 Coming up, ESA commits to the International Space Station. LIGO turns back on. I talked to Justin Park about Space World. All that and more on this episode of Tomorrow. Welcome to Tomorrow! This is 9.40 for December 10th, 2016. I can't even believe we're coming to the end of 2016. For sure, the first couple shows of 2017, I'm still going to say 2016, knowing me. I'm your host, Carrie Ann, and joining me shortly will be Jared and Mike. But first and foremost, I want to thank our Patreon Premier members. These are the people who have given us $10 or more for the segment of this episode. They also get access to our Slack channel, which is always a lot of fun. You get to see really weird conversations and you get to first look at some of the stuff that we're doing for Orbit 10. And most recently, you also get to hear my lovely voice for a completely different show. Not confusing at all. In any case, I want to make sure that we get started as we always do with these shows. And I'm being reminded to remind you that if you would like to be on this particular slate, that you should be donating to patreon.com.tmro. How's that? Sounds good. That's how my director lets me know that I can move on to staying on that slate. Thank you. I appreciate that. Like I said, joining me now is Jared and Mike. And we have so many launches to talk about. Because like we talked in the last week's show, tons of launches in 2016. And this week is no exception. We have four right off the bat. If I was counting correctly, I could be wrong though. Mike, get us started. What's going on? What's the first one up? Well, let's just go right in order of when these happen. First off, we have a Vega launch, which launched Gook Turk 1. Let's check out the footage. I thought you were swallowing on the name for a second. It is Gook Turk 1 though, isn't it? Yes, it is Gook Turk 1. And this launched on the four-stage solid rocket booster Vega. And it launched on Monday, December 5th at 1351 coordinated universal time from French Guiana. And the Gook Turk 1 is a Turkish spy satellite. And it was put into a polar orbit 435 miles up or about 700 kilometers. And that's a stock photo of it right there. So congratulations to Arianespace for this successful launch. And it's always nice to see those Vega launches going up. So are we thinking Arianespace because they own this one? I'm kidding. Yes. We totally had that debate last week. I know. I don't actually want to reopen that one, but it kind of made me laugh. I'm chunking this up as a European launch. Good. Close enough. All right. Why? Why? This is what happens when you put me in charge. So we also have a PSLV launch. Is that correct? That's correct. And this was launching from India. This was on Wednesday, December 7th. And there was two launches that day. Oh, awesome. So let's check out the footage for this launch. Three. That's why he left off. I always wanted to see you come off of the trees like that. It's so cool. Absolutely. Coming out of the jungle there from Shahara Kota Island and the Satish Dwarhan Space Center. This launched at 455 coordinating universal time. And it was the PSLV XL launch vehicle, which has a six solid rocket boosters and a solid core. And then it has a liquid second stage, a solid third stage and a liquid fourth stage. And what you're seeing on screen is it's payload, the resource set to a mission, which is going to be tracking agriculture, water resources, soil contamination, and the growth of Indian cities. So congratulations to India for that successful launch as well. Totally. Congratulations. You said six solid, a solid core, six solid boosters, a solid core, a liquid second stage, which is a ton of solids. Yeah, it kind of goes at leap frogs though from the whole liquid and solids. Solid, solid, liquid, solid, liquid. Yeah, it's awesome. That is awesome. Don't get me wrong. Somebody in the chat room, where was it? Scooch says, need more solids, which is really what kind of helps it leap right off the pad is... Yeah, Ben likes it. It's interesting too. When it takes off the pad, only four of the solid rocket boosters are firing, and then after it's launched, then the other two will fire after it clears the tower and everything like that. So it doesn't even use all six of the solid rocket boosters at once. It's an interesting way that they fly the PSLV for sure. And I like the sort of like skirt configuration there. Like it sort of, I don't know, has a cool like, at the end. Yeah. I don't know. And you said there was another one going on, or that happened on December 7th. Is that right? Yeah, this was the second one of that day, and this was a Delta IV launch. Let's check out the footage of this one. Four. We have engine ignition. Two. One. And... and liftoff of the United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket carrying the WGS-8 mission for the United States Air Force. This just goes to show you that rockets never, I mean they go on time essentially, but you're like four, three, two, one, zero. And... And... Just leave already. I figure it's a little difficult to tell because the Delta IV first lights itself on fire and then it launches. And this one was a little bit different too. This was a Delta IV medium plus, which you saw the four solid rocket boosters and them separate away. And this launch took place at 2353 coordinating universal time from Cape Canaveral. And the Indian launch earlier happened at... excuse me, 455 coordinating universal time. And as he said, this was a... the Wideband Global SATCOM-8 satellite, which is a communication satellite for the United States Air Force. So... I love Delta IV launches and this was another great one. And I'm just so excited for that launch and some of that footage too, especially some of the smoke there with this beautiful plume. Just the footage coming out of ULA now has improved so much this year. I'm really loving it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. And you said one more launch? This is great. I'm just going to make Mike dance for the whole first segment of the show. This is a launch that I've been looking forward to all year. This was a Japanese launch, the Japanese H-2B rocket, which launched the sixth HTV cargo vehicle, which is going to rendezvous with the International Space Station on Tuesday. Let's check out the footage. This happened yesterday, Friday, December 9th, at 1326 Coordinated Universal Time from the Tanagashima Space Center. And the HTV-6 is delivering quite a bit of cargo to the International Space Station. It's about 9,080 pounds or 4,119 kilograms, including some new lithium ion batteries for the space station, as well as new parts for their carbon dioxide scrubbers, which has been a little bit faulty lately. They're still working just fine, but they've been having with some hiccups with that. So that's some very important equipment they need to bring up there to the space station, including lots of food and other supplies as well. So congratulations to JAXA for that successful launch and looking forward to the rendezvous and birthing with the space station on Tuesday. So a couple of things really quickly. You said that you were looking forward to this launch all year. Why is that? Well, just because this was a Japanese launch and with this, Japan now has three launches so far this year. And I really like their rockets because they were actually derived from the Delta II rocket. And the H2B actually has a wider diameter that's a little bit closer to the Delta IV size. It's 5.2 meters in diameter. And it also has four solid rocket boosters as well. So they fly it in a different configuration and they manufacture it completely in Japan and it's all used with domestically made parts. But the original plans was based off of the Delta II and they were able to use the Delta II under like a contract that they had with Boeing at the time to manufacture it in Japan and then eventually started making known improvements and it became its own rocket. So I really like the Japanese launches though and especially for this, having another cargo flight with the Japanese flight, with the Russian flight that failed recently. This was definitely needed and the new batteries and new parts for the carbon dioxide scrubber is something I've been slightly nervous about for a little while. So that alleviates my fears that that will be taken care of very soon. Good, good. And then a couple of comments from the chat room. Siderite says how different rockets are in terms of visuals at least. The wide exhaust of the Indian rocket, the different configurations, how some just start off really slow lift off and others just go whoosh, which that's exactly what I was trying to say. And then Dan TC-24 said, I thought all Delta IVs except for the heavy were retired. Mike, can you speak to that at all? No, the Delta IV is flying in all of its different available configurations and this one had the 5 meter payload fairing, but they also have another type that uses the small solid rocket