Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Exploring NewSpace at the 2011 San Diego SpaceUp Unconference

Episode Date: February 14, 2011

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New Space at the SpaceUp Unconference, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. I spent Saturday, February 12 12, with a lot of young and enthusiastic space crazies. They gave me a good feel for what has come to be called new space, and that's not your father's or your grandfather's final frontier. Stick around and I'll make you a virtual attendee at this gathering. As we prepared this show, Stardust next was encountering Comet Tempel 1, giving Bill Nye the science and planetary guy

ample reason to celebrate. And Bruce Betts is waiting in the wings to bring us What's Up, with another chance to win solar system for iPad in the space trivia contest. A program note, we're almost ready to announce the date and time of the next Plan Rad Live. I'll give you the

details on next week's show, when my guest will once again be Bill Berucki, head of the Kepler mission that has just revealed more than 1,200 extrasolar planet candidates, including a handful of Earth-sized worlds' inhabitable zones. We'll get underway with a Skype visit to the Planetary Society's Science and Technology Coordinator, Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, in a couple of minutes, we're going to hear Bill Nye celebrate the Stardust Next encounter with Tempel 1. But you've also written a little bit about it, and you'll have some of your own coverage. Yeah, I've written a little preview, including the fact that Stardust is practically out of gas as it's flying past this comet. So they've actually had to cut back some of their activities and just do the very minimum

because this is a spacecraft without reaction wheels. So they have to point with thrusters. And if they're out of gas, that means that they won't be able to get the data back. So they have to be very careful. I'm looking forward to going to JPL on Tuesday morning to find out exactly how well things went. Yeah, somebody really ought to come up with an accurate gas gauge for interplanetary probes. When you don't have any gravity to keep the gas at the bottom of your tank, it doesn't work very well. No. Somebody's going to figure that out, though. Let's talk about the latest in your string of fellow image manipulators.

Yeah, I'm doing my best to feature as much work as I can from all these amateur image processors. And I've got a new feature in the Planetary Report, the Planetary Society's member magazine, where I'm planning to feature lots of work by different amateur image processors. And it was a no-brainer, which was the first one that I was going to feature, which was this amazing new mosaic of Voyager views of the Great Red Spot produced by an Icelandic amateur named Bjorn Johnson. The image is just amazing. And I've actually composed a huge poster that you can buy from Cafe Press from the Planetary Society store, which I think you have to see it in print to appreciate just how amazing this new view of the Great Red Spot is. It's actually the greatest view of the Red Spot that's ever been put in print. The Voyagers really did better than any other spacecraft. It is quite a poster. You can enlarge the image of the poster right there in the blog,

one of last week's blog entries. Can't wait to see it actually unfolded or unrolled on paper in front of me. Emily, that's about it. That's all we've got time for today. And I look forward to telling you about how Stardust went next week. Absolutely. Thanks for joining us. Emily Lachtwal is the Science and Technology Coordinator for the

Planetary Society and its primary blogger. And she will join us again next week with that report. Here's Bill. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Planetary Guy here. This week had Valentine's Day, but Valentine's Day this year was also the day that the Stardust Next mission, this is the new exploration of Tempel 1 comet mission, went by Tempel 1. Now, you may recall, if you're a Planetary Society follower, that we were out in an auditorium in Glendora, California in 2005 when the Deep Impact spacecraft shot a copper cannonball into this comet, and all this stuff spewed out into deep space, and we had a look at it to try to figure out what this comet was made of. And this would be, if I may, my friends, what we are all made of. It's generally believed that these objects date from the primordial days or minutes or seconds or millennia of the solar system. And so they used a copper cannonball because everybody figured there was no copper in the comet. So you'd be able to tell what stuff came from the cannonball and what stuff came from the comet itself.

