Latest / Made of Stars / Twenty Seconds to ISS
Transcript
- 0:00Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
- 0:04space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
- 0:08phenomenon, the scientific method, and expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism
- 0:13and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk. Go ahead. When made
- 0:23of stars, made them stars, mad sizes? When made of stars,
- 0:33you could be from high they would new Mexicomas. Where are stars? When
- 0:54we are made of stars? I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend
- 0:57doctor Sean Cruising from Columbus State Universities Coca Cola Space Science Center. Morning,
- 1:02Shawn, Well, that's good to be here, all right. We had
- 1:07it was going to be a busy day for the National Space Station with two
- 1:11launches that were headed for the ISS. As of right now, one of
- 1:17them had to abort this morning. The other is still scheduled to launch later
- 1:21today. Let's start with Ross Cosmos. Yeah, so, the first of
- 1:26the two launches on the same day to the International Space Station was slated for
- 1:32the afternoon hours. If you're in the time zone in Biken or but here
- 1:37in the United States on the Eastern time zone, it was at nine to
- 1:38twenty one this morning. And you know, my friend Scott Norman here at
- 1:44Space Science, our space estorian and lead educator. He and I watch a
- 1:47launch, a lot of these launches together, and it just feels like every
- 1:51time we either watch a launch or we watched some vehicle that's trying to land
- 1:55on the surface of the boon, anytime we're watching it in the same room,
- 1:59we just have a j and we just kill it. I don't know
- 2:00why. We've just seen so many things go wrong. And I even mentioned
- 2:04to him this morning that perhaps we shouldn't watch this launch together, but he
- 2:07said, no, no, come on, in this is This is not
- 2:08a landing on the Moon. It's just a launch of a rocket. And
- 2:12yet trouble hit so exactly, the very reliable Soy used vehicle, which normally
- 2:23launches with nary a problem this morning, just twenty seconds before liftoff, had
- 2:29an automatic abort and the mission was scrubbed for today. The investigation is still
- 2:36ongoing as to what was the cause of the abort. But this is that
- 2:39system that is monitoring the vehicle itself and all of the fuel and the engines
- 2:46and all the vital systems that can shut a launch down quicker than human beings
- 2:53can. If parameters get out of alignment and they and they see that they
- 2:58are out of spec of the computers just are able to shut the launch down
- 3:02to maintain the safety of the astronauts. So that's what happened today. And
- 3:06I say astronauts. This was actually a mission that had one NASA astronaut,
- 3:10a named Tracy Dyson, and two people from well the former Soviet Union cosmonaut
- 3:20Olegg Navitski who was the Russian cosmonaut, and then from Belarus Marina Basilovskaya and
- 3:28Marina Vasilovskaya was listed as a spaceflight participant. Now, you and I have
- 3:34had discussions on this show about commercial astronauts and whether they should be called astronauts,
- 3:38and what the astronauts think about calling commercial spaceflight participants astronauts and things like
- 3:45that. Marina Bellisovskaya was chosen to go on this flight by an organization called
- 3:53the Belarusian Women in Space Program, and it is a program in Belarus to
- 4:00encourage females to go into technical careers, into stem fields, that kind of
- 4:05thing, and they wanted to do so by inspiring women by allowing them to
- 4:12see a female what amounts to cosmonaut coming from Belarus and flying to space.
- 4:18So they did a selection program. Marina the Silvskaia is a flight attendant.
- 4:25She's also a flight instructor for Belarus Airlines, so she is a not just
- 4:30you know, serving coffee and maintaining safety. She also knows how to fly
- 4:34the aircraft itself and trains other people to do so. So this was part
- 4:39of why she won her bid to be chosen as the Belarusian woman in space,
- 4:46the first of these spaceflight participants chosen from this program. But she would
- 4:49also become the first female to fly in space from Belarus, so there was
- 4:56you know, there's a lot on the line today, but the scrub but
- 5:00anyway, and it's okay. It's better to scrub a vehicle that potentially have
- 5:04a safety problem if they can get things sorted out. Their next earliest launch
- 5:10window to go from the bike in our cosmodrome up to the International Space Station
- 5:15will be Saturday. That's March if you're listening anyway, So if they launch
- 5:23on that day, they will arrive and dock with the International Space Station on
- 5:28Monday, March twenty five, Okay, so we talk about the training and
- 5:35the preparation and how astronauts are just built differently mentally, how it's just it's
- 5:41a different sort of human being that does this. They get on board,
- 5:48they face difficulties and complications a different way than most people. They're trained for
- 5:55it. It's a lot of training that they go through to be ready for
- 5:59just about anything, whether it's Neil Armstrong's adjustment on the fly to land on
- 6:02the Moon or you know, the whole Apollo thirteen mission. So many things
- 6:08that they are all prepared for, just at a different level than everyone else.
