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Three Robotics Missions Aiming for the Moon in January · 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 and uranus.
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Listen, that's your own risk, Go ahead. Were made of stars?
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Made them stars, made sizes? Where madea stars? You could be
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from high? They would New Mexico, maas where on stars? Whenens?
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We are made of stars? Joined by my good friend doctor Sean Cruising from
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Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Sign Center. I'm West, Carol, Morning
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Sean, Good morning West, Good to be here with you today. We
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last week talked about the cannibal CME that was getting ready to wreak potential havoc
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on the Earth and communication and all sorts of problems that were potential there for
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it could have had an impact on people trying to watch football last weekend,
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and there were some important football games last weekend, some more important than others
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apparently, But that's another story in debate, for another conversation for another time.
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But this particular CME, at the very least dazzled the sky with lights
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and gave folks a show across the country, really, especially over in the
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southwest. Did we have any communication issues that were noted? And can you
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talk a little bit about the cannibal CME. Yeah, So, first of
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all, let's talk about the cannibal CME. What CME is is a coronal
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mass ejection from the Sun. It's material shooting out at the Sun at a
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very high rate of speed, heading out into the Solar system. Just so
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happens that a few of those events took place within close proximity in terms of
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time last week, and as they were making the way across the Solar system,
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the last and strongest of them was moving faster than the first few,
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which means it caught up with them, and so their arrival times were closer
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to the same time. Because that final coronal mass ejection, a big wave
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of particles moving toward the Earth from an explosion on the Sun, swept up
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the other two. Now you have basically what amounts to three solar storms all
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combining into one solar storm and hitting a at the same time. So forecasters
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had seen that this was probably going to happen. The last time you and
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I were together putting on a podcast together last week. We kind of let
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people know, hey, watch for this as we go through the weekend,
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because it's likely going to cause some effects here on the Earth, And that
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did happen. I will tell you that I am not aware of any major
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detrimental effects in terms of equipment being lost or significant power outages or things like
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that. But what I am aware of is that it sparked a very strong
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geomagnetic storm that led to northern lights being visible a long way from the North
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pole, and likewise, southern lights in the southern hemisphere being seen a long
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way from the geographical south pole down there as well. So we had some
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very intense displays of northern lights here in the northern hemisphere. We call those
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Aurora borealis. The Aurora borealis was stronger than it's been for twenty years,
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which is a couple of solar cycles, and so this was a very intense
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storm. It was it allowed Aurora displays to be seen to reasonably southern latitudes
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here in the Northern hemisphere, like places like say Arizona and California. We're
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seeing northern lights now when you typically think of going to see northern lights.
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You travel to Alaska or northern Canada, or you might sneak off to Finland
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or Iceland or Greenland or one of those lands over there, places and places
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more northern. Hence the name right, significantly more northern than the lower tier
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of forty eight states. Yeah, except for perhaps Maine, you know,
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mains getting on up there anyway, closer to the Arctic circle. Right.
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Arizona's nowhere near the Arctic circle. That's why it's a real hot, dry
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desert. See, that's the way that goes. So when we see northern
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lights there at basically latitude thirty or thirty one something like that. Now you're
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talking about storms from the Sun impacting the magnetic field and the atmosphere of the
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Earth in such an intense way that the top seventy percent of the planet is
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glowing, or the top or the bottom I should say southern hemisphere seventy percent
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of the planet is glowing. And so if you are in northern locations here
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in the Northern hemisphere, or in reasonably southern locales like New Zealand in the
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southern hemisphere, you see very powerful and intense solar storms. And that's what
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was seen from all the places we mentioned Canada, Alaska, Finland, Iceland,
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New Zealand, in the South Australia, places like that got a chance
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to see the aurora phenomenon in both hemispheres because of this cannibal CME storm that
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arrived last weekend. Now, how did the cannibal CMEs arrival have an impact
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on Florida State not getting into the college football playoff? Do we know if
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there was any I mean, it's possible that there was an effect, right,
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Yeah. I believe that you can draw a direct correlation between the waves
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of massive waves of charged particles arriving from the Sun and whatever decision process led
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an undefeated conference champion to not be invited to the playoffs. So yeah,
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so, I mean, I think I think you can only explain it,
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in fact, by some kind of extraterrestrial phenomenon taking place, because certainly nothing
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on Earth explains that decision. It's one of those weird It's one of those
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weird things that I know, we don't talk football. There's one of those
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weird things where it's like they kind of got the right four teams and then
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two teams definitely also got screwed in the deal. So it's like those are
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both kind of true at the same time. It's just weird. But anyway,
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I feel badly for the players. I mean, we don't talk football
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on air, but we were a football off air, and sometimes it's just
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like a bit of a beauty contest. We'd rather see these teams play.
