Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Celebrating Yuri’s Night with Legendary Astronaut Story Musgrave

Episode Date: April 10, 2019

The Los Angeles celebration of Yuri’s Night came six days early this year. It attracted hundreds of space party animals, along with celebrities like Bill Nye and Story Musgrave. Host Mat Kaplan talked with both under the wing of space shuttle Endeavour. Jason Davis is counting down to Space IL’s attempt to soft land Beresheet on the Moon. “Where We Are” is a great new visual feature of the Planetary Society. Emily Lakdawalla introduces us to it. There’s a lot to see in the night sky! Get a What’s Up preview from Bruce Betts. You can learn more about this week’s guests and topics at:  http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/0410-2019-yuris-night-musgrave.htmlLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Yuri's Night conversation with astronaut Story Musgrave, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Happy Yuri's Night, all. Or, if you prefer, the International Day of Human Spaceflight. That's what the United Nations calls April 12th. You'll forgive me, I hope, if I stick with Yuri's Night. After all, I'm proud to be one of the founders of the global celebration of the first human's flight into space. On April 6th, I was back under Space Shuttle Endeavor in Los Angeles with hundreds of brother and sister space geeks, including my boss, Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye, and legendary astronaut Story Musgrave. My conversation with Story is pretty remarkable. But wait, there's more. We'll hear from Emily

Lactuala right after we check in with Planetary Society digital editor Jason Davis about a little spacecraft that is about to make history on the moon. Stick around for more fun with Bruce Betts in this week's What's Up. Jason, I don't know why SpaceIL couldn't schedule this landing for a Tuesday so that it would already have happened and we could talk about and glory in its great success. Like it or not, it's happening the day after this episode of Planetary Radio comes out. That would be April 11. And you have a brand new piece up at planetary.org to prepare us for this thing that, as a lot of people hear this, has already happened. Yes, orbital mechanics just

aren't fair. They should really consult with Planetary Radio first before setting the laws of physics in motion. Damn straight. It's going to happen, right? One way or another. I mean, it's now in orbit around the moon. It has been for a week. They're going to make this attempt on the 11th, Thursday the 11th. Yeah, yeah. The times that they're saying as we record this are 2200 to 2300 Israeli time, which translates to 1900 UTC or three o'clock in the afternoon EDT here in the United States. They're going to have a live stream from SpaceIL's mission control in Israel. So it should be pretty exciting and we should know pretty much in real time what happens. And I am hoping to get Yoav Landsman back on the program if he has time to talk to us. I mean, if he has an active spacecraft on the moon, he may be a bit busy for a few days,

but I can't wait to get him back on and hear about his enthusiasm. That enthusiasm, if this happens successfully, even if it doesn't happen, even if we never hear from Bereshit again, more about that name in a moment, this is something that they should be very proud of, don't you think? Oh yeah, absolutely. As we know from launching LightSail, it is no trivial task to get a spacecraft into space and communicating with you successfully, especially if it's the first time, you know, a team like this has been working on it. You know, they've already overcome some what had the potential to be serious problems.

You know, they had a problem with a star tracker, had to adjust the way that the spacecraft was able to orient itself before all of its orbital maneuvers. They've overcome little problems like that and they're getting images back and really have just done a fantastic job so far. They're working with a country that has never done this before either. And if they're successful, Israel will become just the fourth country to have done this. So it'll be pretty exciting no matter what happens. Remind us about some of those images that you've mentioned, which are really pretty spectacular. flag and focus so they can show that on the moon once they land. But they've taken pictures with most of these cameras and have some really interesting angles of Earth and the moon. In fact, one of them that they got of the moon was actually during the lunar insertion burn

when they were behind the moon. I'm not sure if that's the first time that that's ever been done, but it's a pretty cool accomplishment. Most spacecraft, when they're focused on something like an orbital maneuver, they're not paying attention to imagery. But yeah, all of those are available at planetary.org on our website. No truth to the rumor that Chang'e 4 can be seen waving from the surface of the far side? Yeah, no truth to that rumor that we've been able to tell so far, man. You know, it didn't throw any rocks at the skin scraps. Stayed neutral. That's good.

