Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Live at the National Air and Space Museum

Episode Date: June 18, 2012

Join us for the first half of a conversation with David DeVorkin, John Logsdon and Bill Nye.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, dear podcast listeners. Matt Kaplan here with news that has made me and others very happy. Our feed from iTunes, the iTunes store, is fixed. It took quite a while, and we do have to thank Apple for helping us to solve this problem. But anybody can now subscribe or listen to Planetary Radio from iTunes. Now, the trick is that if somebody already had a subscription there, they're going to have to delete it and then re-subscribe to the show in iTunes. Now, you all obviously have either already taken this action or you found another way to listen to the podcast version of the show.

Well, congratulations and thank you, but if you know any other fans who've been wondering where we've been, please let them know that we're back, or they can subscribe directly from our website at planetary.org slash radio. Here is a show that we've been saving for quite a while. Hope you enjoy. quite a while. Hope you enjoy. A live conversation at the Air and Space Museum, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier, and this time to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society.

Join us for a two-part conversation in and about the world's greatest collection of aircraft and spacecraft. We'll talk with museum curator David Dvorkin and space policy expert John Logsdon. Bill Nye the Science Guy also joins the discussion, which we recorded in front of a live audience. We'll hear Bill's regular commentary, too. He and Emily Lakdawalla are congratulating China on simultaneous successes in space. And speaking of space, Bruce Betts will tell us what to look for up there in this week's What's Up Report. Emily, lots going on this week, lots for us to talk about, much of it from China. but first of all, sort of the image of the week. You have this pretty picture of Titan. I always love pictures of Titan that Cassini takes with the sun almost in front of it. So you can see

every sunrise and sunset on Titan all at the same time. It's this illuminated ring of atmosphere around the planet. Titan is one of those moons that it's very tempting to say planet instead of moon because it is so planet-like. Anyway, this one is an unusual view because in addition to the complete ring of atmosphere around Titan, you also see this funny little cap at the South Pole. And what's even stranger is that it's visible also in some other images that were taken with the sun behind Cassini. So it's clearly some kind of high cloud, but I don't know anything more than that. I'm waiting, I think, to hear from scientists to say something about what this thing is. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before on Titan Images. It's pretty, and it's a June 15 entry in the blog.

Let's go to the Chinese now. Most of the attention this week, quite deservedly, is going to the launch of Shenzhou 9. I think I got that right. With three taikonauts, one of them the first Chinese woman in space. You found, though, another story which is quite significant. Yeah, it is, really, because it's about the Chinese lunar orbiter Chang'e 2, which did orbit the moon. And it went down to an orbit as low as 50 kilometers to scope out some future landing sites for human spaceflight. But then it flew on to L2, the point where the sun and Earth's gravity balance on the far side of Earth, which many people regard as a gateway to space because it's this kind of funny metastable point gravitationally and you can depart from there to go elsewhere. And that's exactly what they did. In April, the spacecraft left L2, and it's now on its way to the asteroid Tutatis, which is, I think many people think is a contact binary. We have some

interesting radar images of it. But hopefully, this Chinese spacecraft on its first interplanetary mission is going to get some up-close photographs of this asteroid. So I'm very excited about that. Is there possibly even more in the future for this Chinese spacecraft? mission is going to get some up-close photographs of this asteroid. So I'm very excited about that. Is there possibly even more in the future for this Chinese spacecraft? Yeah, well, you know, I thought at first from reading on forums that this spacecraft was then going to head on to a couple of other asteroids, but it turns out that that was a bit of mistranslation. But the mistranslation, actually, the truth is cooler. The Chinese are planning a rendezvous mission with the asteroid Apophis, which people know as one of the very few asteroids that has any chance of hitting Earth anytime soon.

So that could be very exciting. Well, more power to them. Great success in both of these missions, we wish, to the Chinese. And Emily, we wish the same for you, and we'll talk to you again next week. Looking forward to it, Matt. She is the science and technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. And you can catch her on the weekly Space Hangout,

the Google Plus Space Hangout with a bunch of other cool people, each Thursday. Next up is Bill Nye. The CEO of the Planetary Society is online on Skype right now. Hey, Bill, we were just talking with Emily about this Chinese spacecraft, Chang'e, Chang'e 2, I should say. Chang'e 2, yeah. It was in a halo orbit around a Lagrange point. What in the world? Yeah, so what out of this world? So beyond the moon, this thing was orbiting a theoretical place in space where the orbital speed and the orbit of the spacecraft were all in balance.

