Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - A Conversation with Sally Ride

Episode Date: April 18, 2005

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Sally Ride is our guest on Planetary Radio. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. The first American woman in space may now have become the first woman of science education for girls. It has been more than two decades since Dr. Sally Ride rode Space Shuttle Challenger into orbit. She did it one more time after that and would have had a third chance, but for the loss of that ship and its amazing crew. Now she's a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego.

We're just moments away from hearing her thoughts about how the times have improved for women astronauts, engineers, and scientists, and how her organization, called Sally Ride Science, is keeping the ball rolling. She also has a message for the Return to Flight crew, slated for liftoff in Discovery next month. Pardon us for omitting our little space headline segment, so that we can feature a slightly extended conversation with Sally. You'll find plenty of news from around the solar system at planetary.org. Don't worry about Bruce Betts. He'll be along with our usual what's- up science and silliness. First up, though, is Emily, who explains why some satellites have to run as fast as they can

to stay in the same place. I'll be back in a minute with Sally Ride. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, How can TV satellites hover in the same position in the sky all the time? One satellite can conveniently provide television service to an entire continent if it is located in a special kind of Earth orbit known as a geostationary orbit, which was first described by Arthur C. Clarke.

To park in one place in the sky, a satellite's orbit has to satisfy three properties. First, it has to travel around the Earth in the same direction as the Earth rotates. Second, its orbital period, the time it takes to travel around the Earth once, has to be exactly one day long. That way, the Earth spins underneath the satellite at exactly the same rate that the satellite travels around the Earth, so the satellite appears to be standing still in longitude. Finally, the satellite has to orbit in the same plane as the Earth's equator, or else it would ascend and descend in the sky every day. That's why all TV satellite dishes

in the Northern Hemisphere point south. They're pointing toward the equator. How far away does a satellite have to be from the Earth to achieve a geostationary orbit? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. First of all, Sally Ride, thanks very much for inviting us into your San Diego headquarters, which is busy, as we can hear with the telephone ringing. Oh, it's my pleasure. Almost 22 years since your first flight on Challenger, you attracted an enormous amount of attention. Now, when a space shuttle flies, eyebrows would only be raised if there weren't one or two or more women as part of the crew.

In fact, in the return to flight scheduled for space shuttle Discovery, when this is heard only maybe a month after this program is being heard by our audience, the commander is a woman. What kind of a change does that indicate? Is it a positive bit of evolution on our part? Oh, it's wonderful, isn't it? I think it's something that was a little while in coming in the astronaut corps and the astronaut program. When I came into the astronaut corps, there were six women brought in at the same time. Six of us came in together. I had the brought in at the same time. Six of us came in together. I had the fortune of being the one that was chosen to fly first. All six of the women went on to fly in space. And as future astronaut

classes were brought in, more and more women were brought in. And until today, the astronaut corps is between 20 and 25 percent female. And as you said, it is now very rare that the space shuttle goes up without at least one woman on board. And it's now common that there will be two women, occasionally three women, on board a flight. And with Eileen Collins now commanding her second space shuttle flight with the upcoming return to flight, it really just shows how important women have become within not just the astronaut corps, but the space program in general. That's exactly where I wanted to go next, because we've followed that a bit on this program in the aerospace industry, in NASA, and that there has been progress. I mean, we can go to JPL now and have a great time talking to Linda Spilker, as we did two

weeks ago, the deputy project scientist for Cassini. But I guess there's still some room, and that seems to be much of what your life is dedicated to. There's still a lot of room, and I'll echo what you just said. All you need to do is walk into Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston during a simulation or during a shuttle flight. And it looks very, very different than it did back in the Apollo days. There was all male. Now there are many women who are involved in mission control, actively controlling the shuttle. But there's still a long ways to go, and the statistics are that only 11% of engineers in the country today are women.