boosters without the other large liquid boosters for the Delta IV medium sizes where they can have a 4 meter payload fairing or a 5 meter payload bearing and also different numbers of solid rocket boosters just like United Launch Alliance offers with the Atlas V. So all of the different configurations of Delta IV are going to continue to fly at least until their new Vulcan rocket is operational and has different configurations available for their customers. Don't worry, Delta II is retiring and I think we had the last launch, there might even be one more launch of Delta II, but Delta II is retiring but all the configurations of Delta IV are going to remain active until at least Vulcan comes online. Interesting. Ben, I think the Delta IV... Ben, there you go. I think the Delta IV retiring, I know the voice from off the back. Delta IV probably comes from where Tori Bruno was talking about some of the competition and how they may have to retire the Delta IV in everything but its heavy configuration but they never actually executed on that, that was just them talking about things. Yes. All right. There you go, perfect. Thank you, voice from the unknown. Okay, so while... I'm going to make my dance a little bit longer. So speaking of launches or not launching, rather, or possible launching? Rather a pending launch, yeah. Something that some of us have been looking forward to is SpaceX's return to flight and there was some recent announcements that they had a December 16th slot at Vandenberg Air Force Base to launch the Iridium NEXT satellites, the 10 of them, and that date has actually been pushed back until at least January because SpaceX is waiting for clearance from the FAA. They published a very brief anomaly update on their website on SpaceX.com and with this, just like it says, they're continuing to look into the investigation of the explosion on September 1st and have been waiting clearance for that but as long as they get clearance from the FAA, they can proceed with this launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base and hopefully that does go off right but it doesn't look like they're going to be able to return to flight this year because the miracle happens in the next few days which let's not keep our hopes up. Right. It's one of those things that you want to be better safe than sorry and these things take time. You've got to get it right. We've seen that time and time again in the last couple of years with a couple of different organizations but like I said, all ships rise at the tide and you just want to... Rockets are not easy. If rockets were easy, everyone would be doing that. Jared, let's go in a slightly different direction. Take me off this world. We're going to go to the outer solar system real quick because the Cassini mission... Real quick, ready? The Cassini mission has entered a new phase called ring grazing orbit. What is the Cassini mission? Cassini is a NASA and European Space Agency collaboration with a mission out at Saturn. Saturn. It was launched in 1997 and it arrived at Saturn in 2004 and it's been operating there since. I also arrived in 1997. Did you? No, 1977. Sorry, not 97. That wouldn't make any sense. I just got really excited. Go on. Then Cassini. I was going to say Cassini launched when I was in third grade. Just to put that into some perspective. You okay, Ben? Ben's gaffawing on this side. It started a new phase called ring grazing orbits. Awesome. What does that do then? These are orbits that graze the rings. If you can believe it or not, that's what they're actually doing. I don't understand. You've got the planet and then you've got the rings. Yes. So these orbits... Does it go around the ring this way? It's going in a polar orbit around Saturn. In fact, it's returned some of its first images from this polar orbit. This is the hexagon storm at the northern hemisphere at the north pole of Saturn. That storm forms like that just because of the way the jet streams converge in that area. It's really cool that it makes this perfect hexagon at the north pole. Getting this kind of detail is pretty amazing. These orbits are getting very close to the rings. Usually, Cassini was kept away from the rings close to the rings because... You don't want it to smash in the bits of the rings, but now it's getting closer. It started that on November 30th. Just about two weeks ago somewhere in there. Is this because Cassini is coming to the end of its mission? Yes, it is coming to the end of its mission. Eventually, in April, they're going to do a flyby of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. That is going to send Cassini into these orbits that will actually put Cassini between the gap between the cloud tops of Saturn's atmosphere and the inner rings of Saturn's rings. It's got this very narrow area that they're aiming it for. When you say very narrow area because Saturn's really big. Yes. How narrow are we tacking? 15,000 kilometers. My car would fit there. I think Tesla could orbit straight through there really quickly. We can even put an eye on engine on it. You still called it very narrow. How is that considered to be very narrow? It's very narrow because nobody's ever attempted to do this before. At any planet ever. They've never attempted to try to squeeze in between the cloud tops and the interior of the rings. I don't want to call this frightening, but we're going to find out whether there's any little bits of stuff in that area because basically Cassini would collide with it if there is something there. But they're doing that to end the mission. They'll start in April. That's going to continue all the way until September. Eventually they're going to actually dispose of Cassini by having it burn up in Saturn's atmosphere. They're going to basically do like a plunge into the atmosphere and then dispose of it that way. We don't want it to contaminate the moons. That was my next question. It was not built to the standards of cleanliness that things like Mars rovers are designed. Because we've found places like Titan and Enceladus which could potentially harbor life or have what we call prebiotic conditions. So the conditions that could arise life later on in the history of the solar system. We don't want to mess up those areas because Cassini is not clean enough. Is that like prime directive kind of thing? Yeah, it's like NASA style prime directive. Basically we got to get rid of it because it's not going to work out so well if it does end up colliding with those places. Gotcha. All right. Very cool. Hey, we all learned something today. I love all the images that Cassini has brought back though over all the years that it's spent at Saturn. That's where we've gotten all of these HD pictures and video of Saturn over the past couple of years and just awesome mission. It's going to be sad when it's over but just the wealth of data available is so mind-blowing. Yeah, the fact that it's been 13 years of observation at Saturn that is just fantastic. More than we could have ever hoped for. Vex Headroom in the chat room is pulling a nice comparison for me. It's like flying between the Earth and the GPS satellite constellation. Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, pretty good comparison. Do we know why it's a hexagonal sort of stormy thing going on? It's the way that the jet streams all converge in that area. We've actually been able to replicate it in the laboratory. If you go back to the pictures basically it's these pictures, there's four different photos here at four different wavelengths of light which show basically four different patterns in the clouds that are there. Even though it's hexagonal in some wavelengths of light, it's actually spherical in other wavelengths of light. We would expect to find on a storm here on Earth if you will. It's basically the jet streams all coming together at just the right angles that allow it to form this hexagon. Interesting. We've actually replicated this in the laboratory. We've been able to show that this is not some kind of alien kind of thing. This is an actual natural phenomenon that can occur if you have the right conditions. Nice. Very cool. All right. Mike, I hope you've been rested. Take a little moment off. Tell me more about International Space Station and the European Space Agency. Yeah, so the European Space Agency and the different heads of all their different member states met to decide on their budget moving forward for the next five years and also whether or not they were going to commit to the International Space Station. Thankfully, they were able to commit. They were the last of the major partners to commit to the new 2024 date of utilizing the International Space Station before its planned retirement. I'm really happy about this because that means that that is official that the International Space Station is going to continue to be used until at least 2024 all of the different partners that are involved with the International Space Station agree. But there were a couple of other