And the gravity of the moon and the gravity of the earth. Oh, yeah. And the spacecraft were all in balance. And they sent it off from there toward an asteroid. That is not a trivial thing. Let me tell you, that is a very difficult – that's rocket science. That's pretty cool. Let me tell you, that is a very different, that's rocket science.

That's pretty cool. And then on top of that, just a few hours ago, as we report here, taikonauts, Chinese astronauts, including a woman astronaut, were able to dock with their own space station. This is fantastic. I mean, this is technological advancement. This is getting her done in outer space. These are two just enormous achievements. Yes, and I remember, because I'm old, Gemini, the Gemini mission,

the whole point of which was to show that we could meet up in space to say nothing of docking. And the Chinese have now done this on their first attempt. And they probably read the manuals, as we said. I wouldn't be surprised. Notice what a big deal it was a couple weeks ago when SpaceX was able to dock with the International Space Station. So everybody, when you watch it on video, it looks very straightforward. I mean, everybody parks cars. We've watched cars park. You've seen people back up 18-wheeler trucks successfully. But these things are going eight kilometers a second,

and you just can't mess up. It's just not trivial. It's really remarkable. Why is this something for Americans and other places around the world? Why is it something for us to celebrate? Space exploration brings out the best in people. This is my strong belief. So as China has its own space program and engages more and more of its citizens, in this case, national pride,

also you will engage people who think globally, who think about the world, who think about our place in space and begin to appreciate the earth as a planet and someplace we got to take care of if we want to keep living here. That's all in it for me. The more people are involved, the better. And what I'd very much like to do, Matt, me, is get taikonauts, Chinese astronauts, aboard the International Space Station. Now, there are people who strongly disagree with me about this. But I think if everybody got up there and shook hands, we could actually, just looking at it no other way, we could save a lot of money. We could avoid another Cold War. It would be a great thing. But anyway, congratulations to the Chinese Space Agency.

These are remarkable accomplishments. And thank you, Bill. Thank you, Matt. Let's change the worlds. He is the CEO of the Planetary Society. He joins us every week with this bit of commentary from our planet and above it. In just a few moments, we will take you back to our visit to the Air and Space Museum, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

You are about to hear a conversation I feared might have been lost forever. I was in Washington, D.C. late last April, along with many of my Planetary Society colleagues, at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. On the evening of April 28, we brought Planetary Radio to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. About 300 people joined us in this magnificent facility. We had almost finished recording Planetary Radio Live when disaster struck. Our digital recorder lost power, corrupting all of the audio we had captured up to that point. Well, it took weeks, but with the help of the Data Rescue Center in California, our show was saved.

I'm now thrilled to present our conversation that evening. It will continue next week when you'll also hear a special Air and Space Museum segment with Emily Lakdawalla. Let's get started. Welcome back to Planetary Radio Live. I'm Matt Kaplan. We're in the Moving Beyond Earth Gallery at Washington, D.C.'s National Air and Space Museum. Please help me welcome the Chief Executive Officer of the Planetary Society, my boss, Bill Nye the Science Guy. Thank you, Matt. It's great to be here. Thank you, Bill. You know, you and many of the people in our audience are here for a stargazing party sponsored by Celestron. Unfortunately, not too many stars out tonight. It's part of the USA Science and Engineering Festival.

That's brought, I think it's safe to say, over 100,000 fans of science to the Washington Convention Center. And you've been very busy over there. Yes, we've been very busy at our crazy booth, and we have met a lot of space enthusiasts and people that really appreciate the process of science, people who understand how complex it is to bring back images from other worlds and images of our own from space. And this perspective, I claim, changes us. Changes us for the better.

Do you share my sense of utter awe by this place that we are in right now? Oh man, so just to talk again briefly about me. I remember you guys, I remember when the Air and Space Museum was a hut. A military, what's called a Quonset hut. It had a few artifacts in it. It was down the mall a little ways. This place was built in 1976. I guess it opened at the 200th anniversary of the United States. The things that you find in here, first of all, everybody, to everybody in the world, I remind you, this museum is free. And that is a remarkable thing, that a country feels that these artifacts and this information should be available, really, to anyone in the world who comes here. And that's remarkable. are built by people who just thought about every shape, every rivet, every sensor. Everything had to be thought through so very carefully.

