Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Space Stinks! Astronaut and Author Tom Jones

Episode Date: April 20, 2009

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Tom Jones says space stinks this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Okay, astronaut and author Tom Jones doesn't really say outer space stinks, but it does have a certain je ne sais quoi. And the reason I don't know is that I haven't been there, but Tom has. He'll tell us about the distinct aroma of space and his new book, Planetology. Emily

Lakdawalla has the week off for the best reason in the universe. By the time you hear this, her family may have grown by one new baby. We'll let you know next week, though readers of her blog at planetary.org may be the first to get the news. Bruce Betts is not so encumbered. We'll visit with him for the first in-person What's Up segment in too long. He'll tell us about the night sky and more, including how you can win the space trivia contest and this week's t-shirt. Bill Nye is off, so we've reached back in time to bring you the very first commentary he did for Planetary Radio, and you'll hear it in a minute. The combined

operational load-bearing external resistance treadmill will fly into orbit this coming August. It has already attracted more attention to space exploration than just about anything short of a new Mars rover. For those of you around the world who are unaware of an American TV personality named Stephen Colbert, of an American TV personality named Stephen Colbert, the fake conservative commentator and host was hoping to hear from NASA that its new International Space Station module would carry his name. The decision was delivered in person by astronaut Sunita Williams. The module will be called Tranquility, after a certain Tranquility base that gained fame 40 years ago,

but Colbert got a heck of a consolation prize in that treadmill. The space agency even came up with a very cool patch design. Me? I'd be thrilled to have my name on anything up there. A water bottle, a bolt, heck, even a toilet seat. Though I'm not sure it has a seat now that I think of it. Better start working on a Kaplan acronym. Here's Bill. Hey, hey, Bill Nye the Planetary Guy.

You know, I'm vice president of the Planetary Society, and I'm very excited about doing this regular feature here on Planetary Radio. Today I'd like to talk about the beer can problem, or if you like, the soda can problem, the pop can problem. And that problem is roughly this. When you go take a trip in a conventional airliner, it's heavy. But 10% of that weight is fuel. 90% of the airplane is you and your luggage and some metal.

But 10% is nothing but kerosene with some don't freeze me additives. Well, if you want to do the same thing with some sort of future space plane where you take off from a runway, orbit the earth, and then re-enter safely and land on a runway again, about 95% of that space plane would have to be fuel. That is to say, 95% of it is gas, which is 5% for you and your luggage and some electronics and keeping warm equipment and stuff like that. And this is why we call it the beer can problem. Because a beer can is a soda can is maybe 95% liquid and 4 or 5% metal. This is a very, very difficult problem.

But the people who may address it are the space tourism advocates. People who are designing rockets with new materials, fabricated in new ways, way beyond or different from conventional aircraft aluminum and rivet construction. These people may make it possible for many of us to take trips into space for considerably less than the current price of about $20 million U.S. This could be a very exciting time when people everywhere get a view of the Earth from outer space. It may, dare I say it, my friends, change the world by changing the beer can problem. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next time on Planetary Radio.

I had a question about space. Frankly, it was a question that threw me for a loop. I knew it would best be answered by someone who has experienced space up close and personal, and a background in science wouldn't hurt. From there, it was a snap to come up with Tom Jones. The veteran of four space shuttle missions and three spacewalks is a member of NASA's and the Planetary Society's advisory councils. The last time we heard from Dr. Jones, he introduced us to his book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to NASA.

He's a planetary scientist who has also written Skywalking, an astronaut's memoir, named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five best books about space. Most recently, he teamed with colleague Ellen Stofan to write Planetology. We talked about this new book after I asked him my big question, which I got to do a few days ago via Skype. Tom, I really appreciate your returning to Planetary Radio this week, especially because the question that I've got for you is probably the oddest one that we have covered in six and a half years of doing this show. But first of all, welcome back. Thank you very much.

So here's what happened. I was online on the NASA site a couple of weeks ago, and they had this nice video documenting an EVA, something you know quite a bit about, having hung out there in space with nothing but a spacesuit to protect you. One of the mission specialists, as the astronauts who'd been outside were coming back in through the airlock, said something like, there's that smell, it's the smell of space, as just about any astronaut can tell you. And my ears perked up, as did my curiosity, and I thought, I've got to get a hold of somebody and ask about this, and who better than Tom Jones, who's been up there four times. Was this guy putting us on?

No, not at all. And I think astronauts always enjoy telling people who haven't been there yet what the experience is like. And that included, you know, rookie astronauts like myself before I flew. And of course, you know, people like yourself are interested in space travel, but want to know what the real experience is like. What are the, what's the sensory side of the experience? And one of those adventures into, I guess, sensory exposure in space is the smell of space. And it's really hard to explain, but it's something I had heard about before I launched on the first trip.

Whenever you expose materials to a vacuum in low Earth orbit, after a while of that exposure, there appears to be some kind of a faint odor that is sensible when you come back inside. And I experienced it myself on two flights where we had spacewalks scheduled. And when we got our spacesuits back in from vacuum, if you are breaking down the equipment or refurbishing it for the next spacewalk and you get your nose next to the fabric of the spacesuit or next to some of the materials in the airlock, you can actually smell something a little acrid or burnt smelling.

