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Can We Build an Elevator to Space? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and that
0:15
Speaker 1: makes this stuff you should miss. So did you hear
0:20
Speaker 1: Snap Dog's son got a football scholarship to I think
0:23
Speaker 1: you see? Yeah? So did uh P Diddes? No way? Yeah?
0:28
Speaker 1: And actually Sean Combs was the first to happen. It
0:31
Speaker 1: was about a month ago, and a lot of people
0:34
Speaker 1: got upset because they were like, we shouldn't you know,
0:37
Speaker 1: be paying for this millionaire multimillionaire son to go to college.
0:43
Speaker 1: But it was all explained. The sports guys came out
0:46
Speaker 1: and really defended and said, it's not you paying for it.
0:49
Speaker 1: It's athletic scholarships that are earned by athletes. And it's
0:53
Speaker 1: a well probably, but it was like, basically, it's not
0:59
Speaker 1: like some kid missing out on an education. Because Pete
1:02
Speaker 1: Eddy's son earned a football scholarship, he should be treated
1:04
Speaker 1: the same and so should Snoop Dogg sign. Where was
1:07
Speaker 1: there an outcry about Snoop Dogg sign? Uh? Not as
1:09
Speaker 1: much because he's the g you see. No one likes Puffy.
1:14
Speaker 1: I don't understand he seems like a nice enough guy. Uh,
1:19
Speaker 1: here's friends with Biggie Smalls. I was in his house once.
1:21
Speaker 1: I'd ever tell you that I had to. I was
1:24
Speaker 1: working on a music video with him and I had
1:25
Speaker 1: to deliver as a p a something to his home
1:28
Speaker 1: in Beverly Hills. And I went to the door and
1:30
Speaker 1: I rang the doorbell, and some really large guy in
1:34
Speaker 1: a warm up suit and like a Kane gold hat
1:38
Speaker 1: invited me in and took my thing and then escorted
1:41
Speaker 1: me out. So I was like in the little fourier
1:43
Speaker 1: and it was like lots of white marble, and I
1:46
Speaker 1: mean it looked it could have been like the King
1:49
Speaker 1: of France living there as far as I know. Yeah,
1:51
Speaker 1: there's like a fountain of sur rock. It was really
1:54
Speaker 1: like pretty plush. Of course, you know he's rich. But
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Speaker 1: I took your thing. Is that lead? Are you talking
2:00
Speaker 1: about everything above the boards? Oh? Yeah it was. It
2:03
Speaker 1: was like a video cassettes for the shoot or something
2:06
Speaker 1: like that. I wouldn't be delivering anything illegal. Well, I
2:09
Speaker 1: didn't know if he did something illegal to you by
2:11
Speaker 1: taking your things, you put it. It was all on
2:13
Speaker 1: the up, could go and chuck anyway. I haven't been
2:15
Speaker 1: to Snoop's house yet, although I did seem one night
2:18
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, you did. Yeah, I can't tell that story. Though,
2:23
Speaker 1: let's hear part time, doesn't he I'm used to, I believe.
2:26
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what a weird start for the show. Yeah,
2:29
Speaker 1: it is a little weird, especially since we're talking about
2:31
Speaker 1: space elevators. Has nothing to do with it. This is
2:33
Speaker 1: not like we're talking about like p Funk or George
2:36
Speaker 1: Clinton andthing like that, or even Bill Clinton. Although I
2:39
Speaker 1: bet George Clinton could build a space elevator in his mind.
2:42
Speaker 1: You know he has many times chuck. Um, Well, I've
2:48
Speaker 1: got I've got something. I have an actual Yeah, it
2:52
Speaker 1: seems kind of stupid, now let's hear it. Uh well, okay,
2:56
Speaker 1: um five fifty seven am. On July one, thousand eleven,
3:00
Speaker 1: About a year ago, something big ended, something that really
3:06
Speaker 1: helped with our childhood, like really was an icon of
3:09
Speaker 1: our childhood. I'm not even gonna let you guess. The
3:13
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle. Of course, the program ended. It started in
3:18
Speaker 1: one and it went all the way to two thousand eleven,
3:22
Speaker 1: thirty great years. Yeah, um and uh more missions um
3:30
Speaker 1: and actually there's this awesome thing on gizmoto. It's you
3:33
Speaker 1: can watch all of the space Shuttle launches at once.
