 Coming up updates from Mastin Space Systems could the closest exoplanet be habitable I've got an interview with Liam Kennedy the creator of ISS above and I've got comments Join us for this episode on tomorrow Welcome to orbit 10 dot 19. I am Carrie and with me is Jared and Mike and Dada Oh, and I also have a Tim and a Ben and a Liam I've got a lot of things going on. So hopefully we can kind of like it's crowded It's a little warm today. I'm not sure how you guys are feeling, but but it's good. It's good. It's always crowded in here Sad hologram Before we get started though, I want to make sure that we thank all of our patrons of the escape velocity These are the people who've contributed ten dollars or more for this particular segment of this particular episode And I feel like it's getting a little crowded in there Soon your names will be very very tiny and very hard to read So enjoy this moment while I waste time so you can actually read your name on the screen if you would also like to read Your name on this screen in a not-so-crowded kind of manner. Please feel free to head on over to patreon.com slash T M R O Whoo. All right Goodness, we are making up for last week of the lack of launches situation with thankfully some launches. So Hologram, would you like to fill us in on what's what's going on? So, yeah, we had two launches this week the first of which was from SpaceX and their Falcon 9 So let's go ahead and check out the footage of that This Falcon 9 rocket launched on Monday, May 15th at 2321 coordinated universal time from launch complex 39 eggs Excuse me from Cape Canaveral, Florida And it launched in the expendable configuration meaning no landing legs and no landing attempt at the first stage So that they could get the very heavy payload into orbit because it needed all the available energy the payload was a Cobb-Pan commsat connecting aircraft ships at sea and mobile users over Europe, but part of a global network This was the fourth satellite in the fifth generation network of commsats for the British company in Mars at based on the Boeing 702 HP satellite butts after the Falcon 9 second stage reached a parking orbit and after that short coast that you saw Sped up the second burn was completed putting the satellite into an elliptical geosynchronous transfer orbit and over the next 10 days the satellites going to be using its own on-board thrusters to Be circularizing its orbit in a geosynchronized orbit over Europe. So congratulations to SpaceX for that successful launch Yeah, it's always nice to have a launch at that time of day. It's just like these gorgeous views Like I mean if you don't appreciate launches anyway those sunsets in Florida are just so so pretty oh my goodness Because a couple people were like oh, I was sort of distracted by the pretty views I didn't even notice that there was no legs or I didn't notice that there was a logo on it and all these different things Yeah, it's kind of pretty in Florida sometimes. I'm a little partial as I was born there Anyway, there was another launch though. Mr. Mike. There was This one was a Soyuz launch the Europeanized Soyuz launching from French Yana The Corospence Center, so let's check out the footage of that and something that I really like in the footage is something They started doing of this graphic overlay of the payload over the real footage to kind of give a description there I really really like that, but in any case, let's go ahead and check out the launch itself That This was a Soyuz ST-A rocket which launched on Thursday May 18th at 1154 coordinating universal time and the payload was the SCS 15 a KU band concept providing Wi-Fi for airlines and Some TV broadcasting over North America now the SCS 15 also carries a hosted payload Built by Raytheon to improve GPS navigation over the United States now after a successful parking orbit was achieved The payload and the Fregat upper stage coasted for five hours Before placing the SCS 15 into a geosynchronous transfer orbit and why not go all the way to Geo And the reason they didn't was so the Fregat could de-orbit and on screen there You're actually seeing the third stage the J stage and now you're seeing the Fregat Igniting and then later after they had that coast they finally were able to deploy the satellite Which is also based on a Boeing 702 SP satellite bus So basically this week we had two similar satellites both built by Boeing that launched this week And here's the pictures. This is in March sets five the fourth flight of that and this one is SCS 15 And other than the different types of antennas for the KA or the KU band Can't really tell the difference. So pretty cool to see that Yeah, yeah, very cool. It's like that footage. Yeah, you're right that overlay Just kind of telling you like what's going on with you know how everything's kind of packaged up in the fairing That was really really cool. And then some of that footage was like everything and I'm floating away for you and like Yeah, really really amazing cameras have come a long way. Yeah, when it comes to turns out, I know yeah, oh weird All right, so Jared speaking of satellites. Yes Good transition. That was a good one. So that's the probably the best thing you'll get out of me this whole show Speaking of satellites, but you're the only one that we don't necessarily talk about a lot We got to go all the way out to the Kuiper belt to talk about this satellite because this one is a brand new discovered Brand spanking new moon that we know of so we love our dwarf planets here that tomorrow And we've got a dwarf planet the largest one without a name 2007 or 10 what a lovely place My favorite it is actually the largest non-named object in the solar system. It's about 1280 kilometers across so it's big. I mean it's like one third or three quarters the size of Pluto So it's good size. It's also one of the reddest objects out there as well likely due to the exposure of methane ice to ultraviolet Radiation so when you expose it it turns red into these things called thulins, which is pretty cool chemistry now It took three space-based observatories to actually confirm this But they did get the imagery back that shows that it does have a moon and it wasn't very hard to find the moon because There's a big red circle around it out in space I'm just kidding about that. How convenient. So yes But we use Hubble invisible light Herschel in far infrared and Kepler as well invisible light Now it's moon As we said 2007 or 10 and it's moon are a part of the Kuiper Belt Which is this region of icy leftovers from the solar system formation about 4.6 billion years ago So because of that its orbit is way way out there So here is your solar system your standard solar system with the different orbits that we have right there We start with Jupiter and Saturn Uranus Neptune and Pluto and purple there We've got Eris, which is one of which is the next largest The second largest dwarf planet and then we've got 2007 or 10 in yellow right there So you can see it goes way further out than Pluto They're about three times the distance the Pluto is at its maximum. So it is way way out there now What's so cool about this is that we're finding that basically all all of these big dwarf planets that we know of out There have moons and that provides evidence to support the widely approved Hypothesis of solar system formation that we have that we know is what's called late heavy bombardment So this was a time from 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago When a whole bunch of stuff in the solar system was smashing into each other Okay, so this this helps provide that evidence of it because it shows that that with this moon and the way it orbits and the way 2007 or 10 rotates as well, which it rotates very slowly It shows that this was likely formed from an impact as opposed to a body coming into The gravity of the dwarf planet and being captured that way So the moon is roughly 300 kilometers across and it orbits at about 15,000 kilometers above the surface of 2007 or 10 so very cool result that we were able to get by using the power of three space observatories Nice. Yeah, that's really cool. I like how I think it was Therian Theron In the chat room was talking. I was calling it Orton because of ORTN Orton, I like that that makes me giggle. All right. Is that how like some of these I mean I understand that there's designations and you have to designate things but like eventually Once they get names, they do get like names, right or no Yeah, they actually um it was well 2007 or 10 was discovered in 2007 sure by Mike Brown and his team at Caltech the Pluto killer and It has to be named he can suggest a name by November 2019 So that's that's he he's the only heyman his team are the only people who can suggest a name But yeah, but once November 2019 rolls around anybody can suggest a name to the international Astronomical Union as long as it sticks within the nomenclature that we want of The Kuiper belt objects out there so Kuiper Mike Kuipe face probably Kuiper Mike Kuipe face That doesn't sound very pleasant. So yeah Yeah, I don't think so a lot of this all we use a lot of mythology Mythological gods as names and I'm not really sure the pattern that they're using with the Kuiper belt objects We have some whole lions. Yeah, like exactly. Yeah, there's specific islands gods that they're using can be any type basically the Polynesian and oceanic gods if you will or what they what they use to name the Kuiper belt objects So yeah, it's really cool that we actually specifically specify Certain things yeah for certain names. So I like it pretty cool. All right. I'm yeah. All right. I'm in okay, so Mike you have some interesting updates From a few people. I don't want to step over on this one. Just hit me. What do we what do you got going on? So first off there was some updates with some rocket engine developments to replace the RD 180 first off this Rather on Sunday Lou origin announced that they had had a mishap with us a very important piece of hardware For their test program for their BE 4 engine the piece of hardware that they had a problem with was a power pack What you see on screen there now? What's a power pack? It's it's a set of turbo pumps and valves that provides all the fuel oxidizer mix that goes into the injections Or the injectors and the combustion changer of a liquid rocket engine So this is where all the fuel is pumping through and getting pepturized to the level that it needs to be at now Blue origin recently shipped a completed engine to their Texas site for a full-scale test But thankfully whatever damage was caused if there was any damage for the whatever accident they had with that power pack is Isn't going to delay their program because they have a second test stand that they can do these tests on with the BE 4 engine now they plan to certify the engine by the end of this year and The hope is to use it on United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket and eventually their own new Glenn rocket and flights with this engine could begin in 2019 now meanwhile their competitor for replacing the RD 180 is arojet rocket dime and they have completed their critical design review of their AR1 engine they hope to be able to certify the engine by 2019 and have the first ones ready for flight in 2020 now they also recently completed testing of their pre burner engine for the AR1 Which drives the turbo the turbo pumps and make sure there's isn't any excess fuel that Builds things up so they've been wrapping up the tests for the The pre burner there and they've also completed testing of the major fuel pump system the kick pump and they've been able to have it pump fuel at around 75,000 revolutions per minute Which is the fastest speed for any hydrocarbon pump to date So with that work those are the individual pieces of the the power pack that blue origin that recently had an accident with but in any case arojet rocket dime is still on schedule and Is it know only about a year behind blue origin even though blue origin got a two-year head start on their engine development? so pretty cool with that and There's the the the kick pump that I was talking about just a moment ago, so Yeah, so that was with the pre burner kind of makes up the same pieces I know there's a lot of pieces there and and we could go through and explain what each one does Well complicated. Yeah, that's why I'm not a rocket science. Yeah. Oh my goodness That's yeah, that's really crazy. That's really cool though. And I well, they're not like in cooperation by any means like the competition ish kind of situation that's going on there is really interesting because I think I feel like it spurs a little bit more creativity and You know a purpose, right? Like you have you don't just have your own deadline It's like now you're trying to fight against somebody else's as well. You know what I'm saying? I don't know. I always think that that's really absolutely and Kind of the reason I like to talk about this stuff is because Jared talks about all these really awesome places out in the universe But I'm just like well, we can't even get to these places. So that's why I focus on it. Yes So we can get to other places like what you're about to talk about. Yeah It's a great. Yeah, we yeah, it's a you know, you've got hardware you have Astro things Astro things well, I was like you don't have software like I know I don't but it is an interesting balance that between you two cosmology the Cosmology and I went to cosmetology school. So somewhere I fit in the middle. What do you know? Jared's got the destination Mike's got the vehicle to get exactly. Yes, and I'm literally just along for the ride. Okay Speaking of going places possibly eventually Jared where where's one of the closest places we might go Oh, well, are you talking about a Proxima Centauri B? Oh, I mean, who is it? Yeah So Proxima Centauri B is the closest exoplanet that we know of it goes around the closest star that we know of called Proxima Centauri a mere 4.2 light years away or about Gosh, she's really far away. It's Yeah, so this was announced last year that they discovered this planet and they did it using the European Southern Observatory's 3.6 meter telescope and Exquisite data of what's called radial velocity method to find the star So basically they looked at Proxima Centauri and they detected a wiggle back and forth from the star now This is this is 4.2 light years away. That's that's a pretty significant distance So, you know, what's the resolution of the wiggle that we're able to detect? Well, it turns out that Proxima Centauri is wobbling at a speed of about two meters per second We're detecting that over tens of trillions of kilometers away. So what does Earth wiggle it? Earth causes our Sun to wiggle at about two meters per second. All right, cool So now I have some sort of reference, but you also would have to combine all the planets together And when you do that our Sun wiggles at somewhere on the order of about a hundred and ten meters per second So yeah, so we're a very insignificant part of what makes our Sun wiggle but cool thing Proxima Centauri b orbits 7.5 million kilometers away for Proxima Centauri But because Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star that planet can actually be closer So you can actually have Proxima Centauri be sitting in the habitable zone of that star Even though it only orbits around that star once every 11 days in five hours So it's a very quick orbit around there now the study was done by a team I'm probably gonna mess this up and it's from England too, which is gonna make it even more embarrassing But the University of executor, I hope I'm saying that right Huh? Yes, so a team at the University of Exeter and meteorological experts at the United Kingdom's Met Office have taken the first crack at what Proxima Centauri b's weather and habitability may actually be like So use something called the unified model Which is what a climate model that we use to predict the Earth's weather very accurately Here and they had two scenarios that they ran one where it was tidally locked So one side of the planet always faces Proxima Centauri and they had another one where it was three two resonance which basically means Proxima Centauri Rotates three times for every two orbits. So Surprise everybody both scenarios found that you can actually have relatively stable climates on this planet. So That's really cool. Yeah, that's really cool on either side. Yeah, not on either side The stable climate side that faces towards the Sun So on the tidally locked one the stable climates are actually along that sunset sunrise area So that strip right along the day-night boundary is where the habitable areas are at Because if you're directly under this if you're directly if the Sun or if Proxima Centauri is directly above you in The center of the side that faces you're getting cooked If you're in the night side of Proxima Centauri because no And any kind of energy reaches there It's very cold the atmosphere literally freezes to the surface on that side So you have to do it right on the day-night boundary, but it works and then in three two resonance They found that that also works as well very strangely all over the planet. So So the possibility of habitability is actually very good for this except for the problem that Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star You know the specific flavor it is a type M star. They tend to spit out a lot of radiation in flares So so if there is life there, it's got to be really radiation tough So and our Sun just again for reference. Yeah, our son is a type G star. Gotcha. So yeah Cool. Thank you See I learned something today. There you go. That makes me happy Um like Let's talk about somebody that we haven't talked about in a while But we know and love dearly and Ben has a huge man crush on and a bet that he might have lost you Let's talk about Mastin space a little bit Yeah, and I hope that he can I hope that Dave Mastin can come on and talk about this and other things with us soon But apparently they had an accident last month with their zero B vehicle and it suffered some sort of crash They're kind of limited on what they can say Mastin said that they can't really talk about much because on that particular flight They were doing an experiment for DARPA the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency And he said that we have a press release pending DARPA approval But we haven't been able to say much about what we're doing We can say though that the vehicle was not destroyed There was no fireball Explosion or fire associated with the vent with the event and we have no plans to repair the vehicle at this time Now a zero B flew 75 times But Mastin still has their zombie which can fly to which has flown 227 times and their newest one the zodiac vehicle which has flown 81 times But in kind of more good news about Mastin though They have completed a 13 months design build and test period for their most powerful rocket engine to date the broadsword 25 now the broadsword 25 is a 3d printed liquid oxygen and liquid methane rocket engine that has a full-throttle C-level thrust rating at 25,000 pounds of thrust or About 11 tons of thrust at sea level now The reason that they're developing this engine It's going to be used for their Zephyr space plane idea for DARPA's excess one space plane program But the engine could be used as not only a boost stage, but also an upper-stage engine for multiple different rockets So They could market this engine by itself if this vehicle doesn't take off But I really like their idea and I hope that Mastin gets their own space plane too. That would just be awesome That would be really really cool and the more space planes the merrier pretty much. Yeah, right? Yeah, that's So, yeah, hopefully Dave Mastin can come on himself and explain to us why this engine can be so efficient Not only at sea level, but also really really high in the atmosphere to work as an upper stage or a boost engine So please come on the show again Dave. We miss you. Come on Dave. I'm for the annual time It is right about that time isn't it? Oh my goodness. We should just have like we should have a Mastin month Right like March is Mastin month Mastin madness or May. I don't know. We should definitely figure that one out Okay, so Jared speaking of earth and its wiggle and wobble. We have some flashing going on. Yeah, the earth is flashing Space so Okay on that So first I want to start with this really cool video Which is a whole bunch of images from Galileo that it took in 1990 when it did a gravitational Assist around the earth. So look at this video. Isn't this so cool? Yeah So awesome. So this was like I said, that's from 1990. That's from 1990. It has been cleaned up a little bit I will admit that but The it took this incredible imagery of the earth when it was zipping past us On a gravitational assist on its way to Jupiter But in this imagery there are flashes that are seen that only appear on land but not anywhere near known bodies of water the Carl Sagan called them specular reflections and They are they were this mystery that we really didn't Understand for quite a while then came a mission that was launched in 2015 called deep space climate observatory Also called discover it was launched to the L one point so that gravitational balance between the earth and the Sun and Deep space climate observatory carries an instrument on board called epic Which I'm sure Ben likes that name it stands for earth polychromatic Imaging camera and basically what it does is it takes a full disc image of the earth multiple times a day and then sends that down for us to take a look at it so Scientists looked at that imagery from epic and they found that the mysterious Specular reflections were there as well so it wasn't a flaw in Galileo's imaging system. It was an actual thing