Anyway, this other spacecraft called Stardust, which went by Comet Veiled 2 a few years ago. It was launched in 1999. Well, these guys have cleverly squirted a little maneuvering rocket gas into space and gotten the thing to go back by Comet Tempel 1 in the hopes of seeing what happened. Last time when the cannonball hit it, nobody could see with all the dust and debris that was tossed out into space. But maybe this time, maybe, the crater will line up and we'll be able to figure out what happened. Now, the spacecraft has been traveling a long time, almost 6 billion kilometers. And we're

having a little contest at the Planetary Society to see if you can guess it a little more accurate than that. Because these distances in space are enormous but the data we gather seem arcane or mysterious or or or insignificant or way off to the side but you never know what you're going to find you're never sure what the comet is made of you're never sure where we all came from you're not exactly sure what the early solar system was like unless you collect these data. So Valentine's Day, I hope, was good for you. It was great for NASA. This is one more step that's taking us to understanding that fundamental question we all ask. Where did we come from? Go get them, Stardust, next. Let's have a look at those 72 images. I've got to fly. Bill Nye,

the Planetary Guy. Saturday morning, February 12, 2011. We're in a multi-level structure called The Loft at the University of California, San Diego. Chris Radcliffe has just stepped on stage with a microphone. So SpaceUp, it is an unconference. The way an unconference works, there's an empty grid right now. We have no idea what we're going to talk about. And the reason we do that is because the people in this room are the right people. You guys are making this.

And so whatever you think is interesting to talk about, you want to talk about NASA plans, you want to talk about interesting video, you want to talk about, you know, the intricacies of rocketry design, go for it. Follow the passion. So began the second annual SpaceUp Unconference. About 70, mostly 20-something space fanatics had gathered to present, to debate, to inspire each other. Chris Radcliffe and his colleagues at the San Diego Space Society had put it all together with help from sponsors, including the Space Frontier Foundation.

Space Vidcast was there to capture some of the sessions. You can see these at spacevidcast.com. I put a PlanRad microphone in front of Chris when there was a brief break in the conference action. Chris, I said a moment ago you run this, but that's not really the idea of an unconference, is it? No, not at all. Spark might be a good word for it. I'm the guy who sets it aflame. But I do hear that you originated at least SpaceUp, which is now happening different places, not just in this country, but around the world. Yeah, it is actually. And originated, maybe, I think transferred, because I'm a techie by trade. And there's a conference called BarCamp, which is an unconference just like this one, but for technology. And I thought, wouldn't it be great to have a space bar camp?

And every time I would say that to somebody, they would say, what's a bar camp? I don't know what that is. So I had to explain it. After explaining it about 10 times to 10 people, suddenly it became my idea. And I said, well, we'll just have to have one of these and show everybody what it's like. Is this going to happen on an annual basis? Is that your hope, at least? Yeah, it'll probably happen annually. It might even happen more often than that. Bar camps tend to happen either every six months or every year.

Because they're so kind of on the fly, you usually don't find out about them until maybe a month, six weeks, until they happen. But yes, they're going to be frequent. They're going to be all over the place. Within minutes, the grid was tiled with post-it labels, each providing a handwritten topic that someone would present. Chris began with one of the most popular sessions of the day. He called it, Is NASA a Zombie? The discussion was lively. NASA had its defenders, and the space agency's science programs received lots of praise. But when it came to plans for humans in space, this mostly very young and very passionate bunch were almost unanimous.

So how do you put the brain back in the zombie? I'm dumb. You've got to kill or move. Starve him. After the session, I stopped to talk with Kate Gray, a freelance British journalist who calls herself a space nomad in America. You can read about her adventures, including the tweet-up at the attempted launch of the space shuttle last November, at SpaceKate.com. Kate brought a somewhat different view of NASA from across the pond.

You come from a place where there is no NASA. It's true. In the UK, we're not lucky to have our own, you know, big budget human space flight program like you guys do. You know, we haven't sent people to the moon. We don't have those iconic images that are ours, that is our nation. And, you know, I got invited to come over and do a story about a NASA expedition to the Mojave Desert. And I was so excited. A NASA scientist had emailed me and invited me to go on a NASA expedition. And I told my friends, I was like, get this, I'm going to the desert with NASA. And they were like, that's amazing.

You know, they were all speechless and thought it was the best thing ever. And when I got here, I was so excited. You know, I chat to people on airplanes and I was just talking to somebody and I said, guess what? You know, I'm going to the desert with NASA. And they went, yep.

And I said, no, no, no. I'm going with NASA. Like, to the desert? The Mojave Desert? Like, with NASA? And they're like, yeah. I couldn't believe it. I mean, wow. no, no, I'm going with NASA, like to the desert, the Mojave Desert, like with NASA. They're like, yeah. I couldn't believe it. I mean, wow, I don't know.

