Latest / Made of Stars / Straight Outta Columbus
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
- 0:04Speaker 1: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
- 0:07Speaker 1: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
- 0:10Speaker 1: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
- 0:15Speaker 1: that's your own risk. Go ahead.
- 0:22Speaker 2: When made of stars, made them stars, madies. When made
- 0:30Speaker 2: of stars, you could be from high they would new Mexicomas.
- 0:39Speaker 2: We're all stars when.
- 0:54Speaker 3: We are made of stars. I'm Wes Carol, joined by
- 0:57Speaker 3: my good friend, doctor Sean Cruise and a executive director
- 1:00Speaker 3: at Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center. Hey Sean, Hey,
- 1:05Speaker 3: we's good to be here today. We have some Artemis
- 1:09Speaker 3: three news. There was a point when we thought Artemis
- 1:13Speaker 3: three was going to be a very different mission. It
- 1:16Speaker 3: is now changed, obviously, and we have talked over the
- 1:19Speaker 3: past month about the fact that these changes have come
- 1:23Speaker 3: and this is now another test mission of sorts. But
- 1:27Speaker 3: what we've been waiting to hear, and this is the
- 1:30Speaker 3: mission before the mission, because this is this is our
- 1:33Speaker 3: Artemis three. They're going to go up do some docking
- 1:37Speaker 3: tests and things, and it's not without complications though, especially
- 1:42Speaker 3: due to some recent news. And then Artemis four will
- 1:45Speaker 3: be the one where people are gonna be walking around
- 1:47Speaker 3: on the Moon again. So before they can do that,
- 1:50Speaker 3: they got to do this test mission and a crew
- 1:52Speaker 3: has now been announced, and we've got some updates maybe
- 1:55Speaker 3: on a little bit more on what's going on there.
- 1:58Speaker 3: And I love the fact that we have a again
- 2:00Speaker 3: quasi local connection, which is very cool. We got Frank
- 2:05Speaker 3: Rubio back in, gonna be suiting up again, so this
- 2:10Speaker 3: is pretty exciting stuff. And he just we talked about
- 2:13Speaker 3: this in the past when he was he was stranded
- 2:17Speaker 3: before the stranded people, right, he kind of made it
- 2:21Speaker 3: cool again.
- 2:22Speaker 4: He was actually stranded, but Frank Rubio.
- 2:25Speaker 3: I was going to a baseball game. One of Luke's
- 2:29Speaker 3: very good friends and I were they were going to
- 2:34Speaker 3: a game. I was riding up with the two of
- 2:37Speaker 3: them and then this kid's dad and we were headed
- 2:40Speaker 3: to a Braves game in Atlanta and we were just
- 2:43Speaker 3: talking and he says something about Frank Rubio and he's like, yeah,
- 2:46Speaker 3: he used to go to my church here in Columbus,
- 2:49Speaker 3: and I was like, wait, what, Wait a minute. The
- 2:52Speaker 3: guy that's kind of like having to extend his stay
- 2:56Speaker 3: on the International Space Station. He's like, yeah, he used
- 2:58Speaker 3: to go to our church. So yeah, he was in
- 3:00Speaker 3: Columbus for a while and he's headed back up. He
- 3:05Speaker 3: is now going to be part of the Artemis legacy.
- 3:10Speaker 4: Frank Rubio was a surgeon at Fort Benning while he
- 3:15Speaker 4: was serving in the United States Army, and after that
- 3:19Speaker 4: joined the astronaut program and had the famous mission that
- 3:23Speaker 4: Wes was just talking about where he flew up on
- 3:26Speaker 4: a Russian soy used and then that same very same
- 3:28Speaker 4: Russian soy use, while hanging out attached to the International
- 3:32Speaker 4: Space Station minding its own business, got pelted by a
- 3:36Speaker 4: micro meteorite and lost all of its coolant and turned
- 3:39Speaker 4: into a giant fountain of ice connected to the space station.
- 3:42Speaker 4: That was pretty interesting. But then see they didn't have
- 3:46Speaker 4: a ride home, so yeah, they were stranded up there,
- 3:52Speaker 4: is the point. And now eventually they flew a different
- 3:55Speaker 4: soy used capsule up there that they were able to
- 3:56Speaker 4: come back home, but not before Frank Rubio broke the
- 4:00Speaker 4: United States duration record for single flight in space at
- 4:04Speaker 4: over a year, three hundred and seventy some days that
- 4:08Speaker 4: he spent up there aboard the International Space station more
- 4:10Speaker 4: than three hundred and sixty five, so more than a year.
- 4:13Speaker 4: And as I recall, Frank wasn't exactly happy about all
- 4:17Speaker 4: of that and missed some kind of important life circumstances,
- 4:21Speaker 4: like I think it's a couple of his children connections
- 4:24Speaker 4: to the military academies anyway, So there was some things
- 4:28Speaker 4: that Frank missed out on because he had to stay
- 4:30Speaker 4: for over a year when he thought he was only
- 4:32Speaker 4: going to be up there for six months. But apparently
- 4:35Speaker 4: that didn't prevent him from joining the Artemis program to
- 4:38Speaker 4: go all the way to the Moon potentially, But it
- 4:41Speaker 4: looks like he won't be doing that now because right
- 4:45Speaker 4: now he's one of the Artemis three astronauts. And again,
- 4:48Speaker 4: as Wes mentioned, they've kind of changed them. So for
- 4:52Speaker 4: years we talked about Artemis three. That was the mission
- 4:55Speaker 4: where we were going to put footprints on the surface
- 4:58Speaker 4: of the Moon. Okay, So then Jared Isiacman came in
- 5:03Speaker 4: as the head of a NASA and evaluated the current
- 5:07Speaker 4: state of the Artists program and said, no, wait a minute,
- 5:10Speaker 4: we really have untested lunar landers, and why in the
- 5:14Speaker 4: world would we want to test those in lunar orbit
- 5:19Speaker 4: rather than just doing that right here in orbit around
- 5:22Speaker 4: our own planet. So then a decision was made to
- 5:27Speaker 4: shift the mission of the Artemis three expedition and make
- 5:33Speaker 4: that all about testing lunar landers in Earth orbit to
- 5:37Speaker 4: make sure they're safe. This is actually what I think,
- 5:40Speaker 4: I like to call this a good idea, right, this
- 5:43Speaker 4: is a good idea. Let's do that, right, Even the
- 5:46Speaker 4: Apollo missions did that same thing.