things that I wanted to mention that were decided on in the European Space Agency budget. One of the things has to do with their ExoMars rubber, rover, which was going to be the follow-on to the trace grass orbiter which we've been talking about which had the Schia Pirelli lander which unfortunately wasn't able to land. But with this, they are going to continue to fund the ExoMars rover and the lander that it would be able to take it to the surface. However, it's going to be pushed back. Originally having it go to Mars in 2020 or rather to launch in 2020 and it doesn't look like they're going to have the earliest time that they'll be able to with the new budget would be 2024. But they do want to continue with the ExoMars project and using rovers. Some other things that I wanted to mention was they have a really cool suborbital not suborbital but they tested a space plane a lifting body type space plane called their intermediate experimental vehicle which launched on a Vega rocket last year and they want to convert that into a pretty much their own X-37B and they're going to call it space rider and so they're going to be doing more work on that and hopefully launching more of those and be doing more experiments and hopefully leading to on orbit servicing and things like that. They also decided for their own version of the asteroid redirect mission which they call the asteroid impact mission has been dropped and they're not going to be funding anything towards that program however some member states still want to do some studies for it and one other thing I wanted to mention is their next big rocket after Arian5 the Arian6 they are looking at an engine alternative for the Arian6 which runs off of liquid, oxygen and methane and they're calling that the Prometheus engine so they're looking at doing a lot of funding towards that as an alternative to the engines that they might use the Vulcan engines that they might use for their Arian6 rockets so a lot of different interesting things there but obviously the thing that I'm most happy about is the successful funding and commitment to use the International Space Station until 2024 so very happy about that. Nice. Very good news. Yeah, yeah, quite. Minnie Stoge is totally excited about all that she's a huge huge advocate for all the science that's going on in the International Space Station right now yeah, if you watch Minnie Stoge's Space Pods, which you should by the way, you should watch the Space Pods maybe even donate to the Space Pods patreon.com slash Space Pods yeah, it's a it's a lot of fun. In any case, so Jared. Yes. We have more outer space things. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about something you can't see okay. Dark matter. Like love? Like love like or Ben? Yeah, that's sure. That's that too. Yeah, well there's this thing called dark matter in our universe and we don't really know how to explain it all that well. We call it dark matter because it does not give off what we would call electromagnetic radiation, which is a way of describing light. So it does not give off any sort of light that we can tell at least as we understand light. But we can see its influence because gravity actually pulls on things and its gravity will bend light. It's very emo. It's very dark. It's very heavy. I know. It's like man, I just don't want to really be seen anywhere, dude. So there's a survey by the European Southern Observatories very large telescope which very aptly named because it is massive and it's shown that the distribution of dark matter may actually be smoother than we expected. Now this was called the kilo degree survey and what this survey did is they looked at light from 15 million galaxies using the very large telescopes, incredible optics and instrumentation and what they ended up discovering is that the distribution of dark matter they thought it would be very clumpy. So there would be little bits here, little bits there. You're calling this not clumpy. Yeah, that's not very clumpy in terms of the distribution that you're looking at there. What you're looking at there is an image of the rendering of if you could see the dark matter, this is the distribution of how it would look. What sort of scale would this be? This would be about 440 full moons in size if you put this on the sky. So this is a very big patch of the sky. That's big. That's ridiculous in terms of the size of the sky they were looking at. And all of it that's just what I could fit on the slide. I learned that from Jared. That's a lot of sky. They found out that it's smoother than they received from other data. So if you look at the European Space Agency's Planck telescope and their data it's different from what that spacecraft's looked at. So now they've got to go back to the models and they've got to potentially rethink how dark matter got distributed in the early universe in order to explain this. Just an interesting result. We have something that doesn't agree with another result that we have. So they're going to have to figure it out. That's one of the cool things about science is that if you get results that clash with each other then you actually get to do and actually figure things out. And you get to go back and look at how to remodel things or do we need to change how we think about something. So just a little heads up that the dark matter kind of not expecting how we were expecting it to be. Interesting. Alright. Mike. I have no good transition for this. This sucks. 2016 has sucked a whole lot and this is just one more thing and it sucks. I don't have a good transition so I'm sorry Mike. So that. But Mike. A lot of you probably have already heard the news but the last of the Mercury 7 astronauts John Glenn passed away on Thursday December 8th and it's very sad that we lost him. I had only heard that morning on Thursday that he had gone into the hospital and a lot of us were watching Buzz Aldrin as he was in his hospital stay and he was 95 years old when he died John Glenn and just what an incredible career that this man had. I mean he served so many different combat missions in World War II and the Korean War which gave him a distinguished career and was able to allow him to be part of that first group of astronauts and he did the first American to orbit the earth in 1962 was just such a risky mission. Alan Shepard mission was also risky but his was also very risky. The first Mercury to launch on an Atlas rocket and the first to orbit the earth. So many things could have gone wrong and everything went well with that and he also had the awesome opportunity years later in 1998 to fly on the space shuttle at the age of 77 as a study to see what the effects of microgravity were on the elderly and just what an incredible man and even I remember at his 50th anniversary of his first flight in his Mercury 7 capsule he gave us speeches and he was still just as sharp as ever and was still making jokes and was so excited about the state of the space industry now and something that really touched me was that just last week he had written a letter to Jeff Bezos saying how touched that he was that Bezos named his new rocket the new Glenn rocket and wished them all the success and is just so excited about that and that really is amazing that this man was able to have such an amazing career and you know not even to mention as a senator for Ohio and the great things that he was able to do for that state and for the space program as a senator and even to the very end being so excited and optimistic and positive towards the space industry and the future of humanity's adventure in space and I'm sorry for getting so teared up here but we're the entire the entire world is going to miss him and Godspeed, John Glenn Yeah, he was a huge advocate, he did quite a bit he will be missed but he led a very full life quite that's definitely not one that was wasted by any means if you will Alright Jared, one more time, off this planet for just a nanosecond Okay, so trying to pick up a little bit after that LIGO, the laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory is turning back online it moved out of engineering mode and back into observation mode at 1600 UTC on November 30th now you may remember LIGO from earlier this year which during the first run of LIGO from September 2015 to January 2016 they provided the first direct evidence of gravitational waves by direct detection of one and they ended up actually detecting a second wave during that time as well now LIGO has undergone upgrades to increase its sensitivity by 25% and it's now being called advanced LIGO for that reason so pretty cool that they've turned it back on and they're now looking for gravitational waves and it's even more sensitive than it was before when we found gravitational waves with it so should be interesting which also reminds me of like Star Trek The Doors Opening sounds a little bit like it like that that reminds me of Star Trek Is Real that's all I have to say about that just in case you guys