Latest / Made of Stars / Starliner Delays Launch After Non-Cicada Related Buzzing Sound

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Starliner Delays Launch After Non-Cicada Related Buzzing Sound · 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 asterism
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and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk. Go ahead. When made
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of stars, made them stars, madies. When made us stars, you
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could be from high they would New Mexicomus where a stars? When we are
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made of stars. I'm Wes Carrol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
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crue In from Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Signed Center. Hey Sean,
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Hey, we that's good to be here today. I'm excited just we talk
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about you know, you guys are part of Columbus State University and it's the
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hooding ceremony portion of graduation tonight. And this is the first year they've called
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me in to be the voice of the hooding ceremony. Normally, I just
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do the graduation ceremony, which is tomorrow. Three ceremonies all day tomorrow.
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But I'm excited I get to do the hooding ceremony and I'm looking forward to
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that. That when these candidates come through and they, you know, graduate,
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then they've got a little message that they read to their professors or family
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members or whatever. And I get to do all that tonight. So this
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will be a fun addition to it. But I quite enjoy being the voice
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of Columbus State University academics. We appreciate you for that. You do an
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excellent job. And yeah, it's a really cool time because tonight you get
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to see the graduate students, the people who are taking it to that next
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level in terms of their education. Here, it's not just the undergrads,
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but it's actually the grad student hooding ceremony, and it's so cool to see
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these people that have worked so hard and achieved so much, and it's going
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to help them in their career, it's going to help their families. It's
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just really a fun time. And so you know, I hope you make
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the most of that ceremony this evening, and for all of those people who
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are involved with that, we just wish them the best and off them very
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sincere congratulations. And I get the advantage too, of one. I've read
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some of these names when they graduated before their undergrad degrees, and I noticed
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some of them. I was looking them over last night and today, and
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then some that you know will actually be part of the ceremony tomorrow. I'll
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have a heads up on some of those names before all the festivities tomorrow.
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But I enjoy the challenge. I mean, this isn't something for everybody,
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so I appreciate the challenge. I know it's trying to get all the names
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straight and sort it out, and uh, I really enjoy it. Uh.
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For some reason, everybody's like, what's wrong with you? Because I
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learned stuff. I learned pronunciations of names and the way some you know,
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students from other countries, how words are pronounced and names are pronounced. I
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quite enjoy it, and then uh to remember them later. And then people
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say, how did you know that one? And it's like, well,
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I had somebody a few years ago with a similar name, so I'm just
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winging it. But anyway, let's jump into why we're here to talk about
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some space news. We have been covering Boeing Starliner for a while now.
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We thought maybe by this point we'd be talking about the successful launch that hasn't
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happened yet, because there was some buzzing, Yeah, some buzzing you know,
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you don't want your rocket? Was it cicadas? Does that have anything
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to do with it? I mean, if you're anywhere near the Georgia area
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right now, you hear a buzzing all the time, and it's not even
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suspicious anymore. I actually had one of these little buggers land on my leg,
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and it was on my leg while I was driving my truck. I
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didn't know he was there. He was crawling up toward the top part of
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my leg. How about that. Yeah, and that's quite alarming when you
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discover it. Yeah, red eyed cicada crawling up towards your top part of
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your leg while you're driving. So yeah, I had that experience yesterday.
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But you know, neither he nor I were harmed in that particular making of
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that motion picture. So we we got off to the side of the road
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and I set him free, and life is good. But this buzzing that
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they heard down at the Kennedy Space Center was not the seventeen year cicadas that
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we're having right now in the state of Georgia. Oh no, No,
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it was actually a component of the rocket. And I just have this mental
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image, like when I read the story and heard this news who was it
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that went? You know, does anybody else hear that? Does anybody else
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hear that sound right now? Because there's some kind of a weird sound coming
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from the rocket. Listen, you have to be close enough to the rocket
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to hear the buzzing, and then you have to know the rocket well enough
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and the sounds that it makes to say, that's not normal buzzing. That's
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some kind of a rattle or vibration that we don't typically hear on the Atlas
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five rocket. We better check that out just a little bit more carefully.
