Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Big Rockets and Little LightSails

Episode Date: October 13, 2015

Digital editor Jason Davis is a lucky guy. He follows and reports on human spaceflight progress, as well as the progress of the LightSail solar sail, which is about a year from its next flight.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Big rockets and little light sails, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Digital editor Jason Davis is back with dual reports. First, a look at the status of NASA's main components for getting humans into deep space, followed by an update on the Planetary Society's solar sail. Bill Nye has strong words for NASA's just-issued Journey to Mars planning document, and Bruce Betts joins me to consider the place of catch-up

in the cosmos. Seen the number one movie yet? I've been twice, and it's even better in 3D. Senior editor Emily Lakdawalla has also watched it. Emily, I have been waiting for you to tell me that you've seen The Martian. Not so much that we can talk about the other foibles, the assumptions that were made to get that movie made and the book before it, but more about its depiction of Mars itself. How does the film do? There were a lot of things that struck me

as not quite right about Mars in the film. But before I get into that, I want to say that I don't want to nitpick here. I really enjoyed the movie. I thought it was very beautiful. And it's definitely worth seeing. So I'm not out to say it's a terrible movie because it doesn't depict Mars right. Quite the reverse. I think that it's a great film and very enjoyable. Here, here. So as he rolled across that incredibly beautiful surface, how realistic was it? The thing that bothered me the most, I think, is how much topography there was in the background and how much very steep topography. There were cliffs and buttens and mountains all over the place. And to be sure, those things do exist on Mars. They generally won't exist too close to landing sites, and they

definitely didn't exist very close to where Pathfinder landed, which of course was a very important feature in the movie. He did visit that landing site. That landing site was really very flat and not all that sandy. There were lots of rocks everywhere. So that wasn't terribly true to reality, but it was a great moment in the film. Maybe they should have included one of those notices that NASA researchers do. Topographic features have been amplified or exaggerated for science purposes. Yeah, and so has the weather, but that's okay. It was still very exciting. All right, let's stick with Mars, but go above the planet to the Mars orbital mission.

Mom, which you just wrote about, how are they doing after a year, that Indian Mars orbiter? Well, it really is pretty amazing that they survived a year at Mars. No other space agency has ever set out to orbit another planet beyond Earth and the Moon for the very first time, gotten there, and survived so long. It's really an amazing achievement, which means that any science that they get out of this mission, it's not really a science mission. It's an engineering mission. And there haven't really been all that many science results. And that's fine, because that's not what this mission set out to do. We should enjoy the engineering achievement and the couple few global images of Mars that they got and look forward to seeing what else they produce.

All right, Emily, thank you. Nice red planet-focused piece this week. Nothing wrong with that. And we'll talk to you again next week. Looking forward to it, Matt. She is our senior editor, the planetary evangelist for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine and will be on stage for the 35th anniversary celebration, the Big Party.

More to explore on the 24th of this month in Pasadena, California. Up next is Bill Nye, CEO of the Planetary Society. Bill, here we are headed into a conversation in part about human spaceflight with our colleague Jason Davis. But even since I spoke to Jason, there's this report that's come out from NASA, which I think you've had a look at. Oh, yes. It's a plan to get a strategy for developing a concept or something like that. In other words, it's not specific enough. Everybody, if you're inclined, check out our website, planetary.org. Am I allowed to say that,

Matt? Absolutely. Yes. And there's the NASA poster, science, exploration, technology. But it doesn't have go to Mars, look for life. Go to Mars, look for water. Go to Mars, do astrobiological experiments. It doesn't have that. It has some things with some hardware and some other things. And there are no price tags associated with them. And my claim is that the Planetary Society brought together the world's foremost authorities on Mars,

human spaceflight, and what it takes to develop and execute a NASA mission based on how much money is available. We have a plan that is a demonstration that it could be done. I'm not saying that our plan is the plan. I'm saying that our plan shows that you could afford to do it if you were diligent, had some pay attentivity, as I like to say. Quoting my father, this plan is big on initiative, but is not much on finitiative. I mean, I love those guys. There are people, the NASA technologists, the NASA scientists, the astronauts, the people who build the rockets. But this thing is not specific enough to be executable. It's too easily derailed. It's trying to accomplish too much in technology without having a real mission,

which are actually trying to get people in orbit around Mars in 2033, for example. And so there's a lot of room for the Planetary Society to lead the way. And that's what we're going to do, Matt. All right. Speaking of humans orbiting Mars, it's going to come up in our discussion with Jason in a few seconds. And there is also a brand new Q&A with Casey Dreyer and Jason Callahan from our advocacy group about humans orbiting Mars, HOM, which you'll have to go to the website if you want to hear it. It's planet at planetary.org.