3:37
Speaker 1: It's just like a hundred and thirty five little tiles
3:39
Speaker 1: on the screen, and it's like, you know, starting from
3:42
Speaker 1: countdown to lift off and like it's got everything. Well,
3:46
Speaker 1: they probably don't have the one ill fated attempt. There
3:49
Speaker 1: were two accidents, one of yeah, it's there, I think
3:52
Speaker 1: I found it, and it just goes dark at about
3:55
Speaker 1: the time the Challenger UM exploded. Yeah. Um, but it
3:59
Speaker 1: was the was a huge deal for our childhood. But
4:02
Speaker 1: it's also you know, a huge deal for the space
4:04
Speaker 1: program because when they launched the first shuttle I think
4:07
Speaker 1: it was Columbia. Um, it was the first time that
4:11
Speaker 1: anyone had ever shot a spacecraft into space and then
4:14
Speaker 1: brought it back intact usable. Is huge. Yeah, we're not
4:18
Speaker 1: talking like a capsule where like Larry Hagman comes down
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Speaker 1: and splashes into the sea and then gets out, because
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Speaker 1: those capsules weren't reused. This was like, we have an
4:29
Speaker 1: appropriately named space shuttle there and back basically exactly. It
4:34
Speaker 1: even looked like a plane. So it was a big
4:36
Speaker 1: deal when this happened and it proved like okay, we
4:38
Speaker 1: can go to space and back using the same equipment.
4:40
Speaker 1: It brought costs down tremendously. Sure, they're still pretty high. Um.
4:44
Speaker 1: And then the space Shuttle program ends and everybody's like,
4:48
Speaker 1: how are we going to get to space and back? Now, Obama,
4:51
Speaker 1: did you think it's through? And uh, Obama didn't say it,
4:55
Speaker 1: but I'll bet he was thinking it when he was
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Speaker 1: kind of skulking away after being shouted at for basically
5:00
Speaker 1: closing NASA. Not true. Um, he probably thought, have you
5:05
Speaker 1: ever heard of the space elevator? Dummy? You should say that. Yeah. Uh,
5:11
Speaker 1: that's what we're gonna talk about. Josh, and I thought
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Speaker 1: this was a thrilling article. You thought the article itself
5:17
Speaker 1: was thrilling. No, no, no, the concept of the space elevator,
5:19
Speaker 1: well it is. Yeah, the article self was a little
5:23
Speaker 1: It was a little two thousand five. It's at outdated,
5:25
Speaker 1: but it's pretty cool. Um. So you mentioned the Space Shuttle.
5:29
Speaker 1: Even though the Space Shuttle took place over the span
5:32
Speaker 1: of what do you say, thirty years? Yeah, anyone to
5:34
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, the price of getting the thing going
5:38
Speaker 1: didn't change a whole lot, which was pretty remarkable. Yeah,
5:41
Speaker 1: it stayed about ten thousan dollars per pound, right, And
5:45
Speaker 1: they originally predicted when they were working on the Shuttle
5:48
Speaker 1: program before it started, that it was gonna be about
5:51
Speaker 1: fifty million a mission. Yeah. It came to about five
5:55
Speaker 1: million a mission. In every mission. They spent half a
5:58
Speaker 1: billion dollars on the shuttle the Shuttle mission. Um, and uh,
6:03
Speaker 1: that ten dollars per pound of that is fuel? Yeah?
6:09
Speaker 1: Is that the per pound of everything on there? Yeah?
6:11
Speaker 1: I think it's just like that kind of equation. So
6:13
Speaker 1: a lighter astronaut would be cheaper, don't don't really symbolic,
6:18
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I know. I think it's more like
6:21
Speaker 1: like if you if you take the full weight of
6:23
Speaker 1: this this, yeah, and divided by the money spent. Yes,
6:28
Speaker 1: I get it. So in theory, a lighter astronaut would
6:30
Speaker 1: make it cheaper, but not really not really okay, um,
6:34
Speaker 1: because I think they had those astronauts like way down
6:36
Speaker 1: to the Graham exactly what they wanted in a way,
6:40
Speaker 1: like they would probably be like, you need to excrete
6:43
Speaker 1: because you're about to suit up, go excrete. You need
6:45
Speaker 1: to p six ounces right now. I'd be a great
6:49
Speaker 1: astronaut then because I can be on command. Can you
6:52
Speaker 1: really almost always Okay, so I've got something for you
6:56
Speaker 1: about six ounces. Um there. Have you seen the little
6:59
Speaker 1: diagram him of a solo cup? You know the lines
7:01
Speaker 1: on a solo cup. Yes, their measurements the bottom one
7:06
Speaker 1: are they really is an ounce? The top one so
7:09
Speaker 1: like liquor. Yeah, the the middle one five ounces for wine.
7:14
Speaker 1: And then I'm not kidding the the the lowest top
7:17
Speaker 1: band report that's that's twelve ounces for beer. I never
7:24
Speaker 1: knew that that's ingenious, it is. I love little tidbits
7:28
Speaker 1: like that, Like the amount of matches in a matchbook
7:31
Speaker 1: is equal to the amount of cigarettes in a pack.