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So congratulations to the technician or United Launch Alliance employee that was able to not
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only hear, but recognize that something was amiss when they heard this vibration or
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buzzing coming from the Atlas five rocket upon which the very first ever human crew
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to fly in Starliner was getting ready to go to space. So they identified
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the buzzing as actually a malfunctioning valve. And what it looks like is that
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valve has been to space before, it's maybe past its duty cycle, and
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it's been enough wear and tear that it needs to be replaced. So what
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is the valve for it? Well? For fueling up these rockets, right,
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and they use this cryogenic fuel. So the point is these valves tend
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to they tend to go through a fair amount of abuse just because of the
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kinds of substances that they happen to be handling. So when this valve was
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detected as buzzing, they quickly realized that it was a faulty valve. And
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now they're rolling the whole rocket back to the to an assembly building in the
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Kennedy Space Center area where engineers can replace this misbehaving valve on the launcher's upper
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stage. So this is all something that they're working on. Check out the
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story if you want to on space dot com. It's a good story.
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Tell you all about star star liners next flight. It looks like now that
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they're in terms of scheduling, it's going to take a while to replace the
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valve. They know about how long that takes. It looks like they won't
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have another acceptable launch window where they also think they can have aired valve until
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May the seventeenth, which as we're recording the show, is a week from
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tomorrow, so that's Friday, May seventeenth. That looks like the earliest date
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which Starliner can fly and become the first ever astronaut mission to the International Space
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Station for that vehicle as part of the crew flight test. I think any
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parent knows the dangers of a valve being passed a duty cycle. I think
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anytime if you've had a baby around, you want to make sure that you're
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ready anytime one of those valves gets pasted a duty cycle. You have to
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know the duty cycle, in tune with the duty cycles. And that's something
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valves or infants or whoever. Yeah, and it takes just experience. It
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takes a lot of experience. Even with a newborn. You got to learn
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them and then you got to just figure them out. They change sometimes over
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the anyway, who cannot remember their first incident with you know, the duty
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cycle? I remember them when you weren't prepared pfly. Yes, indeed,
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because you knew, you knew very good that first one. WHOA, that's
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that's something to remember and I remember it well with both boys. Let's talk
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about the sun, because we have this is. Anytime we talk about CMEs
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or anything going on on the sun, inevitably you start thinking about the Carrington
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event at some point and you hope, oh gosh, maybe it won't get
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that bad. So a couple of geomagnetic storm related stories and one of them
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a sun spot that's a Carrington class sun spot. Uh oh yes, So
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so let's talk about this sun spot called active Region number thirty six sixty four.
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We're gonna go with two stories that they both can be found on today's
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version of spaceweather dot com. So that's May the ninth. Here. The
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one thing you want to know is this, there is a whale of a
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big disturbance on the surface of the Sun today, a very large sunspot group,
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and it had a couple of eruptive episodes, and now the particles from
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those eruptive episodes are headed for the Earth and they could cause moderate too strong
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geomagnetic storms here on the Earth over the weekend, so starting maybe late Friday
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night into Saturday morning, possibly even into Sunday. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
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has forecast models that predict that these first coronal mass ejection waves will reach Earth
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late Friday night, and they are strong enough to potentially cause some interesting effects
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here on the Earth. So there are at least three of these CMEs headed
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this way, and sometimes they stack up on each other and so that's why
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we have the two different predictions for magnetic storms. So what happens is a
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giant explosion on the Sun occurs. That explosion on the Sun launches think of
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it as Mount Everest sized masses of particles. Now it's not like moving in
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a single mountain. It's a wave of charged particle radiation. It travels through
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the Solar System in the direction of the Earth until it arrives at the Earth.