- 6:13All Right, And we talk about this idea of spaceflight participant versus astronaut
- 6:16or cosmonaut. In this case, I would imagine that Tracy Dyson and Oleg
- 6:25Novitski approaching this from the very well trained mindset versus a spaceflight participant who is
- 6:32sitting there with twenty seconds to go, excited anticipating this launch. And it
- 6:42was probably a very different reaction for her at the want while point at twenty
- 6:46seconds to go. I'm just trying to imagine what the adrenaline drop off and
- 6:49disappointment must have been. I mean, you know, it has to be
- 6:55right, because even eager, if you are among the highly trained of astronauts,
- 7:00if it's your first flight to space. I've just heard enough interviews and
- 7:05discussions among astronauts, but I know that that first flight to space means something
- 7:11right, and it's it's it's a little bit more of a should we say,
- 7:15uncertain time for you as compared to a veteran astronaut who's been a space
- 7:19This particular flight this would have been the fourth trip to iss for Nibitski,
- 7:25the third trip for Dyson, but the very first trip for obviously our space
- 7:29flight participant from uh Kaya. So so you can imagine, like, you
- 7:34know, the looking around the inside of this capsule, going, is this
- 7:38supposed to happen? But where's the kaboom? It was supposed to be an
- 7:42earth shattering kaboom? Why why doesn't that come? And and I don't know
- 7:46if you have ever been on a flight that was coming in for a landing
- 7:53and then suddenly pulled back up rapidly, It just that makes me think,
- 8:00WHOA what happened? Again? I start looking out the window, right,
- 8:03So, so it's like we just did something that was unexpected. Well,
- 8:07so imagine that so yeah, I imagine that there was a little uncertainty and
- 8:16a little anxiety. It'll be in to see in the media, uh,
- 8:20if they allow her to comment on that, and and we'll see what she
- 8:22has to say about that kind of an experience. You would think too,
- 8:28that maybe the others might have picked up on a few things that were being
- 8:31discussed as they're talking about and they're doing the checklist down, maybe some things
- 8:35they might have recognized as we might have a problem here that maybe she wouldn't
- 8:39have picked up on. But either way, it had to be a big
- 8:41disappointment for her, and now she gets to begin the whole process all over
- 8:46again. So that's another part of this that that begins again as they get
- 8:50ready for this next opportunity. So that one was a no go, and
- 8:56now SpaceX gets ready to give their sh a being what would have been the
- 9:01second launch that would have been heading to the ISS, so now it will
- 9:05be first, assuming that it launches today at about five o'clock Eastern time.
- 9:09Yeah, that's exactly right. One last thought on the other is simply that
- 9:15you know, there's gonna be some anxiety just because there wasn't the first time.
- 9:18Right now, she has to get back on that vehicle knowing that it
- 9:22aborded the last time, right, So I imagine that there's some added anxieties
- 9:28there, although, as you say, people who are selected for space are
- 9:31selected for a reason, and even these space flight participants, this is not
- 9:33someone who's paying her own way, actually had to go through a vetting process
- 9:37and she's been training, so there's a fair amount of training anyway, and
- 9:41so I would imagine that, you know, there's a fair amount of confidence
- 9:46in a person like that, but it still has to be in the back
- 9:48of your mind, shall we say, as you board that rocket for a
- 9:52second time, knowing that the last time had some sort of fuel or engine
- 9:56of sequence kicking in the last twenty seve ready to go to space. Well
- 10:01that's a little unnerving, sure, And like you pointed out, I mean
- 10:05being on a plane that's about to land and then pulls back up again.
- 10:07It's eventually got to land again, and you kind of in the back of
- 10:11your mind are thinking, wait a minute, why didn't we land the last
- 10:13time? Was there a problem with the windshield? Like what what's the because
- 10:16that's always what I think. Was there an issue with the landing gear?
- 10:20Is it gonna come down this time? All of those things run through your
- 10:22mind. That's the one that gets me is like, did the wheels come
- 10:26down or did they lock in place? Are we okay with our wheels?
