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SpaceX Ends Record Setting Year and Kicks Off 2024 with a Record Pace · 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. We're made
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of stars. Made of stars, madies. When made of stars, you
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could be from high they would New Mexicomus. We're all stars, whomens we
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are made of stars. I'm Wes Carol, joined by my good friend doctor
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Sean Cruising from Columbus Universities Coca Cola Space Science Center. Morning Shawn, good
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morning. We's good to be here today, kicking off the new year.
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Here together we are. Last couple of shows were our recaps of the biggest
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space news stories of twenty twenty three, and we dive right into some new
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stories. Now, one of these is one of those stories that rolls over
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from twenty twenty three because and we talked about this at the end of really
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at the end of twenty twenty two, the record that SpaceX set for a
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number of launches for the year, and they had a goal of you know,
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beating that record last year, which of course they did. I think
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they beat it by you know, June or something like. They were absolutely
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crushing the record right out of the gate, and they wrapped up the year
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with a pretty significant accomplishment. And then they've already had multiple launches to start
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the year this year, so they're I guess already pacing now to break the
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previous record. But they got to ninety six long last year. Incredible,
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isn't it. Ninety six flights. That's an average of every four days for
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an entire year. If only they could figure out a way to do them,
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you know, less than three hours apart. Oh wait, they did
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that to close out the year. So that's the second fastest launch right in
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the history of American space flight and history world space flight, two hours,
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fifty four minutes and forty seconds apart. SpaceX launched a very important mission for
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the United States Military on their Falcon heavy rocket when they launched the X thirty
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seven V, which is the kind of secretive space plane that the United States
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Military is deploying. That plane's going to deploy for several years. Up there.
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Actually, it looks like a little miniature space Shuttle's going to be a
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plan to be up there in orbit for more than a year. Anyway,
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I know everything. That's why it's a secret space plane. It always kind
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of cracks me up. It's like ultra secret mission though everybody knows about.
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Okay, I'm gonna be honest, and this is one of those weird things.
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We talked about this story a couple of weeks ago before we got into
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our recap mode, and about the way that the mission was delayed and how
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it's this super secret craft and we don't really know what they're doing and all
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that stuff. And then when I saw that it launched, and I saw
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the fact that it had gone up, and I said, oh, yeah,
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the secret mission has gone up, and the timing of it going up
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and the delay of the Epstein list being released, and I'm like, maybe
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they accidentally put it on that spy plane, that secret plane, and sent
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it into space by accident, and then that was gonna But then no,
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I guess they finally got around to releasing the Epstein list. So I kind
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of wondered if there was some connection. Since we really don't know what the
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mission is for this thing, maybe how do we know that there's not Epstein
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documents on there. I don't know anything is possible. I don't know.
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We can't prove anything otherwise they can neither confirm nor deny. That's right.
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But it launched. And then was that the first or the second of the
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two that went up really close together? Of the two, all right?
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And then the second of the two, which came a mire two hours and
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fifty four minutes later, was a whole lot of Starlink satellites about eleven PM
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on the same day, on the same day. Unbelievable. So so I
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mean, here, folks, this is what we need to know. The
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only other time that rockets have ever launched that close together from the same organization
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was back in nineteen sixty six during the Gemini eleven mission, where the folks
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at NASA launched what they called their Agena craft, which was a robotic space
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drone, and then they launched the and I eleven capsule. But the reason
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they launched those two so close together there was actually a reason to do that.
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They're part of the same mission. They wanted to launch them close together
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in time so that they would be close together in orbit, so that the
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capsule could go dock with the robotic spacecraft. See, so they're not very
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far apart. So they launched those within an hour and thirty seven minutes and
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twenty five seconds of each other back in nineteen sixty six. But again there
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was a reason to do that. They were part of the same flight.
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So these other two missions basically had nothing to do with each other. But
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SpaceX still pulled off launches within two hours and fifty four minutes less than three
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hours from each other, just because they could and they needed those launch windows.
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And here's the thing that Wes and I were discussing off air. It's
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amazing they launched those two back to back so closely. But since that time
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and now, which was just last Thursday, by the way, just a
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week ago. Since that time and out, they've launched two more within twenty
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four hours of each other. They launched again on January second, and again
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on January third. So those two previous ones were on December twenty eighth,
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two on the same day, less than three hours apart, then again on
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January second, and again on January third, all within the last week.