7:34
Speaker 1: I didn't know that that makes sense. We should just
7:37
Speaker 1: talk about those things all day instead of space elevators. No,
7:39
Speaker 1: let's talk about space elevator. All right, let's talk about it,
7:43
Speaker 1: um quickly, a space elevator and we'll get into the
7:46
Speaker 1: specifics here. But what it basically is, it's a ribbon,
7:51
Speaker 1: a carbon nano tube composite ribbon anchored to a platform offshore, yeah,
7:57
Speaker 1: way out in the Pacific Ocean. And it's has a
8:00
Speaker 1: counterweight way up in space six And they basically would
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Speaker 1: that would be the elevator shaft, and they would send
8:08
Speaker 1: stuff crawling up and down this ribbon? Uh two outer space? Yes,
8:14
Speaker 1: have you ever seen somebody like a piano mover lift
8:17
Speaker 1: the piano? Sure, a second story apartment that except in space. Yeah,
8:22
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it. I don't like the comparison to
8:24
Speaker 1: the game of tether ball here. I thought it was
8:26
Speaker 1: a terrible, terrible analogy, So let's just skip it because
8:29
Speaker 1: it didn't make much sense to me. Yeah, I think you.
8:31
Speaker 1: I think you said it like, basically, we're connecting a
8:34
Speaker 1: line between a platform in the ocean and the satellite
8:38
Speaker 1: up in space, and we're putting something on it that
8:40
Speaker 1: can go up and down. Yeah, and the whole thing
8:42
Speaker 1: of we should just stop right there. The cool thing
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Speaker 1: about this is to me is that every single part
8:49
Speaker 1: of this is feasible right now to do, except for
8:54
Speaker 1: the one thing that they need to do it, which
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Speaker 1: are the carbon nanotubes that go sixty two thousand miles
9:01
Speaker 1: into space. Yes, they're around right, but we can't make
9:04
Speaker 1: them that long yet. Right. There's um that's I think
9:08
Speaker 1: I think that's that's a really good point, Like we
9:10
Speaker 1: all of this is just waiting. And I saw a
9:13
Speaker 1: little video that Michio Kaku or cucku Um made about
9:17
Speaker 1: this explaining it, and he was saying, like everything's been
9:21
Speaker 1: surmounted now, like now it's all in the realm of
9:24
Speaker 1: physical possibility. There's just a few more breakthroughs and it's
9:28
Speaker 1: all carbon nanotubes, which are we've talked about graphine before, right,
9:33
Speaker 1: strongest substance known demand or humankind. That Um, it's one
9:37
Speaker 1: atom thick layer of carbon, incredibly strong. It's like a
9:42
Speaker 1: hundred times stronger than steel at about one fifth of
9:45
Speaker 1: the weight. And a carbon nanotube is a layer of
9:48
Speaker 1: graphine rolled into a tube like it looks like chicken wire,
9:52
Speaker 1: exactly like a soccer ball. Chicken wire. Yeah, it's like
9:55
Speaker 1: like if you spread out a length of chicken wire
9:57
Speaker 1: and then roll it up, Nana, it's yeah. And we
10:01
Speaker 1: say soccer ball because the shape of the traditional soccer ball,
10:05
Speaker 1: not these crazy ones are using these days. I don't
10:07
Speaker 1: even recognize it as a soccer ball. Yeah, but the
10:10
Speaker 1: old school soccer ball, that shape is the same, the
10:14
Speaker 1: same shape as as these carbon atoms, which is the
10:17
Speaker 1: key to it its strength. Um. I've been at I've
10:20
Speaker 1: seen it described as um stiff but flexible like a
10:24
Speaker 1: steel guitar string. So it moves, but it's still super
10:28
Speaker 1: super strong and um, even though it's just a few
10:31
Speaker 1: atoms across, they are ten million times as long as
10:36
Speaker 1: they are wide. Once you get this thing going, so
10:40
Speaker 1: like a guitar string. Yeah, well, because these are nanotubes,
10:43
Speaker 1: so like they're diameters like a few billions of a meter,
10:46
Speaker 1: I think one. Is that right? Yeah, because nano is
10:50
Speaker 1: a billion a billion, yes, yeah, but so so it's
10:54
Speaker 1: very thin, very thin. Um. That's the point. And ultimately
10:58
Speaker 1: I saw that the sixty two a mile cable would
11:03
Speaker 1: be it could be as thin as a piece of
11:05
Speaker 1: seran wrap. Yeah, it would still be strong enough to
11:10
Speaker 1: not snatch under its own weight sixty miles. Like, there's
11:14
Speaker 1: no quality of material outside of this that wouldn't just
11:19
Speaker 1: snap like a hair, like pulling one of your hairs
11:23
Speaker 1: in in half. Agree, this one will. But the problem
11:27
Speaker 1: is is you don't make carbon nanotubes. You grow them. Yeah.