wanted to know, it's a documentary in case there was any question alright I think that was enough I think we need a little bit of a break and when we come back actually Ben will be joining us we're going to go away and Ben is going to be doing an interview with Justin Park from oh my goodness I didn't write it down intergalacticeducation.com so stay with us we'll be right back and welcome back to tomorrow my name is Benjamin Higginbotham before we get started I want to give a huge shout out and thank you to all of the patrons of tomorrow these are people who have contributed $10 or more to get access to absolutely everything we've also got our Patreon producers these are people who have contributed $5 or more to this specific episode if you'd like to find out how you can help crowdfund the shows of tomorrow head on over to patreon.com slash T-M-R-O alright let's go ahead and get started we've got Justin Park from intergalacticeducation here to talk about an upcoming kickstarter called Space World Justin thank you so much for joining us this Saturday yeah thanks for having me Ben first off who is intergalactic education? so we're a game company we've been building a game called Space World for a while now I originally started the company when I was living in Switzerland I had a couple of interns from the International Space University that's where I went for school as well and now we're located in downtown Washington DC area I've got a couple of interns from American University and the University of Baltimore the students are in school for game design and so yeah we're building a game about the space industry so I've been watching your show now for many years and yeah you guys were actually one of the inspirations I had for getting into this industry to begin with and so I wanted to build a computer game about the space industry because it seems like things are always about two years from now and so the game itself goes into the future 24 times the speed and so this is important because if you play the game for a year you're 24 years into the future so you can have lots of cool things the game also this helps put a perspective on how long it takes to do a deep space mission so if you want to send something to the moon for example normally it takes about three days so in the game it takes about three hours so you send your rocket you come back in three hours and it's there but if you want to do a Mars in advance it takes about a week for your payload to get there in the game and so yeah it's Space World is one of these games that actually plays even when you're not playing it the information is stored in a database offline or online and so yeah the game just is always playing and so if you want to do a deep space mission you better be prepared with the resources and make sure that your astronauts aren't getting too much radiation or they're going to be in trouble so if the game is true to life does that mean it will always be two years out and you'll never actually be able to buy it yeah one of the things you do in the game is you collect research and development points and so you do those by answering math questions and then there's also a series of mini games that you can do and so you use your research and development points to help NASA do analyses you help SpaceX unlock the Falcon Heavy you can help Blue Origin unlock the New Glenn and the New Shepherd you can help Virgin Galactic unlock their Spaceplane and so yeah we're focusing on real companies and so there's also an opportunity to do contracts for the DoD and so that's another one of the things that you have to balance out so the DoD contracts are worth a lot of money but then they take your reputation points down and so that's actually you don't want to go below zero reputation points or the world goes to war because you did too many military contracts and you have to start over and so you counterbalance that by doing space exploration contracts and building things on the lunar surface so describing me a little bit of the point of the game right so it's based on for realsies space and actual space agencies and all of that stuff but there's got to be a story or an end game what am I trying to accomplish while playing the game yeah so you start the game out in January 2017 there's a new president coming into the office and he tasks you with putting the first female on the moon by the end of the decade something that hasn't been done before I think that's something that we need to do I think it's something that NASA could do if we did it in the 1960s in a decade we should be able to do it now in about half the time one of the things that you want to be able to do is have enough reputation points so that if you do manage to get enough people there you can start a new government to become the president of the new country that you start on the moon that's kind of one of the more distant goals other more immediate goals is you pick out which Google Lunar Express team you want to back and so winning the Google Lunar Express is one of the first goals of the game even before getting a female to the moon by the end of the decade the game also allows you to do other things if you want to try and do a Mars direct you can certainly do that it's not easy but yeah there are a lot of different paths into the future that the player can take so we're watching some of the gameplay right now and early on we saw some math equations being solved is that part of what the gameplay is there's an educational component here as well? definitely so in order to get your research and development points you have to answer algebra questions we picked out algebra questions because we're also marketing the game to schools we're testing the software out at middle school in southern Maryland right now so we've got about 100 students who are playing the game and getting a feel and yeah we're also getting feedback from the teacher because the questions that the students are answering are actually real questions from their textbook and so the teacher can grade the software a lot faster because we have a separate application that allows them to do that I wanted to build the game but at the same time I wanted to build a company and so a lot of investors aren't so interested in building a computer game but if you tell them more an edtech company and we're trying to improve the math education system in America then there are a lot more inclined to listen to what you're trying to do and so yeah we've been trying to get as much traction as we can from teachers because I feel like this is a game that students should see if they see all of the cool things that are going on in space it might inspire them to go into one of the STEM fields and who knows they're going to be the engineers that are going to be taking us tomorrow someday how's that traction been going? What's the response been like this far? Pretty good a lot of schools don't like to pay for this software but you know for now we're just trying to get traction one of the other things that I've been doing recently is applying for grant money from the Department of Education and the National Science Foundation they also have opportunities for small companies like ours to develop this type of software NeuroPilot has an interesting question which is what happens if you goof the metric unit conversion I assume the game uses metric as opposed to imperial units? We don't use feet because it just doesn't make sense I mean I remember you guys doing a poll on your show as to whether or not to use feet and we're not going to use pounds or any of that it just is kind of silly So you do ask one of the things you have to do in the games you have to figure out how to speak metric So if you're in the United States and you're used to the imperial units that's not going to help you in the game I mean obviously with the basic algebra you're fine but if you're trying to do like actual speed conversion you'll be both basically meters per second so forth and so on? Yeah kilometers per second usually if you're in space but yeah I mean that's just something we might have it as like a tool tip if you hover over it then you can see the conversion to miles per hour but it's really something that I don't yeah I think it's time for the United States to understand what it is to be in kilometers per second you know. Good luck good luck with that we tried that ones before it did not go over so well All right Midi Stodges asking do you plan to bring this to Australia our Australian correspondent of course asking? Yeah so in the beginning of the game there's a region select right now we're focusing on North America but we'll have stretch goals in our Kickstarter campaign that will be for the other regions and so Australia is part of the Eastern Pacific region and so they get lumped in with India who you know has a very strong aerospace program in Japan so yeah we definitely don't want to exclude any particular country from space world but you know this space is now