- 5:50Speaker 3: So in just in talking about this and part of
- 5:52Speaker 3: why I brought it up, and now you've brought it
- 5:54Speaker 3: up again. And I know you can't know for certain
- 5:58Speaker 3: these guys would probably we know that the astronauts that
- 6:01Speaker 3: are going to be part of his team, But I mean,
- 6:07Speaker 3: it's hard not to wonder if this might have been
- 6:11Speaker 3: I don't It wouldn't have been the exact crew that
- 6:12Speaker 3: would have walked, because obviously we've been told that there
- 6:16Speaker 3: will be a woman walking on the Moon when when
- 6:18Speaker 3: we go back, so this wouldn't have been the exact crew. However,
- 6:24Speaker 3: you kind of wonder if if this is a one shot,
- 6:29Speaker 3: one opportunity that Rubio would have had to go to
- 6:32Speaker 3: the Moon, and now it's not going to happen. I
- 6:34Speaker 3: just when I heard his name, I was excited that
- 6:36Speaker 3: he's part of this, and I know he'll be happy
- 6:38Speaker 3: to be part of the Artemis legacy.
- 6:41Speaker 4: I think they just announced this crew June ninth, so
- 6:47Speaker 4: it's not like anybody had been assigned to Artemis three.
- 6:50Speaker 4: So no one had been assigned to Artemist three, well,
- 6:53Speaker 4: whether that was the Artemist three that was going to
- 6:54Speaker 4: go to the Moon or this one. Right, So when
- 6:57Speaker 4: they defined the mission of what needed to be done
- 7:00Speaker 4: for this mission, they picked the people that had the
- 7:04Speaker 4: skills to carry out this mission. And so in some
- 7:08Speaker 4: of the NASA publications that I was reading, they talked
- 7:11Speaker 4: about how these four astronauts were picked for their skills
- 7:16Speaker 4: applicable to this exact mission, right, and including things like
- 7:21Speaker 4: having a lot of spaceflight experience and being able to
- 7:24Speaker 4: dock vehicles in orbit and things like that. Right, So
- 7:27Speaker 4: these people really were selected for what needed to be
- 7:31Speaker 4: done here. It also doesn't exclude them from later going
- 7:36Speaker 4: to the moon. Right, there's still Artemis astronauts, still an
- 7:39Speaker 4: Artemis program. You know, this is politics. We don't like
- 7:44Speaker 4: to talk about politics too much, but there's a lot
- 7:47Speaker 4: of noise out there about no females. Why are there
- 7:49Speaker 4: no females on this crew. Well, one could suggest, hey,
- 7:53Speaker 4: because there are no females on this crew, they're saving
- 7:55Speaker 4: the females in the Artemis program for maybe actually going
- 7:58Speaker 4: to the Moon, which in some pr sense feels like
- 8:02Speaker 4: a higher profile mission. I think this is very likely
- 8:05Speaker 4: true that all of these astronauts are selected on the
- 8:09Speaker 4: basis in part that they're willing to jump in and
- 8:13Speaker 4: play any role needed to be played to make the
- 8:16Speaker 4: whole set of missions, the whole program a success. And
- 8:21Speaker 4: so any role you get to play, you know, you're
- 8:25Speaker 4: playing an important role, a vital role. And so these people, yeah,
- 8:29Speaker 4: they're not scheduled on this flight to go to the Moon,
- 8:32Speaker 4: but they are selected to play a vital role in
- 8:35Speaker 4: getting humans back to the Moon, which basically can't do
- 8:38Speaker 4: that without doing this first. By the way, we haven't
- 8:41Speaker 4: said the names of the other flyers.
- 8:42Speaker 3: I was just going to say, we don't have a
- 8:44Speaker 3: woman in the crew, but we don't have a Canadian
- 8:46Speaker 3: this time either, but we do have an Italian.
- 8:49Speaker 4: Yeah, so Italy's right next to Canada, So so we
- 8:53Speaker 4: just chose the next country over, which is Italy.
- 8:56Speaker 3: It's an easy little hop.
- 9:00Speaker 4: Okay, if you're a first time listener of the podcast,
- 9:03Speaker 4: I say things like this for comedy value, not because
- 9:05Speaker 4: I don't know geography. So yeah, European Space Agency astronaut
- 9:10Speaker 4: Luca Parmitano, a colonel in the Italian Air Force and
- 9:14Speaker 4: a very famous International Space Station astronaut who's had all
- 9:19Speaker 4: kinds of adventures and experience and seems to be a
- 9:22Speaker 4: genuinely amazing guy, was picked as the pilot for this mission.
- 9:27Speaker 4: So there's some flying experience there, right, pilot for this
- 9:31Speaker 4: mission chosen for the skills is the important part, right.
- 9:35Speaker 4: The commander of the mission is also a flyer. It's
- 9:39Speaker 4: Randy Bresnik, who is a Marine Corps aviator and has
- 9:44Speaker 4: worked not only as an astronaut at NASA, already been
- 9:47Speaker 4: on some NASA missions, but has also worked in the
- 9:49Speaker 4: NASA Astronaut Office, which that's the group, the organization that
- 9:53Speaker 4: helped make some of these decisions about who gets selected.
