Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Atlantis: Space Shuttle Launch Party

Episode Date: July 12, 2011

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For the last time, Godspeed Atlantis, all three engines up and burning. 2, 1, 0, and liftoff. The final liftoff of Atlantis on the shoulders of the space shuttle. America will continue the dream. Houston now controlling the flight of Atlantis. The space shuttle spreads its wings one final time for the start of a sentimental journey into history. That's what happened on the morning of Friday, July 8. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. The launch of Atlantis, the last launch ever of a space shuttle, was reason for deep reflection and perhaps a bit of sadness. But it was also reason to celebrate 30 years of amazing accomplishment. That's what we'll do on today's show, right after we hear from Emily Laktawalla, followed by a passionate plea from Bill Nye. Emily is the Planetary Society's Science and Technology Coordinator. I'm Bill Nye. Emily is the Planetary Society's science and technology coordinator.

Emily, good to have you back, as usual, to review some of the highlights of the Planetary Society blog. Where shall we start this time, with MSL? I think so. There's quite a lot about MSL this week. I opened up with Ryan Anderson, who has guest blogged for me before, and he actually has spent a lot of his young professional career researching one of the four possible landing sites for MSL, Gail Crater. But that doesn't mean that he can't be objective about the possible four landing sites. So I'm posting a long blog entry that he wrote summarizing the last landing site selection meeting and talking about the various hypotheses represented by each of the four possible landing sites. by each of the four possible landing sites and the kinds of questions that Curiosity might be able to answer at each one and also the outstanding questions that might influence

whether there are good choices as landing sites. Of course, we expect that decision on the landing site imminently. Anytime in the next couple of weeks, we're not really sure when. So look forward to that. And then I also finally wrote about a visit that happened quite a long time ago when you and I and Bill Nye all went to the clean room to see Curiosity in person, which was pretty awesome. And I never wrote it up, and I finally wrote it up in great detail along with my 3D photos, which you can see. And Emily, I'm wondering if you make reference to the little tiny excerpt that I did of the video that we shot.

tiny excerpt that I did of the video that we shot there. It really wasn't. It was just a small portion of the video we shot that we used on the Planetary Radio Live program that we did a few weeks ago. Is that part of the blog entry? It is, and I'm kind of amused by the editing because you caught both my geeking out practically speechlessness at being right next to the rover, and I finally got control of myself and actually said something intelligent toward the end of the excerpt. Why do you think that? I wanted to capture the best two sides of Emily Lakdawalla, the giddy excitement over all of this, but also the deeper appreciation for what this rover may accomplish. It really is fascinating. I think Bill was just as giddy as you were. I think he was. And, you know, for me, it was just, it was so amazing because curiosity,

I've never really felt the rover always looked kind of strange and bulky and asymmetrical and not pretty like Spirit and Opportunity. But now that I've seen her face to face, I've fallen in love and I really can't wait for her to land on Mars. All right. Well, Curiosity, you have at least three fans here waiting for that launch that's coming up later this year. Emily, even though I believe you will already be on it by the time people hear this, I hope you're having a wonderful time on your vacation and we'll talk to you again soon. Thanks, Matt. I'm looking forward to the rest. Emily Laktawala is the Science and Technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society

and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. Back in just a moment after we hear from Bill. Hey, hey, Bill Nye, the planetary Guy here, Executive Director of the Planetary Society. And this week, I want to talk about space policy. Now, I know many of our listeners are not in the United States, but this is a United States space policy issue that affects everybody in every space program all over the world. The United States Senate and Congress have lost their way.

We got this idea for the Space Launch System, the SLS, which is another name for a big rocket. But here's the thing. This rocket is being built from space shuttle-derived pieces, boosters and engines and so on. Seems like a good idea. But the rocket doesn't have any place to go. There's no mission for it. So we have a rocket being designed by politicians rather than, if I may, rocket engineers. And without a mission, without a place to go, what are you going to do? You're going to waste money. So the idea,

apparently, is to keep jobs going in these various states and congressional districts, as we call them in the United States, just for the sake of having jobs, turning the space program into a jobs program. That's a bad idea in any country for any space program, because you're not going to move forward. You're not going to explore. You're not going to make discoveries and change the world. Oh, wait, wait, there's more. The same group of politicians want to cancel, cancel the James Webb Space Telescope. So the James Webb Space Telescope is intended to replace the Hubble Telescope. Now the Hubble Telescope has changed the world. These pictures that we get are shared by everyone all over the globe. They're wonderful.