Only 20% of scientists in the country today are women. Now, those numbers are way up from the 1970s when, believe it or not, less than 1% of the engineers in this country were female. As recently as that. As recently as that. So it's been an enormous change in just a few decades. But there's still a long ways to go. And what I'm seeing in my work now is that there are lots and lots and lots and lots of girls out there

who are really interested in the space program. They're interested in science. They're interested in the space program, they're interested in science, they're interested in engineering, but they still don't have quite the encouragement and support that boys their age do. They don't have quite the programs available to them. And a funny thing happens to girls in particular as they go into middle school, you know, grades 5 through 8, you know, suddenly, you know, hormones start to kick in a little bit. It's important to be accepted.

It's important to be liked. It's important to do what you think your friends, maybe your teachers, your parents are expecting you to do. It may not be cool to be the best one in the math class. If a girl says she wants to be an aerospace engineer at age 11, she might get a slightly different reaction than a boy who says exactly the same thing. So the result is that we start to lose both boys and girls, but far more girls than boys from the technical field starting at about middle school. The often quoted, almost cliche but no less true, is the comparison between girls' interest in science and math in the fourth grade compared to the eighth grade, where fourth grade, it's what, essentially equal to the boys?

Exactly right. It is equal to the boys. In fourth grade, 68 percent of boys will tell you they like science, and 66 percent of girls will tell you they like science. It's the same. the same. And then in eighth grade, what you find is eighth grade, early high school, there are five times as many boys who are thinking about engineering as a major in college than girls. So there's a huge change that happens over those middle school years. And what I'm trying to do with Sally Wright Science is support those girls, give them programs to participate in, Ride Science is support those girls, give them programs to participate in, offer role models and mentors who are female, put female faces on all these careers, show them there are lots of other

girls just like them who have these interests, and try to publish materials that are gender neutral that the girls will like as well as the boys. I want to talk about all these different things that Sally Ride Science and Sally Ride are into maybe after our break in a couple of minutes. But to talk a little bit more about the context for all this, the challenge bringing girls the need for more scientists and engineers, period, in this country, if we're to proceed and retain the leadership, if indeed we still have it, in so many areas. Oh, it's absolutely right. You know, science and technology developing the technologies of the future. And what we're finding right now is that we've got a real shortage of American-born scientists and engineers in this country.

We've been importing scientists and engineers for quite some time now. We really need to do something at the early stages of the education process to not only make sure that kids have the background to go into science and engineering, but maybe more important, that they've got the interest and the energy and the enthusiasm for it because they're not choosing to go into science and engineering in the numbers that our society really needs and wants. Our guest is Sally Ride, the first American woman in space on the Challenger space shuttle, two trips on Challenger. We'll come back to that, but we will also, after we take this quick break,

talk more about what she is doing with Sally Ride Science, and particularly directed toward American girls and young women. And we will do that right after this break. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system. That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars.

We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first-ever solar sail. You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from space exploration in The Planetary Report. The Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits. You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS.

That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. And you can catch up on space exploration news and developments at our exciting and informative website, PlanetarySociety.org. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Every once in a while, we're lucky enough to get somebody who,

well, the cliche is, needs no introduction, and we have one today, Sally Ride, first American have one today, Sally Ride, first American woman in space, now on the faculty at UC San Diego, near and dear to my own heart because I have an older daughter there. I'm going to be there for a little while longer. We are not too far from there in San Diego at the headquarters of Sally Ride Science. Let's do what we said we would before the break and talk a little bit about what happens out of this suite of offices because you have a lot of different facets to Sally Ride Science.

We do. We put on events, we organize programs, and we publish materials all aimed at encouraging girls, primarily in upper elementary school and middle school, in science and math and engineering. So just when they're beginning to feel the pressure. Exactly. We want to focus on that age group because we know in elementary school they've got the

enthusiasm. We don't need to convert any of these girls to science. We just need to capture that enthusiasm and give them support through the middle school years. As an example, we run one-day science festivals for middle school girls at colleges around the country. We've done them at Stanford, at University of Michigan, at MIT, University of Central Florida, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Caltech. We're going to be doing our next one in Pittsburgh on May 7th at University of Pittsburgh. So anyone in the Pennsylvania area who'd like to come and see me and bring their daughters and

have them ask questions is more than welcome. Listen up, Allentown listeners. But our focus at these is to have a real entertaining day around science. So we have a street fair with booths and exhibits for the girls. They can make slime. They can drive robots. They can look through telescopes. I give a keynote talking about what it's like to be an astronaut and answer lots of questions from the girls.