- 10:31Was the wing flopping just a little bit too much? Like maybe a bolt
- 10:33came out and they wanted to check that before they came back around? Okay,
- 10:39all of those things. Yes, always a concern when you have that
- 10:45in the back of your mind. Plus, you know, now she goes
- 10:48through the hole, like, well, all right, let's let's rebegin this
- 10:50process of mentally getting ready to go do this again. Yeah, exactly.
- 10:56Well, I can tell you who doesn't have to do that. It's all
- 10:58the it's all twinkies and cupcakes that are aboard a cargo mission up to the
- 11:01International Space Station. They have very little to reconsider because after all, their
- 11:05twinkies and cupcakes, you know, so they're not really thinking about their whether
- 11:09it's the first like the space or not, you know that kind of thing.
- 11:13They're just twinkies and cupcakes. And so there's a whole cargo they loaded
- 11:18aboard a Dragon to spacecraft down at the it's near the Kennedy Space Center.
- 11:24But it's not the Kennedy Space Center. It's the Space Forces keep Canaveral launch
- 11:28Pad forty or the thirtieth cargo mission to the Space Station or SpaceX is about
- 11:35ready to go. So this is all important stuff. There's about six thousand
- 11:41pounds of twinkies and cupcakes, you know, a loaded aboard that vehicle,
- 11:45ready to go up to the International Space Station. There probably is a science
- 11:48or experiment or two in there somewhere. You know, there's probably some important
- 11:52science y kind of things on board, but mostly twinkies and cupcakes. I
- 11:56would guess that's what astronauts about that for all. So so anyway, so
- 12:01that is slated to be the second flight today, and as you pointed out
- 12:05moments ago, now it'll be the first flight today if it goes it.
- 12:11Launchtime is at four fifty five pm Eastern time, and so we'll see later
- 12:16on today if this is going to go up again. If you're listening in
- 12:20the future, you already know this. So congratulations you are in my friends.
- 12:24But it is splated if it launches on time to dock with the International
- 12:28Space Station's Harmony module on Saturday morning at about seven thirty am. So that'll
- 12:33be the dock time, and it'll be guided in by Laurel O'Hara and Michael
- 12:37Barrett, who are NASA astronauts up there aboard the International Space Station. They'll
- 12:41be overseeing the docking process. They will be likely the first ones to open
- 12:46the doors and access the twinkies and peptics, and you know, if they
- 12:50tuck a few away to you know, protect money from the other astronauts.
- 12:54I don't really know how that works, but you know they'll they'll have first
- 12:58crack at the twinkies and cupcakes, and you know as well, they absolutely
- 13:03should have a first crack at them if they're going to be the ones that
- 13:07are overseeing the docking process. I mean that seems like a natural perk of
- 13:11the job, right I think so, if you're the one actually, you
- 13:15know, berthing the vehicle and docking it and making sure it's safe, you
- 13:18get to be the first one to open the doors and there's that box of
- 13:22you know, space twinkies right there, just ready to go. I mean,
- 13:26you've got first crack. You have earned the right. In my opinion,
- 13:31I don't make space policy, but in my opinion that that's the way
- 13:33it should work all right. So space exis Starship we know has had its
- 13:39varying levels of successes along the way from getting off the ground to having a
- 13:45slightly better takeoff to a better takeoff. It actually, you know, touched
- 13:50space. So now they're in this phase of getting ready to fly again and
- 13:56hopefully have one better. They want to have those improvements as they go along.
- 14:01So Starship's getting ready to fly again, maybe even sooner than we expected.
- 14:05Yeah, So announcement at a conference called the Satellite twenty twenty four conference
- 14:11in Washington, BC a couple of days ago. As we're recording this podcast
- 14:16March nineteenth, Gwinn Shotwell, who was the president and chief operating officer of
- 14:20SpaceX, had a few quotes. And by the way, this is pause
- 14:24for a moment. I know that he Elon Musk tends to be, at
- 14:30least in terms of the view for the media, tends to be a fairly
- 14:31hands on owner of SpaceX, kind of like Jerry Jones with some professional football
- 14:41team that we know about. Seems to be a little bit hands on.