You want to get those at the next generation for a couple reasons. They're inspirational. We study these distant worlds, exoplanets, and wait, we may make the discovery of what's causing the universe to accelerate in its expansion. We may unleash limitless energy if we can understand what I call the next physics. So everybody, if you have a moment, call these people, the congressmen and senators. If you live in another country, send them an email. They have lost their way right now. We don't want to turn the space program into a jobs program. No, we want to make discoveries and change the world. I've got to fly.

Bill Nye, the Planetary Guy. They say nearly a million people came together along the Florida coast on Friday, July 8. They wanted to be able to tell their children about, or they wanted their children to witness, the end of an era in human space exploration. Millions more followed the last launch of a space shuttle on television and online. I was with family. Not my blood relations, but a family just the same. More than 150 of us gathered at Southern California Public Radio's Crawford Family Forum to share a very emotional morning.

Above our heads on the big screen was NASA's live feed from the Kennedy Space Center. What you're about to hear is just a small fraction of the more than two hours we spent together. I hope you'll feel the thrill and enjoy the kinship. After all, you're part of the family, too. As we began, liftoff was still far from certain, thanks to questionable weather. Bruce Betts was sharing some of the Space Transportation System's accomplishments when another guest arrived about an hour before the scheduled launch. Well, let's see.

Space shuttles have taken into space more than half the mass of all payloads launched by all nations. Three and a half million pounds. Hey, here's Bill. Come on up. That chair is for you. come on up. That chair is for you. Ba-da-ba-ba-da ba-da-da-ba-ba-da Happy last shuttle launch day.

A new beginning. And I told people they can throw things at us if they think we're talking too much. But we were just... You guys, to be up this early on a workday morning, you've got to be as much into this as we are. So once again, thanks for coming. You are, of course, guests as we are of Southern California Public Radio, and we are the Planetary Society, or a piece of it.

I'm Matt Kaplan. I host our radio show, Planetary Radio. Bruce here is the director of projects, and the guy over there with the bow tie is the executive director of the Planetary Society. Has been now for, what, nine months, something like that? Nine months in a row. So how many people have been to a shuttle launch? Roughly, just one?

How many have tried and failed? Yeah, a couple, a half dozen. It really is spectacular because there's so much energy released so fast. You can see the thing when you're standing there, and finally the rockets seem to have turned off. You can't see any more exhaust, but you can still see the spacecraft. You're looking at outer space.

For the people on board, it's so-called black sky. They're seeing stars, but then you there on Earth are seeing this silver object against a blue sky. It's really amazing. When they drop the tanks, do you know where they recover them? Does anybody know where they go to pick them back up? The Indian Ocean. I was there once doing the Science Guy show,

and there was a delay because of the weather in Spain. If you have to make an emergency landing, you're going to land on a runway in Spain. Do you know how long it takes to get to Spain from Florida if you're in one of these things? A little over eight minutes. So it's this thing where getting into space where the sky is black is one thing, but getting into orbit takes nine times the energy.

And when we all get to fly at that speed, we'll still be spending an hour getting through the TSA lines at the airport. Well, Dr. B. I was just going to clarify. The external tank comes and plummets over the Indian Ocean. I think that's what you said, but I was going to point out the solid rocket boosters come down and are picked up about 150 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. In the Atlantic Ocean, yeah.

And if everything works right, they fly over Spain in less than eight minutes. If they actually have what's called a TAL or transatlantic abort, by the time they've glided down to a landing, I forgot, but it's roughly 20 or 30 minutes. They've never had such a thing, but they have four different abort modes once they've launched for so-called intact aborts, not my term, which basically means they can follow a normal abort procedure rather than ditching the shuttle and bailing out, and one of them is transatlantic. So TLA, transatlantic abort. Yes.