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I mean, that's just I mean, I don't know. I mean,
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and I'm not even like, I'm not like a Georgia advocate. I'm not
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a Georgia fan, but I mean, you're gonna tell me they're not one
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of the four best teams and they're not in it either, and you know,
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and then you know, it's just tricky. It's all tricky. But
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anyway, I didn't envy them, and I know they're probably all very glad
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they get to move on to the twelve team thing next year. So all
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right, I'm glad I wasn't on that committee too. By the way,
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let me just let me just throw my hat into that and say it was
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a bit of a difficult situation. I'm sure they were. They were really
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rooting all the people on that committee for certain teams to win and certain teams
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to lose because they wouldn't have to make those decisions. But yet it didn't
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work out that way. Very very true. There were six very deserving teams
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in four or spots. That was the hard part, and anybody not getting
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in you could have made a case from why they should have been in.
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But anyway, they probably said, can we just have some giant storm arrived
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from the Sun and just wipe this whole process out? Could that happen?
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Please? At least at least blame it on that. Before we leave the
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skies, I want to talk about this new meteor shower and this thing is
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going to have I'm looking at the name and it looks like maybe it's Elon
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Musk's kid's name. I don't know that it's got a lambda in the name.
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So tell me about the new meteor shower that we can expect. Well,
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first of all, you don't really get new meteor showers every day.
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I mean, the meteor showers that we experience are kind of the same meteor
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showers they were experiencing back in the days of the Greeks and Romans when that
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was the seat of civilization BC or BCE or whatever. So it's been a
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minute, and again we don't have new meteor showers because it requires a new
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comet to come by in the inner part of the Solar System and leave a
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new debris trail in the plane of the Earth's orbit for us to then pass
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through, and then debris fall from the sky to make a meteor shower.
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See, there's a lot of things that had to line up there, so
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we don't typically get new ones. However, it does occasionally happen. There
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was a comment called forty six P weird Tannin. Forty six P weird Tannin
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is the name of the comet it came by rather recently, left a new
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cloud of debris, and a meteor forecaster by the name of Jeremy val Baylon
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and colleagues have just issued a paper where they're forecasting for a brand new meteor
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shower to occur because of the position of the debris trail left over by comment
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forty six P. We're Tannin. So so, yeah, I know,
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that's a lot of weird names. Look them up? Where can you look
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them up? By the way, spaceweather dot com. That's where the story
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is coming from. So so, this group of scientists has put out a
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SkyWatch alert. Mind you, it's for it's for observers in the Southern hemisphere,
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so it's it's got kind of a southern southernly attitude in terms of where
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the impact will be on Earth with this debris stream, It'll be on the
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bottom part of the curve if you think about the basketball of the Earth.
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So this meter shower should occur sometime in December of twenty twenty three, so
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you know, for Graham and the rest of our listeners who are in the
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Southern hemisphere, we can just say, hey, keep an eye on the
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sky during December, probably maybe around like the twelfth, which is just a
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few days from now, by the way. So so you want to in
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the direction of a constellation called Sculptorus, the Sculptor, and you want to
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look in the direction of a star in that constellation, which is the Lambda
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star. So that is a certain designated star in that constellation. Check out
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a star map if you don't know which one that is. So if you
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look at the Lambda sculpt tourists star on the early morning hours of December twelfth,
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twenty twenty three, in the Southern hemisphere. It's a lot of things
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to tell you. There's a lot of qualifiers there. Yeah. Well,
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and you should also note in the southern hemisphere or Arizona for some random reason,
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and parts of Arizona. So if you do that, Sedona probably anyway.