That was a hurry so they looked really closely at all of the data that came back from it and found that those Specular reflections come from the exact same angle and then what we're seeing this is their idea of what we're seeing is that we're Literally seeing sunlight reflecting off of ice particles in high altitude serious clouds now This is really cool Simply because wait is it almost like a reverse Aurora baryalis to a certain extent um no not really because the auroras have to deal with Charge particles hitting the atmosphere. Okay, so this is just basically like Like you know sunlight reflecting off of a car window in your eyes. It's really annoying It's kind of like the same thing except it's reflecting off of the ice particles that make up Serious clouds at very high altitudes. So very cool stuff. The reason this is so cool Yes, is because there are exoplanet scientists out there who are actually looking into this as a means by which to look at The surfaces of exoplanets when we get the technology in the next decade or two to actually start being able to resolve Exoplanets directly, so they're using this as sort of a pre prep for what to look for when we're looking at exoplanets Interesting, and it's just so cool because when Galileo did that flyby in 1990 They actually did experiments to see if a spacecraft could detect Signatures of life like like chlorophyll Changes in radiation output light wavelengths and radio signal gathering as it went past and here we are You know almost 27 years after the flyby still getting great data from that flyby. So really cool stuff That is really cool. Yeah How neat is that that's pretty neat All right, so Mike another another update on what's going on with commercial crew Yeah, so this isn't necessarily from NASA This is from the the United States government accountability office and they recently Released a report for all of the major activities that NASA is doing But I wanted to kind of focus on their review of the commercial program today And there was a lot of stuff they covered and I hopefully will be able to put a link to that in the description So that those of you watching can check it out for yourself, but as far as commercial crew goes According to the government accountability office both partners are behind schedule and Both of them are at risk of slipping their certifications into late 2018 and not to start operations until 2019 Now both companies have been given a little bit more money to help with this They are still fixed price contracts, but NASA has given their more money for new requirements that they have added And for Boeing the biggest trouble has been meeting the crew safety standards for their starliner vehicle Even the engine that is going to be used on the atlas five is giving them trouble since they need to account for both the rd 180 the be4 Or the ar one for their design to launch on the atlas five because One of those engines is going to replace the atlas five and they don't aren't even sure if they're going to be launching on one of them with The rd 180 probably at least one or two Then they'll be switching over to the other engines So they need to accommodate for that because the atlas five will be slightly changed depending on which engine they use For the be4 the bottom of the rocket the engine housing will be a little bit bigger Or for the ar one the tanks will be a little bit longer So they have to design their vehicle to accommodate all of those changes and redesigns So even though it's good to have competition there's this extra level of complexity for Boeing now the redesigns or the new standards given by nasa has caused most of the delays And this isn't anything new right now. I mean they've been giving these new Changes over the years and the government accountability office says that Boeing just kind of lacks Information to make a lot of the timely decisions that they need to keep their vehicle on on track Now uh for for SpaceX they have had to make changes to satisfy nasa in regards to the Micrometeorite shielding on their vehicle as well as other things um, but the Right now the government accountability office recommends that no further changes or new safety requirements uh be sent from nasa Especially since uh later in the report when they're talking about space launch system nasa isn't even holding up orion and space launch system up to the same safety standards as they are the dragon and the star liners So, you know the government accountability office is saying all right. No more new requirements like they are already, you know pushing it Yeah, they also pointed out though that in the first four years of the commercial crew program It was horribly underfunded and it they commended both of the partners for having made as much progress as they have And lastly thanks to boeing and the deal that they got with the whole sea launch fiasco and and their settlement for getting the money back um, they have been given seats for the soya's vehicle and they will be able to sell those to nasa to continue flying astronauts to the international space station in 2019 but also russia has Kind of russian officials have said that they're more than happy to sell us more seats, but Can't imagine how weird. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, must be nice to be the only ticket to ride Yeah, that kind of sucks, uh, but you know all ships rise as a tide and of course at the same time You don't want anybody to uh, you know to be pushed too hard too fast Too long, uh, because that's how sometimes mistakes get made so yeah Yeah, and that's something else that they brought up and even though we kind of knew a lot of this information I really like these reports from the government accountability office because it kind of Brings you into reality and connects all the dots together and it's just like here Is what we think is actually going on and the recommendations they give a lot of times are followed by nasa so I really like this and uh, um, hopefully they Even with these delays, I still think that everything will be okay with those extra seats that boeing has and everything else Like I think we'll be fine, but it's still a weird situation. Yeah It is cool. All right All right, again, our new segments are so full and I so enjoy them Chalk full of goodness so much stuff to digest So given all that we're going to take a break and know when we come back Ben is going to be giving an interview or having an interview with Liam kennedy Who's created the iss above this one's going to be really good on a lot of fun a lot of visuals for you guys on this one So stay with us. We'll be right back Close your eyes and picture your favorite city What do you see a graceful skyline of towering buildings Cars and trains bustling everywhere Crowds of people working shopping and visiting maybe for the first time Tomorrow sees cities a little differently We see buildings, but also a thriving ecosystem We hear the cars the trains and envision a better way We see cities as a place to call home and as a place worth the journey Cities with a past and a present, but especially a bright future Come with us and explore the cities of tomorrow And welcome back to tomorrow now before we get started with this segment of the show I did want to give a huge shout out to the patrons of tomorrow Who've helped to make this specific segment of this episode happen These are people who've contributed ten dollars or more. There are escaped velocity patrons We've also got our orbital patrons. These are people who've contributed five dollars or more To this specific episode to find out how you can help crowdfund the shows of tomorrow Head on over to patreon.com Slash T M R O All right, we are joined by Liam Kennedy the creator of ISS above We've actually known each other for quite a while and you've been doing space outreach for As long as I've known you trying to get people excited about Looking up essentially so before we get into what ISS above is Tell me a little bit about some of the outreach and like why you think this is important Why should we be doing any of this? Sure, so People may notice when they hear my accent that I'm not from around here And I grew up in in England And strangely enough it wasn't until I moved out to California And suddenly had these amazingly clear skies that we have seemingly You know all throughout the year. I suddenly got inspired to really get involved in astronomy And I became president of orange county astronomers And I was president back in 2001 2002 And we did a lot of outreach So we would take telescopes to schools And we would you know bring Inspiration for what you can see with your own eyes through a telescope in town To the public and to students and throughout all of that situation But there was one thing that was common whenever the International Space Station was passing by I would find a way to you know put that into the outreach for that evening And you know there's this whole thing that the public are not interested in space Yeah, so you know that's like a common common sort of thread of thought In those situations when people get present to what they can see themselves It becomes relevant And suddenly what happens is the public really you you see the inspiration is just One step away. It's not like you have to do it's not like you have to work hard to have people Be in awe of what they can see if they only know it's there to see So and it could be anything like the craters on the moon It could be the rings around Saturn when you actually see that for yourself Your own eyeball up to a telescope and you realize that that bright star In the sky is actually not a star, but it's the planet satan and you can see those crazy rings You suddenly get you realize that it's not just a book. It's not just a scientist who's telling you that it's up there It's you you get connected with it And that's sort of also where the space station comes into it Because most people are just not aware That the space station is passing by so frequently and that's the place Where human beings have been living for the last 16 and a half years And passing us all by five to eight times every day You had an interesting quote before the show. You said you were in front of a bunch of kids And blew their mind with statistics on how how many humans have and how long they've been on space station. Yeah, so So we'll get into my the product that I use to help You know have have me get this outreach happen in the world sort of all around the world We'll get into that in a minute, but I give presentations at schools regularly throughout the month and When we're with an audience, especially of middle school students and below some high school and below What I get them present to is that there has not been one day of their life That there haven't been human beings passing them by in space every single day five to eight times every day um Because another common thing is that since Apollo