A TLA is a three-letter acronym. TAL. TAL. Transatlantic. TAL. Oh, good. Okay. They also, that's actually the second abort mode.

They have a return to landing site, the unpronounceable RTLS. And that occurs early on where they, not surprisingly, return to the landing site. But no one's ever done that either. No, no one has ever done that. They also have, skipping ahead because I want to come back to the last one, they have abort once around, AOA. And that's where they actually achieve orbit. But for some reason, if they have a problem, they come back and land either at White Sands, Edwards, or Kendi after once around.

But then they have the abort to orbit, the only one of these four that has been used and was used on one mission because they did have a main engine failure. There are three main engines that feed fuel from that giant external tank. One of them failed during the ascent, and they did an abort to orbit, but they actually then were content with what had gone wrong enough to go ahead and carry out the mission. This was fairly early on in the program. So they didn't quite abort. enough to go ahead and carry out the mission. This was fairly early on in the program. So they didn't quite abort? Well, they technically referred to an abort to orbit,

but yes, they then were happy enough to carry out the mission. It's a complicated thing. That's what it boils down to. These things are. 35 minutes, by the way. Those are just the intact aborts. Then we also have the aborts before you even launch. The latest tweet that I've seen from NASA is that weather is a go. Bill Nye, Bruce Betts, a lot of other folks, and me at our Atlantis launch party on the morning of July 8.

When we return, liftoff. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Sally Ride. After becoming the first American woman in space, I dedicated myself to supporting space exploration and the education and inspiration of our youth. That's why I formed Sally Ride Science, and that's why I support the Planetary Society. The Society works with space agencies around the world and gets people directly involved with real space missions. It takes a lot to create exciting projects like the first solar sail, informative publications like an award-winning magazine,

and many other outreach efforts like this radio show. Help make space exploration and inspiration happen. Here's how you can join us. You can learn more about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio.

The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. I was joined by Planetary Society Director of Projects Bruce Betts and the Society's Executive Director Bill Nye for a very special party on July 8. We and well over 150 other devoted fans of space exploration came to Southern California Public Radio's Crawford Family Forum to watch and cheer for the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis, the last that would ever rocket into space.

Nick, do we have it in work? All right, guidance. Once they pick up from T-31, then it's all going through computer-controlled automated systems that are all looking rapidly for any issues. looking rapidly for any issues. Just keep in mind that humans wrote the software. Humans built the computers. We all have a tendency, well, the computer's doing it.

Well, it's a human that did it. We're a bunch of them. It's all rocket booster nozzle steering. Check and work. 20. Hey, this is cool. Firing chain is armed. Moments away.

Go for main engine start. There's the water. Hey, there we go. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Main engines. All three engines up and burning. 2, 1, 0 That's the smoke Go Atlantis, go! Godspeed Atlantis

Houston now controlling the flight of Atlantis The space shuttle spreads its wings one final time for the start of a sentimental journey into history. So this is rocket camos action made by a local company. Anybody else have goosebumps? It's fantastic. Look how long the flame and smoke rails. It's just an enormous thing. Shortly after they launch, they roll to an orbiter down configuration, which is the stable one. The solid rocket booster, yeah, they throttle back actually as they go through the speed of sound to reduce the dynamic pressure on the system.

How long before the SRBs burn out? SRBs burn out about two minutes into the flight. So they have a camera shot along the rocket body, right? When they first started launching these things, there was no such picture. It's all changed during the history of the shuttle program. A local company called Ecliptic Enterprises makes those. How local? Very local.

You can see the three flame points are the three main engines. They're all using the fuel from the external tank. Here comes SRV separation. There's little explosive bolts. Lots of explosive bolts. There's also even little rockets that push it farther away. ...staging a good solid rocket booster separation. Guidance now converging.