something that is accessible to every country. Dariachi asks you talk about working with schools it's going to be available outside of schools so one of the citizens tomorrow wants to play can they grab it? Yeah we're going to have a commercial version the school version will be focused a lot more on the algebra questions there's things in the storyline that we want to do that are a little more controversial that we won't be able to have in the student edition for example you get contracted by the Catholic church to build a church on the moon and so that's not something I think we can have it in the school you know there's parents that are not going to like that so yeah that will be specifically in the commercial version yeah other things you know birthing the first child in the space that's something that's kind of controversial as well you know and I think it's something that will be important you know if you think about it eventually there's going to be a baby that's born in space and that babies you know people are going to know the name of that child for the end of time you know it's just if you look at the reaction of what happened to you know when John Glenn passed everybody knew about it and so I think when the first child is born in space that is going to be a major milestone and in space world it's something that you can try as soon as you have the research and development points you know you might want to be careful because you do lose reputation points if people die in space that's one of the ways we balance the game out you're talking about the points and I think this question from space Kyle kind of talks to that which is do you have to answer math questions in real time to successfully launch? yes there math questions are built into the process and landing processes mini games I guess you could call them in the game the one that doesn't require you to answer your math problems is the Falcon 9 first stage landing game because it's already kind of hard you have to maneuver your first stage back and land on the barge and yeah we've been testing that out and the students only have about a 50% landing rate so I guess it's kind of accurate if you look at the record that SpaceX has had so far but yeah and that'll be something that if you use enough research and development points you'll be able to automate it so that it's successful more often and you won't even have to do the mini game but in the beginning yeah we want to make the game as fun as possible and so there's all of these different games that add to the entertainment value of space world speaking of the difficulty level Cameron is asking can you choose a grade level or is it all just kind of one level of math and yeah well we decided to focus on algebra first because we're only a five person team we'd like to add more educational range of educational content you know going up to calculus and maybe down to simple math condition and subtraction but for now you come in and it's algebra level which most kids start algebra in the freshman year of high school we're testing with the eighth grade because they're the honor students and we thought we might get better feedback from them so Joe Bu Joe Bu asks with the game featuring real companies how involved have you been with those companies in the development of the game yeah so I've been talking to some people at Blue Origin just last week I shook hands with Jeff Bezos and I told him I'm building a computer game about you he was in D.C. for the Arthur C. Clark Awards and so yeah he said that sounds exciting he likes games and he introduced me to some people at Blue Origin that I actually I knew from some previous space conferences that I had been to but yeah I go pretty far back with Will Pomerance I've known Will for about 10 years and so yeah I'm hoping Virgin will be one of our premier partners and then yeah I know a few people at SpaceX too I guess so speaking of some of those will you be including speculative or future planned missions like the European Space Agency's Moon Village, Mars 1's plans to go to Mars or SpaceX's what is it the inter-planetary transport system it's so yeah we're already we have the Moon Village built into the storyline already the Mars 1 well they just had a delay this week but yeah the Mars 1 people will definitely have a little bit about them they haven't released any specs on the hardware that they're intending on using we have been modeling a lot of the rockets that exist now already we have the new Glenn already modeled in stages as well because there's an animation where when you're launching into space you can see the individual stages drop off when you put payloads into space we've got a lot of different space modules too we've modeled a lot of the Bigelow Aerospace modules we've got the ISS we've even got a Skylab if you want to go back and put a Skylab module on one of the new heavy lift rockets that you can unlock with enough research and development points does it fail when you first deploy it then you have to go and rescue it as well may there certainly be a probability that you can that it might fail and that you might have to fix it if you don't put enough research and development into it in the beginning so bring giant space blankets try to keep it cool space cookie has more of a comment than a question maybe a feature request as it were which is would like something like this but also with the ability to run your own rocket and vehicle designs fully custom CAD not just like modules with Kerbal Space Program so basically they want to build their own rockets from scratch not just from modules that'd be kind of cool and a really neat learning technique we want to be able to do that I think 3D modeling is a tool that kids are going to be very good at and that by the time they become seniors in college they'll have 10 years of 3D modeling experience I think that's a skill that we really want to start teaching kids at a young age yeah I wanted to put a function like that into the game for since the inception but it's hard we're a five person team and so to build a 3D modeling application like an AutoCAD it's quite a challenge we might have it so you can upload 3D models from AutoCAD or from some 3D modeling tool and then we take it from our website and then if we put it through the approval process or we'll have maybe some kind of online voting we could stick those modules into the game because we're developing with a tool called Unity 3D and Unity 3D allows you to build computer games you can import models from all kinds of different environments we use Blender a lot because it's an open source 3D modeling tool but yeah Unity can take 3D models from lots of different environments and so yeah if that's one other option that doesn't allow, it doesn't require us to do so much development in terms of the in-game 3D modeling Johnny Boy asks what platforms are supported by the games so right now we're focusing on PC, we'll have the game on Steam but because we're building the game with Unity 3D that allows us to very easily export the game to iOS and Android we actually just had our first alpha version we started that's running now on iPad we got that working yesterday Tuesday we started on Tuesday and now it's finally working there's a few glitches where the videos won't run properly but everything else pretty much works, it connects to the database and the game runs, that's the important part I'm going to combine two questions for this last one which is from Anonomin basically like anonymous and Space Mike which is basically when is it going to be out and how much we're going to be doing the kickstarter in January we probably wouldn't be asking $20, $15, we haven't decided if it's going to be $15 or $20 and then we're going to have kind of a low bar but then we'll have lots of stretch goals because we want to build this game but we also want to make it awesome if we're able to raise the money to do that and so I would say we already have a working version obviously that we're testing in the schools right now but we want to have a commercial version the commercial version is really going to it's going to take some work, we want to make sure that it's polished and so I would say probably the middle of 2017 to the end of 2017 we want to raise a lot of money from this because there's a lot of minigames that I have ideas that I want to include into Space World and they'll take development time but at the same time the game itself should be ready in the middle of 2017 relatively bug free, not relatively we want it to be bug free for people who are interested where can they get more information on the upcoming kickstarter and what you guys are working on if you go to spaceworld.us that's our homepage it'll redirect you to intergalacticeducation.com we found that a lot of people were typing intergalactic wrong because it's kind of a tricky word to spell and then if you click on our news it'll take you to our Facebook page and that's where we post pretty regular