You know the public has really sort of Not maintained an interest in the fact that we actually have human beings in space all the time Whereas the Apollo program, which was extraordinary And in fact, that's the reason that's really the reason why I'm here is because of that event Landing on the moon You know just just have me get involved in all of this and be interested in this in this way But when people get present to the fact that there are the only human beings In our species are passing you by You know at home, you're sitting you're sitting in your seat. You've just got to get present to that every single day Those astronauts are passing you by, you know, I'm I'm I'm old enough where uh, there have not been humans Um present in space for my entire life But I do find that statistic absolutely remarkable someone born in the year what 2000 essentially Every single day of their life every single day of their life There has been a human in orbit Since they had been born And likely for the rest of their life How I had never considered that before how incredible of a feat for humanity is that you got it But the problem is right now. There are only five astronauts in orbit. We need to get that number much higher and to do that I think um inspiring people like like you mentioned Uh helps a great deal and as you said Looking up But the key is knowing when to look up and that's where you come in you've got you've got iss above We've actually got uh, we've got we've got a table full of hardware Yes, smorgasbord of iss above. Let's start with what is iss above? so iss above um is A product it's a software product that runs on a computer platform called raspberry pi So it's a non-edible computer platform Um, I've tried and it doesn't taste very good. Um Kind of crunchy. Yeah, exactly crunchy and metallic. Yeah, don't try this at home kids um so And initially what I wanted to do was I created this was actually the first kickstarter version of the product that I created I you know, I had I took on this problem, which is I Really want the world to be inspired by the fact that the space station with human beings in it are passing them by so frequently So my first version I created something that just lit up Sure It just sat on your shelf you plugged it in and the only thing it did was just light up every single time the space station comes by and uh, and this was an example of the first version I had a 3d printed case And uh, that's really what it was designed to do and I started off with my grandkids Yes, I'm old enough to have grandkids. I know that's really hard to sort of uh, you know Take on anyway, my youngest grandson then was three And you know a three-year-old he couldn't read displays and things like I've got going on the latest version But he could certainly count flashes So he knew if it was flashing blue That it was going to be very very soon coming over and when it turned into a rainbow pattern It would be it's coming over and he better say grandpa the space station is coming by Um, and you know, he's now six. So I've been doing this for three years, but uh, but above and beyond that We were talking before the show. Uh, you had one of these up at twit This week in tech, right? So I should I should clarify what that actually means means Uh, uh, and uh, what happened there? Yeah, so uh, yeah twit tv For for all of my english friends. Yeah, they laugh when when I say hey, yeah I proudly on twit tv Because they suddenly said because twit if you don't know means an idiot in the uk So, yeah, you finally found out they finally figured you out liam So twit tv, um, they had a show called coding 101 run by uh Padre father robert balaser and uh and snubs who runs hack five as well and um I happened to be up in the area and I made contact with one of the producers and I just He happened to be really interested in the space station I told him what this does and he happened to put it on the shelf of leo laporte show his radio show and it was just sitting on his shelf And uh, he didn't tell leo what this thing was But during the show the space station started passing by So this little device that has you know, helpfully iss above written on it started flashing and leo Just put it together. He said this is flashing Does that mean oh the space station is going by iss above? He just got it immediately And that just uh provided an opportunity to sort of you know get that word out there So um, it feels like what I call the low hanging fruit, right because most techies I think are um easy space geeks They they're they're just they're space geeks. They maybe just don't know it yet, right? They're they're really engaged with the technology They love their you know the phones and all that all that fun jazz But um, if you just give them a little bit of inspiration Just just just give them be like, oh, hey just look up right now. Yeah, and you will see five humans flying overhead Yeah, uh, that could be just enough to tip them over and be like, oh my gosh, this is incredible The key thing is as well It's yes, it is about looking up when you can see it So I'm sure most people watching the show know that you can go out three or four times a month And look up and the space station is passing by it looks like a really bright star But my product lets you know every time it passes by which can be in the middle of the day So and that's particularly where an opportunity comes for education and teaching But that first version that's all it did. It didn't plug into a tv or anything And I did a kick start over this. I shipped about 160 200 of them Um, and then nasa launched. Oh, this is the connection with space x nasa launched a new camera module In the trunk of the space x. I cut a crs 3 or something. I don't remember which crs It was one of those. It was the very first one that that used the uh, the actual Unpressurized part of the trunk And so that's that's the part underneath underneath and they used a robotic arm to go in and pull this module out And they put it underneath the columbus module and it's been there Since april so it was commission fully on online on april the 30th in 2014 Which was just after I shipped all of these So my little box was sitting out there flashing away and I suddenly realized hey There's live video Views of the earth from the space station now being made available and I called that hd ev the high definition earth viewing experiment That's that's exactly it. Yeah, so and I looked at how that was working So in fact, this is the orbit showing the orbit. You can see the station is currently in darkness This is a real iss above by the way. This is actually plugged in in our control room And this is exactly what you'd see on your tv Yeah, this is the new one in fact the space this particular one is actually configured as if it's somewhere in kazakhstan And the space station if we're in kazakhstan is going over because you can tell you can tell whether it's it's going blinky blinky over there So I realized that hey, I've got a bunch of these devices out there. They have an hd mi port on them And I thought can I utilize that video? And not only just be an inspiration for Having people be present to the fact that the astronauts are above but when they're passing by particularly in the daytime This live video from that camera system shows live views of the earth, which means as it's passing you by Midday right overhead. You'll actually get to see the whole In our area. You'll see the whole of the area of southern california You actually can see yourself from space precisely. Yeah, you're a tiny little pixel You know behind, you know some blurry pixel on the screen, but nevertheless that's that's what's accessible and That started the story of how I then got connected with nasa because I looked at what they had created the camera system only works when the station is in sunlight So which is so for half of each orbit approximately it's in sunlight half of it. It isn't so there's nothing happening When the station is in sunlight so What I figured out was how I could use iss above to bring all of this information To the tv and then automatically launch the video Because what happens if you're a regular person out there in the internet world? You can look at this live video You just go google hdev and yeah, and you'll get it However, and it's it's immensely popular But there's a lot of people that get there and they they don't see the bit on the web page that says Oh, if it's black, it's just because the station is currently in darkness wait a few minutes So hat 45 minutes out of every 90 minute cycle. It's going to be nothing precisely. Yep. So so I actually called up I Amazing nasa's nasa people's phone numbers. They're actually just online 1 800 So I found the print the principal investigators of hdev And I called them up because I had a few questions about how it worked and I literally just picked up the phone and and one of the I contacted two people there I'm sure they don't mind if I mentioned their names that their heroes, you know Astronauts are heroes the there are heroes on the ground working on stuff Yeah, I mean, you know that you know with the spacex world as well sure like it's all that you're all you know People who actually make it work thousands of heroes for every astronaut. Yeah, so I called carlos fontanon He's been with nasa for over 30 years And susan ronko and they were the co-principal investigators of this experiment And the amazing thing was when I called them and I said hi i'm leon from iss above they said oh We've heard of iss above. That's awesome. And they they created a little conference call where I could Answer I could ask questions of their entire team Who built hdev and it was exceptional Um, and then out of that I got invited to to go to johnson space center. I've been to a couple of uh, Um nasa social events sure you've been to some of those they would call twit tweet up So things like that we were next to them. We weren't part of them We were tense next to them while we're doing like space shuttle coverage I think we saw you constantly like you did a lot of the tweet ups when this the final space shuttle mission certainly yeah, yeah, so all of that stuff so um All of that has helped me get to the point where I am now where There's now 1700 of these around the world. Oh, wow There's an iss above in every single nasa center Because it's it's a very self-contained plug and forget device that just brings all of this I call it digital signage for the space station. That's really what it can be it tells you it even tells you when it's going to be visible Tells you when it's coming over shows you the orbit pass and displays those live videos Um, and yeah, so that's sort of what it what it brings you. Oh, did I say it also tweets? Yeah, so whenever it passes overhead. Yes, whenever it passes overhead it tweets with your message to the station So since these have been out there, there's been waves of tweets when