11:34
Speaker 1: There's a really cool nova video too on YouTube where
11:37
Speaker 1: it shows a guy in the lab pulling a uh
11:41
Speaker 1: braided forest of carbon nanotubes and he starts pulling it
11:47
Speaker 1: and you see it all like coalescing together, and he
11:50
Speaker 1: gets like ten ft away and then it finally snaps
11:54
Speaker 1: and then it just it's like smaller than a human hair.
11:56
Speaker 1: It just like floats away almost. Okay, so that's that's
11:59
Speaker 1: longer then I've I've seen the record that I saw
12:02
Speaker 1: was four centimeters in length. Yeah, well this was uh,
12:07
Speaker 1: I don't think I think it was stretching. I don't
12:09
Speaker 1: think it was the original. Okay, So they they the
12:13
Speaker 1: carbon nanotubes grow and then after like, that's the world
12:16
Speaker 1: record four centimeters, which is like a one point six inches, right,
12:21
Speaker 1: that's short, and then it just stopped one of the
12:25
Speaker 1: right exactly. One of the problems with them not being
12:29
Speaker 1: able to figure out why it stops growing is that
12:32
Speaker 1: scientists don't know why it grows in the first place,
12:35
Speaker 1: Like they have no idea. They're just like, oh, this
12:38
Speaker 1: happens when you when you do this, um. And they
12:41
Speaker 1: figured out that there are some things like hydrogen gas
12:43
Speaker 1: in certain amounts makes it grow longer. Um, if you
12:48
Speaker 1: do a little too much hydrogen gas, it won't grow
12:50
Speaker 1: at all. So that there's they're they're figuring this out,
12:53
Speaker 1: but they still are really at a point where they're
12:55
Speaker 1: not they don't understand carbon nanotubes at all. They were
12:57
Speaker 1: only officially discovered in which is a blip in the
13:03
Speaker 1: scientific community. But we're making headway. And like you said,
13:06
Speaker 1: once the carbon nanotu technology is able to be made
13:10
Speaker 1: into things that are maybe several meters long, or they
13:13
Speaker 1: can figure out how to basically wrap it smaller pieces
13:17
Speaker 1: together in like you know, how you insulate wires with
13:21
Speaker 1: plastic something like that, without the the alloy coming away.
13:25
Speaker 1: Then we'll be able to make this space ribbon ribbon
13:29
Speaker 1: for the elevator space ribbon, which essentially is going to
13:32
Speaker 1: be like a there. They would braid these things together
13:35
Speaker 1: like a rope, correct, yes, which would still be tiny though. Yeah,
13:39
Speaker 1: so it'll either be like you know, several meters in
13:42
Speaker 1: length branded together or really short ones braided together. But
13:45
Speaker 1: either way they're not just gonna make one continuous sixty
13:48
Speaker 1: two there's sixty two mile strand yeah. The one thing
13:52
Speaker 1: I didn't get though, if it's so small, like it
13:54
Speaker 1: needs to be a certain size to have these lifters
13:59
Speaker 1: attach to it, you know, like it can't be a
14:02
Speaker 1: human hair, right like that, what what could you attach
14:05
Speaker 1: to that? They have to gain traction with it? So yeah, there, there,
14:09
Speaker 1: It couldn't It couldn't just be as thin as plastic wrap,
14:12
Speaker 1: even though strengthwise it could be. So that's one of
14:17
Speaker 1: the things they're working on, is bulking it up. I
14:19
Speaker 1: guess so, because you have to put the lifter on it.
14:22
Speaker 1: Like you're saying, so the lifts are all from now on,
14:25
Speaker 1: everything like this all exists. We can make this today,
14:28
Speaker 1: you and I can make it right now. Well, let's
14:31
Speaker 1: get it into space first. What what the idea is
14:33
Speaker 1: that they would spool the sing up. Once they've created it,
14:35
Speaker 1: they would shoot it into space with some kind of spacecraft. Uh.
14:40
Speaker 1: Once it's in space, they would start lowering it back
14:43
Speaker 1: to the Earth um towards the platform out in the
14:46
Speaker 1: middle of the sea. While it's still going out into space, right,
14:49
Speaker 1: they'd start lowering the ribbons. Yeah, so it's continue, it's
14:52
Speaker 1: still going in. It's going in two opposite directions. It
14:55
Speaker 1: would be like some kid walking the dog. Yeah. Uh.