And then probably most important, we have a whole series of workshops given by female faculty members or female scientists and engineers from the community who talk about what they do and why they enjoy it. And it really does put a female face on those careers for the girls. What about the camps that you've run? On some of those same campuses, although I know Berkeley also has been a location. Absolutely. You know, the festivals we love, they're great one-day events, but they're only one day.

We want to try to give the girls more support. So we've started summer science camps for girls, sleepover camps. We've had very good luck with the Stanford camps over the past two years since we started them. They've been sold out both summers. So this summer we're actually expanding to UC Berkeley and to University of San Diego. And we have started taking applications for the summer camp. So, again, any girls in grades 5 through 8 who will be entering 6 through 9 over the summer are welcome to attend.

Mention the website now, and we'll do it again at the end of our conversation. And, of course, we'll post it on the Planetary Society website, planetary.org, right where this show can be heard. But what is that URL? The best website to find out about all of our programs is www.sallyridescience.com. And that can get you to information about the festivals, to the camps, to our national toy design competition, Toy Challenge, and also give information about some of the books and career books that we publish for girls and other books that are related to space and to other areas of science.

I was on the website exploring all the stuff about the toy design competition, which was fascinating, so I'm glad you brought it up. Talk about that. That is for both boys and girls. And the idea here is that no matter what you're going to design, whether you're designing a rocket engine or a toy, you go through the same engineering design process. So this is an effort to get, again, middle school kids, boys and girls,

involved in engineering without them really even knowing they're involved in it. We picked a design project, toy design, that we think will appeal to all kids. Hasbro is the founding sponsor, so how cool is that? And we've got Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, is one of our other principal sponsors. We're holding this year's nationals in San Diego on the West Coast and in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the East Coast, coming up towards the end of April and beginning of May. And we've had thousands of kids from all over the country form teams to design toys. They come up with their own creations, and they're brilliant, brilliant toys.

And one of the categories, I think, was to design educational toys for younger children. Absolutely. We've got a whole series of toy categories, including one that is educational toys for your younger brother or sister. You have also authored and co-authored several books. I guess those are also available from Sally Ride Science, although I saw some of them on Amazon at least. Yeah, actually most are available on Amazon. We've just republished, in second edition, two of the books that are only available through Sally Ride Science, but all are related to space. Third Planet, Exploring Earth from Space, a book on Voyager and its missions to the outer planets,

a book on Voyager and its missions to the outer planets, exploring our solar system. So my roots are in space. So that's what the books have been focused on. Was To Space and Back, 1986, was that the first book that you wrote? That was the first book that I wrote. It was while I was still in the astronaut corps. I actually wrote it while I was in training for my third flight, which never happened as a result of the Challenger accident. And you say, actually, in the introduction to the book, that you were about to come out with the book,

I guess you'd just finished writing, when the Challenger accident took place. You had been a crew member on Challenger twice. Did you feel some kinship to this other crew, this lost crew, which in fact you ended up dedicating the book to? Oh, absolutely. Of those seven crew members, four were actually from my astronaut class, the astronaut class of 78. So we all came in together, we trained together, you know, we had dinner at each other's houses, we partied together on the weekend. So I knew them very, very well. And it was my spacecraft.

It was the shuttle that I had been on. So I was very, very close to the crew and to the accident. Was Judy Resnick one of those who you had been through astronaut class with? Yes, Judy was in my astronaut class, and she and I were very good friends. We both spent a lot of time working on and developing the space shuttle's robot arm. So we spent a lot of time together just on that. Knew her family, knew her very well. You get asked the same questions all the time, of course.