Yeah, yeah. Just one more thing to mention here from a couple of listeners, fans of Planetary Radio, Maddie and Desi in Orlando, Florida. They love the show, but they were calling you and me and others out for our pronunciation of what is typically the English spelling of the name of this spacecraft. Bereshit is how it would be logically pronounced in English. But they're saying that really in Hebrew, it ought to be something more like Braysheet. Braysheet. So I don't know.

Are you planning now to change your approach to this mission? Yeah, I suppose I should. They said in the email here, it was extremely cringeworthy to listen to the host. So I don't want to be cringeworthy. So yes, I apologize that we were pronouncing it wrong. We'll get it right from here on out. I don't know. I'm used to having a certain degree of cringeworthiness. So I'm going to say, Maddie and Desi, thank you and apologies up front, because it sure looks like Bereshit if you're doing it in English. But I promise when I go to Israel to visit Yoav and Space IL, I will get it right, even

though I flunked Hebrew school. Jason, thank you so much. We'll check in with you again. And I know that like the rest of us, you're wishing SpaceIL and BraceSheet the best of luck. Yes, thank you, Matt. Always good to be here. Jason Davis, digital editor for the Planetary Society. You heard him mention LightSail. LightSail 2 coming up as soon as we hear that that Falcon Heavy that's going to launch any day now has been successful. We're on the next one, and you can bet Jason, our embedded reporter with that project, LightSail that is, will be a big part of it.

Next up is Planetary Society Senior Editor Emily Lakdawalla. She'll introduce us to a very informative resource on the Society's website. Emily, it's a relatively new feature of the Planetary Society website at planetary.org. What's the significance of where we are? Well, where we are is my attempt to understand where every spacecraft is that has ever been sent beyond Earth's orbit. And there are actually quite a lot of them. I've talked about many of these missions before, but there's so many that it can be hard to keep track of. And so I designed this new feature for the planetary report, which shows you where all of the spacecraft are. And now it's also on our website and backs up a new set of features that we're developing that keep you up to date on what's

happening on every active mission across the solar system. And it's a beautiful graphic. Who does this for us? Well, the graphic is made by Loren Roberts, who's been designing the Planetary Society for many years. And so he and I work together very closely. I'm working with him right now on developing the June issue of the Planetary Report. He's a big space fan and got a good eye for design, and he does a really nice job with the graphics. He's a great guy.

You really are correct in that he has helped give the Planetary Society its distinctive look for many, many years now. There is, of course, more to this. A lot of it is part of something that you've helped to drive, which is making a lot of our resources that once were only available to members available to everybody, right? That's part of it. Yes. One of the first things that I did when I became editor of the Planetary Report last year was to argue, we need to make this open access because this is something that is paid for by Planetary Society members, but our goal as an organization is to educate the world's public. And so why keep this benefit just within the members?

Why not use the members' support to help educate the world? And so that's what we're doing with the Planetary Report. And not surprising that our management saw the wisdom in that. There is another part to this, and you work on it with yet another of our colleagues, Merck, Merck Boyan, our video guy, which we're going to be playing a little bit from in a moment, just the audio track. I have to admit, it's even better when you can see the visuals, the great CGI animation that Merck has done to accompany it. But tell us about this companion to the Where We Are page.

Well, basically, we are trying to find as many different ways as possible to communicate the things that we're talking about. So Merck and I have worked together to develop this little video series that's based on each quarter's issue of Where We Are. All right. Well, we're going to play that soundtrack right now. Emily, thanks very much. We'll check in with you again with more news from around the solar system very soon, I'm sure. Thank you, Matt. Again, you can check this out. The easiest way to get there is planetary.org slash where we are, all one word.