- 9:56Speaker 4: And then of course our friend, not really our friend,
- 9:59Speaker 4: but we all of our friend, Frank Rubio. And then finally,
- 10:03Speaker 4: the last member of the team is Andre Douglas, who
- 10:06Speaker 4: will be a first time space flyer, but a has
- 10:09Speaker 4: been a service member in the Coastguard as well, as
- 10:13Speaker 4: he was a member of the Artemis two crew, he
- 10:17Speaker 4: was the backup member, right, so still part of the crew.
- 10:22Speaker 4: You have to have backup members as it turns out
- 10:24Speaker 4: too so, so even though he hasn't been to space yet,
- 10:27Speaker 4: Andre Douglas served as a member of the Artemists two
- 10:29Speaker 4: crew in case somebody got sick at the last minute,
- 10:32Speaker 4: he would have jumped in and filled that spot. Now
- 10:34Speaker 4: they have a backup crewman on this mission as well.
- 10:38Speaker 4: So the Artemis three backup crew member is Bob Hines,
- 10:42Speaker 4: and he would be he's training right along with the team,
- 10:46Speaker 4: so there's really a five member team training, so he's
- 10:48Speaker 4: learning all the same things that all the other ones
- 10:51Speaker 4: are learning. In case somebody gets sick at the last minute,
- 10:54Speaker 4: he's the fill in. He's the you know, the person
- 10:57Speaker 4: who will know enough to be able to step in
- 11:00Speaker 4: and fill in any of those roles in case an
- 11:03Speaker 4: illness or some kind of a family emergency or something
- 11:05Speaker 4: like that were to occur.
- 11:08Speaker 3: So again, this is going to be a test. They're
- 11:11Speaker 3: going to go up, they're going to be working with
- 11:13Speaker 3: a docking and things, so very much a technical kind
- 11:17Speaker 3: of mission, and it will serve also as a bit
- 11:21Speaker 3: of a filler to keep some of this excitement momentum
- 11:24Speaker 3: going before ultimately Artemis four.
- 11:27Speaker 4: Yeah, So there are a lot of things about the
- 11:30Speaker 4: Artemis three mission that are important, as you say that
- 11:33Speaker 4: right there, keeping the launch cadence up. We want to
- 11:36Speaker 4: launch SLS as often as we can so we understand
- 11:39Speaker 4: how that rocket behaves. We want to have as much
- 11:42Speaker 4: time on O Ryan as we can. This mission does
- 11:45Speaker 4: both of those things, it just does it in Earth orbit.
- 11:49Speaker 4: The other thing is there's going to be some other experiments.
- 11:52Speaker 4: They're actually taking some scientific payloads. They'll be studying Earth
- 11:56Speaker 4: atmosphere and doing some other kinds of work that are
- 12:00Speaker 4: scientific work while they're in orbit. So it's not just
- 12:03Speaker 4: a bunch of you know, like how does this hook
- 12:05Speaker 4: to that? And you know, as you said, it kind
- 12:08Speaker 4: of a mechanical or technical mission, but let's let's make
- 12:12Speaker 4: sure we understand that that is the most important part.
- 12:15Speaker 4: So the most important part of this mission is is
- 12:17Speaker 4: that technical aspect. Not only can we dock successfully the
- 12:23Speaker 4: Orion spacecraft to these lunar landers, but can the lunar
- 12:27Speaker 4: landers themselves launch successfully get to Earth orbit where the
- 12:32Speaker 4: docking can take place, and then how do they behave
- 12:36Speaker 4: how do they behave as a spacecraft actually an orbit
- 12:39Speaker 4: attached to another NASA vehicle. That's got to happen in
- 12:42Speaker 4: the orbit around the Moon. And so we'll be testing
- 12:45Speaker 4: that in orbit around the Earth first, because it's just
- 12:49Speaker 4: easier to get back home or to send up a
- 12:52Speaker 4: rescue mission or all those kinds of things if we're
- 12:54Speaker 4: in Earth orbit and something goes wrong, as opposed to
- 12:57Speaker 4: being all the way out at the distance of the
- 12:59Speaker 4: Moon something going wrong.
- 13:01Speaker 3: So these ISS veterans that will be part of this
- 13:04Speaker 3: mission will have to get used to a much smaller
- 13:07Speaker 3: vehicle to orbit the Earth.
- 13:08Speaker 2: Then.
- 13:09Speaker 4: Yeah, they were up there, you know, in an RV
- 13:12Speaker 4: in space before. Yeah, you know, this is kind of
- 13:14Speaker 4: like being in a Fiat or you know, I don't know,
- 13:18Speaker 4: maybe it's unfair to pick on Fiat, but I try
- 13:20Speaker 4: to pick on Fiat whenever I can.
- 13:22Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 13:23Speaker 4: I actually owned at one time a Ford Fiesta m hm.
- 13:27Speaker 4: So this would be like going from you know, a
- 13:29Speaker 4: giant Winnebago or some some brand of RV down to
- 13:33Speaker 4: my Ford Fiesta. So it's a much tighter space than
- 13:36Speaker 4: the ISS astronauts have had before.
- 13:38Speaker 3: How many times in that fiesta. Do you feel like
- 13:40Speaker 3: you were partying, like just driving it around? Did it
- 13:43Speaker 3: feel Did it feel like a fiesta?
- 13:44Speaker 4: Most times it was a non stop rolling party. I
- 13:47Speaker 4: had this car in high school and in my early
- 13:50Speaker 4: college days, so yeah, it was it was a rolling party.
- 13:53Speaker 4: I will tell you that I was driving along a
- 13:56Speaker 4: windy stretch of prairie in the Great State of Colorado,
- 13:59Speaker 4: and it was a windy day and I have my
- 14:01Speaker 4: left knee against the driver's side door and I could
- 14:04Speaker 4: feel the wind blowing the door it. I don't know
- 14:09Speaker 4: if the astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft have that sensation,
- 14:12Speaker 4: but I did. In my Ford Fiesta.