14:59
Speaker 1: And eventually it it's lowered and there's a dude standing
15:02
Speaker 1: on a platform saying all right, back it down. Then
15:05
Speaker 1: he would take it and clip it onto a c platform,
15:09
Speaker 1: although it would be much more complicated than I think
15:11
Speaker 1: about that operations. So this platform is going to be
15:14
Speaker 1: like four miles from any shipping or air lanes, which
15:18
Speaker 1: is important in the Equatorial Pacific, and a sixty two
15:24
Speaker 1: thousand mile long strand of rope. Even they could say
15:28
Speaker 1: it's it's thick as like a cable, one of the
15:31
Speaker 1: cables holding the Golden gate Bridge. Imagine catching that. I
15:36
Speaker 1: mean it's obviously not, but still like there's somebody piloting
15:40
Speaker 1: machine that like, and you I don't know how you
15:44
Speaker 1: would move the counterweight around the spool so that how
15:52
Speaker 1: are you going to get the threat? This is the
15:55
Speaker 1: most difficult aspect of the whole program, if you ask me,
15:59
Speaker 1: I think grabbing that that ribbon and connecting it. Although
16:02
Speaker 1: they act like they've got that all figured out. They're like,
16:05
Speaker 1: we had this nanotube that was this long. We're all
16:08
Speaker 1: set to trust. Like they've got a guy out on
16:10
Speaker 1: a platform just sitting around waiting waiting for this thing
16:13
Speaker 1: to come down from space. So they so that guy
16:17
Speaker 1: catches the ribbon, ties it off probably with a pretty
16:20
Speaker 1: decent sailors not um, and then you attach the lifter
16:25
Speaker 1: to it. Right, that's right, Um. The lifter is a
16:30
Speaker 1: robotic thing. It basically it's it's sort of like a
16:33
Speaker 1: train track it uses these traction shread rollers. Uh, and
16:37
Speaker 1: it would clamp onto this ribbon and through something a
16:42
Speaker 1: little more advanced than a gasoline engine. I think, what
16:45
Speaker 1: are they using a free electron laser to create the
16:49
Speaker 1: energy to do this? Basically, what they're doing is they're
16:51
Speaker 1: gonna put solar panels but made of stuff that really
16:55
Speaker 1: absorbs light from a laser right on the bottom or
16:59
Speaker 1: on the top, probably on both sides, and then they're
17:01
Speaker 1: just gonna shoot lasers up and down the ribbon and
17:04
Speaker 1: then that laser just powers It's basically like directing sunlight
17:08
Speaker 1: onto full of photovoltaic cells and then converting that to electricity.
17:14
Speaker 1: Then it's just plain old mechanical energy. It's like a
17:17
Speaker 1: little motor that would crawl at a hundred and eighteen
17:22
Speaker 1: miles an hour. Mind you, it's not exactly a crawl
17:24
Speaker 1: that it would shoot up this ribbon into space to
17:30
Speaker 1: the final destination, which would be anything. I think that
17:34
Speaker 1: first they talked about capturing an asteroid to serve as
17:37
Speaker 1: as the which is just as the counterweight to um
17:40
Speaker 1: what I think is smart which would potentially be a
17:44
Speaker 1: satellite or the spacecraft that brought it out there to
17:46
Speaker 1: begin with Yeah, just unfolding or reconfiguring or whatever, and
17:50
Speaker 1: of a sudden bam, there's your counterweight. There's the other
17:52
Speaker 1: end of the string, right dude, that's it. I mean,
17:55
Speaker 1: after they get this going, they're saying it can basically
17:58
Speaker 1: be a constant operational elevator to the sky, lifting as
18:04
Speaker 1: much as thirteen tons of payload at a time in
18:07
Speaker 1: some cases humans maybe eventually, Yeah, crazy. I guess the
18:13
Speaker 1: whole point now would be to just shuttle stuff to
18:16
Speaker 1: say this. The International Space Station UM supplies that kind
18:21
Speaker 1: of thing, gruel food UM, or if you had some
18:27
Speaker 1: sort of asteroid mining operation, you could take your daily
18:31
Speaker 1: hall to the space elevator to be brought down. The
18:35
Speaker 1: point is this thing could be used for trips to
18:38
Speaker 1: UM lower Earth orbit every day, several times a day,
18:42
Speaker 1: because I think lower Earth orbit is UM between five
18:47
Speaker 1: and fift hundred miles, so that's like UM four to
18:53
Speaker 1: twelve hours trip basically, and they're talking about going further
18:57
Speaker 1: than that, right, But Lower Earth orbit is where like
19:00
Speaker 1: all of the all that's where all the action is
19:02
Speaker 1: generally UM. The problem is is that's also where all
19:07
Speaker 1: the space to bree is. Yeah, and I think I
19:10
Speaker 1: don't think we mentioned what the best part about all
19:12
Speaker 1: this is is that it would cost about the closest
19:17
Speaker 1: system I've seen is about two hundred dollars a pound
19:19
Speaker 1: to deliver stuff to outer space, and what was the
19:21
Speaker 1: Space shuttle costs dollars a pound. So that's why they're
19:25
Speaker 1: pursuing this is because it's much much more affordable. They
19:28
Speaker 1: likened it to the Transcontinental Railroad back in the day,
19:32
Speaker 1: linking space to Earth. Yeah, okay, so the problems Josh
19:36
Speaker 1: avoiding um junk flying around in space Like it would
19:41
Speaker 1: suck if you got this thing all looked up and
19:44
Speaker 1: some asteroid came flying out of nowhere and snapped the
19:47
Speaker 1: thing and half well, not just asteroids, apparently space debris
19:49
Speaker 1: UM largely refers to junk man made jump and lower
19:55
Speaker 1: Earth's orbit is allows you with it. Um. One, there
19:58
Speaker 1: was a satellite, an old out of use satellite, collided
20:02
Speaker 1: with a new in use satellite recently and blew it up,
20:06
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, two pieces became four thousand pieces.