The power of that brand, the NASA brand. I mean, it's so well respected. You know, it stands for all these exciting, amazing things. And sometimes, you know, I hear people say, oh, but it's our taxes and we had to pay all this money for it. I'm like, if you look at your national budget, it's not that much. And I have my criticisms of some of the things they do, but it's awesome. I just think they've been so hard on it. It's achieved amazing things, and it's a really globally recognized brand

that you should be proud of. British freelance journalist Kate Gray, who, by the way, is looking for a ticket to space. Your ticket to the SpaceUp Unconference in San Diego, California, is good for another few minutes. When we return, we'll talk to many more of the attendees. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Robert Picardo. I traveled across the galaxy as the doctor in Star Trek Voyager.

Then I joined the Planetary Society to become part of the real adventure of space exploration. The Society fights for missions that unveil the secrets of the solar system. It searches for other intelligences in the universe, and it built the first solar sail. It also shares the wonder through this radio show, its website, and other exciting projects that reach around the globe. I'm proud to be part of this greatest of all voyages,

and I hope you'll consider joining 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. Our nearly 100,000 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.

We return now to the second annual SpaceUp Unconference in San Diego, California, where about 70 true believers gathered to talk about something they and others call new space. Many of the mostly male attendees were students at UC San Diego, the home of the conference. Many more are now out working for companies like SpaceX and XCOR that are at the forefront of this fresh approach to space exploration and development. Still others were there with their own concepts and projects. One was Jesse Powell, an oceanographer at the nearby Scripps Institute, who also dreams of easier access to outer space.

Today I'm going to be talking about something called StarTram, which is a way to launch things into orbit for a very low cost. It's using maglev technology, and basically imagine a long tube that is levitated at one end up to 20 kilometers height using basic repulsive forces of high amperage conducting cables. Are you saying, is your point in your presentation, that this is really something that may be practical? Yeah, it's really practical because the existing technology is Maglev, which is already in use around the world. It's using tethers to hold it in place that are within existing technology today. And basically all it is, is if you accelerate something at 2 G's for

1,000 kilometers, you get up to 8 kilometers a second, and that puts you into orbit. This is a really good forum for somebody to bring something that is really coming out of left field like this concept. Exactly. Actually, that's the one reason I came here is because we're looking for people to spread the word, to help out with engineering studies and web design, things like that. We're trying to make this more of a crowd-sourced or people-sourced project. Paul Breed of Unreasonable Space was a bit older than the average SpaceUp attendee. He was proudly carrying several intricate objects fashioned from single pieces of stainless steel or aluminum. He and his colleagues had created them in a 3D printer that works with metal.

Yes, it's called a printer. Got a lot of space enthusiasts here, but you're the only one who brought his own rocket engines. Yeah, it's a disease. Some people would call it a hobby. My wife might call it an obsession. There's a scene in the old movie Astronaut Farmer where the guy comes to bed at 3 in the morning. His wife rolls over and says,

you smell like your rocket. That's not how the line works. The line works as the wife rolls over and goes, you've brought aluminum chips to bed again. Molly McCormick and Jeffrey Licciardello were active participants in several of the unconference sessions. Jeffrey is an engineer for XCOR in California's Mojave Desert. XCOR is building the Lynx, its own suborbital space plane,

right next to where Scaled Composites is preparing Spaceship Two for Virgin Galactic. At XCOR, we're confident that we can compete with them in an open market and that Lynx will be just as successful as Spaceship Two, if not even more so. Molly, what is that connection you have to these guys, XCOR? We are going to be providing the suits for them, we being orbital outfitters. Suits being spacesuits? Yes, absolutely, spacesuits, intravehicular spacesuits. What's your job?

I am the biomechanical engineer for orbital outfitters. Which entails what? Do you have to make sure that a person can get into this thing and get work done and not be raw by the time they get out of it? Yeah, absolutely. Ergonomics is a huge part of it. I guess generally my job would be described as not breaking the people inside. So it's obviously not just a day job for

either of you because I don't think either of you was required to be here by your employer. That's correct. Well, so why? Why are you here? You know, honestly, this is the best thing I could possibly imagine doing, not only with my weekend, but practically every weekend and every afternoon and evening when I get home from my, you know, my real job, given that most of us actually in this industry right now, or many of us anyway, have a second job. You're a true believer too. Absolutely. I wouldn't be where I am right now if I didn't believe that I should make space affordable to myself. And me too, I hope.