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So if you do that, you might see a new meor shower,
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and this new meteor shower would likely have the name Lambda sculptoids, the Lambda
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sculptoroids. I don't know if you ever had the lambda sculpture before, it
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would not be it would be this sounds like a good thing you want to
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avoid the uh sculpt It's not really sculptuoroids. West and I were fooling around
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before the show. It's sculptor rids. Roids is a different thing, yeah,
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royds is. It's an entirely different part of where you want to be
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looking. And don't look there. Those are closer to asteroids. That's a
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different conversation all together. Yeah, exactly. So, lambda sculptor is the
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star that the radiant of the media shower appears to be aligned with, and
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so it gets called the lamb Lambda sculptor rids therefore by inferring that they're coming,
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well, they appear to be coming from a certain star in a certain
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part of the sky. So that's how meter showers get named. So the
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authors of this study said, well, that's probably what they should be named.
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Lambda sculptor is about where they're going to show up, so let's call
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them the landa sculptors, not ruids. It's and it's good because that helps
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you know where to look, and it's sort of a location focal point for
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it obviously, so that that helps as far as But you need all those
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qualifiers Southern hemisphere looking in the right spot, you need the weather to cooperate,
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you don't need you don't need clouds. All those things. We didn't
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even mention the clouds need. These are all the reasons we love met showers.
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We just love them so much. Yeah, I mean, meter showers
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are really cool. And if you have a lot of patients and you just
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know going in right, you're gonna need to lay on your blanket in the
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backyard for an hour or two to see some meteors. You're not going to
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go out for five minutes and go it's cold out here. I wish they'd
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start this darn meteor show. That's not the way it's gonna work. You
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have to actually be patient and lay out there for a while and then go
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oh I saw one. Okay, great, that's good. So so that's
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what you'll do on December twelfth, where it's summertime, by the way,
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in the southern hemisphere, checking out the Lambda sculptorids. All right, let's
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talk robotic missions that will be headed to the Moon. That's the plan at
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least in January. And we got three of them. Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency
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is one, also astrobotic and then intuitive machines, all looking to get robots
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on the surface of the Moon. Right, And what's weird is if everything
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works out like it seems to be going right now, they'll all land within
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the same week on the Moon, which is very less than seven days apart.
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Two of them have the possibility of landing on the same day, which
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is strange. So all of that, again, this is very sensitive to
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launch schedules and whether rockets are fueling properly and are the valves all working,
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and there's so many things. We have polar bears crossing the launch pad,
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you know, who knows what kinds of things could happen. But okay,
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so if everything goes well from this point forward, the current schedule has all
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three of these vehicles arriving in less than seven days apart, potentially two of
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them on the same day. This would be the highest level of traffic ever
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experienced on the Moon for space vehicles. So this is kind of like,
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you know, it's the holidays. You know, it's well, it's kind
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of after the holidays, but still feels like the holidays. Yeah, it's
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kind of like holiday traffic up there on the Moon. You know, you
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got three vehicles and you're still and you're still in that window where you're not
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sure should I still be saying Happy New Year? We pass that, you
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know that you're kind of in that phase you're maybe not. I was gonna
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say right in the right date on the checks, but I mean, if
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you're still writing checks, I guess that would be that's a qualifier for that.
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If you're still writing checks at the grocery store, why b h.
