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Crew-9 Had to Board Their Dragon and Move It · Made of Stars

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  Speaker 1: Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics,
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  Speaker 1: and space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been
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  Speaker 1: known to learn about astronomical phenomenon, the scientific method, and
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  Speaker 1: expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism and uranus. Listen,
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  Speaker 1: that's your own risk.
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  Speaker 2: Go ahead. When made of stars, made them stars.
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  Speaker 3: Made sizes.
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  Speaker 4: When made us stars, you could be from high they
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  Speaker 4: would New Mexicomus where a.
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  Speaker 5: Stars? When we are made of stars.
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  Speaker 4: I'm West Carol, joined by my good friend doctor Sean
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  Speaker 4: on cruising from Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center.
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  Speaker 4: Morning Sean, Good morning, Wes.
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  Speaker 2: Good to be here today.
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  Speaker 4: We got a SpaceX heavy schedule of things to talk
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  Speaker 4: about today, and I guess, well, because a couple of
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  Speaker 4: things happened earlier this week. As basically, the International Space
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  Speaker 4: Station one of those things that you probably don't really
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  Speaker 4: think about. I think there's just sort of this idea
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  Speaker 4: that something goes up, something docks, it's there, and then
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  Speaker 4: eventually when it undocks, it's coming home. But this is
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  Speaker 4: kind of a neat thing that had to happen. They
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  Speaker 4: had to like move it in the docking process. It
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  Speaker 4: had to go from one place to another. Is that
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  Speaker 4: what they did so that they could, you know, bring
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  Speaker 4: up tang and granola bars and stuff.
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  Speaker 3: Sometimes you've just parked in the wrong spot, like if
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  Speaker 3: you've ever lived in an apartment complex, like your friends
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  Speaker 3: came over for a pizza party to watch the game, whatever,
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  Speaker 3: they parked in the neighbors spot.
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  Speaker 2: It happens. That's ever happened to you. It happens, yep, yep.
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  Speaker 2: So so sometimes you had to.
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  Speaker 3: Say, hey, man, I'm really sorry you got to move
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  Speaker 3: your car. There's a spot right across the lot if
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  Speaker 3: you can just you don't mind, just kind of get
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  Speaker 3: almost back straight up, you know, just back into that
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  Speaker 3: other spot over there, because I know you didn't do
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  Speaker 3: this on purpose, but you parked in my neighbor's designated
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  Speaker 3: spot here at the apartment complex.
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  Speaker 4: Or maybe International Space Station is similar to that, Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: would saying maybe it's as simple as, uh, I know,
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  Speaker 4: this is your spot, but it's right in front of
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  Speaker 4: the door where I need to unload all of some
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  Speaker 4: new furniture. So is it possible that you could move
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  Speaker 4: and take my spot for a little while today? You know,
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  Speaker 4: because that's that's kind of the case. They needed a resupply.
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  Speaker 5: What are they? What are they?
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  Speaker 4: I saw it with six thousand pounds of stuff. I
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  Speaker 4: want to get to that.
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  Speaker 5: In a minute.
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  Speaker 4: We're going to come back to six thousand pounds.
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  Speaker 2: But anyway, I mean, those are some heavy astronauts.
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  Speaker 3: Obviously, it doesn't weigh that much in zero gravity, so
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  Speaker 3: true on Earth at six thousand yea from twinkies, yes,
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  Speaker 3: but in space those twinkies weigh a lot less.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, they do, even when they've been sitting around for
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  Speaker 4: a while, because you know, they last forever.
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  Speaker 3: They do Apparently they do well, all right, So no,
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  Speaker 3: I mean it's a little bit hard.
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  Speaker 2: Imagine this.
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  Speaker 3: Imagine if when your friend who parked in the wrong
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  Speaker 3: parking space when they came to visit you at the
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  Speaker 3: apartment complex. Imagine they all had to they all had
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  Speaker 3: to get in the car, like the entire family had
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  Speaker 3: to get in the car, and they had to be
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  Speaker 3: in space suits to just back it up to go
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  Speaker 3: just back across the parking lot into another spot.
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  Speaker 2: Well, that doesn't happen at the end.