the space station passes over particularly over the usa because There's thousands, uh, you know a couple a thousand or so devices here in the usa Of so over any area there's when the station comes over You'll see, you know dozens and dozens of tweets as it goes over each city and state now What if we take the situation and flip it there's a comment from green jim l l Who says I wonder what would happen if they put the software on one of the pies on the international space station Would it just constantly flash insanely? So I have thought about that. Yeah, so so So the real thing right behind everything what I'm about is having the world get present to when Astronauts are passing them by Because I say that makes a difference and we can talk a little bit more about why that is But I say it makes a difference when people are aware that the astronauts are passing them by it's sort of like an existential thing Something oh, yeah, we've got astronauts there above me If you're an astronaut on the station Uh what I would say might be a useful thing to know is when you're passing by home So instead of it being iss above Um the same software if they had it running on they actually do have an astro pie That's what it's called on the space station. It's a formal Thing from the rosary pie foundation that runs code from schools all around the around europe and the uk Um, so if they had that had it running on there The astronauts could configure it to be Looking out for when they're passing by their home And so it would be like, you know family below or kids below or something like that So every time the station goes over there That's what would happen and I can't say who From the station actually purchased one, but there was there was an astronaut who was on the station a year and a half ago Who actually purchased an ISS above for his family? So when he was on the station his family knew every time Dad and or husband was passing by that brings up an interesting question So i'm going to ask this question from our chat room and then expand on it, which is from mr. Macabar It says, uh, is it only the international space station or also tian gong, which is the chinese space station But let let me take that even a step further. We're about to hit an age of uh citizens in space Right, it's no longer going to be an age of just five or six nasa astronauts soon We're gonna have bigelow space stations. We're gonna have a lunar colony We're gonna have i mean all of these things are real it sounds like it's really out far out there, but In the grants it's not it's yeah, so, uh, will you be able to extend this to hey, you know What i'm taking a trip up to the bigelow station. Here you go. Here's my here's my space above Yes, absolutely. So at the moment the the the product just works with the orbital data from For the space station. So every satellite that's up there Has orbital elements just the two line elements they're called That's what my system downloads and uses to calculate the orbit and where it is so Um, it's just a matter of of switching in a different set of elements or having Multiple elements on there the software doesn't do that yet, but it's definitely feasible to do that. So if you had tian gongs Tla's yeah, yep, you'd be able to just say okay switch between whatever orbit Actually, you could take that a step further if you have the tla from anything in space You would be able to track it. Yes, that's why i've registered the domain sat above So so i'm thinking that way the the other key thing About that if i can just do a tiny little segue name drop here is One of the i would i would really classify this as one of the reasons how i managed to get iss above in the hands of non techies And that was bill nye Purchased an iss above from me In sort of mid Yeah, july of 2014 that's bill bill nye the planetary guy bill nye the planetary guy. That's right um, and uh He happened to fall in love with what you're seeing here at the moment. You'll notice we're not seeing live video That's because the station's in darkness sure He obviously is someone who is interested in having people be passionate about space Well, i would say exploration Yes, in in the context of the planetary society at space exploration But they've also really now been getting more involved in i would say in in the human aspect so and bill was interviewed by the wall street journal and It was the article was 17 questions to bill nye, you know, whatever questions you be, you know is like How many bow ties do you have? Do you ever wear anything other than a bow tie and uh, and then one of the questions two questions on bow ties Something like that. I might be exaggerating But the other question they had was okay. What's your favorite technology gadget? wasn't this His question was what's your most recent obsession? And his most recent obsession he said was this gizmo called iss above You plug it into your tv with an hdmi cable and it gives you live views of the earth from space And his final line was Um, it's uh, I watch it all the time. I watch it more than is reasonable. It's just a beautiful thing Um, and then the next day that was in the wall street journal My phone that was getting emails when any order came in blew up. I had like a hundred orders that next day And the on the on the messages they were often messages like is this what bill nye's got? I want what bill nye's got whatever he described. I want that It was like when harry met sally moment or something That's incredible anyway so bill sort of he he He reached out to people who of all ages Who were just reading the wall street journal? And they wanted that so, um You know, that's one way that you that you you get that sort of uh Outreach out there beyond the techies And I've been very grateful at that So a couple more comments from the chat room going back a word a little bit. I'm kind of the beginning You know, it is a self-contained bias. Uh, yeah, so this is high definition earth viewing right now And it even tells you this is nice because this is part of iss above the the title that is not part of hdmi It's not part of hdmi. You would normally just see this feed So you wouldn't actually know what you're over and we've got uh, what do we have here? We got a soyuz Yeah, that's the soyuz mso Two or three can't remember which one that one is that one Updated now. We're over the sea in japan. Yeah, so this is going to be leaving on june the first I believe that's with the two astronauts who are going back down um, and uh Then this is a progress resupply vehicle and the that's a that's sort of Solar panel from the sickness So, uh, yeah And this is just one of the views this that camera module that's underneath the columbus module has Really three different camera views. This is the rear camera view and in a minute So you've got to watch out internet audience. You should be seeing This getting a lot bluer because it's over the sea of japan And it's just just after sunrise. So this is the back view So the space station is moving towards us this way five miles per second And uh, you'll see the earth Below is getting a lot lighter because it's moving into sunset. Sorry. So it's moving into sunrise Um, and it it occasionally does that just lost the video, but it will come back again It's live video from space. It's gotta happen from time to time. Yeah, and it's interesting So this is a six megabits or eight megabits per second Uh stream That is coming from an encoder on the space station It goes it's spread out via nasa's network of communication satellites satellites called tedris transit and data relay system And then it comes down to somewhere like in white sands new mexico, I think Then it gets piped over to marshal space flight center and then they demux This video stream from everything else and then they send it over to johnson space center And then they stream it to you stream And then it comes to this Bit of a path to get to uh It is quite quite an extraordinary path. So I can just about see that there's it's getting a little bit to bluer there But hopefully it'll come back It looks like they've switched it into a mode where it's just on the rear the rear camera and the reason they might do that You know, it's uh, so I know that they will do it Around june the first because they want they want you to be able to see The undocking of this uh of the Soyuz When it leaves to land in calzak, that makes sense. Yeah, and when it's uh, when space x is doing a delivery They tend to leave it on the down camera view the nindia view because that's where you can see the approaching of The space x dragon And then it's capture and birthing now. I believe each each dev originally I mean, this is a really interesting use of each dev But really, uh, if I remember right because we're going back ways It was designed to try a bunch of different high definition cameras in space and see how well they survive because, um Camera sensors do not like radiation. Yes at all And you have a ton of radiation in space and so they put just a bunch of different cameras Like just commercial for different panasonic, sony, uh, uh, some others And they're really just standard. They're not special cameras. Yeah, they are they're cons cameras They're called commercial off the shelf. Yep. And part of it was also built by high school students with a program that nasa runs called Hunch High schools united for creating hardware They love their acronyms They do So now you can see it's getting a little bit lighter underneath the station and you may event you'll you'll see the full screen to that So you can actually start to see some of this stuff, right? Oh, there you go. Right as I yep that moment But as soon as it comes back, we'll go full screen. You'll actually start to be able to see the earth Starting to form on the lower right hand corner and we can just doubt if you want to just hang there for a little bit I think it's going to be an absolute incredible shot. Yeah, so and so the earth is the edge of the earth is just just about up here and Yeah, you should see that's that's what it looks like when you're 250 miles up and the clouds below you Moving, you know, they're 250 miles below and the incredible thing is this is a live high definition feed from space Right now and if space station was overhead if it was directly overhead We would have You know, we get an alert saying hey, what you're looking at right now is you know, I know that you can tweet out and say, hey You know Hey astronauts, I'm have you ever considered doing something where It tweets a picture like takes a snapshot and tweets a picture saying Hey, here's a picture of what happened when I was on top of you like that is yeah, so That's certainly something I've considered doing sort of like there's a point where yeah Waving and then anything gets tweeted out. It's certainly feasible The raspberry pi platform has its own camera system that you can just install Well, I think we're just grab a