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You may be struggling with getting the year right at this point. I mean,
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I'm already trying to get the Saint Patti's stuff up. By that,
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I'm just gonna jump right past Valentine's Day. I do have a Super Bowl
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party have to think about in there. But where's that darned four leaf clover
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balloon. I need to start looking at that. It's January already. At
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some point in January last year, I was I had cranked some Irish music
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playing in the house, and Luke was like, it's no, We're not
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even closed Valentine's Day. What are you doing? I mean, if Halloween's
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gonna slide to July, you know, I'm just looking right at the schedule,
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that's right. So let me let me ask this question about these three
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missions, because they're they're going to The plan is to land successfully on the
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Moon. That's that's the key word. Uh, And it's always the goal
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in these things. How many times have any of these three successfully landed something
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on the Moon? Well, Japan has had a pretty good record of their
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vehicles, yep, both photographing, orbiting and landing on the Moon. Intuitive
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machines would be the first time for that company. Astrobotics would be the first
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time for that company, because it would be the first time for any commercial
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company to land anything on the Moon. Right, So that's what's never been
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done before. So governmental agencies from various countries have successfully and unsuccessfully, you
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know, contacted the Moon with certain spacecraft, shall we say, hm and
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so, But no commercial company has ever had a landing on the Moon.
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Right now, the Intuitive Machines lander called Nova C looks like it could be
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the first of this three piece armada to get there. It's earliest landing window
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if all goes well, and again we're a ways out even here from launch
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launches January twelfth through the sixteenth, about three days or so after launch,
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about five days or so after launch, it's going to be ready to land
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on the Moon somewhere between January nineteenth or the twenty first. If that all
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goes well there and they actually hit targets within those windows, they would become
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the first ever commercial company to land a payload on the surface of the Moon,
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which you and I have talked about on a previous podcast, So go
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back and check that one out. So if they don't, though, or
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something happens or something slips, Astrobotics Peregrine Lander then has the opportunity. They're
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going to be launching on December twenty fourth, taking a slightly lower energy route
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to get to the Moon, which means it's going to take a little bit
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longer, and they're landing a schedule for January twenty fifth currently, so they
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could in certain eventualities sneak in there and become the first commercial lander to land
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on the Moon, beating out intuitive machines. Novasea lander now the Japanese Space
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Agency JACKSA their SLIM mission, and that's an acronym for what West preferred to
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minutego is a smart lander for investigating Moon. They left out the but that
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doesn't bother me. Smart lander for investigating Moon SLIM. That one has already
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launched. It launched on September the seventh, so it's taken an even lower
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energy route to get to the Moon, taking its time using some orbital mechanics,
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and it's scheduled to arrive as early as the earliest possible day is January
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the twentieth. Now it's not in the race for the first commercial vehicle because
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it's not a commercial vehicle. It's a state owned vehicle. So either Novase
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or Peregrine could become the first successful landing of a commercial vehicle on the surface
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of the Moon. Do we feel like there's pressure to be the first?
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Do we feel like I mean, I would think as a company, and
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I know you can't speak, you're not the mouthpiece for ee of these companies,
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but you would think that they would like that, you know, that
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that feather in their cap, so to speak. Right, And do you
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think there's any We went through this with you know, Virgin Galactic and and
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all of that before, with folks trying to get people just up off the
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planet and into orbit and bat we're not into orbit but just just outside of
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the planet and come back down. So is there Uh, you think they're
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probably in in house thinking can we get this thing launched two days earlier?
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I mean, I think this is true. I think the first company to
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land a vehicle on the Moon is going to have a commercial advantage for advertising
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reasons. Right. It's the same reason that there was a push to make
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history with a commercial company getting passengers into space, as you just mentioned.