And of course, we'll link to it from this week's show page. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Matt. He is the CEO of the Planetary Society, Bill Nye the Science Guy. Jason Davis, a lucky son of a gun. He splits his time between following and writing about human spaceflight progress, including the progress of commercial crew efforts by Boeing, SpaceX, and others, including the progress of commercial crew efforts by Boeing, SpaceX, and others,

and his work as the Planetary Society's Embedded Reporter with the LightSail project. He recently joined me on Skype to review both of these exciting efforts. The commercial crew portion of our discussion can be heard on this week's show page at planetary.org slash radio, or directly from the Planetary Society's page on SoundCloud, as is the New Humans Orbiting Mars Q&A. Jason, welcome back to Planetary Radio. Hey, thanks for having me, Matt. All right, let's jump into this because it really is going to be a whirlwind review. If people want more detail, a great place to find it on any of these topics is your blog at planetary.org. Let's talk about the big rocket,

the Space Launch System. It was not quite two months ago that you were in Mississippi, I believe, to watch a milestone test. Tell us what you saw and how it went. Yeah, so that was a test firing of one of the SLS engines, the RS-25, and these used to be Space Shuttle main engines, so it was a little bit of a throwback there to watch that as well. And it was a pretty incredible experience. I was not prepared for the intensity of watching an engine test. You know, you watch a rocket launch, and you hear a loud sound, and the rocket's gone in just a few seconds.

But this was a long-duration firing where we stood there for several minutes up close, and NASA actually distributed earplugs for the test. So it was pretty cool. All right. So I'm going to say just once, although I could say it five, ten times over the conversation that is still to come, how much I envy you for getting to be at this test and other things that we'll talk about. What's the overall development status of the big rocket? Yes, so some actual pieces of flight hardware are starting to come together for the first flight. Now, we don't know exactly when the first flight will happen. NASA says no later than November 2018. You talk to some internal people at NASA and they will tell you they're aiming for a date sooner than that. Some actual barrel sections are starting to come together down at the Michoud assembly facility outside of New

Orleans. While we were down there for the engine test, we actually had a chance to tour that facility and see some of the pieces coming together for that first flight. And this is where they assembled the external tanks for the space shuttle program. So they're continuing with that heritage there and building the pieces down there in Louisiana and program. So they're continuing with that heritage there and building the pieces down there in Louisiana and Mississippi. So they know how to put big cylinders together. Is this on budget? Yes. As far as we know, there was a recent GAO report that came out that said that the Space Launch System was mostly on budget and mostly on time. There were a few red flags. They're always clearly worried about the schedule on the budget,

but nothing serious at this point. Casey has a really great diagram on the advocacy side that shows these mission life cycles. Something else to find at planetary.org. That, of course, Casey Dreyer, the Director of Advocacy for the Planetary Society. Let's jump to the payload that most people think of as being on the nose at the top of the space launch system, and that is the Orion capsule. You were also at a test of this, weren't you? Yeah, we got to see it fly for the very first time last December. Of course,

that was not on the SLS. That was on a Delta IV heavy rocket. And that was just a two-orbit shakedown cruise where they flew it for the first time to see how the vehicle checked out. And that test went pretty well for NASA, except for a couple glitches in the ocean landing. The next time we'll see this flight will be with that first launch of the Space Launch System in 2018. That'll be an uncrewed flight, right? Yeah, so they'll send it out to the moon for this uncrewed flight. The details of the mission haven't quite come together, but it's generally accepted that it'll stick in orbit for a few days before coming back to Earth. So that'll be the first long-duration shakedown cruise, and of course, riding on top of the SLS will be a whole different

ballgame for it as well. Now, how about putting people inside Orion? It looks like that may be even further out than was originally estimated. Yeah, that was disappointing. Human spaceflight at NASA is using this new form of bookkeeping that has been used on the science side for a long time. It's called the Joint Confidence Level. And long story short, they run all the numbers for the budget and time schedule that's been given and try to see if the program is generally on track. And when they did

this for Orion, they came up with a date of 2023 for the third flight, and this will be the second flight aboard the Space Launch System, and the first with people aboard, rather than 2021. So that was a bit of a disappointment to hear that. But this 2023 date is not set in stone. It's just an estimate. And NASA, of course, if you ask them, they're working for still towards that 2021 date or something at least before 2023. So in reality, we won't know for a while how this turns out.