20:11
Speaker 1: And that's nothing, that's a drop in the bucket. It
20:13
Speaker 1: is so um. The problem is is like even a
20:15
Speaker 1: small like one centimeter diameter piece is a threat to
20:19
Speaker 1: the space elevator. Um so right now, nora D tracks
20:24
Speaker 1: things as small as ten centimeters. Did you know that?
20:27
Speaker 1: I didn't once I read this, but I was pretty
20:29
Speaker 1: I was pretty shocked. But they're gonna have to start
20:31
Speaker 1: tracking stuff down to one centimeter. So this is another
20:34
Speaker 1: kind of challenge that I don't think people talk about,
20:36
Speaker 1: is tracking space debris. Or they're also proposing that we
20:40
Speaker 1: just go up there and get rid of it, like
20:42
Speaker 1: pay contractors to go to space and bring these things
20:45
Speaker 1: down and clean up exactly. That'd be a unique approach, right,
20:50
Speaker 1: Um it's called active avoidance, and UM, it's pretty amazing
20:54
Speaker 1: that you could actually, potentially, because this thing is tethered
20:57
Speaker 1: to a c platform, move the c plat form to
21:00
Speaker 1: dodge these things. But that would mean that there's like
21:03
Speaker 1: some guy whose job it is to like, yeah, joystick it. Yeah,
21:06
Speaker 1: that's crazy. It sounds very far fetched, but it's supposedly
21:11
Speaker 1: not super far fetched. I mean, this company Liftport, they're
21:16
Speaker 1: they're one of the private firms that are have been
21:20
Speaker 1: I think they partnered with NASA for a while until NASA,
21:23
Speaker 1: you know, they're funding has dried up to a large degree,
21:26
Speaker 1: so they had to scrap things like partnering with Liftport,
21:29
Speaker 1: but um Liftport as of now, I think I read
21:33
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven they have sort of scrapped or
21:36
Speaker 1: not scrapped, but they put on the back burner the
21:39
Speaker 1: space to Earth version and they're working on a lunar version.
21:43
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so they want to put one of these
21:45
Speaker 1: on the Moon. Um, which can be done right now
21:50
Speaker 1: if they had the money. That makes sense to me.
21:52
Speaker 1: Um not as much gravity, so they don't need the
21:55
Speaker 1: carbonano tubes. Yeah, they could use the stuff called zylon.
21:59
Speaker 1: It's a synthetic polymer. And apparently they could like do
22:03
Speaker 1: this within the decade. Like everything's in place, it's just
22:05
Speaker 1: a matter of doing it. So yeah, I thought about
22:09
Speaker 1: having one that goes from the Earth to the Moon,
22:11
Speaker 1: or one that goes from the Earth to Mars or
22:14
Speaker 1: you know, and you just well and then from the
22:16
Speaker 1: Moon tomorrow. You know, you could connect them like station
22:20
Speaker 1: one is here, then you have another one that goes there.
22:22
Speaker 1: And the ideas are going to build a bunch of these, right,
22:25
Speaker 1: that's the idea, because if one goes down because of
22:28
Speaker 1: some space to breathe, hey, no problem, We've got another
22:31
Speaker 1: one that we've built even cheaper over here in this
22:34
Speaker 1: part of the ocean. So that's the idea. What's awesome
22:37
Speaker 1: is this is I mean, this is far reaching, it
22:41
Speaker 1: sounds futuristic, it's actually pretty smart. Simple idea like where
22:47
Speaker 1: it's gonna build an elevator that goes to space, and
22:49
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of an old idea. There was a
22:52
Speaker 1: Russian UH scientists named Constantine Ciokowski who proposed this in
22:59
Speaker 1: heard about that and then um kind of went. I
23:03
Speaker 1: think everybody thought he was a crack pot for a while.
