automobiles, has
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a trunk and that part is supposed to burn up on re entry. But
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this carbon fiber weave was so robust that it made it all the way to
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the ground. It's not the first time, by the way, So other
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pieces of SpaceX carbon fiber weave have been found in various locations. Oh,
28:22
this is where the plot thickens, but not one quite this big. So
28:30
yeah, so that SpaceX carbon fiber weave from the Crew Dragon, which again
28:36
you and I have we've extolled the virtues of the SpaceX program and talked about
28:38
their many, many, many many successes. This one's maybe not quite as
28:44
successful. They're gonna have to go back and look at whether or not these
28:48
carbon fiber weave components of the trunk of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft are really made
28:56
of the right material, because they're not quite burning up all the way as
29:00
they are predicted to do. NASA put out a statement they said this,
29:04
NASA is unaware of any structural damage or injuries resulting from these findings. So
29:11
nobody got hurt. No one has hurt this time. But you really don't
29:15
want pieces of your spaceship falling from space landing near a glamping camp in Asheville,
29:21
North Carolina. People might complain, So there you go. It sounds
29:25
like a valid complain at that. Coming up after a quick break, we'll
29:27
give an update on a star Liner and we will talk about this cool connection
29:33
with structures on the Moon and Lego. All right, let's get a quick
29:53
update on what's going on with Starliner because we've been talking about the helium leak.
29:59
We've been talking about, Oh my gosh, what's going on with them?
30:02
Are they stranded? Are they stuck? No, they're not stuck.
30:04
They're still not stuck. They're more than capable of getting home. But what's
30:08
the latest. Yeah, we spent a lot of time on this on last
30:12
week's show, so we're going to spend that much time. Nothing much has
30:15
changed. Starline are still up there, The astronauts are still hanging out in
30:21
the International Space Station and both NASA and Boeing are still saying there's nothing to
30:26
see here. We're all fine, we're all good. But the one,
30:29
I guess, maybe the one update that needs to be discussed, is that
30:33
the spacecraft is in good shape and rated to leave the ISS in case of
30:37
emergency. That according to a recent NASA statement. So they're saying, hey,
30:45
they're fine, they could leave any time they want. And now they
30:48
have also added that the vehicle and the astronauts can stay beyond the forty five
30:53
day limit that they initially proposed for the vehicle. There's not any problems.
30:57
They can stay longer than that. They are absolutely doing some tests of some
31:03
things that didn't go right, but that's not because they're stranded. That's because
31:07
they have the vehicle in a place where they can do the tests, and
31:11
they're also doing parallel tests on the ground. In fact, while we speak,
31:15
while we're recording this podcast, they are likely they're very likely testing the
31:21
thruster systems in a parallel redundant unit on the ground to see if they can
31:26
figure out why they had some of the thruster issues. As the Starliner was
31:30
approaching ISS back on June sixth, So again, nothing to see here.
31:34
Everything's good. They're NASA putting out a statement saying they can stay a little
31:37
longer, there's no problems, and so we're going to just trust them and
31:41
say, Yep, it looks like they're just doing some extra testing. Want
31:45
to make sure they have a good handle on the vehicle. Remember, the
31:48
thruster systems that they're testing on the actual spacecraft are on a component that burns
31:53
up in the atmosphere on re entry or falls on a glamping camp in North
31:57
Carolina, one of the two don't know, but anyway, So the point
32:02
is they can't do the tests once the vehicle comes back down to the ground
32:06
because it's laying in Ashville and they really can't find it there. So let's
32:10
talk about the moon. This is a cool I love this story. I
32:15
saw this and it made me think about how we always talk about STEM related
32:21
things and we talk about robotics. We talk about they're doing meteorology on the
32:28
on Mars now because of you know, equipment, or they're doing advanced I
32:31
guess meteorology on Mars now. So all of the different possible STEM career paths
32:37
and fields and things that are basically gateways into STEM fields, and we often
32:44
talk about those sorts of things that coding and all that my kids are into
32:46
coating. They are also into weather, at least one of them. But
32:52
I love the fact that something that has been getting kids interested in STEM for
32:57
a long time is related to the story, and that's Lego. Because as
33:00
we're they're trying to look and say, well, if we're going to go
33:05
to the Moon, we may need structures on the moon, we may need
33:10
launch pads on the moon, abilities you know, to obviously take back off
33:15
again. So all of these things they're gonna have to do some sort of
33:17
construction that will be engineering and things involved in all of this, and shaping
33:24
moon dust into Lego bricks is something that they're experimenting with. This is a
33:30
fun story, man. So from where do engineers derive their inspiration? You
33:40
know, scientists and engineers, you know sciencey geekee techie people. Where are
33:45
they inspired? Well, it could be that all these years that these kids
33:50
have been playing with Legos, and that includes us, We grew up playing
33:52
with them too. I mean I think I had the knockoff version for a
33:57
while there when I was a kid. I don't think they were official Legos.