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You know, different payloads, different objectives, different orbits, all that kind
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of stuff. So West off Air made the comment that it's kind of like
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an airline. It's like, it's just like an airport. It really does
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feel like a plane taken off. Oh there's another plane take it off.
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Oh that one's going to Detroit. Oh that one's going to you know,
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Honolulu. I don't know anyway. So, yeah, we're living in an
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age that rocket launches are taking place so close together from Florida's Gulf Coast or
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Florida's Space Coast rather that it's kind of like an airport. And it's true.
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I just had a family visit here at the Space Science Center yesterday who
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came up from Orlando, and they were saying, oh, yeah, I
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remember when we used to watch the Apollo launches. And obviously they're people of
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roughly my age, so they remember back when the Apollo missions were going off
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and that was such a big deal. And they said, yeah, now
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it's like, oh, there's a big deal. There's a rocket going off.
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Okay, well it's Thursday, you know, and maybe again on Friday,
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or maybe two on Thursday or whatever. Right, So it's so often
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that it's become commonplace to the people who actually live anywhere near the Space Coast
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in Florida, which is amazing. It really is remarkable. And when you
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realize that this is just the beginning of this kind of rapid launch capabilities and
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flexing, if you will, and knowing how many more because ninety six launches
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last year, you said one every four days, so you know, averaging
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now that they've already i mean, this is the fourth we're recording this on
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the fourth. They've already launched two this year, so they're they and I'm
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sure planned to beat that record. So if you start getting to the point
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where you think, well, if you beat every four days, every three
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or two days is coming. So we really are going to get to a
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point, probably very soon where they're almost launching daily or you know, something
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from somewhere is launching daily, which is pretty remarkable when you think about it.
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Yeah, a way to think about it is this. In twenty twenty
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two, SpaceX broke records when they had sixty one launches. Yeah, so
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that was already amazing. Last year, in twenty twenty three they had ninety
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six launches, which smashed the previous record, and we knew that they thought
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maybe one hundred was attainable, and they got really close. They almost made
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one hundred next year, well this year, now that we're into twenty twenty
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four, got to quit calling it next year because my brain's still on holiday
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obviously, Yes, but this year, in twenty twenty four, they're planning
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approximately one hundred and fifty missions, which if they pull that off, that's
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nearly one every two days for the entire year. Ladies and gentlemen, my
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friends in this audience, you can't do that if you have to have a
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new rocket for every mission. You can't build a Nutwell, I say can't.
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Maybe they can't, but they don't. They don't have to build a
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new rocket for every mission. That's why they're able to do this. Right.
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So let's remember what the goal of SpaceX was from its inception. Its
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goal was to make space more accessible and more affordable. And now they have
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boosters that have achieved repeat missions that are nearing twenty times each and so when
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you reuse a booster that many times, all you have to do is clean
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it up and put some spray paint on it, fill it with fuel again,
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get it back to the cape, and it's ready to take another payload.
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So when you perfect that kind of reuse, which SpaceX is doing right
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before our very eyes. That's why you can achieve potentially one hundred or maybe
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even one hundred and fifty launches in a single calendar year and make space seem
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every day like a bus terminal or an airport, which is happening before our
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eyes. I'm saying this with sort of an emphatic tone because it just wasn't
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that long ago that America had no right to space at all. Yep,
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right, we were pitching rides with the Russians, and we had payloads that
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were being launched, certainly, but not anywhere near this kind of pace from
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the space coast, which meant, I mean, think about it this way.
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They're not launching for no reason. They're not just launching for fun,
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and it's not like model rocket contest. Every one of these has a payload
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aboard, which means think about so think about three years ago, all of
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these payloads were like searching for a home. They wanted to go to space,
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but they had no ride. And so how much more technology and how
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much more science, and how much more important military missions and environmental missions,
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Earth monitoring missions and all the kinds of things that you love about space ladies
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and gentlemen. You all love different things. That's why I'm trying to get
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you all in there. You know, human exploration. How much all of
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that stuff right, couldn't be done three years ago because there weren't enough launch
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vehicles, because we were throwing away all the rockets. All the rockets were
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ending up in the ocean and not being reused. SpaceX and their reusable rockets
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and landing on launch pads and barges and all the crazy stuff they do has
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changed the game. And this is what it looks like. I'm waiting on
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the absurd accomplishment that someday in the future. I mean, I don't know,
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a long way in the field. I hope maybe in our lifetime.