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Thank goodness, we have a barrier around the planet Earth that is the
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Earth's magnetic field. The Earth's magnetic field can then fend off these particles for
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the most part, causing them to mostly encounter Earth's atmosphere over the poles,
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both the North Pole and the South Pole. And that's what leads to what
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we refer to as these geomagnetic storms that have aurora phenomenon with them. In
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other words, outbreaks of northern lights are highly likely, particularly in northern latitudes
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of the USA and Europe. Canada obviously in there, but also if you're
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down south, if you're down Under, if you're toward the southern parts of
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New Zealand or Australia, South America, the southern part of Africa. You
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might also be able to potentially see northern, not northern, southern light displays
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Aurora borealis, no, not borealis Aurora Australlas events here I am walking all
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over my terminology southern lights or Aurora australas displays in the Southern hemisphere as well
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over the next seventy two hours. It's easy to confuse the terminology because we
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don't often speak about those lights. Yeah, we don't think much about the
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Aurora Australlas here in the northern hemisphere. We have these Northern Hemisphere biases,
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which I'm sure your wife knows a lot about from Australia. Yes, indeed,
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I'll bet she points them out whenever she can. She's adapted pretty well
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as a you know, Australian American. She an Aussie American. She's adopted
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very well to you know, we're the top of the world and they're the
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bottom. But you know, she I don't know that she would say it
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out loud, but I wish she would though, because she certainly has the
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right too. When we have this Northern Hemisphere thinking, she should really point
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that out to the rest of us who are just not thinking globally. I'll
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tell you right now, my in laws have a map where it's all flipped
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upside down on the wall and very prominently displayed. And it's it's kind of
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a fun thing to realize that we look at it this way just because you
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know, I guess we were the ones that decided specifically on the map.
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It's just looking at us upside down. It's just very strange. Florida is
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a whole different state that way. It's just it's all, it's all,
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it's all different. It might look like a gesture if it was upside down.
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It kind of does. And you know, but anyway, it's if
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only those map makers from Europe, I guess, had done things differently,
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maybe it would be a little different. Well, you you talk about the
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importance of magnetic field. Is that a good place to transition to this next
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story from University? We want to talk about the Carrington events sunspot, So
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oh yeah, let's stay with that. Yep. Yeah. Even though this
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sunspot has erupted a couple of times and it's already trying to slap us in
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the face here on Earth, it is also important to note that this same
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active region called AR three six sixty four. By the way, the AR
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does not stand for automatic rifle. It stands for active region, so it's
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active region thirty six sixty four on the Sun has grown to a staggering dimension
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which is fifteen times the size of the Earth. It's fifteen times wider than
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our planet Earth. Again, friends, depending on when you're hearing this podcast,
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go to spaceweather dot com if it's If it's far in the future of
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May ninth, go to their archive. Pull up this date, which is
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May ninth, twenty twenty four. Check out this photo because they have superimposed
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next to a photograph of the sunspot AR thirty six sixty four, they have
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a two scale drawing of what's known as the Carrington sunspot group now less and
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I have used this Carrington word several times. If you have no earthly I
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see what I did. They're earthly. You have no earthly idea what we're
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talking about. Know that back in the year eighteen fifty nine, there was
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a tremendously powerful sunspot explosion yielding a solar flare with an extraordinarily energetic coronal mass
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ejection which arrived on the surface of the Earth within hours and caused aurora phenomenon
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to be seen near the equator both in the northern and southern hemispheres of the
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Earth, as well as doing things like setting the telegraph wires on fire.
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Yes, I said telegraph. The year was eighteen fifty nine, and so
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telegraph wires were picked up such a charge that they electrocuted their operators. They
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were set on fire. It brought the modern communications at the time to a
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standstill for quite some time. And the important thing to know is if that
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were to happen today, well, such an occurrence could cause a giant standstill
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in our modern communications. It could literally take the Internet down for several months,
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and if not, the power grids themselves down for up to six months.
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So these are forecasts, not off the top of my head, but
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this was done by a study back in twenty nineteen by the National Academy of
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Sciences, and so this is something that is really important to understand and just
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know that today as we're doing this podcast, a sunspot group as large or
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larger larger than the planet Jupiter, as large or larger than the Carrington sunspot
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group of eighteen fifty nine is on the surface of the Sun today and roughly
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pointed in the direction of the Earth. So yeah, we're going to be
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very happy for that to just go ahead and spin around as the sun rotates
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and point in a different direction, that would be the best thing for us.