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  Speaker 3: That's silly at the apartment complex, But if you're on
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  Speaker 3: the International Space Station, that's exactly what happens. So anytime
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  Speaker 3: that vehicle is undocked, all of the spaceflight participants must
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  Speaker 3: be in their seats, in their suits, as if they're
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  Speaker 3: ready to go home. So that makes this whole process
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  Speaker 3: just a whole lot more difficult. So NASA's Crew nine
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  Speaker 3: Dragon spacecraft, let's remember, folks, that's the one that just
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  Speaker 3: went up with only two astronauts on board, because there's
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  Speaker 3: already two astronauts on the space station that have to
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  Speaker 3: come home on that vehicle because Boeing, we'll just leave
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  Speaker 3: it there anyway, So.
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  Speaker 4: Do they they have to get on there because in
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  Speaker 4: the chance, and I guess there's always a chance there's
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  Speaker 4: an issue with redocking, they may have to then immediately
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  Speaker 4: come home.
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  Speaker 5: I mean, is that on the table.
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  Speaker 3: If for whatever reason, something goes amiss and that vehicle
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  Speaker 3: just has to return to the Earth. They need all
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  Speaker 3: the people on board that it's supposed to carry.
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  Speaker 2: Again, you know, think Boeing.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah here, Well, I was gonna say, wouldn't that just
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  Speaker 4: be the way for Williams and Wilmore. I mean, they've
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  Speaker 4: they've already been through a lot now at that point,
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  Speaker 4: if they were forced to come home, could the headline
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  Speaker 4: be they're stuck in the craft that's coming home like that.
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  Speaker 4: Would that would be the clickmaite version of that story,
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  Speaker 4: wouldn't it?
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  Speaker 2: It could be. I keep thinking back to the pizza party.
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  Speaker 3: Imagine you came to the pizza party at the apartment
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  Speaker 3: complex with someone else and and they're just going to
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  Speaker 3: back that car up, you know, across the parking lot.
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  Speaker 3: You're going, Oh, no, no, I missed my last ride home.
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  Speaker 3: I'm not missing this ride home. Just in case you
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  Speaker 3: decide not to park that car and just drive home,
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  Speaker 3: I'm gonna be in the vehicle with.
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  Speaker 2: You, all right.
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  Speaker 3: So astronauts Nick Haig, Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore and
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  Speaker 3: Roalse Cosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbanov all had to put on
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  Speaker 3: their spacesuits and they all had to jump in the
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  Speaker 3: Dragon capsule just in case it left the pizza party
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  Speaker 3: and headed for home without them. Can't let that happen.
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  Speaker 3: So they all jumped in that and they undock from
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  Speaker 3: what's called the Harmony port. It's the port on the
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  Speaker 3: forward facing Harmony module, and they moved to the Zenith port,
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  Speaker 3: which is a port that faces away from Earth on
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  Speaker 3: the top of the International Space Station. They moved to
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  Speaker 3: a different parking spot. So they undocked from the forward
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  Speaker 3: facing port from the station's Harmony module at six thirty
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  Speaker 3: five AM Eastern Time, and then they redoct with the
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  Speaker 3: Zenith module at approximately seven to twenty five AM Eastern Time.
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  Speaker 3: And therefore, you know, they can they can do that
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  Speaker 3: autonomous redock, by the way, because it's kind of like
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  Speaker 3: a Tesla, you know, it is a Dragon, so it
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  Speaker 3: can actually autonomously redock to the station.
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  Speaker 2: So they did that.
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  Speaker 3: So the maneuver then opened up a port for SpaceX's
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  Speaker 3: thirty first commercial resupply mission to bring a bunch of
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  Speaker 3: experiments and twinkies up to the International Space Station. So
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  Speaker 3: Hagen gorbut Off those two have They arived at the
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  Speaker 3: space station on September twenty ninth. Again, they're riding two
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  Speaker 3: people in a four seater back in the end of
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  Speaker 3: September in the crewed eyed Dragon, and that's so that
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  Speaker 3: they can save room for Butch and Sonny to ride
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  Speaker 3: back home with them in February of twenty twenty five.
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  Speaker 3: But once again they all had to get aboard the
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  Speaker 3: vehicle in order to make that move.
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  Speaker 2: And it's not a small thing.