But either way, still some time in the future before that happens. There are a lot of things that have to be pulled together here. how this turns out. But either way, still some time in the future before that happens. There are a lot of things that have to be pulled together here. I had forgotten that the service module for Orion is coming from across the pond. Yeah, the Europeans are building that as part of a trade based on their ATV, automated transfer vehicle that sends cargo to the station. They're using the same propulsion systems for the service module that the ATV uses. That's a way that ESA, the European Space Agency, is getting involved in the program as well. And generally speaking, there were concerns about that not being on track. But last we heard, it seems like it's coming together. They're shipping it

soon over to the U.S. where it'll go through testing before it heads down to the Cape for that first SLS flight. All right, SLS and Orion taken together, we're talking billions and billions, tens of billions of dollars. Is there pretty good confidence that this investment is going to pay off in the long term? Yeah, well, I guess that depends on who you ask. Yeah, well, I guess that depends on who you ask. Since you're asking me, I would say that it is comparable to other large-scale NASA programs in the past. When you look at the cost of the Apollo program, the cost of the space shuttle program, and the International Space Station, we are talking about something on that scale. So if it gets us to Mars, I suppose you could argue that it's worth it. Some people would say that private spaceflight could do a much cheaper job. But in the reality of NASA programs and government programs, this is kind of what we've been given. The Humans Orbiting Mars report that just came out from the advocacy team that the aforementioned Casey Dreyer put out with

the help of some of our board members and Jason Callahan. It really goes into some of these details to talk about this is the program that we've been given at this cost level. And this is kind of the reality of the situation when you're dealing with a government agency. So there is hope that it will pay off and we'll see other science programs possibly use the SLS and its capabilities. For instance, a mission to Europa could get there a lot quicker if it launched on this. For instance, a mission to Europa could get there a lot quicker if it launched on this heavy lift rocket, as opposed to some of the other launch vehicles today. So I guess it remains to be seen, but there is hope that the billions will pay off

in the long run. When we return, digital editor Jason Davis and I will take up LightSail, the solar sail that is headed back to space in about a year. This is Planetary Radio. Casey Dreyer here, the Planetary Society's Director of Advocacy. The New Horizons Pluto encounter was NASA at its best. But did you know that it was almost canceled twice? It was saved by thousands of space advocates who wrote and called Congress nearly a decade ago. Today, more missions are threatened by budget cuts, including a journey to Europa and the Opportunity rover on Mars.

I need you to join me and stand up for space. Sign our petition to Congress today at planetary.org slash stand up. Pluto was just the beginning. Bill Nye the Planetary Guy here inviting you to the Planetary Society's 35th anniversary celebration. It's Saturday, October 24th in our hometown of Pasadena, California. I'll lead the party with special guests, a great many of them.

No kidding, these people are the real deals. You can't believe how much fun this is going to be. The details are at planetary.org slash 35th. That's easy, right? Planetary.org slash 35th. Join us as we change the world. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Planetary Society digital editor Jason Davis has just given us a report on the Space Launch System and Orion, the two main components in NASA's plans

to put humans back in deep space. Time to pivot toward a much more modest mission. Many of you will remember the successful first flight of LightSail last May and June. Sail.Planetary.org is the place for a deep dive into the project, but I asked Jason to give us a quick update. How much was learned from that glorious, though somewhat harrowing, test mission? The drama-filled light sail mission. It really was. Honest, folks, it wasn't planned that way. No, no, it certainly wasn't. A lot was learned. Afterwards, the team met and came up with kind of a list of issues,

the major lessons learned, and it was long. And since then, they've been kind of going through these issues one by one. Some of them require further testing, such as the problem that we had with the radio, where it started transmitting continuously near the end of the mission, working on different tests to try to figure out the root cause of that. And then other ones were lessons learned, kind of nice-to-haves and things that should be done differently, operationally speaking. A couple of the changes that have been made already, one is the burn wire, and that's a little wire that burns through to deploy the solar

panels. On the first mission during testing, vibration testing on the ground, this little wire, which is so critical to the success of the mission, broke. Ecliptic Enterprises redesigned it at the last minute, and it was successful, of course, but the stakes are a lot higher for this second mission, and they want to have a backup in place. So Ecliptic's working on a design for that right now. There's a cool video of this, by the way, that I think you took of this Burnwire test. It's in your September 25 blog, and some great, boy, really, really geeky images of how this dual burn wire was put together. It's pretty cool.