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So they have that, they have that bragging right forever. Right, So
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yeah, SpaceX is good, says Richard Branson. Jeff Bezos has got a
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nice company with Blue Origin. But we were the first people to get commercial
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astronauts into space, right, So so winning that battle was important that in
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that situation, but at the same time not nearly as important as just having
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a success, right, You want to show your potential future customers if you're
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a commercial operation, that you can actually get their payloads safely to the service
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of the Moon. And so if you rush your launch and splatter your spacecraft
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as a result, that's actually a really that's actually a worse result than if
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you had just launched on time. Right, So, so I imagine that
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safety protocols are really the highest factor driving all of these things. Giving them
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the best chance of commercial success is just getting there to safely to the service
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of the Moon and delivering their packages of both research and commercial ventures. And
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I'm going to assume, and we've talked about this kind of thing before,
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there's probably not a coincidence that this is a window where three of them are
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going to be landing at the same time. This is as far as being
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advantageous for location and all of that, so there's probably not a whole lot
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they can tweak anyway. Yeah, So, typically if you're talking about like
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a Mars mission, Mars has to be in the right alignment in its orbit
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around the Sun relative to the Earth, and then every time it comes into
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that or that that orbital alignment, we just shoot all kinds. It's like
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we have slingshots, right we go, and we just start shooting the sling
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shots and just nailing this planet with spacecraft. With the Moon, it's a
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little bit different because it's orbiting us already, and so there are certain phases
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that they want to launch in. But really that that's only one of the
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multifaceted orbital mechanics pieces to arrive at the Moon in the correct time and so
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but it's a little less complicated than the Martian arrivals. But so there's some
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there's some of that with this alignment. But really some of these missions were
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just delayed from earlier launches, and they delayed them in such a way that
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they're just kind of lining up, and so so I don't think it was
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intentionality. I don't think there are stringent orbital mechanical reasons. Maybe a few
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that play into it in part, but really it's it's more happenstance that these
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things are just lining up. They're all ready to go about the same time.
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And again, the Japanese missions already launched, so it's just they're all
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going to get there about the same time, and they're all going to come
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down and we hope, we wish them all the best of success. We
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want them all to land, all within that six day period of one another
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at their earliest windows and get down on the moon safely. That'd be great.
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It'd be great. Get three for three, and then the fourth one
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to get in there will be University of Alabama. Just it'll just happen that
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way. Well, I don't know, do they do they let you land
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for a certain number. Maybe maybe it's like only the first four. After
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that you gotta wait till next year. I don't know, how does that
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work? I don't know. Coming up after a quick break, a significant
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anniversary celebrated with NASA. Plus they found Frank Rubio's tomato. We'll explain that
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after this. It's easily my favorite story of the day, but I'm gonna
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push it off. I want to talk about this anniversary first, and we'll
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save Frank Rubio's lost tomato for our final story of the day. But let's
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talk about this twenty fifth anniversary. Yeah. So, if you're listening to
24:22
us and you're younger than the age of twenty five, you have never known
24:26
a time when human beings haven't been orbiting over your head in space. And
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that's because twenty five years ago the International Space Station was completed and it's been
24:38
up there ever since, fully running. It was twenty five years ago that
24:42
Bob Cabana, a very famous NASA astronaut. If you know, if you
24:48
collect NASA Astronaut trading cards, you definitely know Bob Cabana, and hopefully you've
24:53
got his rookie card. So he was actually at the flight deck controls of
24:59
the Space Shuttle Endeavor when Endeavor was able to connect to the Russian module called
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Zaria, giving birth to the International Space Station. And so if you want
25:11
to know a lot about this, there's a great story on collectSPACE dot com.
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I would point you there, but I'm going to run through some of
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the basics, and these are quotes that can be found at that website that
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I was telling you about, which is this. Bob Cabana, in an
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interview said this, I cannot believe it was twenty five years ago today that
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we grappled Zaria and joined it with the Unity Node. Zaria, the Russian
25:38
component, Unity the component for the United States. Joining those two together,
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by the way, created the International Space Station. So that's what Cabana's referring
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to. So let me read his quote again, I cannot believe it was
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twenty five years ago today that we grappled Zaria and join it with the Unity
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Node. This was absolutely amazing to me. So Bob Cabana is the outgoing
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Associate Administrator for NASA. He did a special news conference with the Expedition seventy
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crew aboard the International Space Station. Bob Coban was in Washington, d C.
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Astronauts of course, were up board the International Space Station. This all
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happened on Wednesday, December sixth, and that's where Cabana made his remarks.
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So interesting thing. The guy that joined these two spacecraft together has been largely
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in charge of actually making sure this program was successful for many years, and
26:30
that's why he was able to move his way up through NASA. He was
26:34
speaking with Joel Montebano, NASA's Space Station program manager, and they were asking
26:41
questions. They were kind of interviewing the astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
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Now, well, who's up there now? Andreas Morgansen Mogensen from the European
26:51
Space Agency, flight engineers Jasmine Mogbelli and Laurel O'Hara, who were both from
26:56
NASA. So Tishi for a Kyawa of the Japanese Space Agency, and then
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three Russian cosmonauts, ole egg Kononenko, Nikolai Chubb, and Constantin Borisov.