23:05
Speaker 1: They thought da Vinci was too, though yeah, actually did
23:07
Speaker 1: they No, not da Vinci. They think he was a
23:10
Speaker 1: genius back then too, probably except for his flying machine.
23:14
Speaker 1: I think that's credibility. Um. But then Arthur Arthur C.
23:18
Speaker 1: Clark comes along and writes about this in UH Fountains
23:22
Speaker 1: of Paradise, and he was he very clearly saw like
23:27
Speaker 1: the big problem was the ribbon. If you could figure
23:30
Speaker 1: out the ribbon, everything else would be fine, which is
23:32
Speaker 1: still the problem. Arthur C. Clark way ahead of his time.
23:36
Speaker 1: So that's pretty much it. I mean, if they get
23:39
Speaker 1: this lunar and we're going there, they're talking about deep
23:41
Speaker 1: space exploration from a lunar based system, which you know,
23:46
Speaker 1: the benefit there is is it cost a lot of
23:48
Speaker 1: money to get from here to the moon. If you
23:50
Speaker 1: could shuttle a the components of a rocket up to
23:54
Speaker 1: the moon and just get it going up there and
23:56
Speaker 1: be a lot cheaper, right. We talked about that with
23:58
Speaker 1: asteroid minding that that was another their idea is you
24:01
Speaker 1: could launch things from these asteroids or whatever because the
24:06
Speaker 1: a vast majority remember the weight of the space shuttles
24:10
Speaker 1: in the fuel, almost all of that is just used
24:13
Speaker 1: within the first like ten miles. Then after that you
24:16
Speaker 1: start to escape births or a bit and exactly. So um, yeah,
24:22
Speaker 1: if you could, if you could get rid of all that,
24:24
Speaker 1: like you just dropped the cost tremendously base I know.
24:30
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm curious to see within a decade if
24:32
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a space elevator from the Moon to
24:35
Speaker 1: something else, we will be riding one. So yeah, well,
24:39
Speaker 1: it all depends on funding. That's like, these ideas are
24:42
Speaker 1: all great in practice unless you have billions of dollars
24:45
Speaker 1: to get it. But think about Jeff Bezos has billions
24:48
Speaker 1: of dollars um ms Kirt Cameron, that's think James Cameron
24:55
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. These guys have cash and this is what
24:58
Speaker 1: they're putting their money into, this kind of thing. So
25:01
Speaker 1: I don't think it's gonna come down NASA funding. I
25:03
Speaker 1: think it's gonna come down to the will of guys
25:05
Speaker 1: like Kirk Cameron. Well, Kirk Cameron does not have billions
25:09
Speaker 1: of dollars, but he does have a fine collection of
25:12
Speaker 1: faith based movies. Yeah, directive video anna that you can
25:16
Speaker 1: check out, but not the dirty kind of directive video. No, no, no, no,
25:21
Speaker 1: I guess it's about it, right, it's pretty much I'm
25:24
Speaker 1: looking forward to it. Yeah, private space exploration is definitely
25:29
Speaker 1: the way of the future. We should put in a
25:31
Speaker 1: request for this article to be updated, but I'm a
25:34
Speaker 1: free to think they'll be like, have at it. Yeah,
25:37
Speaker 1: I'm afraid to do that. Dude. Well, if you want
25:39
Speaker 1: to read a hilariously out of date article on how
25:42
Speaker 1: Stuff Works that still captures what's going on with the
25:44
Speaker 1: space elevator um and with some cool artists rendering of stuff,
25:49
Speaker 1: you can type in space elevator that's at the handy
25:51
Speaker 1: search bar and a great little website called how stuff
25:54
Speaker 1: Works dot com. And I said search bar, which means
25:56
Speaker 1: it's time now for a listener mail Josh, I'm gonna
26:03
Speaker 1: call this dead Sea follow up UM, and I should mention.