updates about every other day with new content videos we'll be redirecting people to the kickstarter as well we're intending on having videos every day featuring the different companies that are going to be in the game that way people become aware of all the cool stuff that these space companies are doing alright very cool now before we go to break I have six quick questions just first thing that comes to your mind no wrong answers kind of just a way to get the different opinions from different guests alright are you ready alright first one moon or mars first moon for sure liquid or solid propellants I like liquid what should be the name of the first vehicle going to mars shoot I already wrote this down no cheating I knew you were going to ask me these questions and I actually prepared but then I forgot the sheet that I prepared so that I would have to be here yeah I don't know let's see here be like something not too philosophical but I don't know like the arc or something why the arc where why would that's kind of philosophical I guess it has to do with biblical times you know yeah I don't know I should have probably found that the sheet that I prepared but yeah I like this better I like this better no preparing just like right off top of your head kind of it gives you a really good insight into I'm going to have to start that was the one I thought about before because yeah I don't know in space you can name it whatever you want you know we allowing you to name your rockets and your robots when you build or procure them and so yeah you can name your rockets whatever you want when do you think humans will first land on Mars Mars you know there are cycles and so there are certain times that you can get there a lot easier than others but probably in the early 2030's Mars is really hard alright so then when do you think humans will first land on the moon well not for no we know when they first landed on the moon let me actually ask the correct question as it's written which is when do you think humans will set foot on the moon again yeah I'd like to say before the end of the decade you know that's kind of the point of the game and hopefully someone in Donald Trump's transition team sees the game and says oh maybe that's a good idea I would say realistically probably in the early 2020's maybe 2022 we'll see you know there's going to hopefully be a new goal for the administration and so yeah I hope the moon is high on their agenda and why space I think space holds the next market you know there's people out there that believe people like myself who believe there's a trillion dollar industry out there you know there's we've built potentially nothing you know and if you think about all of the value that could come from you know oxygen manufacturing and the entertainment if you were to build you know a space superdome you know that's one of the things you can do in space world is once you've built the superdome it unlocks a game called space ball and space ball is you know something I think a lot of people think is cool because you can take another person and you can throw them three meters into the air that's entertaining and so yeah it's just important I think it's going to be a stepping stone for us politically as well you know the governments of the world now they're they're they're they're pretty good but they definitely have their shortcomings and I think creating a new government in spaces is something that will be a big stepping stone for humanity yeah it's yeah it inspires us it's it's just very important I think people sometimes they get too concerned with what's going on in their day-to-day lives and they forget you know that there's the earth is just a very small place and yeah we're going to reach a point in in our future where we'll look back and it'll be hard to imagine you know being stuck on earth for as long as we've been here people forget to look up I've been paying that a lot Justin thank you so much for spending time on the Saturday and talking about your awesome game one more time where can people go to find more information oh yeah you can go to spaceworld.us we're going to take a quick break 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 it will serve to organize the mission of this Jagradi Bay here the eagle has landed it's one small step for man 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 turning perfectly at this point come with us and explore tomorrow and welcome back to tomorrow now before we welcome back yes back literally back right there now we're back before we get to the final segment of our show we first want to thank our patreon patreons by looking at our tomorrow premiere members these folks give us ten dollars or more per episode of course our tomorrow producers who give us five dollars or more per episode but wait there is more we've also got our tomorrow plus members these folks give us two dollars and fifty cents or more per episode and they get early access to after dark and the show itself and then of course there are is our tomorrow patrons these folks give us up to two dollars and forty nine cents per episode they get their name in the show access to google hangouts and a whole bunch of other fun stuff now go ahead and as Ben likes to say circle your name if you see it there if you can I can't someone said they did that they're like oops I did that in Sharpie so if you would like to help crowd fund the shows of tomorrow head on over to patreon.com slash T M R O and now I'm back with everybody here oh my gosh everybody's at the table this is bizarre this feels awkward we could all stare silently at the camera to make it even more awkward I can't do it anymore all right cap come get us in the comments I broke first sorry my bad so last week's show we did 2016 in review we covered a lot of good things a couple of bad things no space in 2016 other than deaths but space in 2016 was pretty decent sure and loss of rockets it was fine okay well just saying we covered a lot of things nobody's perfect fine so this first comment comes off of patreon I had to remind myself not to call this man Richard Hammond this is when it comes from Jason Hammond I'm guessing no relation Richard Hammond from Top Gear it's like you don't even pay attention it's like I don't even pay attention Jason says favorite space moment in 2016 personally was the epic road trip I made to CRS 9 the first rocket launch and landing I've seen in person that would be super epic I can totally understand that however for the industry my favorite was that brief period of 8 humans in space the population count is one of the basic measures of success in my books I think that's a really good point it's really cool A that we had 8 in space although we've had more than that in space when shuttle was flying yeah I think 14 was the maximum yeah no go ahead what is it Dada I think it was 12 I thought I thought it was 14 I thought it was 13 we've got 12 13 with space my key thing is 14 I thought it was 14 as well wasn't there a Tiangong mission going at the same time as the shuttle mission visiting the ISS Tiangong wasn't flying the shuttle was retired before Tiangong so citizens tomorrow space.com says 13 oh well space mic you win ding ding ding yeah yes I think as well it's very cool that that happens also very sad that that is the maximum number that we've ever had in space and we need to start working on fixing that because if we want to live and work in space the number needs to be more than 13 concurrent people in space yes it should be hundreds if not thousands of people working in space it'll be baby steps of course because space wants to kill us baby steps to be fair nature wants to kill us everything wants to kill you yeah basically next up capcom next one comes off of twitter actually again this is uh I know oh my gosh everyone's flipping out this one comes from space publica space publica space publica says everyone is an astronaut isn't that adorable although I have a gripe I have a gripe it's hard to see from here but there is a worm logo on the baby's arm and the proper meatball logo because the worm logo is never proper the proper meatball logo on the belly no no meatball over warm okay it's okay to be wrong oh no no NASA at their greatest meatball logo okay I don't care I still think the worm looks a lot better oh no there's something just more magical and more futuristic almost about the meatball logo it doesn't get any more futuristic looking than the worm no the worm no it's just a swoopy thing yes that is just pure beautiful graphic design seeing the worm logo though definitely gives me nostalgia from the 80s yes yeah 8 okay leave your comments worm or meatball what is your preference worm right now it's warm in the chat room no why are you all wrong leave your preference as long as it's meatball no well hang on do you legitimately like the worm logo more if you just look at the two if you were to say something other than NASA put any other word there would you prefer some other