Rockets, spacecraft. Everybody, you get this, I hope you get this wild feeling. You say to yourself, well, that looks just like the first airplane to ever cross the North Atlantic with one guy in it all by himself. That looks just like the Spirit of St. Louis. And then somebody will tell you, that is the Spirit of St. Louis. And then I hope you get the same feeling that I get every time I look at it. Wow, that's pretty small, man.

And this guy, Charles Lindbergh, pulled it off. And then another moment, and I guess this is a lot in my head. But when you take aerodynamics, you can show that the ideal shape for a supersonic wing, this is where an airplane or a rocket or almost a rocket is going to go faster than the natural speed of molecules. It should have a double wedge shape. It should have a sharp edge on the top and the bottom. And you walk up to the X-15, which is hanging from the ceiling. It's got double wedges! Like they weren't kidding! I thought they were just, like that was some sort of

exercise for students. No, they really didn't. Everything in here is a result of space exploration, which I claim brings out the best in us, makes us think through everything. And it's wonderful. It's wonderful. I couldn't agree more. There is no better place to talk about the history of space science and exploration than right here. And we've got two distinguished guests who are about to join the conversation. First up is the National Air and Space Museum's Senior Curator for the History of Astronomy and the Space Sciences. He also edited the American Astronomical Society's First Century. He also wrote a little while back, Science with a Vengeance, about the

origins of space science. Please welcome David Dvorkin. Hi, glad to be here. Also on stage is the founder of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. He is a member of the NASA Advisory Council's Exploration Committee and the author of such books as 2010's John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon. He's a past holder of, speak of the devil, Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History right here at the National Air and Space Museum. Welcome, John Logsdon.

Good evening. David, I'm going to start with you. You're justifiably proud, I would say, of the museum's collection of space science and astronomy artifacts. Absolutely. What stands out in your mind? Oh, heavens. I'm reliably proud, I would say, of the museum's collection of space science and astronomy artifacts. Absolutely. What stands out in your mind? Oh, heavens. You can't ask a curator that without them coming up with their own boutique ideas. We have just some fantastic stuff.

When you were talking about the X-15, I immediately thought about the Apollo 11 and all of those capsules and why they look the way they do. And I really like the way that, Bill, you sort of deconstructed their shapes. And, you know, I always wondered, you know, why does it look like a Hershey's Kiss, not to plug it, but why does it look like a Hershey's Kiss? Why is it like an airplane? Yeah, why does it look that way? Yeah. Or a milk bottle. Why isn't it sharp and needle- Yeah, why does it look that way? Or a milk bottle.

Why isn't it sharp and needle-nosed? Why is it blunt? How come to get through the atmosphere and to survive that re-entry into the atmosphere, it sort of hits the atmosphere like a fist rather than like a pencil? And physics tells you why. And it is really the way the heat is dissipated. It's dissipated a lot quicker

if you create a shock wave and spread that heat around. So, you know, that's a good way to think about it. Why do those things do? Oh, man, everything came out of somebody's head. I just love that. Oh, it came out of a lot of people's heads. Yeah, absolutely. More of our live conversation at the National Air and Space Museum is coming right up.

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

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That's planetary.org slash radio. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Ed Kaplan. If you're an aerospace nerd, there is no more holy spot on Earth than the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. That's where we recorded a live conversation last April with David Dvorkin, Senior Curator of the History of Astronomy and the Space Sciences for the Museum,

and John Logsdon, Founder and longtime Director of the Space Policy Institute. These space historians were joined on stage by Bill Nye the Science Guy. We pick up the conversation with David Dvorkin. Aircraft, spacecraft, but you've got some other stuff here. It may not be the stuff that's as much hanging from the ceiling like the X-15 and the Spirit of St. Louis. But I know that you're really proud of the pieces of what may be the most popular scientific instrument of all time, the Hubble Space Telescope. Absolutely. The Hubble Space Telescope has been our focus here for well over a decade,

and it is proven to be certainly in the public eye the most prescient, the most photogenic eye on the universe. It's not the only eye on the universe, but it is the one that grew up at the same time as very sophisticated digital imaging techniques and exploited those digital imaging techniques, like the charged couple device and other devices like that, that allowed these images to be produced that give us a whole new view of the universe. You've got not just sort of spare parts for the Hubble. You've actually got some that were brought back from space.