- 14:15Speaker 3: I had a convertible truck that did not seal up properly,
- 14:19Speaker 3: so when it rained, I would often get wet. So,
- 14:21Speaker 3: you know, I mean, we're not really having a competition
- 14:24Speaker 3: here on it. But Jill likes to remind me that
- 14:26Speaker 3: I used to drive that and you know, it was
- 14:30Speaker 3: like an aquarium and they're sometimes driving around.
- 14:32Speaker 4: It's important to recollect back on these phases of life.
- 14:35Speaker 4: It is as we mature and as we get comfortable
- 14:39Speaker 4: and as we say huh, well, at least I'm not
- 14:41Speaker 4: doing that anymore. Right, it's kind of important.
- 14:43Speaker 3: It is, it is important. More made of stars right
- 14:47Speaker 3: after this, well, speaking of the ISS, we have an
- 15:11Speaker 3: ISS story today because and this has been like a thing.
- 15:16Speaker 3: It's not like a brand new like oh my gosh. Now, uh,
- 15:20Speaker 3: there's a leak involved because we were just talking about
- 15:23Speaker 3: the problems that they were having when when Frank Rubio
- 15:26Speaker 3: was stuck there. But leaking air, that's a bad thing
- 15:33Speaker 3: to leak. When it's a you know, habitat that people
- 15:36Speaker 3: have to live in. They need air.
- 15:38Speaker 4: Really don't want to leak air out of your pretty
- 15:41Speaker 4: much ever.
- 15:41Speaker 3: It's on that list of things you need to survive.
- 15:44Speaker 3: And you know, when you're in this Winnebago floating around
- 15:47Speaker 3: in space. Uh, you know, air is important for for
- 15:50Speaker 3: everyone involved. So they and we can say this kind
- 15:54Speaker 3: of like, oh, it's important all that, but no, they
- 15:56Speaker 3: they had to take some security measures in this.
- 15:59Speaker 4: There's some intentional aspects of this that make the story
- 16:03Speaker 4: kind of exciting. You know, if you're venting air on
- 16:06Speaker 4: purpose out of your spaceship, maybe that's okay. But if
- 16:10Speaker 4: it's just leaking, if you're using the word leak for
- 16:14Speaker 4: your air in a spaceship, that's always bad. That's pretty
- 16:20Speaker 4: much always bad thing.
- 16:21Speaker 3: How just for curiosity, how bad does taco night have
- 16:26Speaker 3: to be on the International Space Station before they have
- 16:28Speaker 3: to start venting air out of it? Because that's the
- 16:31Speaker 3: only reason I can think of to go, we got
- 16:33Speaker 3: to let some air out of this thing.
- 16:35Speaker 4: So there's taco Night. There's also certain other food items
- 16:38Speaker 4: that the astronauts themselves requested NASA please never send this
- 16:42Speaker 4: up again, and seafood gumbo apparently was one of those.
- 16:46Speaker 4: You can imagine like the connection there.
- 16:49Speaker 3: Yeah, I would think some of those Russian sausages might
- 16:52Speaker 3: might cause some complications at times, but you know, well, and.
- 16:55Speaker 4: That's the problem is that it's not it's a shared
- 16:58Speaker 4: air space. Yeah, so we don't have American air versus
- 17:02Speaker 4: Russian air. You just have air and everybody needs it
- 17:07Speaker 4: on both sides of the you know, it's like two
- 17:09Speaker 4: independent nations linked up up there, but everybody needs the
- 17:13Speaker 4: same air and so there's only one air up there
- 17:17Speaker 4: that they're sharing. And apparently the leak is in the
- 17:21Speaker 4: Russian zvez the service module. Now, if you just go
- 17:26Speaker 4: back and scan news stories, you'll realize reasonably quickly that
- 17:30Speaker 4: the ISS has been a little bit of a leaky
- 17:33Speaker 4: bus on more than one occasion, and some of those
- 17:37Speaker 4: occasions even got really kind of exciting. That looked like,
- 17:40Speaker 4: you know, drill holes were intentionally drilled in certain parts
- 17:43Speaker 4: of spaceships and made leaks. Anyway, well, we won't go
- 17:47Speaker 4: down that rabbit hole. But but the idea is that
- 17:49Speaker 4: it's not the first time, certainly that the ISS has
- 17:53Speaker 4: had air leaks. But now remember to make the Winnebago
- 17:57Speaker 4: analogy again. This is a thirty year old win a bagel, right,
- 18:02Speaker 4: This this thing's been up there a while a good
- 18:06Speaker 4: amount of time, and it's it's an aging spacecraft. And sadly,
- 18:12Speaker 4: it looks like cracks are actually forming in the Vezda
- 18:17Speaker 4: module as well as possibly other places aboard the vehicle.
- 18:21Speaker 4: But but cracks in your spaceship that are big enough
- 18:25Speaker 4: to leak air, well that's not good. That's not good
- 18:30Speaker 4: at all. So so the Russian cosmonauts have been doing
- 18:32Speaker 4: an evaluation of these cracks and suggesting some repairs. And
- 18:36Speaker 4: it turns out that when you're repairing a cracked part
- 18:40Speaker 4: of your spaceship that may mean it's getting a bit
- 18:42Speaker 4: brittle and old. And you know, I don't know, if
- 18:45Speaker 4: you can dry rotten space. But there's you know, there's
- 18:47Speaker 4: some structural problems. And so when the when the Russian
- 18:52Speaker 4: crew came back and said, yeah, what we're gonna have
- 18:54Speaker 4: to do is we're gonna have to remove this bracket
- 18:56Speaker 4: because it's kind of in the way for us to
- 18:58Speaker 4: be able to fix the leak. NASA basically said, wait,
- 19:03Speaker 4: you're moving what, Well, it's a bracket. Well doesn't that
- 19:07Speaker 4: bracket actually support the structure of the vehicle. Well, yes,
- 19:12Speaker 4: but it should be safe to take it off. NASA said, no,
- 19:16Speaker 4: that may or may not be true. We don't know.