26:06
Speaker 1: We got a lot of emails from Dead Sea visitors
26:10
Speaker 1: and tourists and a lot of photos and one thing
26:13
Speaker 1: we did not cover because I haven't been there and
26:15
Speaker 1: experience this, but we said, swim in the Dead sea
26:18
Speaker 1: a lot. You ain't a lot of swimming going on
26:20
Speaker 1: in the Dead Sea. There's there's a lot of floating
26:24
Speaker 1: and flailing because they just say it's really disorienting because
26:28
Speaker 1: you're so used to the way you move in water
26:31
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden that's totally different. So people
26:34
Speaker 1: are like gasping, and eventually they'll learn to trust and
26:38
Speaker 1: relax and float on their back. You don't want to
26:40
Speaker 1: go on your stomach. You don't want to try and
26:42
Speaker 1: swim UM, and you don't want to get it in
26:44
Speaker 1: your face because it will really sting your eyes and
26:48
Speaker 1: it tastes really bad. And we had this one that
26:51
Speaker 1: wrote in his husband was suffering. They advise you not
26:54
Speaker 1: to go on with cuts or open sores. Obviously her
26:57
Speaker 1: husband was suffering from a little UM. It's called many
27:02
Speaker 1: different things. When you walk a lot and you get
27:04
Speaker 1: chafed between the legs. Yeah, it goes by many different
27:08
Speaker 1: crude names. But he had a bad case of this
27:11
Speaker 1: and uh didn't tell his family that he was traveling
27:13
Speaker 1: with his wife knew and he went in the Dead
27:15
Speaker 1: Sea promptly got out and the family was like, where
27:18
Speaker 1: did you know the sum in law go? And she
27:20
Speaker 1: was like, maybe he's just not into it all right.
27:25
Speaker 1: So this is from Daniel, but thanks to everyone else.
27:27
Speaker 1: He wrote in just finished the dead Sea podcast had
27:30
Speaker 1: a couple of interesting tidbits. You briefly mentioned the Great
27:33
Speaker 1: Salt Lake when talking about the high salinity the Dead Sea. Uh.
27:37
Speaker 1: These two lakes actually have quite a bit in common.
27:39
Speaker 1: Both lakes are located in the desert region, although the
27:42
Speaker 1: elevation is drastically different. Like the Dead Sea, the Great
27:45
Speaker 1: Salt Lake here in Utah has a very high salt
27:47
Speaker 1: content about, making it hard for anything but hello philic
27:53
Speaker 1: bacteria and some Brian shrimp to grow. Uh. This guy's
27:56
Speaker 1: a graduate student. By the way, b y U. Both
27:59
Speaker 1: lakes are fed mainly by a smaller freshwater lake roughly
28:02
Speaker 1: fifty miles away, the Dead Sea being fed by the
28:06
Speaker 1: uh Sea of Galilee to the north by way of
28:09
Speaker 1: the Jordan River. The Great Salt Lake is fed by
28:11
Speaker 1: Utah Lake to the south, also by the Jordan River coincidence,
28:16
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. In both cases, the water leaves the
28:19
Speaker 1: lake only through evaporation. Uh. And like the Dead Sea,
28:23
Speaker 1: there are many areas the Great Salt Lake that are
28:26
Speaker 1: quite stinky at times, mainly in the muddy waters with
28:28
Speaker 1: a level is low. The Great Salt Lake is also
28:32
Speaker 1: dense enough for you to float with little to no effort.
28:35
Speaker 1: So if you're not able to ever make it over
28:37
Speaker 1: to Europe to visit the Dead Sea, I would say
28:41
Speaker 1: the Middle East, wouldn't you. Okay, you can head on
28:45
Speaker 1: over for a float. And it's little American cousin out
28:48
Speaker 1: here in Utah. Keep up good work, guys. I really
28:51
Speaker 1: enjoy the wide variety of topics that it's from. Daniel.
28:56
Speaker 1: He was a grad student at b YU studying microbiology.
29:00
Speaker 1: So good for you, my friend, nice much smarter than
29:03
Speaker 1: I you. Yeah, well, yeah, great students. All I have
29:06
Speaker 1: to say English undergrad microbiology grad as a well rounded
29:11
Speaker 1: human beings agreed. Um? Oh wait, you're the English undergrad.
29:16
Speaker 1: I love to put the two of you together. You're
29:17
Speaker 1: a well grounded human exactly. UM, if you have some
29:21
Speaker 1: ideas of how to put me in chuck together to
29:23
Speaker 1: form another superhuman UM, we want to hear him. Also,
29:27
Speaker 1: if you just want to say hi, or you have
29:29
Speaker 1: something cool or interesting to tell us a great fact
29:32
Speaker 1: WE love those I love them that you'd like us
29:35
Speaker 1: a tweet or put on Facebook. You can send those
29:39
Speaker 1: two via Twitter s y Escape podcast via Facebook at
29:43
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com. Slash stuff you Should Know, and you
29:46
Speaker 1: can send us a an email ilec trynmail um too.
29:51
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on us
30:00
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com.
30:03
Speaker 1: MHM