screenshot of the hdev. Oh the hdev, right? So grab that tweet out being like hey, it flew overhead. This is where I was this is this is a shot from space of me Cool. Yeah I'll brand that Brought to you by tmro Everyday asked on it in the studio asks the question How does the iss above keep track of which astronauts are bored so it knows who to tweet But it's not it's not tweeting the individual astronauts. No, it's the tweets go to the space station But you can you can put anything you want in there. So if you wanted to personally give a shout out to Peggy witson or Astro two fish Who is up there right now is just the the greatest first first time visitor astronaut Who's up there right now you can put you can tag them in the tweets The tweets go out via the iss above you twitter account, but you can write whatever you want So a few more questions from the chat room rebel Or what is that rebel ace basically asks is it also available for windows? Well, I think The point is it's it's not for os 10. It's not for windows It's a standalone box that you plug in no computer required No, it it is its own computer. So this is this is really what a standard iss above looks like But for people who are geeky watching the the this show You can just that's everyone. Yeah, so that's everyone Just go on to amazon buy a raspberry pi. They're about 35 bucks My software that just is a basically it's it's on this card that that is here This micro sd card. It's an 8 gig card. They cost like six bucks You just write the image for iss above on here and it's not free You know, I'm doing a lot of work here to sort of get this out there But it's usually 30 bucks, but I hope you don't mind I've created a discount code Oh, you're allowed absolutely. Yeah, so it's tmro and you will get uh, this will cost 15 dollars So you just get the download put it onto a raspberry pi A lot of people say oh cut isn't there an app for this and I would say yes There is there are some apps that do a lot of what this does But I'm a bit of a what's the polite term Uh, it's a polite english term. I'm a bit of a bastard supplied english term I I want to force people To plug this into a tv I say that when this is when this when you put this into a tv It actually makes a difference because everyone who's in Site of that tv gets to take part in the experience If it's something that's an app, it's on your phone, you know, your phone is your phone You're using it for so many other things. You're using it to call people. Sure You know, I've got it beeping You know, I I have it beep when the space station is coming over So my phone lets me know that so you can get apps that do this and they're wonderful And they're great for the use but what I'm trying to do is to have this experience brought to people's homes Brought to people's offices. It's more about the inspiration than it is. Yeah So I force you to buy this hardware device so that you have to plug it into but you don't force them to buy it from you You can go buy it off the shelf. Yes, you can so so some people are not geeks Or they just want the whole thing. So yes, so you can order it from me and there's still a discount that will work on that as well So it actually that brings another point from the chat room Chris Radcliffe a little bit earlier said, uh, you know There are a lot of schools and Situation like this where you don't want a pc to manage this a simple plug-in machine beats a pc that needs management any day You got you totally got the value of it. That's the other advantage of just having this which is On your desk, which is you don't need them. Yeah, there are no windows updates. There are no os 10 updates It just sits there and either and this I plug it into a screen although you can't have the little what's yeah So this is still a raspberry pi System, but it's using what's called the standard raspberry pi touchscreen. Sure you can't control it using the touch But nevertheless, it's a seven inch hdmi display. They only cost like 60 bucks extra And then the uh, but it's inside it's still a raspberry pi Okay, yeah, so and then I use a you know a different display indicator This is another Kickstarter A device there called the blink the blinkum From a friend in in pasadena so, uh, so you you you can all right and Yeah, so so though you can use lots of different displays. This one is an lc an lcd. This one is a a little strip of of led lights if I just Plug it in It'll boot up. So you you'll start seeing what what that looks like. This one here is a a raspberry pi zero w this one cost 10 dollars If you can get them they're they're a little bit in hard supply So there's there's over 30 million of raspberry pies out there in the world Uh, so this one is just and it all runs the same code. I also have one running on my back here Well, that's eink on your right. It is although It's beta and it crashed so Eink display it actually keeps the lot it the display is Doesn't need any power So if if it crashes or in this case, or if you switch it off, it will keep whatever was there last but But earlier on you were seeing it was working anyway, so But that's it. It's it's basically a device that I've it's even got silly putty here See I love this stuff Dutta our control room data Mastermind of the show asks does it require a wireless or an ethernet connection? Yes, it does So either wireless or uh, or ethernet So the is above itself has a built-in ethernet port. It also has built-in wi-fi So And the way that you configure all this is just using a simple web Application running on your phone or whatever. It's got a website web server running on it And that's how you can configure it Updates come to it completely automatically. It's sort of like a an appliance that just you don't have to worry about it So because there there are often new features that I push out or bug fixes And uh, that's that's usually a very reliable way to get them out there Big b from the chat room is asking can it run on a pi zero? Yes. Yes. So this is so this is the pie zero here Yeah, so uh, yeah Runs perfectly on the pi zero and then You know I kind of I think I'll expand on this but sarge enzymes asking has anyone developed an app to integrate with isus above But I think expanding on that. Is there any sort of like api or sdk that allows you to integrate this like more information in or out of this? Um, I haven't thought about that. Um, so I'd have to sort of think about what What that would be about, you know, how that would uh, you know What sort of systems that that would link to I'm just uh, so I don't know I don't I think I have a good answer. It's a solid maybe. Yeah, it's certainly so in terms of my side of things I'm pulling stuff from various Uh external services. So Um, so there's time like, you know, that image that was just on there is one that I've dedicated to this device It's pulling it from my server Uh checking if there's a new update to it and it pushes them down to the units Um, the bit where you see the overlay of the of the place names That's coming from a server that I've got Running that service. I'm calculating the place name that's below the space station And then all the iss aboves are going to me To that server to pull that information. So so that's pulling information But I but I think what uh, your viewer was talking about was having something go the other way Um, and it's certainly feasible. I've sort of thought of doing other things like sms messaging from it directly All right Really quickly three more questions. Uh, this is from our twitch channel It's uh, jarni's is asking would it run on other arm boards such as a banana pie? um So I have not uh Yeah iss above definitely at the moment doesn't I've certainly created versions that just run under regular linux distributions. So and they they just So I haven't made them available to the public, but I'm certainly, you know open to sort of looking at doing that So I've got versions that run under just regular Distributions of linux. Okay, and I've just removed all of the custom stuff to do with, you know Blinky lights and things like that But yeah Heldas asks so the high definition earth viewing experiment is ending eventually. Is there a placement replacement plan? Wonderful That's a great. Yeah, great great. It's been a concern of mine for some time Because uh, the place the port that the that this module is on Is actually very anything on the station is really valuable in terms of real estate, right? People want to put experiments up there there is A replacement experiment designed to go in its space and it does has nothing to do with hdev But it's been delayed and delayed and delayed, but it still looks like sometime in 2018 This is likely going to be discarded And the replacement is that what I've seen going on nasa does know how valuable this is sure But they don't like have this is hdev replacement What they've been doing is replacing many other of the cameras that are that are around the station They've been replacing those with high definition cameras So, you know the pan tilt zoom cameras that some of them have so this is just one of the live streams There is another live stream if you google iss live Video it's another you stream channel. Oh, it's the camera has switched to the front camera view And this is just an incredible view, right? This is you look at this and you're like, oh This is a live view from space right now From a craft with five humans on board orbiting the earth Right, I feel like that should be text across the top. You're looking at a live view of space with craft humans I mean, it just and it does go that way when people say, oh, you this is live right now Yeah, I'm seeing something Wow, yes, and that is what's so amazing So to answer that what what I see What the team who've involved most involved in this they've been concerned with Making sure that other that the cameras are just this is going to be something that will Hopefully just be fed directly from standard operational cameras that are on there now. We're trying to have I am Standing for having you know, a special channel that is dedicated to Delivering this the experience of hdev, but using some of those new camera angles This is a great view to see the earth But it doesn't get you in touch with the fact that this view is from a place where human beings are living Because there's no structure here of the station That's why one of the most popular views is the one where it's the rear camera view where you can see the station Or the down camera view when dragon is attached and you can see part of the the solar panels Another incredible view that I don't think they have is just in if they did inside the station looking out the cupola Yeah, so then you'd be able to see earth below slash astronauts in the shot. That'd be kind of cool But I realize that nasa's kind of Yeah, there's privacy things that they certainly do if you look at the iss live channel That that is controlled by flight