Oh, absolutely. And that tells you a lot about the parts for the Hubble, you've actually got some that were brought back from space. Oh, absolutely. And that tells you a lot about the history of the Hubble. The Hubble Space Telescope is the first astronomical telescope in space that's used just like a telescope on the ground. Now, it wasn't the first one that a lot of people could use and use like a telescope on the ground, but it is the first one that you could make better. Every time astronauts visited the Hubble Space Telescope from the shuttle, they brought up new instruments. And during that time, those detectors I talked about, the CCDs, they got better and better and better. And now the Hubble is at least 30 times better than it was when it first flew in 1990.

John Logsdon, is there significance? Is this some kind of milestone, what the Hubble represented? I mean, here was really a robotic spacecraft, but it was meant to be visited now and then by us humans. Well, it's a beautiful example of a human-robotic partnership to do remarkable things in space. People talk a lot about humans versus robots, and I think that's the wrong thing to say. It's humans and robots working together for pushing the frontier, gathering knowledge.

Well, there's no robot, so far as we know, not made by humans. They are extensions of us. I mean, there are people that talk about self-replicating. Well, I say, so far. So far, right. John, you've spent a lifetime not just helping to shape space policy, but really illuminating the history of space flight and human space flight, which, my God, this plays.

What role does this museum play in that story? Well, the role I hope it plays is to remind people what we have done and make them think about what we will do. It's not a mausoleum. It is a celebration of what we've done. I mean, in the annex of the Air and Space Museum out near Dulles Airport just this past week, the Discovery Shuttle Orbiter has arrived. We should celebrate what it did, but we should also be thinking about what's next, where we're going, how we're going to get there. That's a story that museums should be telling. What really gets to you as you walk around these galleries and just makes you sigh?

Well, I started my career writing a book called The Decision to Go to the Moon, and then have recently published, as you said, the book John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon. So it is the Apollo 11 capsule that I think is the artifact of choice for me. The fact that three guys in that particular capsule and six more times, five successfully, went out a quarter of a million miles and went to another world, I think that's a remarkable statement of human achievement. They walked right past you, right? That's right.

I went to the Apollo 11 launch, was out at the crew headquarters at quarters at 3 in the morning, stood there and watched these three guys, Neil and Buzz and Mike, on their way to the moon. I want to do it again, by the way. You want to be there for the next one. I want to be there for the next one, yeah. Let's hope we don't have to wait too long for that. David, I said that, you know, you wrote this book, Space with a Vengeance, about the origins of space science. And really, we might tend to forget, especially the younger people in the audience, this is a pretty new exercise for humanity.

Absolutely. You look at Space Hall right outside the Moving Beyond Earth gallery, and you'll see a a V2 missile at the beginning of Space Hall and then within a very few years you'll see its children, its grandchildren, its great-grandchildren sitting in our missile pit. And that is really over just the lifetime of some of us in this room. Certainly it includes me. There's not that many places you use the expression. Did you say missile pit? Yes. The missile pit. I got to get one for my car.

How many missiles are in the missile pit? That's a very good question. I'll guess about seven or eight. I don't know for sure. It keeps changing. That's David Dvorkin joined on stage by John Logsdon and Bill Nye. Join us next week for the second half of our conversation in front of a live audience at the National Air and Space Museum. Welcome back, Bruce.

Good to be back, Matt. He is the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, and this, this is What's Up on Planetary Radio. Tell us about the night sky. Well, if you want a challenge, a low-on-the-horizon challenge, look for Mercury over the next week or two. on the horizon challenge. Look for Mercury over the next week or two. It will be low in the west shortly after sunset, just as it starts to get dark. It'll be a bright object down there. Looking into this, not surprisingly, that Mercury, it moves fast in the sky relative to the background stars. It's amazing how much it moves from night to night. One way to time that, if you look at a few nights, June 21st, if you're getting this before then, there's a nice lineup low on the horizon, pretty much cutting across or going parallel to the horizon of the moon, Mercury, and then Gemini's, the two