And you'll find this great graphic and a link to the video that we're about to hear right now. The video that is voiced by Emily Lakdawalla, the senior editor for the Planetary Society, editor-in-chief of the Planetary Report, and our planetary evangelist. Here she is. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla, and this is Where We Are for April 2019. The moon is a happening place this quarter. Chang'e 4 landed in January, and its rover, Yutu 2, is now tootling across the lunar far side, while Chuchiao listens to its radio signals overhead. Also, Israel launched its first deep space mission. The bear sheet lander hopes to touch down this month. Amateur radio operators on Earth are still commanding Longjiang 2 to take pictures. They have until August, when that spacecraft will crash into the moon. Let's move on to our near-Earth asteroid explorers. Hayabusa 2 performed a perfect sample-grabbing run last month. Meanwhile,

OSIRIS-REx is making a color map of Bennu, and later in April, it'll start detailed surveys of possible sampling sites. Closer to the Sun, Akatsuki continues its mission to Venus. And much closer to the Sun, Harker's solar probe is way inside the orbit of Mercury, flying through the outermost layers of our star. Now let's fly outward, beyond Earth. It's a sad update for Mars. In the last quarter, we've had to say goodbye to Opportunity, as well as to the two Marco CubeSats. Curiosity had a weird computer reset that interrupted science, but it's recovered now. InSight has deployed both its science instruments, but its temperature probe is having a tough time

penetrating the Martian ground. But the orbiters are carrying on all six of them. Moving on to Jupiter, Juno is diving toward its 19th Perijove Pass and will perform its 20th at the end of May. Skipping over Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, let's go on to the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons has returned all its best images of 2014 MU69, but still has lots more data to send back. And it's still gathering new data on other, much more distant Kuiper Belt objects while searching for a future flyby target. We end, as we always do, far beyond the Kuiper Belt, where Voyager 1 and 2 are exploring interstellar space. Radio signals from Voyager 1, which do travel at the speed of light,

now take more than 20 hours to reach Earth across the vast distance between us. Yuri's Night is the best party any space geek could hope to attend. It began on April 12, 2001, the 40th anniversary of the day humankind became a spacefaring species. There were a couple of hundred parties spread throughout our planet that night. Then, as now, the mothership is the Los Angeles Gathering, where once again this year, a little early on April 6th, we celebrated under the wings of Space Shuttle Endeavor at the California Science Center. Our planetary radio microphones were set up in my usual corner of the big hall,

and that's where I enjoyed a brief visit with Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye the Science Guy. You just came off the stage. It was the most fun ever. That was good. It's not your first Yuri's Night. No, it's not by no means. But this is really a great event. You know, when you have such a big venue venue and you have a space shuttle hanging over everybody, it's really a compelling place to be.

And preceding you on stage, a guy who rode that. None other than Story Musgrave, yeah. He's the real deal. What a wild man. What a cool guy. Yeah, he's quite a showman. I was impressed with the presentation. He's going to come over and sit in front of the microphones when you're done.

Oh, cool. I know I've asked you this before. I'll ask you again. Events like this, a lot of the people here, they're not big space geeks like you and me and the audience that's listening to us right now, but they're here, and the theme is what we like to talk about, the PB&J. PB&J, the passion, beauty, and joy of space exploration. But they are space enthusiasts.

And as I told the crowd a few moments ago, you're not going to join Roscosmos. You're not going to be a cosmonaut for the former Soviet Union. That's not going to happen. But you can join the Planetary Society and we connect you with space. 60,000 people around the world who think space exploration brings out the best in us and they want to be part of it. So I talked about how we advocate in the U.S. Congress, in Europe, in Canada, a little bit in Japan, Australia. and I talked about education, how Jason Davis, our long-form journalist, was quoted extensively in the New York Times two days ago. And I also talked about light sail and how we create spacecraft, and you can be part of this. I'm glad that you talk about the Planetary Society.

A little bit. There's so much more to it. I mean, every time I walk into this room, it's overwhelming. And so you look at the space shuttle, everybody, and you go, wow, that thing is kind of dirty. I mean, someone should clean that. Well, actually, it's been working. Thank you. It's been on orbit for a long time.

And Story Musgrave wrote it. And, you know, you just look at the nozzles of the rocket engines. They're enormous. I mean, if you stood up in it, you can't touch the top. I mean, there's just so much power is required. I remember I was at a space shuttle launch during the Science Guy show, and there was a delay because of the weather in Spain. So in emergencies, the plan was the space shuttle would land on a runway in Spain.