- 19:19Speaker 4: So if you're gonna perform that repair, we're going to
- 19:22Speaker 4: evac all of our NASA astronauts into the Dragons space
- 19:26Speaker 4: capsule and we're gonna have them wait there where there
- 19:30Speaker 4: can be purely American air inside that vehicle, sealed off
- 19:34Speaker 4: from the rest of the ISS ready to go home
- 19:37Speaker 4: if things go really bad. So, if you're gonna make
- 19:40Speaker 4: that repair, that's what we're gonna do with our astronauts.
- 19:43Speaker 4: And they actually did evact them last Friday morning. The
- 19:47Speaker 4: decision was made. They moved all of Crew twelve back
- 19:51Speaker 4: to their Dragon capsule. Now here's the problem. There's enough
- 19:55Speaker 4: seats for all the crew twelve people, but there's another
- 19:59Speaker 4: member of there, Chris Williams. Chris Williams, another astronaut, flew
- 20:04Speaker 4: up to space with the Russians, so he doesn't really
- 20:07Speaker 4: have a seat on that Dragon capsule, the crew twelve
- 20:09Speaker 4: Dragon capsule. But they just threw him in anyway. They
- 20:12Speaker 4: just said, no, just cram in there. Just get in that,
- 20:15Speaker 4: you know, crammed position beneath the seats, because if this
- 20:19Speaker 4: goes bad, we want to make sure you're in a
- 20:21Speaker 4: vehicle that we know we can return home safely. Also, Wes,
- 20:26Speaker 4: I don't know about you, but that all sounds like
- 20:28Speaker 4: uncomfortable collaboration, right, That doesn't sound anyway. So when that happened,
- 20:36Speaker 4: then the Russian Space Agency said, well, wait a minute,
- 20:40Speaker 4: perhaps we should work with our brethren at NASA and
- 20:43Speaker 4: maybe gather some more data on the leaks and the
- 20:47Speaker 4: proper repair methods before we go leaping into removing brackets
- 20:51Speaker 4: that structurally support the Vezda module, which is basically like
- 20:55Speaker 4: a tunnel to move back and forth between the two
- 20:59Speaker 4: components of space station. And so so why don't we
- 21:02Speaker 4: go ahead and gather some more data, and and so,
- 21:04Speaker 4: you know, a statement on the website that I was reading,
- 21:07Speaker 4: which is a story from Space Daily dot com said, quote,
- 21:11Speaker 4: NASA strongly supported the decision to collect more information before
- 21:15Speaker 4: moving ahead. Unquote, So there you're having. We're now kind
- 21:20Speaker 4: of in this paused phase where they're gathering more information.
- 21:24Speaker 4: They're trying to figure out the best way to move forward,
- 21:26Speaker 4: working with their NASA partners now and so normal operations
- 21:31Speaker 4: have resumed on the space station, but the space station's
- 21:35Speaker 4: losing you know, pounds of air at a time. So yeah,
- 21:41Speaker 4: it's it's something they definitely need to get fixed and
- 21:43Speaker 4: get taken care of.
- 21:46Speaker 3: I know this is asking a very technical question, but
- 21:50Speaker 3: it seems to me like losing pounds of air over
- 21:53Speaker 3: periods of time, like short periods of time, period of time,
- 21:59Speaker 3: how do they replace that? Like, how does that work?
- 22:03Speaker 3: They have to send up like balloons, what do they
- 22:05Speaker 3: got to do? How they got to refill that?
- 22:09Speaker 4: So fortunately, they think of these things ahead of time,
- 22:13Speaker 4: and they send up more air than they actually need
- 22:17Speaker 4: to pressurize properly the interior of the space station. So
- 22:21Speaker 4: there are tanks on the outside that are supplying the
- 22:24Speaker 4: extra air needed, and one can imagine. Oh, by the way,
- 22:28Speaker 4: the exact number is half a pound of pressure per day,
- 22:33Speaker 4: So that's three and a half pounds per week.
- 22:36Speaker 3: That doesn't seem like a lot here on earth.
- 22:39Speaker 4: Oh, I don't know, Man's it seems.
- 22:41Speaker 1: Like a lot.
- 22:42Speaker 3: It seems like a lot there half a pound of air.
- 22:47Speaker 4: Anyway. The point is they have reserve tanks and they're
- 22:51Speaker 4: repressurizing the interior. However, those reserve tanks are finite to
- 22:55Speaker 4: your point, and so you just don't want to be
- 22:59Speaker 4: leaking this is a larger than normal leak or a
- 23:02Speaker 4: larger than previous leak. You don't want to be leaking
- 23:05Speaker 4: pounds of air per week off into space in a
- 23:08Speaker 4: non controlled way for any kind of length of time.
- 23:13Speaker 4: So they do need to go ahead and execute the
- 23:16Speaker 4: maneuvers to fix it. They probably need to send up
- 23:18Speaker 4: some new air tanks at some point. All of these
- 23:22Speaker 4: things need to happen.
- 23:23Speaker 3: You know, because you can't just fill the whole thing
- 23:25Speaker 3: up with fix a flat. You know, that's not gonna help.
- 23:28Speaker 3: Those people have to be in there flex seal.
- 23:32Speaker 4: I was in flex seal in option.
- 23:34Speaker 3: That's right. I bet that would be an amazing flex
- 23:37Speaker 3: seal ad that would work. So we're gonna.
- 23:40Speaker 4: See the guy in the boat going, wait a minute,
- 23:42Speaker 4: have you tried our new and whatever that is product and.
- 23:47Speaker 3: Floating around outside, like, all right, let's spray this all
- 23:50Speaker 3: over the outside and see what we can do.