word like tomorrow in that worm logo you would prefer tomorrow in the worm logo as opposed to the meatball logo yes because it's just overly gratuitous when you would put something like tomorrow in a meatball style logo because I mean tomorrow's logo itself or or are you are you remembering the worm logo because you grew up in that era I I had a little bit of the worm logo in my life because I was I was four when they finally switch back to the meatball oh my god just stop talking but okay no you're done now I don't want to hear anymore next up Capcom Jesus fans having trouble understanding that he's old I'm done with this conversation the only thing that bothers him more than that is knowing that I'm older than he is yeah like a lot like a lot for 11 days out of the year it's two years older than you next up Capcom I'm sorry didn't you say that louder no I don't actually that's why I put the earpiece in your good ear so next one comes off of YouTube this is from Fabio Milan saying can anyone comment on the accuracy of the Nat Geo Mars series we've never landed on Mars so that's not very accurate and all the people that they've talked to in 2016 they really talked to so I guess that's accurate I mean we're not gonna the theoretical accuracy of landing on Mars I guess I mean it felt correct ish I don't know the first episode I've only seen the first episode so far and I really love the documentary parts of it but the mission parts of it are very Hollywood and I'm not really a big fan of somebody advertising themselves an accurate depiction of what a Mars mission would actually be like and then it's very Hollywood yeah I mean I don't have it is Hollywood but there doesn't seem to be much science I'm seeing that's terribly wrong here's the thing that's exactly the science is essentially correct but it's little things like you don't have lights inside your helmet pointing at your face this series is not for the people sitting at this table including Mike and Dada it is not for us but you see my point it's not for us okay who's it for because if it was for us it wouldn't be on that geo it's if it was for us it's for the general public it's for this is gonna sound terrible but it's for everybody else who doesn't know about tomorrow right it's for everybody else who's not actually that interested in space it's for everyone else who says oh well I mean NASA they don't want to go down when they stop flying the shuttle it's it's for those people it really is and in that way as long as the science is still basically correct I cannot fault them for that I can't and I feel like it's also like kind of writing on the success of movies like the Martian of hey while there's some general interest in stuff like this let's see if we can you know grab some you know entirely accurate you know with the dramatizations or whatever the documentary part is legit so I think that this is just another way because we all have our things that you know whatever it was that reignited our passion in space because I'm sure that a lot of us you know like most people you know had a had at least an interest in space as a kid and then you know got interested in other things whatever it was that reignited your interest in space like looking back on it now might not be the most you know scientific accurate thing ever but it was enough it was just enough to get you to delve a little bit deeper and I feel like the point that you're making Carrie Ann is something like this is enough to grab people's attention and have them delve just a little bit deeper into the space world and see what's going on so I'll say yes to everyone but I'll fundamentally answer the question it seems like the science I haven't actually because it's so Hollywood and because it is a storyline I haven't actually looked at that I suspend disbelief I go into those moments of the of the show and I go into suspended disbelief because that's that's how it's presented to me is suspended disbelief so I never looked at it like oh is all of the science accurate because it wasn't presented to me that way I should go back and actually look and be like okay well how accurate are all of these things but on the surface I'm not I'm not able to think of anything major that would be wrong I would say that's true right I like there are times where you watch a movie and you're like no that is not how microgravity works at all but yeah I mean I think they got they got a overall it's not bad yeah overall it's not it's pretty good overall from a is would this kind of be a fairly accurate representation of what it might be like yes the dialogue and the commander acting like this all of the time is annoying but that's personal preference and not too accuracy of the film as someone said I think it was Tars who runs our chat designed and runs our chat room basically said my mom can't watch TMRO but she does watch Mars and that's fair right team just as TMRO is not going to be for everyone out there I mean I kind of wish everyone out there would would love and watch it but then I I anyhow I'll talk to that point remind me to talk to PewDiePie in After Dark so just as everyone will talk about watch TMRO not everyone to watch Mars either and they serve different markets and that's probably okay next up Capcom next one comes from and I love this name off of YouTube comes from Jet Quasar that's a scary Picon did you want to do this no no go ahead go ahead you never mentioned the relaunch and landing in the Blue Origin suborbital rocket the first time a spacecraft has been completely reused after a launch into space and booster stage landing and this was actually done several times in 2016 yes absolutely right we did gloss over that we did and well I mean yes you're right it was awesome no there are really no butts with that it was awesome it was really quite awesome and inspiring true to the word it was awe awe inspired awe this is what happens when sometimes Ben just says hey so we're going to talk about this what do you think right now do you give me your answer right now is that you don't have enough time to think about something and there are major moments like that that sometimes get missed 2016 is a really big year a lot of stuff happened and I'm sure there are other moments that we complete the list but that's okay I mean that's where we leave the comments open to you the citizens of tomorrow to talk about this is how you keep us true to ourselves there's another comment in here that does exactly that the very last comments like you idiot so I know you're totally right it was a really awesome moment and I am glad that you enjoyed it and we did too we did too yeah I think it was really great the other thing that I really thought was great in 2016 is Blue Origin started Web Cap Steam that was one of my top like yes we get to see this stuff now so that was that was really cool that was sweet yep alright next up next one also off of YouTube comes from it I can't say it give me a nibble sick I think I like I like the name Gideon because of the show Mr. Robot yeah Gideon is a great Gideon is an also I didn't even know that was a name that I heard on the show I'm like ooh that's kind of neat and then we got a comment I'm pretty sure Gideon oh no no this is a legitimate comment but you got more weight for going into the comments because I think Gideon is an awesome name alright anyhow apparently that's a good comments of the show just rename yourself Gideon they're really cool names yep yep yep next week's shows every commenter will be from Gideon a Gideon of sorts oh goodness can we acknowledge how cool Tori Bruno is with Rocket Builder my favorite moments were CRS-8 first barge landing and N-R-O-L-45 since I love how the Delta 4 sets itself on fire it does yes it does ok now I will launch so the space shuttle had those sparklers underneath the engine that was to burn off all the excess hydrogen so that as the vehicle launches you don't have this huge cloud of explosion happening around the vehicle the Delta 4 and Delta 4 Heavy also has those sparklers does it work as well they're not even close they light those engines and just these huge hydrogen fires around the vehicle the foam is burning and charred at the bottom like you look at engine ignition it's just massively huge fireball erupting I was about to say me and Dutta have seen a Delta 4 Heavy launch in person in Vandenberg it's worse in Vandenberg for some reason when it was going up you could see the char marks on this side of it in this cell bar increasing cell signal size we're going to change the way the RS68 engines turn on so that it doesn't burn itself it still burns itself instead of it charring evenly it made this nice little pattern of small medium big char marks on the side of the rocket it was pretty great it was amazing I do every time those engines ignite I'm like oh my god what happened the foam is burning like the engines are burning and so is the side of the rocket sometimes the side of the rocket will actually be on fire for a