You know how long it took to get to Spain when it finally went? Seven minutes. Oh, gosh. And it's just, this is what everybody, you don't get about the amount of energy required to get in orbit. You know, when you watch a movie, a superhero movie, they're just going up and down. It's not so easy. They're just going up and down. It's not so easy.

And when you stand under this spacecraft and look at the engines and the thickness of the wings and the durability of the windshield and the enormous vertical stabilizer, the elevons, it's just, as you say, it's overwhelming. If you've never been to see a space shuttle, everybody, there are three of them on display around the United States. Come check it out. Yeah. And we are under the one called Endeavor here at the California Science Center with Bill Nye, the CEO. Thank you, Bill.

Thank you, Matt. There was one very special Yuri's Night guest I was not going home without talking to. Everyone who has flown in space is a special human being, but there's no denying that some of them stand out even in this most accomplished of groups. Story Musgrave is one of these. You'll hear why in our conversation, but there are a few facts you should know up front if you don't already. Born in 1935 on a Massachusetts dairy farm, he was an explorer and an adventurer before he was old enough for school. He was fixing tractors before he became a teen.

He ran off to Korea as a Marine, eventually flying for the Corps. Seven graduate degrees, including an M.D., and he did biomedical research for the Air Force. He became a science astronaut more than 50 years ago. Only one other person has flown into space six times, and Story is the only astronaut to have flown on all five shuttle orbiters. When you hear him talk about the missions he designed, he means it. And at AV3, he keeps a schedule that would exhaust most of us. It included his presentation at this year's Yuri's Night, after which he made his way to

our microphones. You'll hear the party raging around us as we talked. I'm going to start with Dr. Musgrave, although I know that Story is... Story is the name, yes. It's Big Story or Little Story. It's a big story, I can assure you. Little Story is my 12-year-old, and she a major part of my life. Little story. Story. We walked in together.

Oh, it's going to get edited. So if I use the F word, it'll be okay? Yeah. I'm sorry, sir. Life is fun. If it ain't fun, don't do it. Oh, that's a good F word. You and I walked in here together into this hallowed hall.

And that bird is there. That's my sweetie. That's my little sweetie. That's what I was going to say. You reached up and you gave Endeavor a pat as we walked in. My sweetie. It's my little sweetie. I animate machines. I kiss machines.

You know, I had a double-engine fire in a T-38 leaving El Toro, and the checklist says, you know, confirmed a fiery check. And I got a slight reprimand from the accident committee. You know, what were you waiting on? I was waiting on loss of control. But this airplane trying to get herself and trying to get me home, they understood. They got a reprimand. I mean, I didn't file the checklist, but she's trying to get me home. If that happened to me today, I'd do the same thing, so it's okay. So I animate machines.

You flew on all of them, right? Yes. Like I said, they found 10 fingernails embedded in every instrument panel and did the DNA. Did each one of these have their own character? I don't know. So I got two on Challenger. I did Challengers first, and I did another one on Challenger. So you're dealing with statistics.

So I got one flight on Discovery, one on Atlantis, one on Columbia. And so with only one set of data on that, it's hard to say because the environment you're flying in does change. And so there's no doubt coming like an entry. For example, Mach 25 on down, there was a different experience. But I can't say it was the vehicle or the environment because we had different winds at different altitudes. Now, clearly, Columbia is different. It's got more oxygen and hydrogen tanks.

How long you can stay up there depends upon your electricity. It could be other consumables, but it turns out it's electricity. And so Columbia got a bunch more tanks. I was on the longest shuttle flight, 18 days, but it has to be done on Columbia because it got more tanks. So that's a little difference. 18 days but it has to be done on Columbia because it got more tanks so that's a little difference but the shuttles are designed to be like a commercial airplane a pilot in a 757 you go from this one to that one and it

should be similar enough that you do what you got to do and that's the way it's going to turn out so the shuttles are designed like that now of course this incredible beauty here this endeavor came after the rest of the fleet because of the loss of Challenger. And they wanted to have five flying vehicles. So the sweetie Endeavor here, you know, it was contracted to replace Challenger. Even if you didn't spend enough time with each of them over more than... I just have one flight. I have two on Challenger and one on the others.