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Right now, I was just getting ready to head into the telegraph office
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and send a message, so I guess I should probably hold off, or
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maybe, you know, use a fax machine or something. Yes, I
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don't know if you could be electrocuted while texting, don't you know. I
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don't think so. But you know, I don't know. Put on shows
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through a Carrington class event, I'm not really sure what would happen. Put
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on show stop the infamous El Guapo. All right, now, let's talk
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about what happened forty one thousand years ago. This is a little further back
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than the Carrington event, just slightly a little further back, but ties into
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what you're talking about about the magnetic field. Yeah. My college students that
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I'm teaching today think the nineteen eighties was ancient history, so they don't really
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know the difference between you know, something forty one thousand years ago or the
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Carrington event of eighteen fifty nine or flock of seagulls. They just don't understand
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all the same difference, all the same something happened so far back that it
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doesn't really worth it's not really worth thinking about. However, scientists don't do
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such things. They actually think about these things. So a study of some
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samples of Earth related material from which we can track some very unusual isotopes in
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the Earth, like calcium forty one, carbon fourteen, and beryllium ten,
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which are all unstable, slightly radioactive isotopes. Of these elements that we find
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on the periodic table, it turns out that when we look and see both
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in ice cores and trapped in trees and other kinds of natural materials here on
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the Earth, we can kind of look to see how these unstable and unusual
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isotopes built up in the past, kind of like just a time capsule.
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And so there are scientists that do this to try to figure out things that
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occurred long ago in our planet's history. And there's a group of scientists from
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Germany that are looking at something called the Le Champs excursion. You know,
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I'm not like you, Wes. I can't read these names and just know
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that I'm pronouncing them correc but I'm going with la Champ. I think that's
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correct, looks good. I mean, the only other thing would be and
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I mean that, I know it's extra painful as a Broncos fan, but
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I guess you could say that the you know, the the Chiefs just won
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a Super Bowl in Las Vegas, they would be the lost champs, you
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know, lost champions, you know if you were, But I don't,
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I don't know. That's a bit of a stretch now. I like la
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Champ's it seems like, I know you didn't use the Raiders as an example,
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who actually are in Las Vegas. But the Super Bowl was chiss won
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a championship. But that's so far fetched it couldn't possibly happen. But I
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mean, currently the Chiefs. The Chiefs won and they played the game in
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Vegas. That's what I was thinking. But you know, there's a lot
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of other teams with I mean, speaking as a member of the fan base
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of the AFC West, I would say that's far more likely that the that
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the Chiefs would win such a championship rather than the Raiders in Las Vegas.
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I know that your brother is a devoted fan, and Matt, if you're
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listening, I'm sorry. You know, I'm a Broncos fan. I can't
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possibly support the Raiders in any manner, not even the silly analogy with Lost
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Champs, which we're talking about right now. Yeah. Yeah, and we
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derailed this podcast. Word derailed. There's a there's a tangent that we have
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spent a little time on. Uh so, uh basically the Lost Champs excursion.
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Yes, the lost the Champs out of Las Vegas to a Super Bowl
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near you. Maybe the last time the Raiders won a Super Bowl. That's
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forty one thousand years ago. I'm not sure. I don't think it was
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quite that far ago, but it seems like that long ago to me.
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But I don't know. I would think that maybe some of the Chiefs players,
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after winning the championship went on a Lost Chomps excursion somewhere in Vegas,
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just somewhere just outside the city. I don't know anything from firsthand knowledge.
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I've I've never been to Nevada. I've flown up over it, but uh,
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you know, here you have to go just outside the city for some
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of the extra fund true excursion. Not really, I've heard that, you
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know. I did do my graduate work in Las Vegas, Nevada, which
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is interesting, by the way, that was before the Raiders invaded on a
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Lost Chumps excursion. Yeah there was a guy chomping on a towel back then,
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though, wasn't there? There was a guy? Yeah, that guy
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was there and you know, just win baby probably fit his motto too.
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Anyway. All right, so let me see if I can reel this back
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in. Friends, I know the West and I are having a good time
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here at the expense of you know, both basketball and football. However,
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there really was something that occurred approximately forty one thousand years ago called the La
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Champ excursion, and the excursion means something went on a trip, and what
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went on a trip appears to be the Earth's magnetic field. It was that
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le Champ excursion about which we discussed today. There's a great story on Universe
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today dot com describing how we find these signatures of these rare isotopes embedded in
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various Earth materials that can help us see what was taking place forty one thousand
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years ago. And this research group out in Germany has discovered that these rare
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isotopes have a cosmogenic origin through paleomagnetic data reconstruction all right. So if you
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followed that, cosmogenetic means it's coming from space and pale magnetism means we're looking
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at these signatures embedded in Earth materials from long ago that explain to us what
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the prevalence of these rare isotopes was in our atmosphere. And see, these
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isotopes can't exist in our atmosphere if the magnetic field is working well, because
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the only way they can exist is by the impact on the atmosphere of high
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intensity cosmic rays or charge particles from either space or the Sun during a powerful
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explosion, much like we were just discussing in the previous story. It looks
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as though, based on these the prevalence of these radioactive isotopes from about forty
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one thousand years ago in the geological record, that the magnetic field just kind
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of shut off for anywhere from two hundred and fifty to four hundred and forty
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years. And during this time that it shut off, the poles actually reversed.