34:00
My parents, you know, went to the local dime store. Yes
34:04
there were dime stores when I was a kid. They got the knockoff version.
34:07
So maybe that's why I'm not an engineer. I didn't play with the
34:08
real Legos. But you know, my son grew up playing with Legos and
34:13
he is an engineer. So I'm just saying from where do people derive their
34:16
inspiration? Well, maybe if you're a scientist or engineer who's responsible for trying
34:23
to find designs to build lunar habitats, and you have to you have to
34:30
build your stuff out of things that are already located on the moon, because
34:35
you can't take a bunch of heavy bricks and mortar with you because it's expensive
34:40
to launch heavy things. Weight is what it's all about when launching rockets,
34:45
and we want to keep weight as minimal as possible. So we call this
34:50
in C two resource utilization, and in C two means in place. And
34:54
so if I can get there and I just use the stuff that's already in
34:58
place rather than a bunch of stuff with me, it's better. So a
35:02
team from the European Space Agency working with Lego envisioned, hey, what if
35:09
we went to the Moon and we could somehow take moon dust and build Lego
35:15
bricks. And I mean, maybe not those little tiny ones, but what
35:19
if we could build big ones. What if we had an industrial size three
35:23
D printer on the Moon that just took moondust and built big Lego bricks out
35:29
of them. Why think of the things we could build. We could build
35:34
a Toronto source rack, or we could we could build you know, a
35:38
dragon with wings because we've done these things out of legos before. Or maybe
35:44
we could build a lunar habitat that astronauts could live in on the Moon.
35:49
It never once crossed my mind, as I'm reading this story earlier in the
35:54
week, that they would make the little tiny bricks. It never even crossed
36:00
my mind. So when you said that, all I can think about is
36:02
these guys up there in there in their gloves trying to pieces together to build
36:07
a habitat, and they're they're thick lunar spacesuits, and uh going, oh,
36:14
why couldn't they just make them bigger? I mean, and you can
36:17
never find that lego part that you're looking at, right. You have like
36:20
this giant Lego collection, and you need the one with it's like a two.
36:23
It's got like two and it's got a curved edge on it. Where
36:28
is that one? And it's red? I actually have the red one.
36:30
I can't because my other stuff is red. So I've got to find the
36:32
red curved two pronged piece that's gonna fit so I can build my t rex.
36:38
And so where is that I'm looking through? So you imagine like astronauts
36:42
on the moon, like just sifting through their three D printed legos, going
36:45
where is that one part? I need it to be one high, not
36:49
too high. I need it's like a one, not a two. Saw
36:53
a minute ago, I got a yellow one. No, I don't need
36:57
the yellow one. Yellow ones make it look bad. I got to have
37:00
a red one, you know. Anyway, So if they're going to build
37:04
lunar habitats, maybe first just make them all gray so we don't have to
37:07
worry about the color issue, and maybe make them a little bigger because those
37:13
little ones would be hard. But little, you know, like two by
37:15
ones may be a little bit difficult to maneuver in those space gloves that you
37:20
just mentioned. I know, I know that Axium Space is working on some
37:23
really cool spacesuits that are going to be well, very dextrous, shall we
37:30
say. And I know that once the you know, the Artomus astronauts are
37:34
on the surface of the Moon in those axium space suits, they're going to
37:36
be able to pick up small rocks and manipulate things. But building a habitat
37:40
out of like regular sized legos might take a while. That would take a
37:45
while. Even even with the better gloves, that would still take a while.