So it's hard to draw conclusions that they're different. But are your memories of each one of those missions, all six that you did, are they equally strong? Are they equally... No, they're absolutely not. And so I like the kind of mission which I have to create.

I like a mission which I have to build. It doesn't get handed to me. So my Department of Defense missions were pretty straightforward, even though I had developed that system earlier on. The kind of mission which you follow the procedures and the checklist you know the processes i did challenges first flight i built that mission and i did the second mission was all astronomy and also on challenger you know four ultraviolet telescopes cosmic gray telescope infrared telescope it goes on and on and so we had to build that mission but those are the missions

i care the most about where i have to create what the heck we're doing i got to build the checklist i got to build what we're going to do yeah and of course the hubble repair i built every part of that mission i designed it and so we don't just train and go fly you you build the mission so those missions mean more to me and for giving that vehicle it makes a huge difference in my love and my association with the vehicle if i had to put that much work into what we're going to fly together so you put in all that work it was your mission that one all the planning that goes, laying out virtually every minute that you're going to be spending while you're up there. But things still happen, right? And that's where people

like you need to use your skills, your smarts, your experience to improvise. Well, yeah, it's a product of child labor. That's what made it happen. And I ain't kidding, man. I've been on every kind of machine no problem solver yeah so all these damn machines and then i got hubble okay it's another machine i know what i got to do with it that's why i got the job but i'm thinking of when things went wrong you know when you know something that worked really well maybe in the pool in Houston. Just didn't work that well while you were out there with a spacesuit and trying to get something to work. Well, I recovered the SDS. Me, I was the lead astronaut on the team to recover SDS-49, the Intelsat repair mission, when that did not go well.

I am there trying to learn about spacewalking. Yes, I was your lead spacewalker for 25 years with NASA. But I'm there just to learn. I've already been assigned to Hubble, but I'm there to learn. I'm always learning, damn it. I'll learn from anybody.

I'm there to learn. But when that mission went bad, I'm trying to stay below the radar. I'm just trying to sit. I'm not even sitting in a chair. I'm sitting down on the floor, just taking in things. But the second time Pierre didn't get that bar, didn't get attached and kick the satellite off unstable, the room is starting to turn and look at me. And I said, oh, dear me. They're looking at me. Then the big guy. You know the big guy?

Which man? The big guy. And so this player is not an option guy called Gene Kranz. Oh, yes. Yeah. He comes up to me. I'm trying to stay out of the goddamn radar. Gene comes up to me and says, story.

Yes, sir. He said, fix it. And you don't ignore Gene Kranz. No. Fix it. OK. He wants me to fix it. And you don't ignore Gene Kranz. No, fix it. Okay, he wants me to fix it. I got it. I knew what the problem was in 10 minutes. But it's funny.

He said, fix it. Okay, I got it. How did it go wrong? I need to figure out why the plan did not fit, why the plan didn't work. That's the first thing I do is why did the plan not work? And so I'm going to get in a similar and get in my suit. So I got right on the suit, people. And I said, I know it's going to take a while, folks,

but get my suit ready, please. And you know what they said? Story, your suit's been ready for 24 hours. They knew who's going to get the job. They knew. Okay. Let me go in a different direction. Yeah.

You were with the program for so long. I'm the only astronaut to be in the Corps for over 30 years. The only one. That's very important. I stayed with it as long as I could. And NASA let me go. In fact, they fired me. I didn't know it was...

That's interesting. Sir, when... Because they don't put it that way, of course, but... Of course, they don't dare put it that way. Right, right. They said, you ain't going to fly again and we don't have a job for you. Okay.

Okay, I'm not a cynical. I'm not a negative person. But that's it, man. It's leave. I should have taken it to them, and people said I could have. So now we've been through all these years since the retirement of these spacecraft. And we're just now, maybe if we're lucky this year, we're going to see Americans return to space on American spacecraft.