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The magnetic north became magnetic south and magnetic south became magnetic north, a
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pole reversal. Now I'm not talking about the rotational axis. The whole planet
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did not flip over, that's not what I mean. It's happening with the
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with the iron core that's both liquid and metallic inside the Earth. The field
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generated by that core real first its polarity, and it took several hundred years.
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Well, during that several hundred year period of time, Earth was unprotected
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from the kinds of things that we were just describing in the previous stories,
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big explosions on the Sun or some supernova deep in the Milky Way galaxy with
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a wave of charged particles called cosmic rays arriving at the Earth. The Earth
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was unprotected and it could possibly have had an effect both on certainly the non
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living materials like ice cores and you know, dead trees, things like that,
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but also on anything that happened to be alive at that time, which
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would have been like Neanderthal man like certain species on the Earth that have now
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gone extinct. And we don't completely understand why. It's not out of the
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question that some of those extinction events could have been related to reversals in the
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polarity of the magnetic field, which base just brought the field completely down,
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leaving our planet vulnerable for several hundred years. So it's interesting to think about
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again. Check out the story on Universe today dot com. Coming up after
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a quick break, we're gonna talk about cookies, special cookies. We'll do
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that right after this. It's always fun when a story that we've done in
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the past years go by, like I don't know, four and a half
25:44
years something like that or more. Sometimes they are much much more. But
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we talk about a story and you think this is a fun story. They're
25:52
gonna bake a cookie on the International Space Station, and then now we find
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out all these years years later that the cookies were very special, so special
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that they're going to be in the Smithsonian. If anybody out there in the
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audience has ever stayed at a Double Tree, you might know that one of
26:15
the specialty hospitality items of the Double Tree Hotel by Hilton or it's Hilton by
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Double Tree, are there chocolate chip cookies. They make fresh baked chocolate chip
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cookies and they are delicious. So we begin our story there. Then we
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moved to NASA, and NASA is at all times trying to find new ways
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to make their astronauts comfortable during long duration spaceflight. And one of the things
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that you might miss if you spend six months aboard the International Space Station.
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You might be up there just saying I want a cheeseburger in paradise, like
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Jimmy Buffett. But you might also just be saying, you know what,
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I miss a night nice fresh baked chocolate chip cookie, not just for its
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flavor, but also for its delightful aroma that just fills my kitchen. This
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is an earthly pleasure that astronauts are not afforded because we don't have ovens aboard
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the International Space Station. They do have microwaves, but they're not actually baking
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with oven technology because you see, giant open heat sources are not the best
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idea in space. Okay, Well, that brings us to the point where
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the NASA Nutrition has said, you know what, We're going to reach out
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to some companies that do build experimental apparatus installations for the International Space Station,
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and we're going to see if they can come up with a safe version of
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an oven that can operate in the labs aboard the International Space Station, which
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are a little bit more hardened environments than the kitchen areas, and we're going
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to see if they can build an oven where we might be able to bake
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some food. So they had this idea. They reached out to a company
28:03
called Nanoas and there's two inventions called the zero G kitchen and the zero G
28:10
oven that came out of that collaboration, and they said, yes, we
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think we can build safe, self contained, but nonetheless conventional ovens that could
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fly in the laboratory spaces aboard the International Space Station and possibly do some testing
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to give astronauts more desirable food during long duration spaceflight. So whatever meeting that
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was, they all looked around the room and said, well, gosh,
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what should we bake first? And I'm sure the idea was floated pretty quickly.
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What about chocolate chip cookies? So then somebody said, well, you
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know it has these really famous chocolate chip cookies. Is the Double Tree,
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and they have the very famous Double Tree chocolate chip cookies. What if we
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partnered with Double Tree to fly some Double Tree chocolate chip cookies to space and
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bake them aboard the zero G kitchen or zero G oven by nano Rax upboard
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the International Space Station. What a grand idea. So they actually did this,
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They actually flew the experiment. We had a little bit of an inside
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track. I'm not gonna say I have any former students that either do or
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do not work at the Marshall Space Flight Center. And I'm not going to
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say that we were or were not tipped off that this experiment could possibly be
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happening. But even if we were, that's not the source of information.