You, in another blog a little bit earlier, September 4th, you wrote about the work that's being done, design work, on how LightSail will use those sails to raise its orbit. Real solar sailing, right? Real solar sailing, right? Real solar sailing, yeah. The initial analysis has been done by Georgia Tech's aerospace engineering folks. They're showing about a kilometer per day of orbit raising based on the method

that LightSail's going to use. So you have to remember, as it's going around the Earth, you're going to be in Earth's shadow half the time and moving towards the Sun on different parts of the orbit. So they've worked out this orbit-raising strategy where the sail kind of tacks into the solar photons as it's moving away from the Sun, and that gradually pushes its orbit up by about a kilometer per day. So that'll be really neat to see an actual

measurable change in the orbit from solar sailing. Nobody has done this before in orbit, right? Solar sailing like this with control? Not in Earth orbit, no. The Japanese did it with Icarus, but that was in sun orbit away from the Earth. So this will be the first time it's actually been shown to have a measurable effect like this in Earth orbit. And this has always seemed crazily complex to me. And I got confirmation of that. I'm now reading our old boss, Lou Friedman's new book about human spaceflight. But he talks a lot about solar sailing. And he says, they're really designed more to be point to point, which Icarus kind of was, certainly more so than a sail in orbit it seems like a like i said a really

complex uh challenge i mean am i far off no you're not um just a lot of crazy orbital mechanics involved and just the orbit raising the light sail is going to be doing explaining how that would work and make the orbit egg-shaped i found found, as an outsider, a lot of complexity around that. One of the things we're going to try to have done by the second mission is a new animation sequence where our excellent animations guy, Josh Spradling, does a cool video showing a little bit more of how this will work to help visualize it. But Lou is right. These things aren't generally meant to be in-orbit operations. The original concept of solar sailing was point-to-point, and that's what Lou's probably talking about. Going to visit Halley's Comet, for instance, was one of these applications. Another big rocket being prepared right now. That light sail, the next light sail, is going to ride. Tell us about that launch.

The next light sail is going to ride. Tell us about that launch. Yeah, so the Falcon Heavy, that'll be the first operational Falcon Heavy mission. It'll be another Air Force payload that'll fly out of Cape Canaveral. We're still looking at a schedule of September 2016. After the loss of a Falcon 9 earlier this year, we had some concerns that the Falcon Heavy production might get delayed. Certainly, Elon Musk said once in a public interview that Falcon Heavy development would be deprioritized. Obviously, they want to fix the rocket they have operating today first. But we haven't heard any indications of a launch slip on our flight, that second Falcon Heavy flight. So the first flight may be delayed. We don't know that yet. But as of now, it looks like we're still on for

September 2016. We'll just hope that it stays that way. That's great. And after all, Falcon Heavy, I don't know if this is good or bad news, shares a lot of components with the Falcon 9. I mean, in some ways, it's three Falcon 9s strapped together, right? Yeah, it sure is. Yeah, that'll be quite a thing to see. Hopefully, you can join us again down in Florida. I'm sure you'll be there. I'm going to walk there if I have to for this one. I will not miss it.

I'll close with this. How did the LightSail team feel about being named the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Small Sat Mission of the Year 2015? I think I know the answer. They were pretty happy about that. You know, we were really, we captured a lot of media attention during this first mission. That was all we were talking about for a while. But having the AIAA kind of recognize you, having your peer group recognize you for your accomplishment was really a nice kind of feather in their cap. And I think they were really understandably pretty proud to get up there during the small

sat conference and hoist that award up in the air. So we were very proud to get that honor. The mission continues. The best is yet ahead. And Jason, I'm glad you were there following it for us. That's light sail, along with all the great work you do reporting on the progress of humans in space. Thanks so much, and I look forward to talking to you again on the show. Yeah, thank you, Matt. That's Jason Davis. He is the Planetary Society's digital editor covering human and commercial spaceflight, but he's also our embedded reporter for the ongoing mission of LightSail.

You can follow his blog at planetary.org. That's also where you can find the blogs from Bruce Batts, who we're going to be talking to in just a moment as we learn what's up in the night sky. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society. He joins me in the Planetary Society studio where we, I think we figured out how to turn off the fan. I think so. It's a studio with a really loud fan. It's life support. Speaking of life support, we hear from William Wilkerson that there is actually ketchup on the International Space Station. William says Heinz tomato ketchup is part of the standard U.S. condiment kit that

gets shipped up to the ISS. And William says in his best Homer Simpson voice, mmm, space condiments. I love how civilized space has become. Ketchup's important. I believe in it. Ketchup, ketchup. You're not a Prairie Home companion, are you? No, sorry.