Yes, and of course, we're developing six different ways to get to low Earth orbit and to get a capsule to a space station. I am not a cynical person, but I was on the first crew to Skylab where we flew Apollo Saturn 1B to the Skylab. And, sir, that was almost 50 years ago. You need to put that into perspective. What is the vision? What is the long-term vision for spaceflight? We are celebrating now flying a capsule to a space station, and that's called 50 years ago. But you in the Planetary Society, you know all of this.

but you in the planetary society, you know all of this. And so back in the old days with Carl Sagan, and the media is trying to look at human spaceflight and that kind of stuff. They got Sagan on this side of the thing, and they go, well, Sagan and Musgrave talking about, you know, the value of human spaceflight and unhuman and all the rest of that. So they're going to create a program. Well, they got into the both of us, and they

canceled the program. Because they said the two of you think alike. The two of you are on the same page. So you and Carl are on the same damn page, and we were. And we still stand solidly behind human spaceflight and robotic spaceflight. Yes, but

they've got to work together, sir. Absolutely. You need to work together. Absolutely. And if you're going out there, you go robotically first. And so you send robotically, and I would, Mars, you concentrate on one place, and you start digging in the Earth to create the habitats and create what you've got to do. I know it's a little limiting in the science to go to one place,

but as part of what you send out there, it is also how you drag humans out there after you. Let me talk to you about those long-range goals. It looks like we're going to go to the moon again. No, how do you think we're going to the moon? Well, that's a good question, isn't it? Sir, it's unsupported. isn't it? I mean, the vice president. It's unsupported.

That is an unsupported political statement. Again, Storymush gave not a cynic. Fifteen years ago, H.W. said we are going to the moon. And did we go? We did not. Yeah, that's right. That program got canceled. But as a jobs program, we took

Constellation, we added back the big booster, you know, and we added back the capsule. We did not add back Altair. We did not add back the small vehicle to carry people. And so we added that back as a jobs program, and it's looking terrible at the moment. Somebody's saying

go back to the moon. That is an unsupported, empty political statement, sir. It's unsupported because if you want to do that, before you make that statement, you should check with NASA and you're giving NASA a date to do it.

You check with NASA on the technology and what it's going to do and then you check with Nancy. Sir, if you want a supported statement, you check with Nancy and see if the Congress will vote the funds. Now, NASA doesn't have a dollar right now. And we should say Nancy Pelosi is who you're talking about. That's who I'm talking about. Right.

Sir, the administration, as you well know, the president and the vice president do not run the space program. You have to acknowledge that. It is the money voted by the Congress. If they don't vote money, it ain't going to happen. And if they do vote money, that's what you got to do. That's the way you make it happen. A supported statement means I have been to Congress and let's say

okay going back is that 50 billion going back to the move well I don't know but if it's 50 billion and you want to do it in the 5 years that he's saying to do it then that is add 10 billion per year to the program

which is a 50% increase in the budget as a supported statement, have you checked with Congress that maybe they will vote that? Yeah. Okay, you know what I'm saying, sir. Oh, I sure do. The Planetary Society knows more about this than I do. We just did our last Space Policy Edition program, and we talked about exactly this, what you are saying. The money is not there. Will it be? Maybe, but it's not there right now. Well, they have not voted a significant increase forever. He just said it up there, 0.4%.

Pretend I'm Jim Bridenstine. But I'm not Washington. Story Musgrave is not Washington. But what if Washington... I am not electable and I'm not appointable. If someone tries to elect me or appoint me, the go-to people will come out and it's a horrible scene. I mean, you think Joe Biden kisses someone on the top of the head, he gets all this. Story Musgrave, oh my God.

But what if Washington came to Story Musgrave and said, Story, we want your advice. What's the proper path for human spaceflight? Sir, it's the same as any other damn thing. It's called a vision. And a long-term vision, we've got to be long. We can't have the Bushes saying we're going to the moon and Obama cancelling the whole thing. It's a long-term vision. It's a leader who will

lead to the vision. It's the resources to get the job done and the project management to damn it, make it happen. A question that I have for you, which I think maybe you are uniquely qualified to answer because you, oh, I bet you can take a good stab at it. You've been up there six times. Oh, I bet you can take a good stab at it. You've been up there six times. You're a medical doctor, a surgeon. You are a biomedical researcher. Do humans physically have a future in space, in long-duration space travel,

when you're entering this environment that is going to be so challenging for our bodies that evolved down here? I think we need the faith, Matt, that we can do that. But there are these big things. I think Mars radiation is a key problem, as you well know. We ain't fixed that one yet. And, of course, it's a totally different psychology. It's one thing to have a medical emergency on Space Station. They can get to a major medical center the next day. But as you well know, when you look at home and it's a pale blue dot,

and that's a different psychology. When you've got the engines and you've got the trajectory, you ain't going to turn around. You have to go there. And so the psychology of it is I ain't getting home for a year. That's a different psychology. So we need to deal with that too. And we also have to have, of course, a closed-loop ecological system.