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  Speaker 3: It's anytime a space capsule is undocking from the space
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  Speaker 3: station with human beings on board, they have to do
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  Speaker 3: a substantial amount of preparation and they can't leave anybody
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  Speaker 3: who's supposed to be on that vehicle waiting inside the
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  Speaker 3: floating space station, because if it has to come back home,
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  Speaker 3: everybody has to be on board.
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  Speaker 4: As much as it would seem like all of this
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  Speaker 4: is routine, especially with the vehicle doing most of the work,
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  Speaker 4: I would think it's sort of like the analogy about,
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  Speaker 4: you know, minor surgery. They always say minor surgery is
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  Speaker 4: surgery being done on someone that's not you or a
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  Speaker 4: loved one. So I would think, you know, they're showing
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  Speaker 4: that this is not a small thing just by them
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  Speaker 4: all being in the craft and buckled up and ready
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  Speaker 4: to come home just in case.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's right.
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  Speaker 4: And so.
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  Speaker 3: No extra vehicular activity, which is a way to think
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  Speaker 3: about it, once you leave the space station, at no
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  Speaker 3: time that you would ever do that as an astronaut.
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  Speaker 2: Is it a small thing.
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  Speaker 3: There are a substantial checklist of safety measures that have
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  Speaker 3: to be followed, that have to be carefully considered, and
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  Speaker 3: so even just moving a spacecraft from one berth to
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  Speaker 3: a different berth aboard the space station is a big deal.
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  Speaker 4: Is it common to have to move them in this
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  Speaker 4: situation or is this I mean something that's like typically
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  Speaker 4: are they able to plan ahead to know that they
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  Speaker 4: need to be in a different place or does it
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  Speaker 4: have to do with whether unloading or I mean some
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  Speaker 4: of this. You may not know exactly what's going on
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  Speaker 4: up there, but just curious about that.
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  Speaker 3: Let me play a word game with you and just
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  Speaker 3: say it's not uncommon, right, So it's not like unheard
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  Speaker 3: of that they would have to do this.
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  Speaker 2: It does happen, And.
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  Speaker 3: What happens is this sometimes the configuration of spacecraft that
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  Speaker 3: are docked to the space station when you arrive is
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  Speaker 3: not the same as the configuration that maybe when you
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  Speaker 3: leave right or in this case, something that was docked
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  Speaker 3: to the space station that made it convenient to unload
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  Speaker 3: one thing is now in the way when you need
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  Speaker 3: to unload some other things, and so you shift vehicles around.
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  Speaker 3: Now they don't it's not a preferred maneuver. Right As
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  Speaker 3: they're working out the logistics of things, they would like
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  Speaker 3: a space vehicle to dock once stay in that spot
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  Speaker 3: until it's ready to come back home. So always when
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  Speaker 3: you have a situation like that, it's just been that
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  Speaker 3: the logistics didn't allow for any other docking configuration. So
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  Speaker 3: it's not taken lightly. It's not that often, but it's
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  Speaker 3: also not unheard of, and they certainly have done it
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  Speaker 3: in the past.
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  Speaker 4: So let's talk about what they were taking. You said, so,
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  Speaker 4: we said six thousand pounds of supplies. And I understand
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  Speaker 4: the situation of the fact that weightlessness there as far
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  Speaker 4: as you know how heavy it is, but it still
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  Speaker 4: would be a lot of stuff. So is there any
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  Speaker 4: factor in in that? I mean, is there a maximum
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  Speaker 4: amount of things that they could put up there as
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  Speaker 4: far as weight goes? I mean, I understand there's a
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  Speaker 4: maximum amount of space, but is this is this something
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  Speaker 4: that has to be factored in? Can they put six
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  Speaker 4: thousand pounds of stuff in, you know, a basically weightless
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  Speaker 4: thing in orbit and put it all in one part
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  Speaker 4: of the ship and it not the International Space Station?
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  Speaker 4: Did it not affect it?
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  Speaker 5: Or does it have to.
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  Speaker 4: Be evenly distributed?
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  Speaker 5: Like what you know?
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  Speaker 4: I think I'm I think I'm asking the right question, right.
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  Speaker 2: You you are asking the right question. I will tell
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  Speaker 2: you this think of it this way. They always try
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  Speaker 2: to put them maximum amount.