29:30
We actually had the folks from double Tree here locally come to us and say,
29:33
Hey, you're a space science center and it turns out that our chocolate
29:37
chip cookies are gonna fly aboard the International Space Station and they're gonna be cooked?
29:42
Could we come down to the Space Science Center and do a promotional event
29:47
to promote the fact that these cookies are going to fly aboard? Iss?
29:52
What did we say? Wes? I think I would quote the great Marv
29:56
Albert and say, yes, that was very good. Thanks also his favorite
30:03
also his favorite classic rock band. Yes, it's interesting, isn't it The
30:07
way NASA says, hey, we want to do this, who should we
30:11
partner with? And then double Tree comes along? And then double Tree says,
30:17
hey, who can we now partner with? How about a space science
30:18
center? I love these kind of partnerships. It's perfect. It's a good
30:22
reason I'd like to call these trickle down partnerships, well, I don't know,
30:26
at least I do anyway, So we're very happy to have trickle down
30:30
partnerships from NASA that give us free cookies. Because what happened on that day
30:34
that the Double Tree folks came down to promote this event taking place aboard International
30:38
Space Station is that they brought a whole giant batch of their cookies and we
30:44
all shared in them for free, not just us here at Space Science Center,
30:47
but our guests that we're visiting that afternoon. So that just made me
30:51
happy. And aboard the International Space Station that day, two very famous astronauts,
30:56
Christina Cook, who's one of the NASA's most fa famous modern space flyers,
31:00
and then Luca Parmitano, a veteran and legend of the European Space Agency's
31:07
astronaut program. They were the two that had the well, they had the
31:12
very great honor of sticking cookie dough into ovens in the laboratory aboard the International
31:18
Space Station and trying to see what cooking time was best. And you can
31:25
imagine how this goes, right, You know, you pop some dough in,
31:26
you set a certain period of time, you pull them out, you
31:30
take it by to those cookies though. Oh those are a little bit dowe.
31:33
Still, let's try again. That's the best way to eat them.
31:37
Sorry, that's it a little bit dowie. Go for it. I love
31:41
cookie dough, I love cookies, So anywhere in between, I'm probably gonna
31:44
like it too. Yeah, and so now you imagine, like, well,
31:47
we could do some iterations here, right, Oh, let's just add
31:49
fifteen seconds. See what happens. I don't know if that's what they did,
31:52
but that's what I would do. Yeah. Anyway, so, oh
31:53
that's not quite done either. Let me go ahead and gobble those up.
31:56
We'll try again. So after the fifth trial, after the fifth round of
32:00
cookies, Christina and Luca decided, I think we have something here. I
32:07
think we've nailed it. I think we have the proper time for baking cookies
32:12
aboard the International Space Station. And so those cookies were then bagged and sealed.
32:20
Now you have to imagine one of two things. Number one, all
32:24
the astronauts of board I says, thinking this is a great tragedy. Why
32:27
are we not just eating these babies? Or Number two, they were so
32:31
stuffed with partially baked Doe cookies that they were like, oh no, none
32:36
for me. Thanks, go ahead and bag those up and send them back
32:38
to Earth. Now, it's funny that they did this experiment in twenty nineteen,
32:45
so it's been a minute since they cooked these cookies. They baked,
32:47
let me say baked. They baked these cookies aboard International Space Station. However,
32:53
a spokesperson for the Smithsonian has reached out to collectSPACE dot com and you
33:00
can read this article on space dot com, by the way, and said
33:02
that the Curatorial Department of Space History at Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum at
33:08
the Udvar Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, has received one of Batch five's
33:16
best preserved cookies. It's basically been frozen since they got it out of the
33:22
oven aboard the International Space Station in twenty nineteen. It has now made its
33:28
frozen way to Chantilly, Virginia and is now being put on permanent display hopefully
33:36
at the Udvar Haasee Center of the National Air and Space Museum, So you
33:40
can actually go in person now and see one of these cookies baked by Luca
33:46
and Christina aboard the ISS back in twenty nineteen, and according to Jennifer Lava
33:52
Suer of the Department of Space History at the Smithsonium. She says, this,
33:59
we have the film of the cookies baked. This was the final version
34:02
that they feel that they feel got closest to the actual texture that you would
34:07
want to get in a baked cookie. So the additional thing she said is
34:13
I can still smell them. So unfortunately visitors to uvar HASEI will not be
34:19
able to get close enough to the cookie to smell it because it's going to
34:23
be encased in something that preserves it. However, just no going in that.