controllers at johnson space center and they sometimes do switch Internal views to that same feed so and what I don't show you here is that there's a beta version Version three i'm working on is what I call it a multi panel version where you can have Four quadrants and it now it'll feature iss live hdev and nasa tv and the orbit all in one view So it's best if you've got a big tv to experience that but So but what's really there is that is that you can you can you can really see Just the whole plethora of different live videos from the station I think for version three as vax headroom in the chat room saying is asking if you're aware of launch library, which is a A project from tomorrow be cool for us to get launch information in there as well through the free api Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah So that that's definitely something that i'm interested in putting in there because people who have this Are interested in you know, it's not just the space station. It's other things as well All right before before we get into our general questions Where can people find more information on iss above you in general and like where can they buy something? Yeah, so iss above calm will get you to the website and All the information is there you're gonna either purchase complete units or get that download image Do you have all of the I I didn't even look at the store page, but do you have all the different types here? It's just the base It's really this is this is the one that that you would get if you purchased a retail unit It comes with this and a power supply and instructions And and you know, that's all you need because I think I want that one on my desk at company Yeah, that's right. This this one I I was uh I created this one as a job lot initially for NASA because they wanted they wanted units that they could connect into their unlimited Verizon hot spot thing And their educators can just take it around with them. So I so I shipped about a dozen of these all around the country But these are easy to put together You know, there's no slide right in the back. It does it just slides in there's there's a little bit of just connecting On here, you can see I've just this is connecting the power through but it's really really easy to do So So that that's what I'd recommend there is that you just buy the components you put them together It's very easy. All right. Our five general questions ready. All right. No right or wrong answers. All right Moon or mars first I I still love the moon. I still thought yeah, so We'll have to get you a moon first shirt. Yeah, I know. Oh my gosh. There you go. I just uh, I've Come up with the world. I'm a bit embarrassed about that Oh, why why embarrassed about that there? I mean there are technical reasons for there's uh Emotional reasons for it too. Yeah, I know when you've spent enough time with people who are sort of really going for it That definitely is you know, there are there are the two camps. Oh, yeah, absolutely We should just go straight to mars or you know, yeah, I just think the moon is is just a cool place I would totally I would visit the moon on a week-long vacation. I can't do that with mars. No, exactly Another way to inspire right be like, oh, hey, just look up tonight. Yeah, I'll be there Yes, I'll be you know, I'll be on the moon. You'll probably see it unless you have clouds. Cool. Uh, would you go? Yes I I would to the moon. Oh to the moon. Yes. I would go to the moon to mars to mars I don't think so and that's I'm just thinking of the of the timing sure I'm gonna wait for them to get the indoor plumbing office. Yeah, some of that. Yes, exactly Yeah, I I would be a happy camper type person where I you know, I want I want there to be amenities That's fair. Uh, when do you think humans will first land on mars? Oh gosh, okay So I still think it's going to be in the 2030s Early or late. Um, I'm going for early When do you think humans will set foot on the moon again? Uh, yeah, so let's say 2025 No idea why that just sort of came into my head. I asked I asked my brain We're holding you to it. It's all right. Just it just it just You're responsible for 2025 now. Right. I got it. Last question and my favorite. Mm-hmm. Why space? Space I would say why space what it is for me Is that it's about everything that's great about being human I think when when you are someone who is involved with or thinking about space It's a really great community to be around It's inspiring. Uh, I think when human beings sort of really look beyond themselves It provides an opportunity to look beyond our Petty problems in a way. I mean, we've got, you know, really important things to deal with on the earth I think that this Has us all get an opportunity to sort of be connected to the world as a whole And to be responsible that we're we're all You know, we're all at this moment in time We're all here to make a difference and I think working on things in space Actually has a big knock on effect with how we are on the earth what we're up to That is a great answer. Liam. Thank you so much for taking time out of your saturday and joining us here on the station I would not rather be anywhere else. Look, I'm gonna build a couple of these bring them to my uh, my desk over at the company x It's gonna be awesome. All right. Uh Thank you so much. Uh, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back comments from last week's show stay tuned We'll be right back We've always looked to the stars They guide us Give us comfort Help us find our way We see ourselves out there When we look up It inspires us and we long for something. We don't yet know We yearn to go there So we venture forth We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing Not because they are easy, but because they are hard Because that goes Don't serve to organize The eagle has landed It's one small step for man one The athlete for me The exploration of space will go ahead Whether we join in it or not Many think we stopped exploring But we know Our journey didn't end We've only just begun It was functioning perfectly at this point Come with us and explore tomorrow And welcome back to tomorrow. Now before we get started with comments from our last show I do want to give a huge shout out to all of the patrons of tomorrow who have developed to make this specific segment To this episode happened. These are escape velocity members. They've contributed ten dollars or more to this specific episode We have also got our orbital subscribers. These are people who've contributed five dollars or more to this specific episode And for this segment, we also have our sub orbital members These are people who've contributed two dollars and fifty cents or more And they're going to get access to after dark and all the other goodies that come along with that And as well as of course their name in the show because we are a crowdfunded show every single dollar helps That's what allows us to do this week after week to find out how you can help us continue to create the shows of tomorrow Head on over at patreon.com Slash t m r o item joined by uh hero dynamics capcom and the hologram We are going to be going over comments from our last show. So capcom Your hair's pink. It's purple It's purple Take us away. What's our first comment? So last topic was kevin to prune and speaking about the europa clipper Uh, although a lot less about his physique than i would have liked Those arms though Just saying that right those arms were they were crazy pants. Yeah. Oh my goodness. All right First comment comes off of youtube from brad c as it were It's concerning that these developmental and testing phases are being delayed by problems that are clearly avoidable I think the issue is nasa, which is a government agency is regulated by political activity Shouldn't technical scientific or developmental decisions be made by scientists and engineers instead of politicians? I say yes Uh, uh, let's go around the room should the engineers develop the rockets of the politicians Uh engineers. Yeah engineers Yep engineers engineers. Yeah, we're all going to agree with you on that one Yeah, uh, but you know the reason the politicians do it is because nasa is funded by tax dollars Right and they want to keep jobs in their district. And so that's what happens Unfortunately, it's a very short side of view because in doing that enforcing engineering decisions on the engineers They almost always end up with a lesser product. They end up with a product. It is stupid expensive And um, it may get canceled. We've seen this constellation is a perfect example of that and um, you know, you just if if if they went back to the apollo era of Look, we don't know how just put people on the moon That was that was great to be fair though. They had a much larger percentage of our budget at that time So, yeah, we'll see what happens. I think I think you'll find most people will agree that the engineer should make the engineering decisions but um I mean, that's not the world we live in today Something that I will say for for this, uh, you know, james wedd the man when he was uh, the Administrator of nasa not the telescope the man the actual man who's dead now but uh, you know, he had a brilliant idea of placing all the different factories and all the different nasa centers In multiple states around the country so that it would almost force congressional support So today you might have these congresspeople that don't necessarily care about space and The ideas that they come up with might not be something that we like in general But the fact that they want to, you know, uh Make their constituents happy in their districts for whatever nasa center or whatever factory or whatever Part of the industry they have in their area It gives that support and I think that without that we wouldn't be able even though we might not be fans of the space Launch system here and other programs at least they're they're happening and getting this congressional support Because of of things like this so It's complicated, but at least something's happening. This goes back to our roundtable discussion We have to have I don't think we're not fans of the space launch system I don't think any of us is sitting here going we hate space launch system space launch system should never fly I think fundamentally are uh, I think someone in our control room is not a fan of space launch system Most of us are not a fan are are not not fans. I don't know how to word that I I think I think the big issue most of us have is what what we just mentioned Which is it's cost which was created by politicians Dictating engineering needs like like you have to use solid fuels. Why why why is that for why does a politician say You have to use solid oh you have to use leftover shuttle materials. Yeah, exactly. I mean, okay That goes to our roundtable discussion that I believe is happening June next month this next july july i think june or july whenever we have