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The way that they work, maybe next year when they use the same booster
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in the same day. That's what I'm waiting on. Well, we landed
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it and there was still some fuel in it. We're gonna launch it again
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like a NASCAR pit crew, right, put some new tires up, putting
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some winchoe wipers. I don't know what do they do, changing the oil.
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I don't know what do they do. I mean, if you can't
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believe it, then you can't achieve it right, Let's move on to Juno
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because Juno has made its closest fly by of IOH yeah, it's important to
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say that. You know that launch schedule we were just talking about, it's
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the second quickest line. NASA still holds that record, right, Ye,
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NASA still holds it from nineteen sixty six, So that is the second fastest
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turnaround of launches. But you know SpaceX is you know, obviously doing a
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little well and I can imagine SpaceX looking at that going oh that was the
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second fastest, was it? Okay, well that's good to know. You
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know, Elon has that number tucked away, right, he's got it,
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like, what is it an hour thirty seven? Oh yeah, we're gonna
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get that one. Yeah. So now we're going to go talk about a
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new spacecraft and it's having the second closest flyby of Io. So this seems
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like a really close flyby and it's got some really amazing pictures. And on
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December thirtieth, NASA's Juno spacecraft flew a mere nine hundred and thirty miles n
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nine hundred and thirty miles above Io's surface. If you don't know about the
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moon, Io is the only other world that we know about in the Solar
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System that has active volcanoes. Now, we we have to separate this from
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ice geysers, because ice geysers do exist on other moons, but these are
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actually volcanoes, you know, turn liquefying rocky material and black lasting it up
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into the air. So so Io's the only other place besides Earth where we
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find active volcanoes, and so it's a really an interesting world. It's an
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important one to study. Back in the day, back in two thousand and
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one, the Galileo spacecraft made a really close flyby of the south pole of
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Io, a mere one hundred and twelve miles. So that's number one.
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So again you know, there's a record, it's still standing, but this
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is the second one, or you could say it's the closest one in modern
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times. It's over twenty years ago. Okay, I guess, I guess
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that's okay. So Juno came just a mirror basically thousand miles nine hundred and
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thirty miles above the Io's surface, about one ninth you know the distance of
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Galileo. But anyway, it got a really close set of pictures. And
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then the fun thing about Juno is it's a modern spacecraft, so it's got
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lots of updated instruments and cameras of board that even though Galileo got closer,
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Galileo didn't have the hardware on board to make the kinds of measurements that Juno
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is making. So Juno is actually taking data trying to verify whether or not
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there's a whole ocean of magma below the surface of Io. So some theoretical
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predictions have suggested that that's the case. It's not just a pop up sulfur
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volcano here and there, but actually Io has a whole magma ocean, a
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whole liquefied chamber of material below its surface. And now this Juno spacecraft has
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done this close flyby, we'll do some other close flybys, and they're gathering
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data to hope to confirm or deny the existence of this subterranean chamber of magma.
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They call it a magma ocean on that important moon of the planet Jupiter.
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All right, so we've covered a couple of seconds for accomplishments. We've
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got another first accomplishment. This isn't a second, This is a first accomplishment
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number one, and it's another Marvel from the vehicle that is the Ingenuity helicopter.
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First of all, initially they thought maybe this thing would get five flights
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around on Mars when they sent it up, right, five was maybe that
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was an optimistic goal. I guess they thought, well, if we can
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get five missions out of this thing, it's approaching. Maybe if it does
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another there'll be a seventieth flight, the sixty ninth flight, and it ended
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up being the longest flight for Ingenuity. Just to be clear, it actually
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has completed a seventieth flight. It's just the oieth flight was not the longest
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one. Nice okay, so about seventieth flight. So Ingenuity helicopter that went
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up with the Mars Perseverance rover didn't even know if the thing was gonna fly
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in the Martian atmosphere work sure, right, you don't know until you know.
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You think you've engineered everything carefully, but you don't i until you know.
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So it's even its first flight was amazing because that was the first ever
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powered flight in the atmosphere of another planet, so already pretty cool. It's
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like right, brothers on Mars, right, So the first flight was cool.