- 14:43But I will tell you that Gwinn Shotwell, the president and CEO of the
- 14:50COO rather of SpaceX, is a really important figure in how SpaceX operates,
- 14:58their planning, their success along the way, and so I think maybe in
- 15:05terms of just the way SpaceX is perceived, perhaps Gwinn Shotwell rarely gets enough
- 15:11credit for the various successes that SpaceX has, So we don't want to do
- 15:18that on our podcast. So I'm going to just say, by the way,
- 15:20Gwenn, we know you were playing a vital role and an important leadership
- 15:26function in how SpaceX performs and the amazing successes that they have, So let's
- 15:33just throw it out, throw that out really quickly. So anyway, gwyn
- 15:35Shotwell was at this conference in Satellite twenty twenty four in DC a couple of
- 15:39days ago and said this The company was still reviewing the data from the vehicle's
- 15:46third integrated launch on March fourteenth, but expected to be ready to fly again
- 15:50soon. Quote. We're still going through the data, she said, when
- 15:56asked about the analysis from the flight. And the next quote is quote,
- 16:00it was an incredibly successful flight. We hit exactly where we wanted to go.
- 16:07Unquote. I think that's really important because that opens the curtain that we've
- 16:12discussed many times on the show about the way that SpaceX does their engineering,
- 16:17which is the agile development process. And so you said moments ago, they've
- 16:22had vurying levels of success. I agree with that, but their variations have
- 16:26been systematic in the sense that each flight is better. Right, It's not
- 16:33like, oh, we had a good flight and we had a bad flight,
- 16:34and we had another good flights another bad flight. No. No,
- 16:37each time their capabilities have grown. And that's the way they do engineering at
- 16:42spaces. They will fly a vehicle, they will analyze what happened, what
- 16:48went wrong, they will repair those things, fly again and have better success.
- 16:53Then they will analyze what went wrong, fly again and have even betterits.
- 16:59And that's what's happened on the three flights SpaceX Starship. So there's no
- 17:03reason to really suspect that that wouldn't happen again on the fourth flight of SpaceX
- 17:08Starship. Now it's always unknown, you don't know until it flies, all
- 17:11those kinds of things. But the fact that they think they can fix the
- 17:15problems that happened on the first flight, turn those problems around, be ready
- 17:19to fly again in six weeks, which is what Gwen Shotwell said at the
- 17:26conference that possibly hopefully ready to fly in about six weeks. That makes that
- 17:33early May. It's astounding. No other rocket system in the history of humanity
- 17:40has had the kind of engineering turnarounds and improvements on the duty cycle that we
- 17:47see from SpaceX. It just hasn't ever been done before. And so,
- 17:52you know, during during that recent flight, yeah, the vehicle broke apart
- 17:55about sixty five kilometers in altitude, which is get up close to that one
- 18:00hundred kilometer uh you know limit for space. The super heavy booster also exploded
- 18:06during the final stages of the scent. It didn't make it back down,
- 18:10you know, to to where they to where they thought it could possibly land,
- 18:14right, and they were going to bring it in under controlled landing,
- 18:17but they were going to bring it down the Gulf of Mexico anyway and let
- 18:18it splash down. They just wanted to see if they could achieve the speeds
- 18:22or slowing it down and possibly landing it vertically in the future. So really
- 18:27they pretty much hit their their milestones, which was to get the starship vehicle
- 18:32at the speed where it could attain orbit and slow the main booster down to
- 18:38the speed where it could possibly do a ground based landing. Even though neither
- 18:44of those things were planned for this flight. That's the important thing to keep
- 18:45reminding everyone. They didn't plan to do either of those things. So so
- 18:51successes all the way around. And again going back to the quote from gwyn
- 18:53shotwell, we hit exactly where we wanted to go and they're going to be
- 18:59ready to go again six weeks, which is absolutely remarkable. So NASA has
- 19:04some budget concerns. They're planning to now shut down one of the great observatories
- 19:11because they've got to save some money. Yeah, this is this is actually
- 19:15a very sad story. And you just don't ever want to hear of some
- 19:19really expensive, properly functioning space telescope type instrument lose its serviceability because well,
- 19:30we just want to pay for it anymore. About what you want to hear.