while I do think because of that that might be one of my favorite rockets to launch it's just because of how long the foam is burning on those rockets I was watching a launch at home with Kitty and Kitty this was the first Delta 4 that she had seen and the engines light and it catches itself on fire and she's like oh god what is it I'm like it's okay it's okay can you imagine being an engineer that worked on the design and development of a Delta 4 and it's the very first launch of one of these Delta 4s and you see you see it just go whoosh giant fire on the path the rocket itself is on fire where it's not supposed to be and you're just sitting there going flight is nominal nominal trajectory nominal speed actually I don't think the first Delta 4 heavy was nominal was it that was a problem later in the flight oh yeah so off the pad you'd be like oh we're nominal are we nominal so anyhow Kitty and say oh yeah the rocket builder that is a pretty new website it's cool but I don't I guess I don't get it right so if I'm spending 100 million dollars plus on a rocket I don't really feel like I want to go to an Amazon type cart to buy why not I think that this was more a exercise in transparency and you know a lot of people have been quoting the most expensive price for an Atlas 5 rocket which is upwards of 360 million dollars you know when comparing the prices of ULA to SpaceX so I think that this is just like no that's not exactly you know not every single launch is going to be a minimum of 360 million dollars and that's just my opinion but that's what I feel like the purpose of this is kind of for the general space industry to just be like okay I want to get a price on you know an Atlas 5 or a Delta 4 what would this you know roughly cost me or something and to get a better idea of how much they cost and to try to see them you know having competitive prices so to speak. I guess I don't get me wrong it's neat the thing is that where they're getting the most heat isn't for the commercial launches because if they were price competitive guess what they'd launch more commercial stuff where they're getting the most heat are the government launches and guess what the rocket builder doesn't give you the pricing on the government launches the second problem is they include the L.A. value add which is some random I think they just take the cost of the rocket multiply it by 3 and say that's United Launch Alliance's value add at 300 million dollars and it's just this weird have you guys played with the rocket builder it's weird right it's a little weird there's that variable that I'm like what's that all about yeah so yeah I've deselected all of the bonus features and I ended up having like a Delta 5 or excuse me a Delta 4 with the 5 solid rocket boosters and like the heaviest configuration for like 88 million dollars I'm just like hmm I doubt this could actually go through yeah I tried well maybe I mean maybe I can maybe I I don't know you're right it probably is just kind of to to beat down the illusion of the Atlas and Delta line costing you know two to three X what a Falcon line cost but I played with it and I was like okay this is neat and this is fun but if I'm buying a rocket for 100 million dollars I'm personally gonna call someone and be like hi I want to buy 100 million dollar rocket help me out you actually can submit I know from there I you know I I wonder if anyone has Tori there was a tweet that Tori said that there was a lot of interest a lot of people saved but no one had submitted yet I wonder if by now anyone has submitted via the rocket I'm gonna do it during should I do it during after dark no I don't think you should do it because I don't know what your actual commit to that is a little bit no I mean you can't okay moving on okay last last comment son comes off of YouTube this is from Matt Roselle the speed of sound depends on temperature not pressure yep I said pressure okay with what with what yeah with what what this is like the most random thing ever oh we were talking about the the speed of sound I think this was actually a conversation in last week's comments commentary it was yeah yeah yeah comment on a comment yeah we're I think we're okay we were talking about how JP Aro spaces balloon castles are going to be able to survive the friction you know trying to get up to Mach 10 to get to we were arguing about using Mach numbers as a measurement of speed because that Mach isn't a consistent number depending upon whether you're at sea level or up in space because we were talking about ground speed versus air speed right right and the speed of sound and because Mach is the speed of sound and so I was using I was incorrectly implying that pressure or even stating that pressure is what adjusts the speed of sound and that is not correct it's actually temperature and is directly related to temperature I actually thought it was legitimately thought it was pressure because if you don't have a gas for the sound to travel through it requires something sound sound requires something to travel through such as air or a gas or or something even even a solid sound can actually travel through like what it tends to travel faster through solids too so I thought oh pressure it is not correct it is actually based on temperature and when you look at a chart of sound speed at altitude it actually does speed up and slow down there's actually it's amazing as you look at the temperature it actually almost one-to-one follows the temperature for speed when you look at that chart so I learned something from my own show I had no idea how you look like you're ready to say something is that based on air density as well or no there's actually a formula Pippinwa in the chat room says it's both temperature and air density yeah so it's not just I mean that makes sense it's air it's air density coupled with temperature yeah both combined yes but isn't density going to also impact temperature will impact density yes but you can't have sea level air that's sub-zero freezing and your Mach number just instantaneously drops because you still have the speed of sound isn't going to increase at sea level because you have super cold air because you still have super high dense air but I think it actually will increase a little bit but not the same amount it won't be the same as 200,000 feet that's fair we're all looking off camera I'm excited for orbit 10 when we have a camera in there that you can cut to that's fair but the point is it's still not a like the speed of light is for the most part constant we can point to that and be like that is a measurement or we have constant measurements of like this many kilometers per hour that's a constant Mach is not a constant so fundamentally Mach is not a constant I incorrectly on the show stated that it was a function of pressure and it is a function of air density and temperature actually temperature and air density I believe would be a better way of describing that and I was incorrect on the show and I learned something and thank you I should have known that and I didn't but now I'm smarter awesome host channel space Kyle is saying the local speed of sound and thereby the Mach number depend on the condition of the surrounding medium in particular temperature and pressure ok right so fundamentally the point being that Mach number is a bad way to measure like orbital velocity in my opinion because it's not a orbital velocity doesn't depend on your Mach speed it depends on your actual this is how fast you need to go despite air pressure or anything else you're combating gravity so that's why I don't think using like Mach 10 as a way of saying oh we've made orbital velocity is correct way you should say we're at you know 22,000 kilometers per hour that would be a much better way of saying hey we've reached orbital velocity yeah in my opinion now you could technically use both technically either one would be correct you can use a Mach number to describe saying hey we're at orbital velocity I just don't think it makes as much sense is using something like 22,000 kilometers per hour or X number of meters per second what is it 8 kilometers per second 8 kilometers per second 28,000 kilometers per hour there we go all right yeah there we go the speed of ban is faster than the light speeds thanks stars all right that is our show for this week next week we've got a one of the NASA I believe it's a centennial challenge it's going to be the NASA 3d printed habitat challenge that's going to be pretty cool one of the challenge one of the challenges for 3d printing habs which is going to be one of those critical things that we're going to need to do if we are to colonize the moon and Mars or anything else on the solar system that will be next week episode 9 dot 41 will be the last episode this year and then we will return early January January 7th with orbit 10 I'm super excited for that so next week last one couple weeks off then orbit 10 I'd like to thank everyone so much for watching we'll see you after dark