37:47
So possibly we should upscale it the size of the legos that's like duplos,
37:52
maybe make them duplo size or bigger. Maybe even Well, we have
37:55
things called bricks here, so I think that maybe if they just went with
38:00
brick sized, that might be all those They could be really big bricks there,
38:04
because there's obviously a way different so that would be easy too. Can
38:07
you imagine the size of a Lego you could pick up on the Moon.
38:09
I mean, you could pick up a really big Lego. That's true because
38:14
it's one sixth gravity. I mean, you know, things don't weigh much,
38:16
So you could pick up a you know, multi cinder block sized Lego
38:21
piece to build your Lego moon habitat on the Moon. Because you're on the
38:25
Moon and there's not much gravity up there. I would think that's some of
38:30
the great place to build Legos, some of those little tiny pieces. I
38:34
mean, if they start, you know, ruffling around in the box,
38:37
right, they're just barely even going to stay in the box, aren't they.
38:39
I mean, pretty pretty light. These are the challenges of the next
38:44
generation of space explorers, ladies and gentlemen. I just love that that this
38:47
touches into that just sort of old school engineering and again that gateway thing,
38:53
and I'm sure it was part of your son's, part of Christian's gateway into
38:59
engineering is a love for Lego and there's a lot of kids that's one of
39:01
those toys. It's just not gone anywhere. It's still there and they still
39:06
continue on. So science officer for the European Space Agency, his name is
39:14
Aidan Cowley. He had this quote. He says, you know, no
39:15
one's ever built a structure on the Moon, so we have to work out
39:20
not only how we build them, but what we build them out of.
39:23
We can't take any materials with us, so really, the amazing part of
39:29
the story may or may not be the fact that Aidan Cowley and his colleagues
39:32
thought of just building legos, because that's pretty good, right, but you
39:37
have to be able to build the legos. And what they did is they
39:39
figured out a way to use what they have available up there, lunar soils,
39:46
to be able to construct a three D printer that could turn those into
39:51
legos that are robust and hold together. How did they do this Well,
39:55
it turns out that moondust is actually really, really really rare because basically all
40:00
the pristine moondust that we have is just what the Apollo astronauts brought back.
40:06
They didn't bring that much back. That stuff is way too valuable. So
40:09
what they did is they combined this stuff called lunar soil simulant or a simulated
40:16
regolith. In other words, people on Earth used the chemical and structural composition
40:22
of the actual moon dust, and they analyzed that to see if they could
40:27
construct that same kind of lunar dust in a lab, which they were able
40:30
to do. So you have that they have that material, which is lunar
40:35
simulant, and then they also took an actual meteorite and they ground it up
40:43
because that constituents of that meteorite have things that you would also find on the
40:46
Moon, like metal, grains and chondrules and other components of that meteorite that
40:52
are not typically found in Earth soils, but you would find in the moon
40:57
soils. And they took those real space materials, combined them with the lunar
41:00
soil regolith, and figured out a manner in which to create with a three
41:06
D printer actual two scale sized Lego components. Now I'm talking about the small
41:12
ones now, right, and so like like the ones that we play with,
41:15
you know, like a two by six two by six Lego. So
41:19
they made some little or two by eight so I can't remember what show it's
41:21
one of those anyway, So they made actual little Lego bricks. And to
41:27
the by the way, they were collaborating with Lego, right, So they
41:30
they got the design of the act, they got the whatever, the three
41:32
D the three D models of actual Lego bricks from Lego themselves. Lego was
41:37
a collaborator. And here's the important part. They let the Lego people take
41:43
the simulated Lego bricks with moon soils and things, and they let the Lego
41:49
people actually snap them together. And the question was would these little Legos made
41:53
out of space materials snap together the same way an actual Lego would do,
42:00
and the end result of that test was yes, they did. They snapped