- 19:34It takes a lot of time and effort and engineering and the dangers of
- 19:40space travel to deploy these very expensive scientific instruments in the orbit the first place,
- 19:45or into the various places where they operate, and so once they're there,
- 19:49you really just want them to work for as long as they work,
- 19:53and the space environment causes them to break down. Okay, we understand that
- 19:59every everything has some kind of limited time where it can operate in these hostile
- 20:04environments. But to know that the Chanter a observer function and NASA is now
- 20:11considering shutting it down just because they don't have enough budget because the United States
- 20:18government didn't grant the NASA base agency the money they requested. So it's actually
- 20:27a decrease in funding by about two billion dollars, which is a lot for
- 20:30NASA. That's a pretty large fraction of their budgets, more than ten percent.
- 20:36And so when you look at that kind of a funding shortfall, and
- 20:41then the agency has to look around and say, well, we're gonna have
- 20:44to make some difficult decisions here. Why don't we just go ahead and kill
- 20:48the Chanter X ray observatory. I mean, they have to do something.
- 20:52I get it, I understand, but these these long term decisions have consequences
- 20:57because it disables a whole function of our astronomical ability. And once again,
- 21:04I just hate shutting down working vehicles when they're in orbit. When it took
- 21:08so much planning, engineering, construction time money to carry all that out.
- 21:15Astronauts flying aboard space shuttles actually deployed the observatory, risking their own lives to
- 21:19get it up there in the first place, and we just stay, ah,
- 21:22we don't want to fund it anymore. Me personally, I know this
- 21:26is a tad editorial. I try to just stay news for the podcast,
- 21:30but I just don't like to see this happen. I don't think anyone really
- 21:33does. Coming up, after a quick break, we'll talk about the eclipse,
- 21:37and of course the start of spring. We'll do that right after this.
- 21:57Before we talk about the spring starting officially and the upcoming eclipse. Quickly,
- 22:04let's talk about Mars. This is a pretty cool story. Yeah,
- 22:08it's a really interesting story. There's a study done by an international team of
- 22:12astronomers and planetary scientists, and this study was presented at the fifty fifth Annual
- 22:18Lunar and Planetary Conference in Texas a couple of days ago. And basically the
- 22:22study is this, they are looking at a very large impact crater up on
- 22:26Mars. And because Mars just has less water, wind rain, it has
- 22:33no plate tectonics, it has fewer mechanisms to kind of erase the history of
- 22:38objects impacting its surface. It's a good place to study to see what happens
- 22:45when big objects hit other objects. Right, Because we want to know if
- 22:48a big asteroid hits the Earth, what kind of effect that will have on
- 22:52us. Well, this is a new study that's leading to a new piece
- 22:56of data that says there was a very large asteroid impact on Mars about two
- 23:00and a half billion years ago, which is not that long in the history
- 23:03of planets, right, compared to the overall age of the planets, which
- 23:07is about five billion years two and a half million years ago, just like
- 23:11last week anyway, So this is a somewhat recent impact on Mars. And
- 23:18the study has shown that that one large asteroid impact threw enough material up into
- 23:26the air on Mars that it then resulted in over two billion other smaller impact
- 23:33craters from all that material falling back down to the surface of the planet.
- 23:40And some of these pieces of what they call ejecta or material thrown off the
- 23:44surface landed as much as thirteen hundred miles away. So and again, Martian
- 23:52gravity is a little different, the Martian atmosphere is a little different than here
- 23:56on Earth, so those wouldn't quite be the same that we would expect on
- 24:00Earth with an impact. But listen, friends, from this study, it
- 24:04shows us clearly that there will be one area highly affected by an asteroid impacting
- 24:11the surface of Earth, but there will be a much much broader area affected
- 24:18and directly impacted by all of the debris thrown into the air during the collision
- 24:23that comes back down and makes its own set of impact craters and impact events.
- 24:29So it's kind of like a one two punch. You have the asteroid
- 24:33itself impacting the surface, causing mass destruction, but then you have all the
- 24:38material that was once on the surface that was thrown into the air, also
- 24:44coming back down at high rates of speed, making again on Mars, two
- 24:48billion more impacts from this event billions, a big number, by the way,
- 24:53friends, it's more than thousands, it's more than millions. It's two
- 24:57billion more impacts. That's just an indicator of the kinds of mass destruction that
- 25:03could potentially occur here on Earth. Right, So why if we do these
- 25:07studies. We do these studies to understand our own environment a little bit better
- 25:11and to understand what could happen in cases anything that we could possibly do.