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As Wes said, it was only planned for five. So the whole
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plan laid out for you know, hey, what if this thing works,
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well, let's do flight five different flights. We have these goals for those
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five flights, and let's see if we can pull that off. Well they
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pulled all that off, so they said, oh, well it's still working,
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so why don't we add a few flights, And they went from five
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to seventy seven zero successful flights on Mars so far. And yes, if
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we look back one flight to sixty nine, which took place on December twenty
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first, that was the longest one achieved of all these seventy flights, two
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than three hundred and fifteen feet, which okay, if you think about like
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Earth drones or you know whatever, that's not that far. I mean,
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it's seven hundred and six meters. It's like seven football fields. It's pretty
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far. You know, it's probably longer than kiddy Hawk, right, so
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so anyway, so but it's half a mile, yeah, right, it's
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almost almost half a mile, roughly half a mile. If you think about
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that happening in an atmosphere of a planet where it's only one percent the atmospheric
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pressure of Earth. In other words, there's very little air for this port
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little helicopter to beat its props against to lift it off, and it managed
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to fly almost half a mile. It's astounding. And again the fact that
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it was engineered for five test flights. Now they completely redefine the mission of
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this little helicopter. It now flies out in front of the rover and they
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use the data from the helicopter to plan out the rover's path and mission and
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targets, which has been so effective over the rest of those sixty five flights
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that NASA is now saying they'll likely never send a rover to Mars again without
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a helicopter on board. It makes sense they need that eye in the sky.
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Yeah, they can plan the path and search for the interesting features and
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scout what's ahead of the rover, and so yeah, it's operationally functioning so
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fantastically that it will now likely become just standard procedure to have one of these
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little drones on board for every upcoming Mars mission. It's pretty remarkable. Yeah,
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remarkable achievement, and just a reminder. We talk about STEM careers and
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we talk about things. This is one of those. It's that combination of
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a few different things all coming together. But robotics being such an important part
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of what they're accomplishing there, not just with the rover, but now with
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this drone helicopter that has been you know, breaking records. Obviously it was
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it was record breaking to begin with, just by being there and doing what
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it was doing, but continuing to be an impressive add on to this rover
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in its mission. Yeah, and it's it's so fun, as you just
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said, thinking about this generation of students that are growing up with technologies that
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are just native to them, right, I mean since they were small children,
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they've probably been flying little mini helicopters around inside their house. Right when
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I was a kid, I would have I couldn't even have dreamt of such
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a thing. I remember RC helicopters, but they were the things that slammed
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into a tree and broke and you never used them again. Like you had
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one flight, yes, and it died and it was like all the parts
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were too expensive and you couldn't get them. And now a little you know,
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quad copter drone is just you know, you get it at the dollar
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store basically. So it's a technology that today's students are growing up with.
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Natively, they're learning how to program robots, either through first robotics with Lego
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or some other kind of robotic platform. They're doing all the things as kids
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that lead them to careers as scientists and engineers on missions like this one,
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or like on the SpaceX missions that we talked about previously, or on the
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Juno missions which we talked about previously. And this technology is advancing so fantastically
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that we really are living in I mean, we thought we grew up in
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the space age, but we are really living in the space exploration age where
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it is a serious endeavor on multiple fronts, both human and robotic space exploration
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happening simultaneously. What a great time to be alive and to see all these
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things happening, and to see all these amazing successes in our investigations of our
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solar system. Coming up after a quick break, a ride that could get
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us to Mars faster. We'll talk about that next. All right, let's
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talk about the r d r E rocket, the rotating detonation rocket engine.
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This could be our way to get to Mars faster, which someday will be
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important. Yeah. Check this story out on science alert dot com as well
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as other places, I'm sure, but Science Alert dot Com had a story
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out in the last day or so about this the r d R E.
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Friends, it's all about fuel efficiency when you hear this story, it's about
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fuel efficiency. It's also about just a little bit simpler rocket engine mechanically as
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well. So what if you could build a much more fuel efficient engine that
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achieve the same goals as more robust rocket engines do today, or i should
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say, more fuel consuming engines do today. And what if you could build
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this same rocket engine that it was actually mechanically more simple, so you had
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less opportunities for failure on the mechanical side of the engine. And what if
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it was the same engine both fuel efficient and simpler. Well, that's what
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the rotating detonation rocket engine being tested at NASA's Marshall Space space Flight Center not
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far from us over at Huntsville, Alabama, where several of our students are
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actually over there are former students here at Cobens State University over there working at
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the Marshall Space Flight Center. Now that's where this testing is taking place.