42:06
together just like regular Legos. So these things are going to be on display
42:12
in different Legos stores for people to check them out, including I guess Disney
42:16
Springs, which has I've been in that Lego store a couple times. So
42:22
if you want to see, well, if you live in the part of
42:24
the country that this podcast originates in the southeastern United States and you want to
42:30
see one of these Lego bricks constructed of space materials or simulated space materials or
42:37
a combination thereof, you can actually travel down near Disney too, a place
42:43
called Disney Springs in Florida and go to the Lego store that West frequents when
42:47
he goes down there, yes, many times, and you can actually see
42:52
one of these bricks on display from now until the end of September. So
42:58
there you go, friends, check it out. If you're getting down to
43:00
that, you know that Florida area, that a Greater Orlando area and assuming
43:04
that's where Disney Springs is somewhere down there anyway, so if you go down
43:07
there, you can check out the Disney's I'm sorry, the Lego store in
43:10
that in the Disney Springs area and the Lego brick is on display and they're
43:15
pretty cool. They look like a little brick of moon materials. They're gray
43:21
like the Moon, and you know they have they look a little dusty and
43:23
crumbly like the Moon, but they're not crumbly. They're actually pretty robust.
43:28
They were printed with three D printer out of that lunar material and they snap
43:31
together, so says the Lego company. So this could be the model for
43:37
how we build habitats both on the Moon and on Mars. Remember everything we
43:43
learn about space exploration and living on other worlds on the surface of the Moon,
43:49
we can extrapolate that to Mars. So you could actually build, potentially
43:53
lego habitats for real astronauts on the surface of the red planet. That would
44:00
be a really interesting thing to do. Imagine if you're a kid growing up
44:04
building legos and someday you're snapping together giant legos that you made with a three
44:08
D printer out of Martian soil for people to actually live in. That's a
44:14
pretty cool sequence of events. So we mentioned Independence Day tomorrow. We're recording
44:20
this on a Wednesday, which is the third Tomorrow, Independence Day, You
44:22
guys are closed at the co Cola Space Science Center for Independence Day. We
44:28
are closed on Thursday, July fourth, but we'll reopen on the fifth,
44:31
and we will be open through Saturday. So come down and check us out.
44:36
If the family's in town for the holiday, they got a week off,
44:37
they're heading over to our area. Come down and visit us at the
44:40
Coca Cola Space Science Center. We have lots of great things to see there.
44:45
We do not have any lego bricks made out of moon soil, but
44:49
we do have actual meteorites on display that you can come and check out.
44:52
In our meteorite display case. You can also see, as we talked about
44:55
David Scott, the David Scott collection of artifacts from very famous astronaut from the
45:00
Apollo era. He also flew on Gemini, by the way, he was
45:04
a Gemini and Apollo astronaut. Some things that Dave actually took to space are
45:08
on display in our exhibit gallery. We talked about engine test stands in the
45:13
mighty RS twenty five engine that launched space shuttles and the SLS. Well,
45:17
we have a component of the RS twenty five engine, a space shuttle Maine
45:21
engine nozzle on display in our exhibit gallery. Don't forget our Space Shuttle Odyssey,
45:24
a ride to Space. Let's just stimulated ride to space aboard a virtual
45:29
space shuttle. And we also have our Omnosphere Theater, which we just upgraded.
45:32
Our planetarium projection system that is a state of the art laser driven set
45:37
of projectors. The colors and contrasts are very beautiful. Come check out all
45:42
these things inside the air conditioning. When it's going to be very hot because
45:45
it's July in the Southeast, we're in indoor activity and we're kid friendly.
45:51
Come down and check it out. Visit us online to find out all the
45:53
information about our facility www dot CCSC dot org org. Charlie, Charlie SamSam
46:00
Charlie dot org. Sean and I thank you for listening, and we'll do
46:05
this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus has all of your garage
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