- 25:15By the way, a story we didn't talk about this week, which we
- 25:18might talk about next week is the fact that our Dart spacecraft, which is
- 25:23a test of a planetary defender. If we can find an asteroid far enough
- 25:29out that looks like it's going to come and hit the Earth, we can
- 25:32send a space vehicle up there and punch it in the eye. Well that's
- 25:36basically what the Dark spacecraft did. We just found out a study that it
- 25:38actually changed the shape of the asteroid that it impacted. So I had a
- 25:44far greater impact on the asteroid than what we were thought. So why are
- 25:49we doing those kinds of studies. Well, it's because of this kind of
- 25:52study, right, So we do studies on how we can divert asteroids because
- 25:56we keep learning more and more about how potentially devastating an asteroid impact could be
- 26:03to the surface of the Earth. So that's the story about the two billion
- 26:07secondary craters around the Martian impact crater in the Elysium Plenetia up there on the
- 26:14service of Parts. And if you don't think you can do a lot of
- 26:15damage, just ask the dinosaurs. Oh wait, all right, let's talk
- 26:19about the official start of spring, because, and we've discussed this before on
- 26:26the show, we have sort of this calendar look at the seasons. So
- 26:32by that standard, spring started at the beginning of March right. I mean,
- 26:34that's just kind of the way it works. But when we get to
- 26:37the official point where you get the day where it's an even amount of light
- 26:42and all that, the vernal equinox, which also has happens in autumn as
- 26:47well, but that's now officially come and gone, and it happened, I
- 26:52guess because of the placement of it this year. It happened on the nineteenth
- 26:55instead of normally on the twentieth, but it was late at night on the
- 26:57nineteenth. Yeah, here's whe're recording the show. It's just a little bit
- 27:02more than twenty four hours ago. But it's important to say, you know,
- 27:04the meteorologists love to say, well, that's the astronomical definition for the
- 27:11first day of spring. We meteorologists have a different set of dates that we
- 27:15described our seasons, both beginning and ending. YadA, YadA, YadA.
- 27:21Okay, let me just say from the astronomical point of view, it's not
- 27:26really the first day of spring. Friends, I don't know who tag that.
- 27:27It's the point where the sun crosses a celestial equator. That's what's actually
- 27:33happening. Okay, So the vernal equinox. Equinox literally means equi night.
- 27:41In other words, equal hours of daylight and darkness. So that's what happens
- 27:45at the vernal equinox. Vernal beans green and that was nicknamed after the fact
- 27:51that plants are starting to green up here in the northern hemisphere when this occurs,
- 27:56and so it got the name vernal equinox know a long time ago.
- 28:00So so equinox literally means equi nite equal hours of daylight and darkness. It's
- 28:07the day where the sun crosses the celestial equator moving nord, which means we're
- 28:11gonna get more and more sunlight until the summer salstice. The word salstice means
- 28:18sun standing still. That's the day where the sun quits traveling north at least
- 28:25in our selectial cordin system, and starts to head back south again. And
- 28:29so here on Earth, these are observer related events. This is how we
- 28:33see the sky operating, and so equinox again, we call it the first
- 28:37day of spring. Merologists have been arguing about while their calendar, and actually
- 28:45I kind of agree with them. Really it's almost like the middle of spring.
- 28:48I get it, okay, But really, from an astronomical point of
- 28:52view, it's the day the sun makes a very important crossing of a coordinate
- 28:56on the sky called the solution. All right, don't I don't know that
- 29:02I've ever thought about this before. But you you talk about this, and
- 29:03you're describing this for the northern hemisphere. So is it is it flip flopped
- 29:10in the southern hemisphere? Do they refer to our autumnal equinox as they're vernal
- 29:15or do they just use the same terms that we do? So so,
- 29:19typically what happens is these things get named from antiquity, and names stick with
- 29:27things even when they don't make sense anymore. Gotcha. So this name is
- 29:33probably older than you know, the western presence in the continent of Australia in
- 29:40the first place, right, Ye, probably trampled with them, And they
- 29:45probably use the same terms down south that we use here because of antiquity,
- 29:49not because they make sense. I mean, I have people I could ask.
- 29:55I just thought I would ask you because I wasn't sure. And you
- 29:56talk about things that get named even when they don't make sense anymore, like
- 30:00calling the Cowboys the America's team. You know, sometimes things just don't make
- 30:04sense anymore. Just to circle back to that Jerry Jones thing, Hey,
- 30:08let's talk about the eclipse, cause it's coming up, and I know you're
- 30:11gonna have a front row seat for this thing. Yeah, oddly enough,
- 30:15it's gonna be in Texas. I wonder if I can get a jersey.