- 23:52Speaker 4: We drilled these holes intentionally into the International Space Station
- 23:57Speaker 4: so we could show you how flex seal or whatever you.
- 24:00Speaker 3: Know, screen door on a submarine deal yep, let's talk
- 24:05Speaker 3: about gravitational waves and like we're getting better at finding them,
- 24:11Speaker 3: and when you get better at finding something, then you
- 24:13Speaker 3: find more of them.
- 24:16Speaker 4: Did that count as a product endorsement? By the way, No,
- 24:19Speaker 4: I neither can confirm nor deny whether flex Seal would
- 24:23Speaker 4: fill holes in the International.
- 24:24Speaker 3: Space Listen, I'm gonna tell you this. You you can
- 24:27Speaker 3: dodge the endorsements if you want. I can indorse it, man,
- 24:31Speaker 3: I have. I have made flex Seal work for me.
- 24:35Speaker 3: There's no there's no there's no compensation for it. I'm
- 24:38Speaker 3: just telling you for a fact, flex Seal has has
- 24:42Speaker 3: done me well over the years and a number of scenarios.
- 24:45Speaker 3: So if only I had I was just thinking, if
- 24:48Speaker 3: only I had it when I had my truck, and
- 24:51Speaker 3: that was an option I might have been able to
- 24:53Speaker 3: keep some of the you know, fish out of the
- 24:56Speaker 3: floor of the truck that were swimming around in my aquarium.
- 25:00Speaker 3: But yeah, no it's not it's not technically an endorsement,
- 25:04Speaker 3: but I would happily endorse the folks at flex Seal.
- 25:07Speaker 3: I'm just saying they've done me well.
- 25:10Speaker 4: I don't think we get the full manifestos of everything
- 25:13Speaker 4: that's sent to space. Do you think they have some
- 25:15Speaker 4: flex Seal up.
- 25:16Speaker 3: There or some version of it. There may be a
- 25:19Speaker 3: NASA grade version of it. That's just a step and
- 25:22Speaker 3: I'd love to get my hands on that because I'm
- 25:24Speaker 3: telling you the stuff we have here on Earth, it's
- 25:30Speaker 3: been a lifesaver a couple of times for me.
- 25:32Speaker 4: Lined out of space age materials by engineers at NASA.
- 25:37Speaker 3: Can you imagine, So you know, I just you know,
- 25:41Speaker 3: every now and then, it's nice to have it around
- 25:43Speaker 3: when you need it, and it is come in handy
- 25:46Speaker 3: a few times.
- 25:48Speaker 4: So there's one hole you can't fill with flex seal,
- 25:50Speaker 4: and that's a black hole.
- 25:51Speaker 3: Here you go, well done.
- 25:53Speaker 4: There was a transition for you, right it is. I
- 25:54Speaker 4: love it, Thank you, Thank you all be here all
- 25:57Speaker 4: week anyway. So gravitational waves, friends, are not a form
- 26:02Speaker 4: of electromagnetic radiation. They're literally a ripple in the fabric
- 26:07Speaker 4: of space time. And it was only just a few
- 26:11Speaker 4: years ago that we, for the first time ever as humanity,
- 26:14Speaker 4: were able to detect these ripples through the fabric of
- 26:19Speaker 4: the space time continuum with an instrument called the interferometer
- 26:23Speaker 4: of Gravitational Wave Observatory. We know that better as LIGO. Okay,
- 26:29Speaker 4: so that's the setup. Here's the rest of the story.
- 26:33Speaker 4: Over the years, the astronomers have gotten better at using
- 26:37Speaker 4: not only the LIGO instrument here in the United States,
- 26:41Speaker 4: but also a similar kind of instrument called VIRGO, which
- 26:45Speaker 4: is an Italian gravitational wave interferometer, and then something called
- 26:49Speaker 4: the KAGRA the Commioki gravitational wave detector in Japan. Now,
- 26:56Speaker 4: if you have a multi instrument approach like this, you
- 27:00Speaker 4: can get better and better at detecting these ripples in
- 27:04Speaker 4: the fabric of space time. But a question might be,
- 27:06Speaker 4: wait a minute, what makes these ripples in the fabric
- 27:09Speaker 4: of what kind of an event is so powerful? They
- 27:13Speaker 4: can actually pluck the fabric of space time in a
- 27:17Speaker 4: way that a ripple a wave will travel across the
- 27:20Speaker 4: Cosmos and arrive here at the planet Earth in enough
- 27:24Speaker 4: intensity that we can measure it. I'm very glad you
- 27:27Speaker 4: asked that question.
- 27:29Speaker 3: I was just it was in the chamber. I was
- 27:31Speaker 3: ready to say it. You just took the words out
- 27:34Speaker 3: of my mouth.
- 27:35Speaker 4: So the answer is black holes merging black two big
- 27:40Speaker 4: black holes running into each other is enough of an
- 27:44Speaker 4: event that it can cause an energetic enough phenomenon that's
- 27:50Speaker 4: a gravitational phenomenon that it can cause these waves to
- 27:54Speaker 4: travel in such a way that we can measure them.
- 27:56Speaker 4: And now that we have multiple of these instruments online,
- 28:00Speaker 4: now that we've been collecting data for a long time,
- 28:03Speaker 4: astronomers are just getting better at being able to detect
- 28:06Speaker 4: these gravitational wave signals, which is helping us to learn
- 28:10Speaker 4: more and more about the actual black holes that form
- 28:13Speaker 4: them in the first place. So we've just had a
- 28:16Speaker 4: new study come out with astronomers capturing signals between April
- 28:20Speaker 4: twenty twenty four and January of twenty twenty five using
- 28:23Speaker 4: this three instrument technique that we just chatted about, and
- 28:28Speaker 4: they are finding more and more black holes. There's been
- 28:31Speaker 4: kind of a surge in gravitational wave detections due to
- 28:35Speaker 4: merging black holes. So Daniel Williams from the University of
- 28:39Speaker 4: Glasgow in the UK says it this way. Quote, we're
- 28:43Speaker 4: now detecting so many of these signals that we're not
- 28:46Speaker 4: just learning about individual collisions. It's the astronomical equivalent of
- 28:51Speaker 4: uncovering an ancient civilization. The quote goes on to say
- 28:57Speaker 4: the new results are like finding a previously undiscovered horde,
- 29:01Speaker 4: revealing not just individual lives, but the structure of an
- 29:05Speaker 4: entire lost world. Unquote from Daniel Williams, University of Glasgow.