Okay, so in the night sky, actually in the pre-dawn part of the night sky is when you really want to party over in the east. Low down, it's just nasty with planets. There's super bright Venus. There's bright Jupiter. There's reddish Mars that's a lot dimmer than both of those. Very low to the horizon for the next week or so, you can catch Mercury as well. And Mars and Jupiter are getting really, really close in the sky.

So on October 17th, they will be less than half a degree apart, Jupiter being the much, much brighter object. We move on to this week in space history. It was 1964 that Voskhod 1 became the first spacecraft to fly three people in space at once. World of Spacecraft! Okay, we'll wait for the all-clear signal here now. In this old bank vault, I feel kind of like we're in a bomb shelter. Burgess Meredith, where are you when we need you? Wow, Burgess Meredith reference.

Nice. I will continue my 35th anniversary of the Planetary Society celebration by looking back. So in 1980, there was one known trans-Neptunian object. That was Pluto, one object known to orbit mostly beyond the orbit of Neptune. One object known to orbit mostly beyond the orbit of Neptune. In 2015, there are now more than 1,600 trans-Neptunian objects. That doesn't even count the moons of trans-Neptunian objects. Very good. We are making progress. We are. We're making a lot of progress.

That's a lot of what I realized when I look back 35 years. So, we asked you in our trivia contest, who is the only woman to perform a solo space flight? Not surprisingly, a lot of people probably knew this one off the top of their heads. Andrew Williams of Gig Harbor, Washington, a first-time winner, according to my records, I bet he knew. He said it was Valentina Taraskova. He also says, I love your show. I listen all the time. Correct, right? Yes, I love our show too. You've got some other info from some other listeners. So from Martin Hajofsky, he noted that she was the first civilian in space as well. And more information came from Randy Bottom. She was a 26-year-old skydiving textile factory worker who flew from 16 to 19 June 63 aboard Vostok 6. Her call sign was Chica, meaning seagull, after which an asteroid was named.

And I have this interesting fact from Mark Little in Ireland, Northern Ireland. Mark Little in Ireland, Northern Ireland. She later married Andriyan Grigoryevich Nikolaev, another cosmonaut, and their daughter, Elena, first child born of two people who'd been in space. Indeed. So that was a random space fact in the not-too-distant past. I just want to mention that Andrew, our winner, congratulations. He's getting a Planetary Radio t-shirt and a 200-point account on nonprofit itelescope.net, the global network of telescopes. That account's worth a couple hundred dollars. So, Andrew, knock yourself out. I got to tell you one more here because I know

you're going to like it. This from Daniel Kazard, and we got a similar message from Eric O'Day, but Daniel said, speaking of which, the correct answer to the first solo female flight in space really ought to be Laika. He says, why do you have to be such species chauvinist? Sorry. That's all right. We give Laika her due pretty regularly on this program. So don't worry, we're getting there. There is a video, it's by my new favorite band, Public Service Broadcasting. They are absolutely terrific, and they've got a video about Valentina Tereshkova, and we'll put the link up. It's on YouTube, but we'll put the link

on the show page that you can reach from planetary.org slash radio. Would you like a new contest? You ready? I'd love one. All right. Once again, 35th anniversary celebration of the Planetary Society. So here's your question. Listen carefully. As of 1980 and 2015, both of those, how many worlds had been either soft landed upon or had successful atmospheric probes.

Here are my notes and caveats. Note that I count spacecraft not designed as landers but that survived after landing, but I do not count touch-and-go or fly-through sample returns. Go to planetary.org slash radiocontest. Get us your entry. You have until Tuesday, October 20th at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us this answer. You know what? I forgot to say that we got this reference to this Tereshkova video by the band Public Service Broadcasting from Nicholas Schmidt. And he also wanted us to know that he's reading a

really great book about anti-gravity. A book about anti-gravity? Yeah, he says it's impossible to put down. Is it as good as the one about uncle gravity? Anti-gravity? Oh, I get it. I get it. Say goodnight, Bruce. Alright, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky and think about what your auntie

would think about all of this. Thank you and goodnight. He's Bruce Betts, the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, who joins us each week here for What's Up. Good night, Aunt Dora. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California,

and is made possible by its human members. Danielle Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle created the theme music. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.