- 30:18I don't know. Perhaps, Thank goodness, it's not a Derrick Henry jersey
- 30:23that they're going to be selling there. That's all I'm saying. I mean,
- 30:26if I could get a Derrick Henry Dallas Cowboys jersey, I would do
- 30:30that right now. I would buy that. Yeah, I would keep it
- 30:33around for a few years and sell it on eBay. Yeah, maybe I
- 30:38would have the only one. I don't know anyway, so I'm not sure.
- 30:41I'm not sure. If there's a team called the Waco Cowboys, I
- 30:45don't really know. But that's where I'm going to be. I'm going to
- 30:48Waco, friends, because I'm going to get in the path of totality for
- 30:52the April eighth Eclipse, the Great American Eclipse, the second one of those,
- 30:57by the way, and just very short time. The last one occurred
- 31:02back in the year twenty seventeen. Now Here we are in twenty twenty four,
- 31:06just just seven years later, and we're going to have another eclipse transversing
- 31:11the continent of North America, and I intend to be right in the path
- 31:17of that totality in Waco, Texas, and I will be you talking a
- 31:22lot about that, probably on podcasts before and after the eclipse. But the
- 31:26important part is, no matter where you are, make sure that if you're
- 31:30going to view the total eclipse or a partial portion of the eclipse, that
- 31:36you do so with the proper safety techniques. You still have time right now
- 31:41as of the recording of this podcast to order the proper safety glasses online.
- 31:48Make sure they have the proper verified ISO ratings making them safe. You don't
- 31:52want to buy cheap knockoffs that potentially don't protect your eyes. Look for that
- 31:57ISO rating. You know, there's there's a lot of good vendors out there
- 32:02that are selling those glasses. But again, the ISO rating will be printed
- 32:07right on the glasses. Assure yourself that you have the proper glasses if you're
- 32:12using those or There are a variety of other techniques by which serve the eclipse.
- 32:17One of those is a pinhole projection system. That's the easiest, cheapest
- 32:21way to do that. Another one is to take a pair of binoculars but
- 32:24do not look through the binoculars. Let the light from the eclipse shine through
- 32:29the binoculars and project onto a wall or a piece of poster board. And
- 32:35that's another pretty good way to do it because you can just look at the
- 32:37projection. But again, if you have small children around, just make sure
- 32:40they can't accidentally get their eyes into that light path through the binoculars. Yeah.
- 32:46So anyway, research online these various techniques for observing the eclipse safely and
- 32:52make sure that you take part of that. I know, the Cocola Space
- 32:57Science Center. You guys have another music under the Dome coming up that first
- 33:01Tuesday of April, April the second. It's a new music under the Dome
- 33:07and it's new not just because it's different musicians and artists, but also because
- 33:13we have a brand new planetarium. Projections are on the Spear Theater. It
- 33:20was just installed last week. This week as we're recording this podcast on the
- 33:25twenty first of March here on a Thursday, we are in our first week
- 33:30of operation and are so far our audiences are loving the new planetarium projection system
- 33:36in our on Spear Theater from the sub Corporation. It's a digit Star seven,
- 33:42which doesn't mean a lot to a lot of people, but we once
- 33:45we used to have a DIGITSAR four, so the upgrade came from a DIGITSAR
- 33:50four system with twenty five year old projectors to now a digit Star seven system
- 33:58with five week old so we have moved into the current millennium. We're happy
- 34:04to do that and I'm very excited to show audiences the new images up on
- 34:08our atmosphere. Theater don't so if you haven't had a chance to come down
- 34:10to see the atmosphere, you won't know how much it is. So let
- 34:15me just tell you you'll get this really cool show inside the offmosphere. To
- 34:19check it out. If you want to know the showtimes, visit our website
- 34:22www dot cc s SC dot org. And yes, Music under the Dome
- 34:29is currently a sold out concert for April second, but we do allow some
- 34:32tickets to be sold night of the concert at the door. You can check
- 34:37out the information for Music under the Dome, which will feature our new planetarium
- 34:40projection system. Check it all out of the website. Once again, visit
- 34:44www dot cc SSC dot org. Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org and that
- 34:52will do it for this week's show. Sean and I thank you for listening,
- 34:54and we'll do this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus has
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