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  Speaker 3: Of cargo into a dragon, right, So six thousand pounds
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  Speaker 3: sounds like a lot.
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  Speaker 2: That's the load every time, right.
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  Speaker 3: So they don't want to send it up half full ever,
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  Speaker 3: because of the cost of launch, right, So they never
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  Speaker 3: want to leave a nook or crammy unavailable. So maybe
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  Speaker 3: the weight changes a little bit, but the space occupation
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  Speaker 3: definitely does not. They want to send that thing up
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  Speaker 3: as full as they can every single time when it
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  Speaker 3: gets up to orbit. It's not the same as like
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  Speaker 3: an airplane that is having to stay aloft due to
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  Speaker 3: lift and you have to balance the plane around the
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  Speaker 3: lift points and things like that. It's simply a mass
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  Speaker 3: in freefall when it's aboard the International Space Station.
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  Speaker 2: And that's what people I think.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe you don't get that idea, You don't think about
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  Speaker 3: that idea in a common, everyday thing. But you don't
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  Speaker 3: have the International Space Station up firing its little engines
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  Speaker 3: all the time like a plane would be running its
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  Speaker 3: engines to stay aloft in the atmosphere. The space station
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  Speaker 3: is simply falling in gravity, except it's falling in a
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  Speaker 3: clever way because falling with style as buzz Lightyear would.
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  Speaker 4: Say, and it has to do with the rotation of
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  Speaker 4: the Earth along with it, right, Yeah, so's there's some
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  Speaker 4: factor with that, but mostly it just is it's just
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  Speaker 4: a mass that's in freefall around the Earth.
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  Speaker 3: It's following a trajectory that would bring it back down
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  Speaker 3: to the ground, except that its trajectory is so high
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  Speaker 3: that it simply is falling at the same curvature as
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  Speaker 3: the curvature of the Earth, and so it's falling and
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  Speaker 3: missing and falling and missing and falling and missing and
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  Speaker 3: falling and missing. So a way to describe orbit is
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  Speaker 3: simply freefall.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 3: The space station is in freefall, so it kind of
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  Speaker 3: doesn't matter where you put the stuff. It's just more
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  Speaker 3: mass that's in freefall around the Earth. It's not having
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  Speaker 3: to actually negotiate any kind of lift to stay aloft.
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  Speaker 3: Now that doesn't mean that once in a while they
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  Speaker 3: don't correct the orbit of.
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  Speaker 2: The space station.
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  Speaker 3: They do that, so sometimes that orbit can it's running
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  Speaker 3: into just enough. You think about like space is like,
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  Speaker 3: well it's above the atmosphere. Well, the atmosphere doesn't have
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  Speaker 3: a stop a stopping line, right, there's not like a
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  Speaker 3: line of is Okay, there's no air above here anymore.
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  Speaker 3: It's a gradient, and so it's a gradient, a continuum
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  Speaker 3: if you will, that progressively decreases as you go into space.
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  Speaker 3: So yes, you're above the majority of the atmosphere, but
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  Speaker 3: there's still enough very tenuous, thin atmosphere out there to
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  Speaker 3: cause a bit of drag on the International Space Station,
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  Speaker 3: and so once in a while they have to just
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  Speaker 3: nudge it back up to its nominal orbit using onboard
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  Speaker 3: navigation propulsion systems. So if they do that as a
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  Speaker 3: corrective measure once in a while, but all the rest
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  Speaker 3: of the time the thing is simply in free fall,
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  Speaker 3: so the district imbustion doesn't matter in a kind of
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  Speaker 3: aviation perspective. Aboard the space station, however, it's going to
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  Speaker 3: be in the way, right. So you're trying to work
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  Speaker 3: up there in the National Space Station, and even though
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  Speaker 3: you're not walking, you're floating around. You might still trip
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  Speaker 3: on a box of twinkies. So you got to put
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  Speaker 3: those boxes of twinkies away. You've got to get all
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  Speaker 3: that stuff stowed in the proper areas where a it
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  Speaker 3: can be safe to navigate around for the astronauts, and
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  Speaker 3: b if it is some kind of an experiment. It's
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  Speaker 3: in the right module that they can actually hook that
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  Speaker 3: experiment up and actually perform the experiment or use the
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  Speaker 3: equipment in the way that was intended when they set
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  Speaker 3: it up. So, yeah, six thousand pounds, it's a that's earthweight. Obviously,
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  Speaker 3: it's a big mass. It's a lot of stuff to
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  Speaker 3: take up there. It's a very full dragon capsule, and
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  Speaker 3: there are a big variety of items on board for
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  Speaker 3: all the things that life could entail if you were
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  Speaker 3: living for six months or more a board that floating
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  Speaker 3: laboratory at the International Space Station.