Oh, absolutely. So what is it about this format? I mean, is there something special about the unconference format and SpaceUp specifically that, you know, makes you happy to be here? Well, this is the first time I've been at SpaceUp, and my impressions are very new, but I really enjoy the format because it's a very organic sort of feel to the conversations and the topics that everyone talks about. It's not some dry planned itinerary where everyone goes and listens to a PowerPoint presentation. New space is commercial space, but on top of that, because commercial space has actually been around for a very long time, most of what NASA does is through commercial

space, commercial meaning Boeing or Lockheed or any actual company. NASA contracts out. Exactly. But there are a herd, if you will, of new up-and-coming companies that are much smaller, they are much more nimble, and I think primarily they do not believe in cost-plus contracting. We just came out of this session upstairs. Great discussion. Very well attended about NASA as a zombie. And there were some people who said, just destroy it. Blow it up.

Get rid of it. It's worthless. You didn't say that. No, I think that we can't destroy NASA because NASA does a lot of good things. In the talk upstairs, they mentioned how the unmanned parts of NASA are getting a lot of great science. But I also think that NASA just needs to reorganize and refocus its mission a little bit. If NASA can focus on the high-level science and the far-reaching exploration goals, like a long-term mission to Mars that no private corporation really has the will or the power to do

right now, by working with the commercial sector to bring things to orbit, they can focus on just optimizing a mission to Mars, and everything can be done for a lot less money and a lot faster than NASA trying to reinvent the wheel. Molly, you were nodding your head. Yeah, I absolutely agree. In particular, there's some excellent biological work coming out of NASA Ames. There's some fabulous rover work, the Mars rovers, the Hubble, all that sort of work, a lot of that comes out of JPL. And there are individual centers across the United States

that are doing really fantastic basic science research. And I think that ultimately that's perhaps where NASA ought to be focusing more of its efforts and moving away from things that we already know how to do. They aren't new. And in fact, we can now turn an actual profit on. That's why you want to move it to the commercial companies. Optimism or pessimism about the future? I'm certainly optimistic. I think that in the next 10 years, certainly in the next 20 years, the entire landscape of how we get to space is going

to be revolutionized. And sooner or later, maybe my children or my grandchildren will be able to go to space and not think that it's really that big of a deal like the way we treat it now. Yeah. Also optimism. I don't think you're really going to see anyone in this room today that is a pessimist or they wouldn't even bother to be here. But I'm also very optimistic. And I, too, look forward to the day when this isn't such a spectacular event, when spaceflight isn't something that makes or breaks heroes. It's just something you do. Thank you so much.

It's been delightful talking to both of you. Thank you. Young engineers and space enthusiasts Molly McCormick and Jeffrey Licciardello. Representing the Space Frontier Foundation at the 2011 SpaceUp Unconference was its project manager, James Pura. This is really at least a second generation of sort of grassroots space enthusiasts, and you may be one of those yourself. I absolutely am. And, you know, it just goes to show you that this whole space and new space feel is infectious. It takes on a life of its own.

Part of what New Space is all about is it's reinventing itself all the time. And whether that's in the science field or whether that's in the entrepreneurial field or whether that's here in creating an entirely new form of space conference, it's all cool, it's all space, and it's all fun. Why are you in it? Why are you so involved? I mean, they're probably, I'm going to bet, there are things you could be doing that might let you buy a bigger house or something. Well, yeah, absolutely. And I look around the room and there's a lot of people that actually have other jobs that are not as exciting that end up paying the bills.

But this is where we go to have fun and we have friends and we talk about space and we talk about the future. And space conferences are kind of like a mecca where everybody gets together to talk about the stuff that they don't get to talk to their family and friends about. about the stuff that they don't get to talk to their family and friends about. They get to talk to like-minded people about far-reaching ideas, and they don't get funny looks in return. It's nice to know that you have a place like that where you can go and you can speak your mind and you can talk about and you can catch up on what the latest and greatest is in space, and it's a good time. Preaching to the choir, but as somebody once said to me, even the choir needs to be preached to.

Yeah, definitely. James Pura of the Space Frontier Foundation, which has its own space conference in late July at NASA's Ames Research Center. I was sorry to leave the San Diego SpaceUp unconference before the big party planned for that Saturday evening. Maybe next year. You can learn more at spaceup.org. And you can learn about the night sky and more when Bruce arrives with What's Up in just a few seconds. I'm back in Bruce Bett's office at the headquarters of the Planetary Society, where the acoustics are not bad, actually.