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So these are the people aboard the International Space Station now, and so they
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were just having a chat to say, hey, isn't this cool. It's
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exactly twenty five years since the completion and the corresponding inhabitants of the International Space
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Station, what do you all think? Another quote from Bob Cobana said this,
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think of all that's been accomplished on the ISS in the last twenty five
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years, three thousand research and educational investigations from one hundred and eight different countries
27:36
around the world, and we've had two hundred and seventy three people from twenty
27:40
one different countries visit the space station. So that's really amazing, right,
27:45
So you can think about like a research outpost, you know where Antarctica,
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you know, near some volcano somewhere, and oh, yeah, this one
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that's in orbit around the Earth. And so that's that's kind of what they're
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celebrating. Jas Mobeli also jumped in and said this one of my favorite aspects
28:00
of the International Space Station is it is the International part of it. We
28:04
each bring our unique perspectives not just from our different nationalities, but also are
28:10
different backgrounds. So celebration of you know, diverse input and collaboration and cooperation
28:18
up there in orbit for twenty five years. That is no small thing,
28:21
my friend. So hats off to all of those who have worked on and
28:25
aboard NASA's International Space Station. I'm gonna mention this just so I can see
28:30
if that vein on your forehead will pop out just a little bit. But
28:33
I continue to be fascinated when I occasionally hear that there is this subculture of
28:37
people who believe that there is no International Space Station and there's no people on
28:41
it, and that they're all just docter fit. You had to move out
28:45
of the shot so I couldn't see the vein, and I just every now
28:49
and then someone will send me one and I'll say, are you serious right
28:52
now? Like this is you're making a case that there's no one up there,
28:57
and this has been something that they've been able to fake for twenty five
29:02
years now. Yes, it never ceases to amaze me. Wes why some
29:08
obviously intelligent people spend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to convince us of
29:17
the non existence of things that clearly exist. Yeah, Like, if we
29:22
could only channel the energies of these people into real things that contribute to society,
29:29
we might have, you know, cures for cancer by now, or
29:32
some other really cool thing that society needs. But no, they spend cop
29:37
and again, and I'm gonna hats off to them. Sometimes intelligent people spending
29:44
copious amounts of time generating fiction, but with the nefarious purpose of convincing other
29:51
people that it's reality, that things that obviously exist or happened did not obviously
29:59
exist or happen. How how people, You're basically a waste of thinking,
30:07
matter and material that could be employed for so many This is my vein popping
30:11
out, by the way, so many more significant and useful purposes. Retask
30:17
yourselves, listeners, if you're one of these people, retask yourself, we
30:22
need you on the we need you. On the bright side, they're probably
30:25
not listening to us, just or maybe if they've just seen it and they're
30:30
going, eh, this could this maybe be real? Maybe they're listening to
30:33
us, but uh, oh it is exhausting. It would be It would
30:37
be easier to explain if they were just a bunch of dumb guys. The
30:41
sad part is is when you go you're smarter than this, aren't you.
30:45
I mean, there's nothing else you could be doing with your time other than
30:49
trying to watch and see if you know, when somebody was doing a flip
30:53
in the air, someone sort of helped push them around or what. No,
30:56
come on, come on anyway, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean
31:00
to get your blood pressure worked up this morning or today. It's too early
31:06
for all that. Can we talk about Frank Rubio's tomato? I hope we
31:10
can? Uh this, I mean, this rule now be I don't know
31:15
if it can fully surpass. Maybe it does surpass because the astronaut Frank Rubio
31:21
has ties to the Chattahoochee Valley area, and maybe this does surpass it.
31:26
But my previous favorite story involving the International Space Station and food involved a sausage
31:33
floating around. So now, and I wasn't aware of this. I don't
31:38
know how this wasn't on the headlines of all the newspapers across the country.