I've asked several, I'm sure, today that you've heard a few hundred times. And one of them that you've acknowledged is you get asked, isn't it dangerous? And if it's dangerous, why should we be going up there? That's a good way to turn things around before we say goodbye. That's probably right. You know, it is dangerous. It is risky. Astronauts understand those risks very well.

Every astronaut has to internalize those risks for him or herself. But I think that the value of space exploration is that it really speaks to our inner soul. I mean, we are explorers. We're a species of explorers. It's what we do. It's what we do. And it's what we've done since people first stood on two legs and started walking around. And space exploration is today's embodiment of that. And you can see it

when you go talk to any group of kids. They're fascinated by space exploration. They're fascinated by astronauts. It's something they would love to do when they grow up. You know, it is absolutely worth the risk because it's a real important part of who we are. And, of course, we ask those questions from a certain bias that might be expected from planetary radio. Yes. Any message for that Discovery crew that's going to make the return to flight about a month after this is heard? Oh, well, I wish them all the success in the world. I know that they're deep in training.

Wish them all the success in the world. I know that they're deep in training. They're ready to go and eager to strap in and start the countdown. SallyRideScience.com? Dot com. SallyRideScience.com. And we will put that on the website as well. And by the way, while people are there, lots and lots of corporate support for what you're up to here, which I guess I would hope they would think of as enlightened self-interest.

Well, that's exactly right. We have a lot of corporate sponsors, and the corporate sponsors that we have are sponsors because they know that it's important to reach kids in upper elementary and middle school because if you don't reach them then, you're not going to get them back. And they need them. They're going to need them in a few years as their employees. They need them, and they need the girls as well as the boys. And well-educated voters as well, even if they don't end up in science.

You know, that's exactly right. I think that that's a point that I always try to make, is that we're not necessarily trying to make all of these girls and boys scientists. It's so important to be scientifically literate these days that just to be an informed citizen, they should have a good background knowledge. And middle school, high school is when they get it. Sally Ride, thank you so much for taking a few minutes here at your headquarters for Sally Ride Science in the San Diego area.

We wish you continued success. Thank you very much. And we will be right back with Bruce Batts and this week's What's Up, including the space trivia contest after this return visit from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. In order to have an orbital speed that is exactly as fast as the Earth rotates, geostationary satellites have to be pretty far away, 36,000 kilometers above the Earth's surface, or nearly three Earth diameters away.

This is quite a high orbit compared to most other human-made satellites. For example, the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope are in low Earth orbits. At less than 2,000 kilometers above the Earth's surface, they travel around the Earth about 15 times a day. The equatorial orbit requirement limits the usefulness of geostationary orbits. They can't provide communications to places at very high latitudes like Siberia or Antarctica. And because all geostationary satellites have to be at the equator and at the same altitude, there is increasing competition for limited space.

But one day, solar sail technology may allow satellites to use constant solar pressure to levitate themselves into higher-latitude geostationary orbits, relieving the traffic congestion and providing 24-hour communications to the Arctic and Antarctic. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Time again for What's Up on Planetary Radio. The Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, Dr. Bruce Betts is here.

Bruce, what's up? Good bright planets are up. Lots of stars, too. You can find those on your own. I'm going to tell you where the planets are because they're the moving things. I've got to say, you didn't know I was going to say this, but you sent out an email to a few of us and said, watch for the Iridium flare,

which just took place a couple of nights ago as we record this. And it was cool. It was really cool. A little Iridium satellite. Good, yeah. In fact, I encourage people to go see them yourselves. I can't tell you when and where because it's something that's localized within tens of kilometers, tens of miles.

But you can go to various websites, one of them being www.heavens-above.com. There you can put in your location. And these Iridium satellites, there are 60 or 70 of them, communication satellites, and they have this one piece that acts just like a mirror, basically. And so it reflects the sunlight straight down to a small place on Earth. So it goes from basically not being visible to sometimes being 100 to 500 times brighter than the brightest star in the sky for a period of 20 or 30 seconds.