The main engine steering the shuttle on a pinpoint path to its preliminary orbit. Two minutes, 20 seconds into the flight. Atlantis already traveling 3,200 miles an hour, 35 miles in altitude, 50 miles downrange. Especially by this point, they've arced over. They're going much more horizontal than vertical. Atlantis kicking on its afterburners for one minute, 23 seconds for the final phase of powered flight. How many people have gone 3,200 miles an hour? It's remarkable.

Just the amount of energy required to get in orbit is really something. Look at that. There's the curvature of where we live. And notice how thin the atmosphere is. It looks like it's out of focus, but that's the atmosphere. That's how we live. Without that little thin, blurry blue line, there would be none of us. Just incredible. I can say safely, I think, if I couldn't be there at KSC for this, I'm sure glad to be here with all of you.

Thank you for coming. It's the shared experience. It's humans. The main engines will soon be throttling down once again to limit the stress on the shuttle and its four crew members to that of three times the effect of gravity. Atlantis currently traveling at a speed of

more than four miles a second. Four miles a second. So at this point, because you have less fuel, your acceleration keeps going up, so they actually have to throttle back to keep it comfortable for the astronauts, and eventually so they keep it to about three Gs. Three good main engines, three good auxiliary power units, three good fuel cells. Approaching the eight-minute mark into the flight. Atlantis now traveling more than 15,000 miles an hour.

So three Gs. I've been in airplanes when you're at five and a half Gs. You have to be in shape to breathe. It's athletic. 15 seconds into the flight, standing by for main engine cutoff. That will be followed a few seconds later by the separation of the external fuel tank. So that should be spectacular. We'll hang in for that. So there's all these great engineering reasons for keeping a camera on the external fuel tank.

You want to see if it's damaged and stuff. Main engines have just cut off. Last time they'll be used in space. Here we go, little blow-away things. Little cute little zillion dollar. Ooh. A zillion dollar. It's just spectacular.

So there we are, about ten minutes after launch. Just about perfect, apparently. I mean, could we have asked for any more? I really didn't think we were going to be seeing a launch this morning. Good for us. And for them. Planetary Society Executive Director Bill Nye and its Director of Projects, Bruce Betts, joining me and more than 150 other fans

at our Atlantis launch party on Friday, July 8. Thanks once again to Southern California Public Radio for hosting that event with the Society. As we finish this week's show, Atlantis and its veteran crew of four are A-OK and about to dock with the International Space Station. Its busy mission includes delivery of the Raffaello Multipurpose Logistics Module, the last major component of the ISS. If all goes well, Atlantis will return to the Kennedy Space Center on July 20,

the 42nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Our celebration of three decades of the space shuttle continues in a moment with Bruce Betts and What's Up. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. I'm here with Bruce. In fact, I've been here now for hours because we're still in the Crawford Family Forum. Empty now, they're just putting things away after that amazing launch. I just feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to share this with, what, 150, 170 people and you. That was really special. It made for a very special, spectacular

event. We had the launch. It was neat. Tell me, what's up in the night sky? Well, you can check out the space shuttle. Actually, you can check that out from some places. A reminder to people, you can check out the space shuttle in the night sky looking really bright if you're in the right place at the right time or International Space Station. you just need to figure out what the predictions will be for your particular area. One way to do that is go to www.heavens-above.com and there are other sites that will do that for you too. In addition to that, we've got planets.

We've got Saturn still over in the evening sky in the west looking yellowish. You might still catch Mercury low, low down below that, although it's going to be tricky in the glare of sunset. And in the pre-dawn, Jupiter super bright, high, high in the east, and Mars lower down in the east looking kind of reddish. This week in space history, in 2011, there was the final launch of a space shuttle. God, I remember it as if it were just today. But what I also can bring to you is lots of... Random space fact.