31:42
The paper copies that they probably still print that there was a missing tomato on
31:48
the International Space Station, and they've they've only just now found the thing.
31:55
So for anything to go missing aboard the International Space Station, I mean,
31:59
how do you do that? It's a system. It's not like you go,
32:01
where did I leave my car keys? Were they at the restaurant?
32:05
No, because you weren't at a restaurant. You've been on board the International
32:07
Space Station for six months or in Rubio's case, a year, right,
32:13
a year plus? So how did you lose your tomato? Frank? This
32:16
is what we all want to know. So apparently Frank Rubio was conducting an
32:21
experiment, a longgoing experiment called VEGO five. The VEG five experiment was basically,
32:29
can we grow plants aboard the International Space Station. One of the plants
32:31
that they were trying to grow food supplying plants, by the way, was
32:35
a red robin dwarf tomato. Frank had one of his tomatoes that was successfully
32:42
grown on this plant in space, which hats off already right there, right,
32:45
it's pretty good gardening aboard an enclosed tube in orbit around the Earth.
32:51
You were still able to get some tomatoes off your vine. That's awesome way
32:53
to go, Frank. But Frank lost one of his one inch tomatoes.
32:59
Well at least that was his story. His colleagues aboard the International Space Station
33:05
immediately began to tease him, apparently that he simply ate the tomato and didn't
33:10
give it over to science. So Frank, did you eat your tomato?
33:15
So they've been they've been just saying, well, let's have a quote for
33:20
also from Jasmine Mobeli. She's got a couple of different quotes on stories today,
33:23
but Jasmine said, quote, our good friend Frank Rubio has been blamed
33:29
for quite a while for eating the tomato. But we can exonerate him now
33:35
we found the tomato, says Jasmine. So this was part of the twenty
33:40
fifth anniversary live stream where we're celebrating twenty five years aboard the Space Station,
33:46
which means Jasmine took this very high profile opportunity to give Frank the business about
33:52
eating his tomato one more time. I'm sure Frank has heard a lot of
33:58
this tomato story. Frank, if you're listening to our podcast, which I
34:00
know you do, first of all, like to thank you for listening,
34:04
and second of all, like to congratulate you on being vindicated for not eating
34:09
the tomato, because apparently you didn't. So Frank's words. Oh go ahead,
34:15
Rubio joke during a live stream back in September. I spent so many
34:20
hours looking for that thing. I'm sure the desiccated tomato will show up at
34:23
some point and vindicate me years later. It was only months. Yeah,
34:29
that's good. So, and I mean I'm just I'm trying to think through
34:34
this whole process because you know, when they go up, they're tracking everything
34:42
they eat, right, They're tracking their meals, They're tracking so you know
34:45
they've got they're tracking them for health in various things. I mean, eating
34:51
the tomato would be a pretty significant violation when and not only is it stuffing
34:57
on the toes of the science, but it's also you know, I mean
35:00
he should let somebody know that he ate the tomato, right, I mean,
35:06
you know how things go. I mean you're like frosting the cake,
35:09
just a little frosting off the knife. I mean you probably shouldn't do that,
35:14
but you know, it would be hard not to eat one of those
35:15
little guys up there right just go oh hey, oh I lost it?
35:20
Oh where did it go? And I'm sure that you know it's in that
35:23
nature of fun, yeah, that this teasing was taking place, But you're
35:28
right. I mean, if it's a part of an experiment and you're really
35:30
trying to measure things, You've got scientists back on Earth wh're actually trying to
35:34
measure things. Even losing the tomato is not as cool as it could be.
35:38
Even the tomatoes floating off and getting sucked into some air vent somewhere or
35:43
I don't know what happened to it, but hiding somewhere. Somebody pointed out,
35:46
by the way on space dot Com that the International Space Station is about
35:51
the size of a six room house, right, so it's it's a pretty
35:55
big place. It's a fairly large space for a small tomato to go missing.