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And the RDRE is a new kind of engine that allows for a circular or
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ring shaped channel to have rocket fuel burning in that rapidly rotates around the rocket
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engine's nozzle basically, and so you don't have detonation taking place all over the
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rocket engine simultaneously. You have it happening in this kind of rotary engine.
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I don't know did they talk to Masda when they built this. Look at
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that Wankel rotary engine. I don't know if it's that similar. I'm not
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an engine guy, but anyway, probably not similar at all. But anyway,
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the RDRE uses less propellant, that's the big thing. It's more fuel
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efficient generating the same thrust. And it is also mechanically simpler, which the
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Mazda rotary wankle engine I know was not anyway, So these two things seem
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to be virtuous. And so the story in science alert dot com it goes
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into how many newtons of thrust or kill Newton's are produced, and you want
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to check all that out. You can. Basically, they just had an
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RDRE engine achieve more thrust than they had before they tested it back in twenty
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twenty two. It had a certain amount of thrust. They tested it again
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here recently and it had more thrust. It looks like they have designs to
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build it where they can build even more thrust than that. And in the
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latest press conference from the team over at Marshall Space Flight Center working on the
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RDRE, a gentleman by the name of Tom Teasley had this quote, and
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again this is from science alert dot com. The quote says, it demonstrates
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we are closer to making lightweight propulsion systems that allow us to send more mass
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and payload further into deep space. A critical component to NASA's Moon and Mars
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missions or their vision is what Tom said. So here's the idea. If
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your engine uses less fuel, you can take less fuel with you. And
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if you can take less fuel, you can take more twinkies or camping gear,
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or scientific payloads or you know whatever, more people, potentially more three
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D printing material to build Mars houses out of the local soil. Anyways,
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whatever it is, less fuel, more stuff, right, So that's the
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idea. Or you can just make your whole payload lighter so you can get
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there faster, as the headline suggested. So if you don't have to take
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as much fuel, then you have less mass and the engines can actually get
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you to Mars quicker, which you know anything about the potential future for Mars
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exploration, You got to keep those astronauts, shall we say, entertained or
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engaged during a rather lengthy time to travel to Mars. Well, if you
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can shorten up that time kind of like the concord, did you know,
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flying across the Atlantic. That's right. You don't have those knotty rock stars
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on the concord for as long, so they can't party as hard. So
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anyway, it's kind of the same thing with these astronauts going to Mars.
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You don't have those rowdy astronauts partying for three years. You can get that
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down to eighteen months or something like that, right, So, so all
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of this is encouraging for the future of Mars exploration and good job to the
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RDR team over at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Well, the other component
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of this too, and you talk about, Okay, if you can travel
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with you know, you don't need as much fuel for the trip. It
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would also leave some room for fuel for the return trip, right because it's
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not like there's a fueling station once they get there, not that anyway,
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they don't have the local convenience store where you can go down and fill up
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the return rocket. Yeah, very true. It depends on what the fuel
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is now there are there are teams of scientists who are engaged in looking for
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terranean water on Mars. That water could potentially be split into hydrogen and oxygen
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and turned into rocket fuel. But yeah, you see all these it doesn't
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matter. Even if you can get fuel on Mars, you want less of
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it, right yep, so you can take more stuff that's or get there
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quicker. So even if you're having a hauler of your fuel for both directions,
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or if your model is to be able to pump some of that water
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out of the ground on Mars and use that Martian water for fuel back either
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way. And by the way, we don't know that there's Martian water.
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I'm going to just make that clear. There are people looking for it right
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now. We don't know that it exists. That would be a massive story
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and we'll be headline number one on that Days Made of Stars when we find
28:42
that out. But the idea is that it is possibly there and maybe even
28:48
likely there. So whatever your rocket fuel constituent and wherever you get it,
28:52
you want less of it so you can have more stuff or get there quicker.
28:55
All right, let's talk meteors, because we've gone through this phase of
29:00
new meteors than a meteor shower that they had to go back and reevaluate where
29:04
they came from. And we've gone through kind of some of our regular annuals
29:10
and we have our early January meteor shower. There have been a lot of
29:15
unusual meteor shower stories lately, haven't there. Yes, So this is from
29:21
spaceweather dot com. It's great website. Check it out for all the sun
29:23
monitoring and local environment of your Earth as it travels around the Sun kind of
29:29
stories. But this one is about the meteor shower on January the fourth.