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  Speaker 4: I guess what I was getting at with the question
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  Speaker 4: about the weight has to do with it's it, and
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  Speaker 4: I think you touched on at the beginning. It's more
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  Speaker 4: about the lift off as far as what the weight
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  Speaker 4: is than it is about when it's actually aboard the
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: International Space Station. There's no like at that point. It's
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  Speaker 4: just how much space is it taken up? And is
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  Speaker 4: is there enough room for people to navigate around and
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  Speaker 4: sleep and do all the experiments and things they got
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: to do up there, right, because we hear these stories
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  Speaker 4: about them, you know, sleeping in a dock, you know,
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  Speaker 4: one of the docked craft that are there and you go, well,
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: that's a place to sleep, that could be a bedroom
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: or if they need to, and sort of those sorts
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: of things. Let's talk about the starship Boo. We've talked
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: about the catch, the remarkable robotic sci fi like old
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: sci fi movie looking catch that that's absolutely real and
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: what that means as far as eventually landing on the
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: Moon again, because it all it's all connected, and that's important.
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: There's an importance to that catch more than just boy,
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  Speaker 4: that looked cool.
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  Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
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  Speaker 3: And to say that that looks like a science fiction movie,
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  Speaker 3: I mean it was science fiction until they pulled it off, right,
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  Speaker 3: it is science fiction on October twelfth, the day before
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  Speaker 3: they did it. On October thirteenth, they pulled it off
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  Speaker 3: and it becomes science fact. So so yeah, it's just
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  Speaker 3: unlike anything that anybody's ever seen in terms of rocket
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  Speaker 3: performance before it. You mean, you can catch those things
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  Speaker 3: out of the air, so now they don't even need
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: landing gear and that actually speeds up the process of
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: refueling them and getting them ready to launch again. And
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: the answer to all of that, as of October thirteenth,
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  Speaker 3: from SpaceX is now. Yes, yes, we can grab it
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: out of the air, we can refuel it, we can
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  Speaker 3: turn it around more quickly. Now, what's happened in the
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: meantime and why we're talking about it again today, is
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: that some of the folks from the Artemis program have
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: come out and commented on this.
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  Speaker 2: Now, so Star is.
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  Speaker 3: The prime vehicle for the Artemis three mission, and that
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: is part of what they call the Human Landing System.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: That's a component of the Artemis program. And to say
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: it's NASA's Artemis program is maybe a little bit redundant,
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: but it is that.
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  Speaker 2: So this is a This is a NASA program manager.
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  Speaker 3: His name is Kent Kojanki, and Kent Kojenki came out
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: and commented on the fact that now that SpaceX and
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: Starship has achieved this, it's getting us closer to actually
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: being able to put people on the Moon. Now, if
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: you're not familiar with the whole Artemis method, there's a
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: giant rocket called the Space Launch System. It's basically a
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: Frankenstein rocket built out of old Space Shuttle components, and
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: that is designed to get something called the Orion capsule
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: not only into orbit, but also out of Earth orbit
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: and all the way to the Moon. But once Oryan
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: arrives at the Moon, the plan is for the astronauts
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: to transfer to another vehicle that can take them to
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: the surface of the Moon. So now they're in a
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: Hershey's Kiss type shaped spacecraft called the Orion Capsule. They
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: catch a ride in lunar orbit after having dock to
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: a different vehicle. Then they ride that ride down to
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: the surface. They walk around for a while, they pick
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: up a few rocks, they buy a souvenir T shirt.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: They get back on that vehicle again. Don't forget them
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: back to lunar orbit, don't forget Hy's Kiss and come
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: back home.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: Don't forget nine holes. They got to play nine holes.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, if Alan Shepherd could hit one ball,
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: surely they.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Can get around a mini.