- 29:11Speaker 4: First of all, if you can speak like that, if
- 29:13Speaker 4: you can come up with those kinds of terms of phrase,
- 29:18Speaker 4: you should be quoted in these kinds of publications. By
- 29:20Speaker 4: the way, this is from a story in Sky in
- 29:21Speaker 4: Telescope magazine, we had of another quote from another individual
- 29:26Speaker 4: named Ian Harry. Ian Harry works at the University of
- 29:29Speaker 4: Portsmouth and he says this about these gems of hidden
- 29:34Speaker 4: data in these signals. Quote, there is a fraction of
- 29:38Speaker 4: binary black hole systems where at least one of the
- 29:41Speaker 4: black hole appears to have formed from a previous merger
- 29:46Speaker 4: of two smaller black holes, as opposed to being formed
- 29:50Speaker 4: directly from the first merger of a supernova. So this
- 29:54Speaker 4: kind of object is called a second generation black hole unquote.
- 30:00Speaker 4: And so the interesting thing is they're able to tell
- 30:05Speaker 4: based on the masses that they can calculate from the
- 30:08Speaker 4: gravitational waves for the black holes that collided. And also
- 30:12Speaker 4: they're unusual and sometimes even backwards or retrograde spin that
- 30:18Speaker 4: these objects have collided in the past. Where do they
- 30:22Speaker 4: get the data to sort all that out? That data
- 30:25Speaker 4: is embedded in these newly detected gravitational waves coming into
- 30:30Speaker 4: the planet Earth. That is a new technology that's barely
- 30:35Speaker 4: a decade old. So this is really something amazing that
- 30:40Speaker 4: we're able to tell about the history and distribution and
- 30:45Speaker 4: life cycle of black holes based on gathering data from space,
- 30:50Speaker 4: not from electromagnetic radiation or light, but now from gravitational
- 30:54Speaker 4: waves in the first for the first time in human history,
- 30:58Speaker 4: which is pretty pretty spectacular.
- 30:59Speaker 3: More made of stars. Right after this, they have found
- 31:25Speaker 3: a meteorite in the Sahara Desert, and I guess there's
- 31:30Speaker 3: evidence that this could be a marsized planet from you know,
- 31:36Speaker 3: the beginning of our time, at least in the Solar System.
- 31:40Speaker 3: So yeah, what's the story on this meteorite and how
- 31:43Speaker 3: do they know how big it could have been when
- 31:48Speaker 3: it was still a planet.
- 31:50Speaker 4: So there are many rocks from space that fall to
- 31:55Speaker 4: Earth and get recovered. We know these as meteorites, and
- 32:00Speaker 4: a vast majority of them are perfectly happy and well
- 32:03Speaker 4: adjusted in their life. But a few of them are
- 32:06Speaker 4: actually angrites. So we have to talk about the angrites.
- 32:12Speaker 4: I think you find them mostly on social media, these angrates.
- 32:17Speaker 3: I have my angrite moments. I can tell.
- 32:19Speaker 4: You, Okay, there.
- 32:21Speaker 3: I get the more I seem to have them.
- 32:25Speaker 4: Well, apparently, in addition to the social media angrites, there
- 32:29Speaker 4: are also a geological classification known as an angrite, and
- 32:34Speaker 4: an angrit in the geological classification is an extremely rare
- 32:37Speaker 4: type of meteorite that has certain characteristics. It happens to
- 32:43Speaker 4: be very silica poor. In other words, it does not
- 32:48Speaker 4: have a high silica content, and it means that the
- 32:52Speaker 4: lack of this silica or silica silicon dioxide, which comprises
- 32:58Speaker 4: the majority of raw on both the surface of the
- 33:01Speaker 4: Earth and the surface of Mars, means that it probably
- 33:04Speaker 4: didn't come from the surface of another planet. So where
- 33:08Speaker 4: did this angrite come from? Well, a brand new analysis
- 33:14Speaker 4: of a meteorite called NWA twelve seven seventy four. And
- 33:22Speaker 4: by the way, before we go on, let's just say
- 33:24Speaker 4: NWA stands for Northwest Africa.
- 33:29Speaker 3: Not the hip hop group, not the hip hop group
- 33:32Speaker 3: that was different.
- 33:34Speaker 4: And also not just any place in Northwest Africa, but
- 33:39Speaker 4: the Sahara Desert itself. So this object was discovered in
- 33:45Speaker 4: the in twenty nineteen in the Sahara Desert.
- 33:48Speaker 3: Straight out of Compton, NWA.
- 33:52Speaker 4: And so in the right hand sector of one of
- 33:55Speaker 4: the faces of this meteorite, it has, by the way,
- 34:00Speaker 4: before I go on, not tied to anything West. Just said,
- 34:03Speaker 4: the meteorite happens to be very black in color. It's
- 34:07Speaker 4: a very dark surface structure, which a lot of meteorites
- 34:12Speaker 4: are actually but it embedded in that very dark structure
- 34:15Speaker 4: is a bright green gemstone known as olivine. And so
- 34:23Speaker 4: there is an olivine inclusion in this angrate meteorite discovered
- 34:30Speaker 4: in the Sahara Desert back in twenty nineteen. And now
- 34:34Speaker 4: a new piece of research from the University of Colorado,
- 34:37Speaker 4: Boulder has discovered something very important about the overall structure
- 34:43Speaker 4: of this meteorite. First of all, First of all, the
- 34:48Speaker 4: pressure necessary to form this particular rock had to be
- 34:54Speaker 4: at seventeen point five kilobars of pressure. Now, okay, that's
- 34:58Speaker 4: not a number that everybody knows what that means. But
- 35:02Speaker 4: understand this. There's a lot of pressure at the bottom
- 35:07Speaker 4: of the ocean in the Marianas Trench, that's about one
- 35:12Speaker 4: kill a bar. So at the deepest place in Earth's
- 35:18Speaker 4: ocean it's only about one kill a bar of pressure.