five shows in one month All right next up capcom. Okay next comment also comes off of youtube from rocky boulders says uh okay Could be worse. Uh, I love how ben can have accidentally calling Europa a planet Well with all the talk of poluto status. I'm really surprised you guys haven't talked more about the new geophysical planet definition proposed by alan stern and company back in march Maybe this would make for a good roundtable discussion the problem. It may The problem is I think that turns like our moon into a planet it turns every moon in the solar system into a planet It does and it potentially turns asteroids into planets as well I forgot how many hundreds of planets we would have just in our local system It would be one of the most painful pains in the butt to anyone themselves Aren't planets themselves technically moons of their orbiting star. So now we're splitting hairs Now that's what happens. This is what happens when you reclassify poluto. It's on you guys now It's like a never-ending onion where we're just peeling layers and layers and layers back and it's just not gonna end well It's not gonna end well. That's planet that planet song in fifth grade is going to be amazing That's what I was thinking That's gonna be like a six hour song now Forget it. The pneumatic advice for that is going to be its own paragraph My favorite planet's the sun Is technically a moon of of uh, you know the black uh Oh my god, what what have you done? You guys you astro You should have left it alone. We screwed the pooch left it alone. Pluto was just fine being a planet We blew it. You blew it. You blew it kid. You know it next up Okay Yeah, that's totally the response you were expecting there Uh next comment comes off of youtube. Uh, eric. I'm going to print announces as eric irl Uh, it's the camera mounts that make the cape canaveral footage so good They're based on the old anti aircraft gun mounts and they're over 50 years old They provide a rock steady platform for whatever cameras and lenses you put on them. Okay, it's it's not just the camera mounts It's also the humans running them Uh, yes, you know photo show, right? Uh, I mean again goes kudos kudos to the humans who were manually tracking those shots They were incredible those from the last SpaceX launch. I mean having the right tools helps Having the right tools helps with doing the job. Well, absolutely But that's only part of it, right? But you still have to know how to use those tools I that's right But if any one of those elements is is out of whack, right? Yes, we have a really great person who can track but they have just this horrible little like DSLR tripod that's not going to be good, right? Right? Yeah, and at the same time if you have this incredible stable mount platform But you have someone who's never tried to track a rocket before right also not going to be good It's a combination of all of the things. Yes, absolutely But yeah, I mean again it just when you consider the distances involved It was absolutely incredible never mind that they use telescopes for photo or for uh camera lenses correct Well, yeah, you have to at that point. They are their giant telescopes pointed at a rocket The best part is if you ever get the chance to see the part where they don't actually have the rocket in frame And it's a whole lot of Trying to hang on to it And actually that's where was it that's trying to find it for like three seconds That's the secret little thing behind you know behind again pulling back the curtain for a moment It's not just the camera operator or the mount It's also the people choosing the shots that the public gets to see because you know everyone's like I want to see all the shots. It's like, no, no, no, no, actually, you know, you don't because it's a lot of like nothing Nauseous. Yeah, it's a lot of nothing. Uh, I'm gonna be sick. Yeah, right. Yeah, so anyhow I realized there are still nerds who definitely want to choose. They're like, no, you're wrong I want but you know the the control room does a great job with that too. The experiment with that is I was not that that was not me. I'm not patting myself on the back No, no, no, no, but the the the easy experiment with that is uh watch any sort of live event Whether it's music or wrestling or Sports or whatever it is, right? And then go back anything that was broadcast and then go back and watch the broadcast and see the things that you missed Yeah, because even though live you Technically got to see all of the angles, right? You know, you saw all of the things that happened all of the same time You can't consume it but you can't consume it in that way. Uh, so human brain doesn't work that way Yeah, so it's just it's a it's it's a cute little experiment you can do on your own Yep. Um, okay. So next comment comes off of patreon. Actually, uh, this way. Thank you patron Thank you single patron who commented on patreon Uh, this one comes from tom westcott says uh mixed feelings about making science cool I don't want to bring it down to baking soda, uh, volcanoes getting people excited about results is great But we also need to get them excited about calculus stats physics and biology as well That stuff can be hard for a lot of folks Absolutely Yeah, you really have to tow a line a very careful line When trying to make science cool because you gotta you can't dumb it down too much for people That's not very nice. It depends on what your audience is though. Yeah, you have to think about your audience too You also can't like start doing calculus on the chalkboard behind you as well Because then you're just going to lose the majority of your audience I mean even people who know how to do calculus have a hard time doing calculus. So I mean it's It's called calculus uh Yeah, it's it that can be very difficult and I think sometimes we have uh some trouble even on this show Uh, because we have a fairly wide audience and we have had everyone from people who have worked on stuff That has gone out into space and bombed the moon as we like to say, uh, you know We have rocket scientists in the chat room and then we have people who just randomly hi back We do have people who just randomly find us like uh on twitch for instance or youtube or twitter or twitch viewers Hello twitch viewers or also apparently, uh randomly in walk doing marches in dc for science. Um, yeah We have all different kinds of people who watch this show Uh and any show uh any sort of thing anytime you were talking or evangelizing space and science You do have to take your audience into consideration Sometimes it's hard because you don't know your audience. Yeah, like I have no idea who's watching right now I don't know what level to be at So you just have to kind of find it you do you have to find it something in the middle that um Uh, isn't insulting the people who know this stuff But at the same time isn't over the head of other people and little things like not using acronyms helps a great deal Yeah, because you don't actually have to use acronyms to sound smart, right? So that's that's one of those little itty bitty things that goes a long way To you know, you're not insulting the people who know this stuff because they know what you're talking about And people who don't know what you're talking about can figure it out now You're not throwing tla's at them all the time three litter acronyms Uh, yeah, and I feel like uh, the the biggest thing is is how much time to spend on it Like even on on the news story that I did today talking about blue origin and aero jet It's just like okay here. They did a test on a part like for those of you who don't know This is what this part does and you know still trying to balance that but not take too much time to explain it If the most important part that makes the rocket go right Here's another really important part that makes the rocket go. What's the difference? Well, yeah, well except that the uh, because it was the power plant. We were talking about the power plant, right? Yep Power pack Well, the turbo pump we're talking about the turbo pump, right? Yeah, the spinny's really fast The jet engine inside of the rocket engine Yes, and we've seen what happens when that jet engine fails look no further than uh, One of the Cygnus missions the Antares it took down an entire rocket One turbo pump failure took an entire rocket down. That's what they were testing Yeah, neat Yeah, the other thing to note. Uh, just really quickly not to harp on this too long either Too late. I know Uh, they always tell you when you're trying to write something particularly, you know, go with what you know You have to go with what what you know what you understand Uh, you don't ever want to appear too foolish when you're trying to branch out a little bit And uh, so that also, you know, if Well Me doing math on air last week. Let's not touch that one. Shall we um In my head by the way while trying to listen to something that was so terrible. I'm so sorry for that I was really proud of myself in the moment though. Um, I don't remember this, but okay. Yeah But then so so there's that right so and and uh, not every Uh person that we have on the show is going to speak to you and that's okay, too So I think we just need to make room for all of those things being possibilities is I guess my point there All right next up. All right next one comes off of youtube. This is from jeff molinuk molinuk molinuk Yep, we're thank you liam How does uh spacex falcon 9 first stage return back to landing zone without going to zero velocity during its space turnaround See may first launch. Ah, so what what they're talking about is if you look at the uh velocity meters on the spacex launch, um When it goes up it reaches this apache that that kind of the top part and then it Starts falling back down to earth But the speed never hit zero you'd expect it to go up Go to zero and then kind of going back down and the reason it never hit zero is Because it started at zero which means that the meters are uh earth relative velocity In other words it's taking into account the rotation of the earth So it's not going to hit zero because The earth is rotating underneath it and we're taking all of that into account and so uh unless you actually started going Against it. Essentially, you're just not going to hit a zero marker Same thing with the altitude by the way the altitude uh, you'll notice that is uh, it'll say stage two altitude It's at zero That can't be correct, right? Well, it's not incorrect But the the the altimeters not sitting on the ground at zero altitude You know it's way it's you know 14 stories high up in the rocket So all of that's kind of nulled out to make that because you expect them to read zero When it launches when when it's on the launch pad you expect It's it's altitude how high up it is and how fast it's going you expect those to say zero You don't expect it to say, you know hundreds or thousands of miles per hour and you know, whatever it is