34:29
Jennifer from the Smithsonian said, I can tell you it does still smell
34:32
like a baked cookie five years later. So that's the quality of the Double
34:39
Tree cookies. Aboard ISS my friends two observations. One, I really want
34:45
one of these cookies. And two, so as they're monitoring vitals and things
34:51
on Earth or the astronaut, so they all go in, why is all
34:53
their blood sugar spiking? You know, I'm trying to imagine other tests that
35:01
could have caused that same effect, but none probably quite like this. I'm
35:07
sure that the blood blood sugars of large numbers of crew members probably was beyond
35:14
normal parameters for at least, say what at twelve hours, and it's been
35:17
steadily up for a very long time. We can't quite figure out what's going
35:21
on. Let's talk about what you guys have going on at the Cocola Space
35:24
Science Center. We talked last week about how the school years getting to that
35:29
wind down phase of things, which I'm sure means that you'll have more field
35:32
trips and things trickling in and then you start getting into the summer, and
35:37
that's when you guys, of course, are open for folks to come in
35:42
and enjoy, you know, with the cost of admission, that free air
35:45
conditioning once they get inside the building and all that stuff. As we get
35:49
into the dog days of summer, and then I know you'll also have some
35:52
uh summer activities that will be taking place there. So you guys are gonna
35:57
stay busy in the summer and it doesn't slowed down just because school's out.
36:01
You're right about that, my friend. We have rhythms here at Space Science
36:05
Center. We move from season to season and it seems the activity level changes,
36:09
but it never really goes to zero. We are very active right now.
36:13
We're finishing up the last school groups over the next couple of weeks.
36:15
But then, as you say, we're going to swing into our summer mode.
36:19
That begins a whole series of activities. First of all, as you
36:22
mentioned, we have are some of our special activities taking place in the summer,
36:27
including our robotics summer camps. We also have the beginning of our astronomy
36:31
programs at Callaway Gardens. We'll be out there for seven Monday nights throughout the
36:37
summer, a collaborative program with the education department at Callaway Gardens. If you're
36:42
not from the area, it's sort of like a state park, except it's
36:46
a private company. It's a beautiful nature area out there, and we have
36:52
had a long standing relationship with them where we do astronomy program after their gardens
36:57
closes down for the evening and you can get in for free and see the
37:00
night time sky at Calloway Gardens. So check out the website for those events
37:04
coming up. In addition, I would encourage people to come down and see
37:07
our brand new planetarium system. We have a whole brand new set of projectors
37:14
and control system for our state of the art planetarium, our Omosphere Theater.
37:19
You can come down and check out shows in the Atmosphere Theater all summer long,
37:22
and once you buy a daily admission, you can see unlimited number of
37:25
shows at least to the limit of number of shows we have per day,
37:30
so you can see all of the shows that we run in a single day.
37:32
In addition to that, we have our brand new Guzzle Vortex exhibit,
37:36
which is great for the youngest members of the audience. It's something that you
37:40
can go and actually well, grab a handful of alien food and feed some
37:45
aliens from an exoplanet near you. But once you feed these aliens, their
37:50
food flies through a series of tubes called an air maze. It comes flying
37:53
out from the top of the ceiling and it goes into a recycle process where
37:59
you can feed the ali all over again. It's just like the circle of
38:02
life, just happening right out there on the exhibit gallery floor. Friends,
38:07
So come down and see all these great new exhibits and some of our old
38:09
ones which are also phenomenon phenomenal, and we'd love to see you this summer,
38:14
So come down and see us at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science
38:16
Center. Check out all the information about our hours and our programs at the
38:22
website www dot Okay, we got passed that part. Now you're ready for
38:27
the rest. See c SSC dot org. Charlie, Charlie SamSam Charlie dot
38:35
org. Sean and I thank you for listening, and we'll do this again
38:37
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