We can't carry enough food and water. We need the plants like on Earth. We need the closed ecological system. The plants consume our carbon dioxide, produce oxygen, we eat them, and you know, we fertilize them with our manure. And so, we may be in space

to go that far out for that long. Maybe we need a closed ecological system, which we haven't really dealt with yet. Do you think that humans have a place out there in our future, our destiny? Well, it's a serious question whether you need to send humans or not. I'm a human, and of course I've done human spaceflight. You need to send humans only when humans need to go.

With the incredible multimedia that we have, the incredible photography, and the user experience, when you can send that there and get a robotic and total experience of the place, is it important to send humans to say they have been there? It's a serious question. Yeah.

So I don't know that you have to send humans there. What do you tell young people? My 12-year-old. And older. You and I, we could stay all night. We could, yes. What do you tell young space travelers, young astronauts? What's the best way for them, and maybe for all of us,

as space begins to open up for the rest of humanity? Well, I'm not sure it's opening up. The costs are outrageous. SpaceX got it down a little. It's still $70 million. There's all these unsupported statements. We're going to commercialize. We are going to give space station to commercial people.

Sir, I'm sorry to say it. station to commercial people sir i'm sorry to say it in the 60 years that we've been in space flight only communications have been able to pay the way only communication satellites and communications in general have been able to pay for the cost of space flight so you're going to commercialize space station it's four billion a year and some commercial company going to commercialize Space Station. It's $4 billion a year. And some commercial company is going to lose $4 billion a year. It doesn't pay a damn dime. You just got to deal with the reality. And that's important. But what do you tell young astronauts who are going?

What do I tell them? The people who want to get into space? Yeah. Keep the dream going, man. All right. Keep the dream going because like Yuri and like myself on the Baylor and like my little daughter, 12-year-old, you don't know what the future is. Climb every mountain, get ready, and have the faith.

That's all you can do. But you don't know what's going to unfold. That's a good way to close. Okay, sir. Story, it has been an honor. Thank you very much. All right, man. I guess my has been an honor. Thank you very much. Alright, man. I guess my bosses are after me. They are after you. They need you elsewhere.

Astronaut Story Musgrave at the Yuri's Night L.A. Party on the evening of April 6, 2019. We're very grateful to Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides, Christy Fair, and the other wonderful people who made this year's celebration happen. Time for What's Up on

Planetary Radio. The chief scientist of the Planetary Society is back to tell us about the night sky. Please help me welcome Bruce Betts. Wait a minute. Do I have it here? Oh, no. I thought there'd be some applause there. I guess not. I just feel like I'm coming up to bat. How about this one that we used last week with Jason for Beresheet's landing legs being deployed? Yes, I will be doing this entire segment bouncing on springs. I want to see that, or at least I want to hear that. Tell us, what's up? In the evening sky, make sure you check out and bond with Orion and Sirius and all the good winter constellations

that are slipping away, at least for a while, from the evening sky. And while you're in that neck of the woods, check out Mars over in the southwest in the early evening, and it's still near the brighter reddish star Aldebaran in Taurus, kind of near the Pleiades. And in the pre-dawn sky, we've got our lineup of planets low down in the west, pre-dawn, kind of tough to see, but Venus is super bright. So if you get a view to the horizon you should be able to pick out Venus in the east and Mercury hanging out snuggling with it for the next couple weeks looking dimmer still looking like a bright star to their upper right is yellow Saturn and farther upper right is Jupiter Jupiter and Saturn are moving away from Venus and on the 24th of

April the moon will be hanging out very close to Jupiter, should be a lovely sight, morning of the 24th in the east-southeast. We move on to this week in space history. In 1970, the ill-fated but it all worked out okay Apollo 13 was launched. Two years later this week in 1972, the worked out really well Apollo 16 was launched. Apollo 13, one of the great, maybe the most heroic story in the history of space exploration. I'd put it up there anyway. We move on to Random Space Fact. And I should have had Story Musgrave do that for you. All right, someday I'll remember. Oh, all the wishes of the random space facts that never were.