Funny you should do that, because on NPR, National Public Radio, this morning, they went to the Tweet-Up tent, and the big special guest was Elmo from Sesame Street. This is a show, la-la-la-la, Planetary Radio. We'll stop that and move on. STS-135, this mission is the 37th and final visit of a space shuttle to the International Space Station. 37 visits to the International Space Station. STS-135 is basically designed to stock the complex with as many supplies,

as many Cheez-Its and spare parts as possible to keep things going. And finally, I've got lots of them. In 30 years of flights, the space shuttle has flown 355 different individuals, some of them multiple times, from 16 different countries. There are lots more. I'm going to do a whole focus on space shuttle, random space facts, if you follow me on Twitter at randomspacefact, all one word. Randomspacefact on Twitter, That's where to follow Bruce.

It's an amazing legacy, this space transportation system. It is a long history. And for many people out there, the only U.S. human rocket system they've seen. All right. Let's go on to trivia. We asked you in a question that Matt mocked me for its detail and severity, and it just seemed intuitively obvious to me, which is how much does Mercury's orbit precess around the sun? purely as a result of general relativistic effects. And it was significant as one of the proofs of general relativity, that crazy, wacky Einstein theory. And how do we do, Matt?

Well, first, periaps is? Periaps is the closest point in the orbit to the sun. So the whole orbit is basically rotating itself. But a clean way to think about that is pick the periaps or the apoaps, the farthest point, and basically that changes from year to year, from century to century in space relative to the sun. And it changes even more due to other effects like tugs by other planets, particularly Jupiter will actually tweak it even more than general relativity by quite a bit. But there was this part they couldn't explain, the astronomers a couple hundred years ago, that was left over, and then it got explained by general relativity by quite a bit, but there was this part they couldn't explain, the astronomers

a couple hundred years ago, that was left over, and then it got explained by general relativity. How big is it, Matt? I will tell you, and by the way, I should have had more faith in the typical brilliance of our audience. We had a somewhat depressed response to this, but a heck of a lot of people just were, first of all, fascinated by this question and had had no idea. But they got in the correct answer, which happens to be about 43 arc seconds per century. To be exact, 42.98 arc seconds per century. That can be, we can point to general relativity for explaining that discrepancy. Thank you again, Albert. Our winner, first-time winner, Torin Farr.

Torin Farr of Palatine, Illinois, who said, indeed, that's the amount of precession due solely to general relativity. So, Torin, we're going to be sending you a Planetary Radio t-shirt. By the way, a lot of people did say that the total per session, 5,600 arc seconds per century. Indeed, it's only a wee bit from general relativity. There's also a tiny, tiny amount from kernel relativity. Randall Sitton, regular listener, he was upset because you forced him, you specified the units in which to give the answer. Oh, I'm sorry. You're right.

We usually don't do that. We usually let you put it in whatever units you want. I'm sorry. Now, my favorite answer, though, came from Torsten Zimmer. He actually had the correct answer as well, but he was sorry that the answer was 43, not 42, which, of course, is the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Or is it? All right, we move on to the next trivia question, not surprisingly space shuttle related. Kind of pleased with this one.

This one's a bit of a challenge. How many space shuttle flights, to be clear, space shuttle flights to space, had functioning ejection seats? How many space shuttle flights had functioning ejection seats? Go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter. You have until Monday, July 18, at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us that fascinating answer. I kind of remember this, but I couldn't tell you how many flights. One of you will, probably many of you will, when we come back in a couple of weeks and answer this. We're done.

All right. Well, thank you, Matt, for putting on a fun event here with our friends at Southern California Public Radio, KPCC. It was a good time. our friends at Southern California Public Radio, KPCC. It was a good time. And everybody go out there, look up the night sky, and think about what you would do with a leftover solid rocket booster casing. Thank you, and good night. As long as it's empty. I want one that's still got all the solid rocket fuel in it, because that would make for a heck of a 4th of July backyard party. I'm telling you. Anyway, we are done. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society.

He joins me every week for What's Up, this time back in the Crawford Family Forum here at the Moen Broadcast Center, belonging to Southern California Public Radio. Next week, an update on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence from Harvard's Paul Horowitz. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and made possible in part by a grant from the William T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation.

Clear skies and Godspeed, Atlantis. Thank you.