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: Golf in I would say, I always think, at the
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: very least, sorry kind of cut you off. So then
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: they go back up and then readock and then finish
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: the process back.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's important to know what they're going to
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: be doing actually on the surface. I think mini golf
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: is it would perform a variety of physics demonstrations which
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: we all should see.
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: So that's still still like Norm McDonald's like he's looking out,
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: Colin's looking out. They're playing golf, he said it a
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: little differently than that.
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: But they're playing golf.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: They doing out there.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: So this is uh, I mean, and I think that
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: all of that gets lost in the fact that this
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: this thing did look And I guess I think that's
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: what's fascinating to me, is it looks so cool that
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: you go, yeah, but that's like a that's like, you know,
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: like a one hundredth of the significance of this is
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: how cool it looked, right, because this is a massive
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: step forward.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: It's a huge step forward. So how does all this
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: stuff tie in with Starship? Well, starship is the ride.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: It's the ride down to the surface. It's the ride
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: back to the Hershey's kiss, so they can get back home. Right,
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: So what starship has to do, well, I should say this,
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: what SpaceX has to do is be able to put
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: a starship in lunar orbit, sitting there waiting to dock
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: up with the Orion capsule, to go down to the
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: surface and then launch back again off the lunar surface
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: reconnect with Orion. Well, so, so the starship is the
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: front payload The thing that got captured by the tower
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: was the main booster. That's the rocket to get it
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: off the ground. But here's the other piece. In order
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: to get starships in orbit around the Moon, you have
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: to put a whole bunch of fuel into Earth orbit.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: And that's because the starship has to launch from Earth,
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: use all of its fuel to get itself into orbit,
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: then dock with an orbiting gas station, refuel, then launch
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: itself to lunar orbit so it can have all the
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: fuel it needs to do all the maneuvers it has
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: to do. Okay, So how did catching a giant booster
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: with Mechazilla, the big you know tongs out there, the
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: chopsticks as they call them. How how did that help
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: all of this? Well, it's because it enables SpaceX to
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: have rapid reusability of that main stage booster for starship.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: In other words, they demonstrated by capturing it that they
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: have the ability to fuel it and turn it around
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: for launch again in a very rapid configuration, which they're
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: going to need.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: To get all that fuel to space.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: Let me go back to doctor Kent Kojanki from the
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: Human Landing System Program with NASA. Here's a quote from Kent.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: He says this, what's interesting to us is for the
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: architecture that SpaceX has proposed in implementing that they're implementing,
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: they're going to have to do several launches in order
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: to aggregate propellant in low Earth orbit prior to going
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: to the Moon. Being able to rapidly reuse the boosters
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: demonstrates that cadence. So what doctor Kojenki is saying is
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: because they were able to grab that main stage booster
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: out of the air, they demonstrated that they could both
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: do that landing but also preserve it for a rapid
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: refuel and relaunch necessary to fuel all these orbiting gas
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: stations so that in SpaceX starship can launch to the Moon,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: so that they can provide a ride down to the
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: service to the Moon for the Artemis astronauts. Wow, I mean, folks,
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: it's not easy. It's rocket science, right, So all of
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: these things are very complicated, but this is a major,
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: major step forward in something that looked a lot like
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: science fiction, probably on paper, even to those people at NASA.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: SpaceX pulled it off, demonstrated that they could do it,
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: and they are now one giant leap closer to landing
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: people back on the moon again very soon.