It's true. So I want to talk about Orcus. Orcus hanging out past Neptune. It's a Plutino, which means it's locked like Pluto in a two to three resonance with Neptune, making two times around the sun for every three of Neptune. What's interesting about Orcus is it's kind of the anti-Pluto. It hangs out almost exactly opposite Pluto during their orbits. Kind of weird and groovy. I have a random space fact. Please share. Well, it's not actually from me. It has to do with the appearance by Sarah Horst on our program

just recently, which we've gotten so much great reaction to. I mean, typical of that is this from Mel Powell in Sherman Oaks, California. He says, forget bottling weird atmospheres. If only we could bottle Dr. Horse enthusiasm. But here's the random space fact. I heard from Leighton or Leighton Cochran in Australia, one of our many Down Under listeners. He heard Sarah talking about, in fact, we looked at them, how she uses crushed walnut shells to simulate the regolith on Titan. And he says that actually these were in use quite a few years ago to simulate the soil of Earth as well, because they have just the right properties for many kinds of research. So I thought that was pretty interesting. Thank you, Dr. Cochran.

Huh. Wow. That is random and spacey and walnutty. That's nutty, man. Now we go on to the trivia contest. All right. I asked you on what types of bodies have we landed spacecraft that have transmitted after landing? How'd we do, Matt? I'm going to let Martin Hajoski of Houston answer this for us, though he was not the winner. Sorry, Martin. He says, it's kind of like humans have been sending spacecraft to camp. That's comets, asteroids, moons, and planets. Awesome. I love a good acronym.

Yes, it's camp. Camp right. That is camp correct. It's an expensive camp. Our winner, actually, is Gretchen in New York. New York. She indeed said planets, moons, asteroids, and a comet. Only one, I guess, that we've actually landed on.

Congratulations, Gretchen. Although we did slam something into a second one, but that does not fit the trivia question as it was asked. But yes, we've landed on 67P with Rosetta. Yeah. We got also this from Perry Metzger. Must be a neighbor of Gretchen's in New York. New York. To my knowledge, no lander has yet survived contact with a rubber asteroid, but JPL might yet send a mission across Pasadena to explore one if it can get sufficient funding. Don't hold your breath. That would be a challenging landing. Talk about a low-gravity environment.

We're ready to move on. This is a little bonus random space fact. The largest object in the solar system that does not yet have a normal name is 2007 OR10. And in fact, if you go to the Planetary Society's website, you can find a blog by Meg Schwamb, the lead discoverer of that object, and you can vote for what to name 2007OR10, or at least what name to submit suggested for the IAU. But here's my question now that I've given that background and bonus random space facts. What telescope was used to discover not only the soon to be named 2007 OR-10, but also Eris, Sedna, and Orcus, as well as other things? What telescope

was used to discover those? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Excellent question. That blog post, by the way, it went up on our site at planetary.org. On April 9th, you have until the 17th, April 17th at 8 a.m. Pacific time, to get us the answer for this one. And maybe, maybe you'll be the person picked by random.org, if you have the right answer, that is, to win a 200-point itelescope.net account. They just opened up a huge new telescope in the mountains of Chile. I just got an announcement of this.

It's very cool, like a 19-inch reflector, I think. That's only one of the ones that you can use in their worldwide network, along with, of course, an as-yet-unlanded-upon Planetary Society kick asteroid, rubber asteroid. Explore it yourself. I think that's it for another week. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, and think about a hat that you haven't worn for a while. up there, look up at the night sky, and think about a hat that you haven't worn for a while. Thank you, and good night. I have so many, and I'm wearing them more and more. He's Bruce

Betts. He's the chief scientist of the Planetary Society. He joins us this and every week for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its space partying members. Mary

Liz Bender is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. Thanks again for those ratings and reviews at Astra.