And we're going to talk about what's up in the night sky and ever so much more. Welcome back. It's good to be back. Wait, welcome to you. Welcome back to the office. Notice I've covered it in cheese to be back uh wait welcome to you welcome back to the office notice i've covered it in cheese to make for a better acoustical signature yeah that's why i'm wearing the clothespin uh night sky got jupiter brightest starlight object over there in the evening sky over in the west uh saturn's got some friends we've got saturn coming up late in the evening

11 midnight over in the east as things will do. But if you look a little later on or before dawn, you'll find Spica near it, the brightest star in Virgo. Notice Saturn's the more yellowish one. Spica is slightly dimmer, more bluish, whitish. Also, look for the moon near Saturn looking lovely on February 21st. And a week later, February 28th, the moon will be near Venus, which is in the eastern part of the sky before dawn. You'll have lovely crescent moon Venus coming up February 28th. In this week in space history, we had the Voyager 1 solar system portrait taken, the whole pale blue dot, little pictures, things like that. And how interesting, of course, because we just had Ed Stone on the show last week,

the head of that project. Didn't Carl Sagan really have to push for that? I do believe he did, yes. They're just little dots, but they're dots taken from really, really far away. We also had 1973. Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to pass through the asteroid belt. And finally, John Glenn becomes first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. Random

Space Fact! Just trying to mix it up. Going on eight and a half years and it never fails to entertain me. That's why I like you so much, man. Hopefully it's entertaining someone else out there. Random space fact. Neptune is so far from the sun and has so much internal heat going on from radioactivity and leftover heat from formation

that Neptune actually radiates twice as much heat going out than the heat coming in from the sun. Oh gosh it's just plain cold out there. Yeah I believe the term is way butt cold. I'm sorry can we say that on the radio? No. Then never mind. We move on to the trivia contest an attempt to save us from the FCC. In the trivia contest, we ask you, in what constellation is the center of the Milky Way galaxy as it appears in our sky? How do we do, Matt? Yeah, we want to say it's not really in the middle of this constellation. It's just past it.

And if you look toward Sagittarius, you are essentially looking into the core of the Milky Way, right? Yes, indeed. So it was Michael Capps. Now get this, Michael Capps in Troy, Virginia. He is a previous winner, but it has been almost four years since he last won the contest. So Michael, congratulations. We're going to send you, how about a year in space calendar? Because we didn't really say two weeks ago. That sounds great. Congratulations. Welcome back.

I got to tell you that Torsten Zimmer, he sends me this nice little entry, and he mentioned Sagittarius. And he says, here's this great new image, amazingly clear, that the Hubble just got of the core of the Milky Way. And I open it up, and of course, it's a broken-into Milky Way candy bar. Which, ironically, is exactly what the center of the Milky Way galaxy looks like. And now we fit it, what do we know? You want to know what's inside a black hole? It's creamy caramel. Tasty and dense.

But I've got to bring up Lindsaysey dawson who once again sent a magnificent entry with nice photos and pointed out that because we had given the advice do not go to the core because of all the nastiness there he did figure out that if you wanted to get to the core and back in the two weeks between the question and us giving the answer, you would have to travel at 155 light years per hour. He didn't try this, did he? No, he didn't. He didn't.

Okay, good. What do you got for next time? All right. For next time, first the caveat, not counting Apophis in 2029. So on a regular basis, what asteroid gets the brightest in our sky? As it appears to us here on Earth, which asteroid is the brightest on a regular basis? Go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter. And why don't we give away another copy of Solar System for iPad from Touch Press, written by Marcus Chown. I think that'd be a cool thing to do. I like it. You've got until

the 21st of February, 2011, at 2pm Pacific Time, to get us that answer. Alright, everybody. Go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about juggling. Thank you. Good night. We've got to get you juggling on the next PlanRad Live, which we're beginning to plan, folks. Stay tuned. It's going to come up in the spring. But you have to promise to juggle. I can try.

He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He juggles all those projects all the time. But he does make time to join us every week here for What's Up. Next week, 1,200 or so possible new planets, courtesy of Kepler. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and made possible in part by a grant

from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation. Clear skies. Редактор субтитров А.Семкин Корректор А.Егорова