So I'm glad you saw it. What does this tell us about the solar sail now approaching a launch date? It's going to be cool. A solar sail, if you've got the optimum geometry, which may not happen much, actually would probably be brighter than the full moon but concentrated into one spot. Could we, like, use it to wipe out Soviet missile installations if there were still Soviets and James Bond existed? No, no, we couldn't. And it would be a great irony since we're launching on a former Soviet ICBM out of a Russian.

Go look for satellites. Go look for iridium flares. And while you're out there, you can check out some planets too. Our quick rundown. Jupiter, brightest looking star-like object in the east just after sunset and up all night. Saturn, high in the south after sunset looking like a yellowish bright star. And Mars, low in the southeast before dawn. And if you're looking for a challenge, Venus in the west, very low after sunset, very near the sun still.

So you'd have to have a really clear view to the horizon to see it. On to random space fact! The Uranian rings, of which there are several, are dark and narrow compared to, say, the Saturnian rings. They are made primarily of rock or dust, as opposed to the dirty snowball analogy that's used for the Saturnian rings. And there are several discrete narrow rings as well as a general blend of dust floating around in between. So a different set of rings going on. Talking about Uranus here. I'm being very careful.

Good. Yes. We were talking about Uranus. On to the trivia question. We asked you, what is Earth's average orbital velocity as it travels around the sun? How do we do? We got all kinds of correct answers and some interesting ones, and I just thought we got to share a few of these. I love all these people.

These listeners are great. One is from Steve Witte. He says that's how to pronounce the name. I suspect he's just telling us his hobby, I think. Steve Witte said that the Earth's average orbital velocity is zero in the geocentric system. Ah. Then did he provide the sun's velocity in the geocentric system? You know, he actually did say the sun, however, moves pretty fast.

You know, he actually did say the sun, however, moves pretty fast. Carl Zander, he put it in terms that would be more understandable by most Americans, 65,000 miles per hour. I figured it out. He's got it about right, a little over 100,000 kilometers per hour. Then we got Ian Scales in London. Okay, I've got to read this to you. It's probably more time than we've got, but the Earth's mean orbital velocity is 29.78 kilometers per second.

Mean, of course, because the orbit is elliptical with the Sun at one of two foci, and so the planet has maximum and minimum orbital velocities, the maximum being at perihelion, closest to Sol approach, minimum at aphelion. I've never known how to say that. The furthest orbital distance out, however, this ellipse itself is not

in morphological stasis as it oscillates from greater to lesser eccentricity and back again with a period of approximately 100,000 k-anum. It currently has a value of 0.167. You know, I've tried to be in morphological stasis. I can't even say it, but I've tried to do it and I can't. I just can't achieve it. Way too much information.

Well, it's just enough. I enjoyed it. But it was a bit more than we asked for. But that's why I asked for the average velocity, or mean, not meaning angry, but average. And here it is, rounded up slightly, 30 kilometers per second. Our winner this week, chosen from all the winning, all the correct answers, Sandy Ochstad of Eli, Minnesota, long-time listener to Planetary Radio. Sandy, congratulations. You're getting a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Congratulations. And if you'd like to win our contest

and now win a beautiful solar sail Cosmos 1 poster from the Planetary Society, answer the following question. What was the last surveyor spacecraft that landed on the moon? The surveyors being the robotic precursors to Apollo that soft-landed from the U.S. What was the last surveyor spacecraft that landed on the moon? To give us your answer, go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to email us your answer and win that beautiful poster. Get that entry in to us by the 25th of April, Monday, April 25th, at 2 p.m. Pacific time.

And we will make sure that you are considered for this round of the What's Up Trivia Contest. Bruce, we're done. Hey, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about turkeys. Thank you, and good night. Let's see what the listeners have to say about that when they write in. As we encourage you to do, and tell us what you think of What's Up? with Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. This has been a production of the Planetary Society,

and it will be again next week when I hope you'll come on back. Have a great week, everyone.