29:33
It's called the quadrantids. So if you woke up this morning and you saw
29:37
some little streaks of light in the sky, could be that could also be
29:41
over the next few days. If you're hearing this podcast near to live,
29:44
or if you just want to, you know, set your calendar for next
29:45
year January fourth, the quadranted meteor shower. These meteors come from what they
29:52
think is an extinct comet. It's called two thousand and three e h one,
29:59
so that's the name the object. But this object is thought to be
30:03
either a dead comet or Astronomers have been discussing a new kind of object called
30:08
a rock comet, which just means comets are mostly an ice ball. This
30:14
has a lot larger component to it of solid, rocky type materials than you
30:19
would expect in your average comet. So there's this kind of hybrid between a
30:26
comet and an asteroid. They're calling it a rock comet. Anyway, so
30:30
two thousand and three e H one could be that kind of object. But
30:33
anyway, as it goes around the Sun and kind of melts and vaporizes,
30:38
it leaves a big debris trail and the Earth runs into it. And that
30:41
happens on on or about January the fourth, and so you see a lot
30:47
of them. Leftover material from that object streaking in through Earth's atmosphere, burning
30:52
up into high points of the sky in the middle of the night, and
30:56
causing what's called the quadranted meteor shower. Now you might be thinking, wait
31:00
a minute, I know this from childhood. METI your showers are named after
31:04
constellations. Well, what the heck is a quadranted I've you know, I've
31:10
heard of Perseus, and I've heard of Lira, and I've heard of some
31:12
of these other ones that I know what the lyrids are, and the perseods
31:17
are, and the leonids are. They're named after constellations. I don't know
31:22
what quadrantids are. Well. There used to be a constellation called quadrans Euralus
31:29
that astronomers discarded back in the eighteen hundreds. They just they just abandon it.
31:36
And it's up around the modern day. I say modern day. It's
31:38
still a long time ago. Modern day constellation of bootes the herdsman and so
31:45
really, these quadranted meteors come in in a direction that's relatively close to the
31:51
constellation of bootes. And if you're ever hanging around me, please don't call
31:56
it booties because it just hurts my head. The constel b O O T
32:00
e S. Do not pronounce it booties. Get out of my head,
32:04
Sean, It just it hurts my soul. Quess I didn't say it.
32:10
I just said I was thinking it. That's all wastes. No, yeah,
32:20
just that's if you if you're looking in the direction of booties. Uh
32:24
is that usually kind of where Uranus is hanging out? I don't know.
32:28
Anyway. All right, let's talk about twenty twenty four. We're your guys
32:32
are back and in the Coca Cola Space Science Center of Columbus State University.
32:37
And uh and I know you guys, uh, I guess with kids back
32:43
in school, we're recording this on the fourth, so a lot of the
32:46
area school started back today, so I know you guys will re begin your
32:51
schedule of having kids coming in, uh to visit the facilities. Plus you've
32:54
got some things on the calendar. Yeah, as we are beginning the school
32:59
year, we have a brand new set of school visits coming. Our first
33:05
school visit is tomorrow, so we're we're getting the building ready today for the
33:08
invading armies arriving in giant yellow buses and coming in to see us here at
33:13
Space Side Center. We're very happy to have those school children from our local
33:16
school district coming in. But we are also debuting a brand new exhibit.
33:22
It just opened right at the end of twenty twenty three. It's sponsored by
33:27
Pratt and Whitney and it's called the Guzzle Vortex, and it is engaging for
33:31
the youngest children, but really for the whole family, and it teaches them
33:36
concepts about flight like that Ingenuity helicopter up on Mars. It also teaches them
33:43
concepts about the search for alien life or what we would call extraterrestrial life on
33:50
exoplanets out there in the Solar System. We're in the galaxy rather, and
33:53
so it's an interesting exhibit and we're very proud to debut that exhibit at the
33:59
end of last year. And if you've seen it yet, come on down
34:00
and check that out. And of course our show schedule at our Otmosphere Theater,
34:05
and all the information about our hours and our costs and all the things
34:07
you need to know to visit the space sides that are write our website.
34:10
Check it out www dot cc SSC dot org. Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot
34:19
org and Happy New Year, Thank you for listening, and Sean and I
34:23
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