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: Coming up after a quick break, we have to say
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: farewell to a new friend we hardly knew you. We'll
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: do that right after this. All right, We got all
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: caught up in talking about the comets. We had a
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: couple of comments to talk about. And sometimes with comets,
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: they start getting anywhere in the proximity of heat, you know,
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: like a star in our case, the sun. And you know,
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: they're primarily made of ice and rocks, so ice and
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: heat sometimes don't make for a good combination. So Comet
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: Atlas did not survive.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: So the very very interesting commet that we saw at
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: the first of the month of October, which is Comet
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: tea Atlas, which had many many people around the globe
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: talking about it, say wow, spectacular show. People got pictures
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: with their cell phones. It was bright enough to be
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: able to do that. That was a lot of fun.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: When's the next one? When is the next one going
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: to come around? And so experts out there, you know,
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: comment experts. They like their moment in the sun, so
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: to speak, and they were saying, well, we have another one.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: There's another one that at the end of this very
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: month might very well, put on a show. It could
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: be oh, I don't know, brighter than venus, which is
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: a bold claim for any comet. So so what they
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: you know, what they always say but doesn't seem to
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: make the headlines, shall we say, is well, there's actually
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: a very slim chance for this comment to be able
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: to actually survive because before it would appear in the
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: evening sky as a very very bright comment, it has
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: to pass by the sun in an extraordinarily close approach.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: That's the part that I guess people just didn't generally
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: read down far enough to see or whatever. Certainly, the
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: people who do space media or media in general, they
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: just want people to read their stories, so maybe they
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: de emphasize that piece. Well guess what that was also
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: called comment Atlas? Why was it called Comet atlis the
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: second comet because it was discovered by the same Atlas
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: survey system, which is an acronym for a detecting a
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: detection method for finding near Earth objects. It's in Hawaii anyway,
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: so that system both found Comet tea Atlas, which is
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: Chu Chin Shawn Atlas, and this next comet Atlas, so
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: chu Chinshawan Atlas was Comet ce twenty twenty three A
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: three and the other Comet Atlas was C twenty twenty
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: four S one. See they have different catalog numbers. They're
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: not the same comet. So when the second one, that
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: might have been a follow up to Comet tea atless
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: which everybody got to see, when the second one came
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: around to its time to draw near to the Sun,
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: it simply got too close and vaporized. And in fact,
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory we know it SOHO, the
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: coronagraphs on SOHO captured the demise of this comet. It
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: captured the disintegration and you can actually see that video.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: There's a great video post on Sky and Telescope dot
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: com where they show that video from the SOHO coronagraph
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: You can see that comet just get too close to
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: the Sun and absolutely melt and disappear. So sadly for
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: commet hunters everywhere, the second Comet Atlas that was supposed
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: to come around toward the end of October into early November,
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: it simply did not survive. It died in Periheliu and
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: its closest approach to the Sun on October the twenty.
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: Eighth, I mean, ice plus heat.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: It's not a good comedy.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: It's not typically a good thing, so I mean, and
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: we talked about the possibility of that when we were
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: first discussing it. So let's talk about the Parker Solar
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: Probe because this is something also that we've been talking
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: about for a while.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, ice plus heat, it's almost the same story, except
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: it's not ice this time. It's well, it's materials from
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: the surface of the Earth, which when they get hot
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: close enough to the Sun, they get so hot that
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: they would vaporize eventually too. But Parker's Solar Probe is
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: a spacecraft that was specifically designed to fly through the outer.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Reaches of the Sun.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: And something interesting is it made a close pass by
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: the planet Venus on November six, which is Wednesday, and
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: it is delivering data from that close pass. So that's
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: already something kind of cool. But it with this flyby
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: around Venus, it kind of altered its trajectory that's going
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: to bring it to a very very close pass by
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: the surface of the Sun. In fact, a mere three
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: point eighty six million miles from the solar surface. That
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: sounds like a long ways. I certainly want to wouldn't
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: want to paint a stripe that long. But in terms
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: of spacecraft drawing near to the surface of the Sun,
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: that is actually super close. So that will happen on
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: December twenty fourth, Christmas Eve twenty twenty four, and when
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: that pass takes place, it will be the closest that
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: any human object, human made object, any human made object,
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: has ever been to the Sun. We've never had any
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: kind of spacecraft drawn that near to the Sun. No
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: human made object has ever passed as close to any star.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: And so the Parker Solar Probe's data will really be
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: charting unknown territory. It'll be gathering data from a place
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: that no data has ever been gathered before, and that
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: includes maybe traveling through a plasma plume off the surface.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: This is like.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: When there's a big storm on the Sun Sunspot group
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: and particles are actually ejected off the surface to these
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: intense magnetic fields around sunspot groups. It creates something called
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: a filament or a prominence. It's a giant arch of
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: plasma that's ejected off the surface. Well, Parker might actually
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: fly through one of those. That obviously would be a first.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: So this is an absolutely amazing set of events that
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: are set up to take place. We have a quote
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: from Gnome Eisenberg from Johns Hopkins University about the pass
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: by the surface of Venus. First, because what the spacecraft
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: is going to do now that it's passed by the
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: surface of Venus, it's able to turn away from the
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: Sun and look at the patterns in the solar wind,
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: which may actually help us detect landforms on the surface
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: of Venus. So again Gnome Eisenberg from Johns Hopkins says
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: this quote because it flies over a number of similar
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: and different landforms than previous Venus flybys. Umber six flyby
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: gave us more context to evaluate whether the Whisper camera
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: can help us distinguish physical or even chemical properties.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: On the surface of Venus.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: Unquote Johns Hopkins researcher talking about the close pass of
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: Venus that it made on Wednesday, and now it's often
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: to make this super close pass of the Sun on
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: Christmas Eve, December twenty twenty fourth. So let's hear it
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: for the Parker Solar Probe and amazing and adventurous spacecraft.