36:00
It's a very small tomato, and it is zero g We're all kinds
36:05
of crap. And I mean that literally sometimes can float away, right and
36:08
go places that you don't necessarily want it to go. So you're in that
36:12
environment. It's not like it's gonna fall on the ground to go, Oh
36:14
it just slipped under the lip of the fridge. No, No, it
36:16
just is gonna float away while you're not looking, and if you don't realize
36:21
it, it's gone. Baby. So so yeah, it's maybe kind of
36:25
a big deal, kind of want to watch your payloads. Don't want him
36:28
to float off and get in a computer somewhere. I'm sure Frank took a
36:30
fair amount of ribbing from his buddies up there, and if you know,
36:34
I'm sure they were just teasing him for the sake of teasing him. But
36:37
if by some chance, you know, he was eating a bacon and lettuce
36:42
sandwich and they were like, it seems to be missing something there, Frank.
36:49
You know, did you maybe add something to it from the experiment?
36:52
You know that would seem to incriminate him, certainly, don't. I don't
36:55
know how. It's a good question. We'll have to ask some of our
36:59
insider buddies. How closely did they monitor in between meal snacks? Yeah,
37:02
that would be I need to know this, right. So those astro outs
37:07
are up there, can they just go grab like, you know, a
37:08
twix, you know? Or can they just go get some you know,
37:12
peanut butter crackers? I mean, is there a twinkie? They can just
37:15
cut it? I don't know these things, right, So maybe the tomato
37:17
was just in between meal snacks. Oh no, it wasn't, because it
37:22
actually showed up, that's right, It turned up. But it wasn't inventory,
37:24
so you would think that what it was inventory as part of the experiment
37:28
wasn't inventory with the food, so maybe you could have just snuck it.
37:31
Anyway, Let's talk about the upcoming holiday season. As far as the Cocola
37:37
Space Science Center goes, you guys will be shutting down at some point.
37:42
Not just yet though you still got some time to come in and visit,
37:45
but as you're planning around your holidays and when you want to come in,
37:47
and you guys have a new exhibit for folks to check out. Let's talk
37:52
about the exhibit first. It's great for this time of year because it's great
37:55
for the youngest kids. I had a mom bring in a very timid and
38:00
kind of afraid three year old just a couple of days ago, and they
38:06
were about to leave when I said, wait a minute, before you go,
38:09
have you played with our new exhibit. It's called the guzzle Vortex.
38:14
And the mom said something to the effect of, why no, we have
38:15
not played with guzzle Vortex because she was a little bit too afraid. I
38:20
said, well, wait, just walk her over, walk her over to
38:22
this part of the gallery and let her watch me play with the guzzle Vortex
38:27
for a minute or two, and in less than five minutes, that once
38:31
timid child was up and playing and running around and giggling and having a fantastic
38:37
time with the new guzzle Vortex sponsored by our friends at Pratt and Whitney.
38:43
Because that's the whole idea, is to get the youngest set of visitors engaged
38:47
with scientific ideas at a young age while also having just a wonderful time.
38:53
Now, if you're wondering what the guzzle Vortex is, I might just tempt
38:58
you to say, well, I'm not gonna tell you right now. Just
39:00
come down and see it for yourself. But I'll give you a little bit
39:02
more than that. It's something called an air Mas, but it's a special
39:07
Space Science Center version of an air Mas, and it has kids enthralled and
39:12
engaged for long periods of time. Bring the kids down during the holiday season
39:15
where they're gonna out of school here for a little bit and have them play
39:19
with the guzzle Vortex at the Coca Cola Space Science Center's exhibit gallery. Now,
39:23
we do close down for the holidays midday on December twenty first, and
39:30
if you want to know more specifics about those hours and when and what shows
39:32
will be running. Check out the website, go visit us online www dot
39:38
cc SSC dot org and for more up to the minute updates on a variety
39:45
of things that could be happening at Space Science Center. Follow us on Facebook,
39:49
friends, because that's where we're posting and jamming and showing you new things
39:53
and telling jokes and just having a good time. On our Facebook page www
39:58
dot CCSC dot org. On the line, and I hope that everybody out
40:04
there is preparing for a wonderful holiday season. Sean and I thank you for
40:07
listening, and we'll do this again next week. Overhead Door Company of Columbus
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