- 35:22Speaker 4: This is seventeen times that, and so this is extraordinarily
- 35:28Speaker 4: more pressure than we have basically anywhere in the crust
- 35:32Speaker 4: of the Earth. So not only did this rock have
- 35:38Speaker 4: to be processed in that very high pressure, that then
- 35:41Speaker 4: tells us that it had to be a fairly large
- 35:44Speaker 4: planet whose gravity can even generate that kind of pressure
- 35:48Speaker 4: in order to crush the minerals that they see down
- 35:52Speaker 4: into these states where we understand that it was a
- 35:54Speaker 4: high pressure event, like for instance, maybe in the upper
- 35:59Speaker 4: man of the planet. Mars could be a place. Now
- 36:03Speaker 4: this we're not saying it came from Mars, but we're
- 36:05Speaker 4: saying it came from something the size of Mars. Okay,
- 36:11Speaker 4: But then also the crystals have this pattern of being
- 36:15Speaker 4: very sharp and not subjected to those high pressures for
- 36:20Speaker 4: a long period of time. So the crystallization must have
- 36:23Speaker 4: happened at relatively shallow depths, something less than two hundred kilometers,
- 36:29Speaker 4: which means basically in the crust of a big planet
- 36:34Speaker 4: the size of Mars. And so that means that this
- 36:38Speaker 4: had to have some kind of a rapid ascent in
- 36:40Speaker 4: its lifetime, coming from a lower depth volcanically probably brought
- 36:45Speaker 4: up to the higher layers in the stratification of this
- 36:49Speaker 4: former planet, and then after all of this complicated lifetime,
- 36:54Speaker 4: that's when it falls on northwest Africa. So it's amazing
- 36:57Speaker 4: what geologists and mineral sciences can figure out about the
- 37:02Speaker 4: history of a rock based on many of these kinds
- 37:06Speaker 4: of tests and analyzes. But we know that this particular
- 37:13Speaker 4: angrite meteorite had that kind of a history. It was
- 37:16Speaker 4: part of the early Solar System. It was embedded in
- 37:19Speaker 4: a much larger object, not an asteroid, but something the
- 37:22Speaker 4: size of Mars. That object had to be destroyed so
- 37:26Speaker 4: this rock could be liberated back out to space, and
- 37:29Speaker 4: then it fell to Earth some unknown period of time later,
- 37:33Speaker 4: a long time later, right, And so this tells us
- 37:37Speaker 4: a lot about a lost world from the dawn of
- 37:41Speaker 4: our Solar System. One more piece of evidence that planets,
- 37:47Speaker 4: or we might call them protoplanets the size of Mars
- 37:50Speaker 4: were out there in some large abundance and got obliterated
- 37:54Speaker 4: in the processes that formed the planets that we see today. Right,
- 37:58Speaker 4: So that's the amazing part. We can tell all of
- 38:01Speaker 4: that from the analysis of this rare ang Right media
- 38:05Speaker 4: write a really interesting story on Universe today dot com.
- 38:10Speaker 3: So we're in the summer months, summer phase of Columbus
- 38:14Speaker 3: State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center, which means a
- 38:17Speaker 3: few things. You still have people coming in and out,
- 38:22Speaker 3: but it may be a little bit more opportunity to
- 38:24Speaker 3: kind of spread out when you're inside enjoying the air
- 38:26Speaker 3: conditioning and checking things out.
- 38:29Speaker 4: So if you've had one of those visits with your
- 38:31Speaker 4: kids where you came down and there was a gigantic
- 38:33Speaker 4: school group in our gallery and they seem to be
- 38:36Speaker 4: having most of the fun, hopefully we pulled you aside
- 38:40Speaker 4: and took you on a special tour of our observatory
- 38:42Speaker 4: or did something fun like that with you. But I
- 38:44Speaker 4: will tell you that that happens a lot more doing
- 38:46Speaker 4: in the school year. It happens a lot less during
- 38:49Speaker 4: the summertime. And so this, as Wes just mentioned, a
- 38:53Speaker 4: very good time on your calendar year to come down
- 38:56Speaker 4: and visit the Space Science Center in the months of
- 38:59Speaker 4: June and July, in between the school groups coming in,
- 39:02Speaker 4: I will tell you that we are ready for you friends.
- 39:05Speaker 4: Come down and see us. Come check out all the
- 39:07Speaker 4: new exhibits and gadgetry we have going on in Space
- 39:10Speaker 4: Sign Center. We have newly upgrade, upgraded flight simulators, we
- 39:14Speaker 4: have newly upgraded Mars rovers. We have, of course, our
- 39:17Speaker 4: Space Shuttle Odyssey. We have a brand new show in
- 39:19Speaker 4: our theater called Dinosaurs Survival Story. Come down and check
- 39:23Speaker 4: out all of these things in the summer months. If
- 39:25Speaker 4: you want to know about the pay structure and hours
- 39:28Speaker 4: of operation of the Space Science Center, I would highly
- 39:31Speaker 4: encourage you to visit our website. Go to www dot
- 39:34Speaker 4: cc s SC dot org. Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org.
- 39:40Speaker 3: Sean and I thank you for listening, and we'll do
- 39:41Speaker 3: this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus has
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