bright stars, Castor and Pollux. But you can watch Mercury relative to Castor and Pollux from night to night, assuming you can see low on the horizon just as it's getting dark. We've also got Mars and Saturn up higher in the evening sky and west and south. And in the pre-dawn, the two super bright planets, Jupiter and Venus, both coming up. Venus still particularly low, but you might be able to pick it up in the pre-dawn. Jupiter a little bit higher, so certainly plenty bright enough. If you're up in the pre-dawn, check it out over in the east, and you can watch them move relative to each other. Jupiter will keep moving up in the sky over the coming weeks, and Venus is going to be a little more stagnant. It was this week in 1983 that Sally Ride became America's first female astronaut.

And it was three years ago this week that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and LCROSS were launched. Sally Ride, friend of the show, is anybody who hears our little public service announcement every other week in the middle of the show knows. The other week in the middle of the show knows. And whose organization, Solid Ride Science, did some nice public outreach camera work from lunar spacecraft, different set of lunar spacecraft. We move on to random space. Oh, Skype made that even stranger. And I don't even think I'll play with it because that really came out eerie. That was just my voice.

I've been working on it. I'm taking training for my kids. That's very good. You know how the stars in the constellation, you'll have alpha, beta, all those Greek letters, alpha, whatever, Scorpius, beta, Scorpius. That's called a bear designation, bear designation, B-A-Y-E-R. And that came from a guy who not surprisingly was named Bayer.

And he created the original list with over 1,500 stars. But there's a common misconception that the brightest star in a constellation is alpha that constellation. And it's often true, but it's also often not true, because they didn't have advanced photometric techniques, ways to measure things carefully. So he just kind of clumped the brightest in one clump and then in the next clump, or even went by where the position was, depending on the constellation. So it's very, very erratic. Wow, that must have been so frustrating.

I bet they really got a headache over this Bayer guy. I bet they did. Fortunately, that led people in his family later on to come up with something to help out. That's right. That part is not true, or at least I do not know that it is true. That's not why we have Tylenol today? There you go. By the way, of the 88 modern constellations, there are about 30 in which Alpha is not the brightest star.

We'll come back to a particular constellation where that is true in the trivia contest. But first, let's ask you about the previous trivia contest. And I asked you, what is the date of the next Venus transit of the sun? How do we do, Matt? Boy, a lot of people took it right down to the minute of the beginning of this, which is still quite amazing to me, even though astronomers have had this capability for a long time. We pin these down so accurately. But we just asked for the date, and that's what Kathy Hutchison gave us.

Kathy Hutchison of Maconda, Illinois. She said the next transit of the sun by Venus will be December 10 and 11, 2117, followed in 2125. And as you said, these things come in pairs. They do indeed. And the time

depends on where you are. but only within 13 minutes. This last transit, if you're on one side of the globe, started at 13 minutes different time than the other side. And it's that difference that allowed people to measure the parallax and therefore the Earth-Sun distance. Kathy, we're going to send you a Planetary Radio t-shirt, which is also what we're going to send the person who is randomly chosen and has the correct answer to this question that Bruce is about to ask. What is the brightest star in Ursa Major? The big bear, the subset of that being colloquially called the Big Dipper. What is the brightest star in Ursa Major? And give us the traditional name, not the alpha, beta, et cetera name.

Although you can throw that one in too, because that's an interesting story. What is the brightest star? And what does that traditional name mean in its original language? Go to planetary.org slash radio, find out how to enter. You have until the 25th, June 25th

at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us that answer. And now a tease for next week's contest. We've held out for ages. We have this Celestron telescope, limited edition first scope, the anniversary first scope that they only made about a thousand of that they made exactly a thousand of. We're going to give it away next week. We were going to do that when we had our big show done at the Air and Space Museum a month and a half ago. But that interview that was heard today was only just recovered because the audio got all messed up. In honor of that, not this week, but next week, you'll definitely want to join the contest because you might

just win yourself this very cool telescope. And with that, we're done. Alright everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky and think about 20-sided dice. Thank you and good night. 20-sided dice. When six sides just doesn't cut it in your universe, he's the dungeon master.

Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society he joins us every week here for What's Up Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation and by the members

of the Planetary Society Clear skies.