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: And I'm assuming there's a possibility this thing, doesn't you
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: know last long? I mean, there's a possibility, right, I.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Mean, since since we've never had a vehicle that close
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: to the Sun, we just don't know, right, We don't know, right.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: We know we designed it to do this.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: It's it's designed is to fly this incredibly close pass
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: and then a couple of days later, turn around and
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: send a little ping back to the Earth saying I
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: made it. Yep. Well, they don't put that feature on
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: a spacecraft if they don't think there's at least a
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: chance it might not make it, right, and so, so
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: certainly there is a chance that Parker doesn't survive the
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: Christmas Eve pass of the Sun. We'll all be watching
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: Christmas morning. It will be one of our presents for
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: a space geeks. You know, we'll we'll get up and
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: we'll try to see if Parker pinged back to the Earth.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: But anyway, so, so yeah, it's there. There is definitely
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: a chance it won't make it. If it does make it,
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: it will park itself in an orbit, a permanent orbit
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: around the Sun, where we will then just continue to
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: make semi close passes and send data back to the
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: Earth about the nature of the sun environment.
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: So they didn't put like a container of you know,
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: popcorn kernels in it just to see what would happen
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: as it passed by, and then it could deliver the
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: you know, radiated popcorn back to the earth.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Like that's not good. I mean, that was our Native
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Stars proposal that we sent in.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: We tried, we tried to get a partnership with or
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: Redenbacher and it just didn't didn't work out. W Shiffy
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: Pop two, any of those. The final Music Under the
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: Dome of twenty twenty four has happened. It's in the
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: books and you guys can It's not done though. Because
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: of the school year, the way the calendar year works
• 32:19
  Speaker 4: for schools, there are more shows in the season. They
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: just don't come back until March.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: Even though we're looking at the calendar ending for twenty
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: twenty four, as Wes just said, our academic year is
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: only about halfway over, and so we have lots more
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: music under the Dome concerts that are coming up next spring.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: I will tell you these concerts are just fantastic. There's
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: so much fun and there's such a great time. I
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: would encourage anybody to look into purchasing your tickets ahead
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: of time. What happens is that people find out about
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: and they think, oh, okay, I'll get those tickets. Well
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: then they wait until like a day or two before
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: the show and our tickets are sold out. That happened
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: here at this last concert. And then I had many
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: email inquiries from friends say hey, do you got some
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: of those tickets? Can you hold some tickets for me?
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: And the answer was no, I can't because they're all
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: sold out. See, so that's the problem. We save a
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: certain number for day of the show sales at the door,
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: but that's a.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: Very small number.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: So once again, friends, if you're in the area and
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: you haven't seen a music end of the Dome concert,
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: I would highly encourage you to purchase those tickets online
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: ahead of the show.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: You can do that by visiting www.
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: Dot cc s SC dot org Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: dot org. And also while you're there, you can find
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: out all about the latest happenings of the Coca Cola
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: Space Science Center, where our next astronomy nights are going
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: to be, when our Christmas Planetarium show is coming online
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: all of those fun facts. Check out the website once again,
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org cc s SC dot org.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Sean and I thank you for listening, and we'll do
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus has
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