And there's no visible residue, but that's what's referred to as the smell of space. It's got this definite after-effect odor, like ozone perhaps, that the astronauts point out is the biggest sign that somebody's actually been out there. This is the funniest thing because, I mean, I follow this stuff pretty closely and I've never heard anything about this. And I'm willing to bet that most of our audience is not. But it's obviously not a secret. Sounds like you've shared about this with other astronauts and other members of the

public. Well, you can't bottle it and you can't show a slide of it. Ode to space. It's difficult to share with people. But I think it's one of the common experiences that everybody talks about in hushed tones almost, because it's a shared experience that very few people have. And that olfactory introduction to spaceflight, I think, is really important for sharing the experience. And what we think it is, is it's simply the result of the exposure of materials outside in Earth orbit to atomic oxygen, which is a single atom of oxygen that's been

broken down from the molecular two-atom form by exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun. And now there's a small cloud of those oxygen atoms that you're flying through all the time, small cloud of those oxygen atoms that you're flying through all the time. And they tend to break down other chemical compounds and interact with them because single atom oxygen, monatomic oxygen is very reactive. And I think the result of that chemical reactivity is the production, perhaps, of triple oxygen, triple atomic oxygen ozone, O3, which has that characteristic smell of burnt insulation or a burnt electrical smell. And I think that's closest to what we're experiencing. Well, this is what made me think that maybe it was more a heat effect. But when you talk about these, well, oxygen radicals, I guess, is this the stuff that is just naturally up there in

low Earth orbit, since you're really not in a perfect vacuum? That's right. You're in the very far upper fringes of the atmosphere, and there is regular oxygen that we can breathe up there, but of course it's very rarefied. And when these molecules of oxygen are broken down by solar radiation, they drift about, and you run into them on your way around the planet. In fact, at night, if you look outside your spacecraft, you'll see the edges of the shuttle, for example, glowing in the night side of Earth because of the collisions with atomic oxygen. And when they combine rapidly with each other or with other atoms on the surface of the spacecraft, perhaps contamination or residue, they glow as they give up photons. So you see a very faint halo around the edges of the shuttle because of that atomic oxygen environment that you're flying through.

It's very reactive, and it actually, over months and years, like on the space station, can destroy certain materials, especially ones that are polymers or plastics. Those tend to react most easily. Fascinating. And obviously, oxygen is nasty stuff. It can be very corrosive. That's the concern for spacecraft designers. You have to try to find something that has a protective oxide layer on it that's non-reactive,

or just because of its nature or the way it's been designed, it can resist the corrosion by atomic oxygen. And it gets to be less pronounced the farther away you get from Earth. Now, my experience is limited to low Earth orbit, only a couple of hundred miles up. But I've even heard people describe this same smell when they came in from moonwalks. And that may be related to the dust that they've got all over their spacesuits, or it may be the same atomic oxygen effect from exposure to solar radiation or vacuum out there. I tend to suspect on the lunar surface it's different from what we experience in Earth orbit, because there's a lot less oxygen to be broken down and be floating around on the lunar surface.

You know, we were just talking a couple of weeks ago on this show about the challenges faced by the designers of the next generation spacesuit, including dealing with that extremely abrasive, sharp-edged dust on the moon. I suppose they'd also better take this possibility into consideration. You certainly have to. You only smell this smell when it's only been an hour or so since you brought the equipment in. And once it's soaked in regular air, that odor tends to dissipate. So it's not something that you can find any time you go in the airlock. But right after you've closed the airlock and you've hung up the spacesuits and you're working around them, you can smell that faint ozone smell. And it is very exotic, and it really lets you know that you've been someplace.

smell. And it is very exotic, and it really lets you know that you've been someplace. And I think it's almost a, not deliberately, but it's almost like a secret experience that astronauts share. And maybe it's because that kind of odor is overwhelmed by all the other memories you take away from the flight, and it's not right there in front of you. But once you get back up there and experience it again, it's really something you want to point out to everybody else. I still think that we're onto something here, and we should be talking to Chanel or someone like that, that they like this Otis space. It might be possible to capture that. So space smells, but there's much more ahead from astronaut and author Tom Jones. Planetary Radio will return with him in a minute. 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. Tom Jones has just assured us that, yes, space has a certain odor, or more accurately, it generates a certain scent in many objects exposed to it, like spacesuits. The astronaut and author has been there, smelled that, and he has also written about his nearly 53 days in space and how he got there in his memoir, Skywalking. But there's much more to talk with Tom about now that he has satisfied my

curiosity about the aroma of space. The other reason I'm feeling kind of satisfied with myself right now is that it's so clear that I found the right person to talk to about this topic. But let's move on to some of the other stuff that you're up to, like this brand-new book that you've co-written with another past guest on this radio show. Well, Planetology is subtitled The Unlocking the Secrets of the Solar System, and my friend Ellen Stofan and I worked on this book together,

and it just came out from National Geographic in the last four months. And it's a beautiful look at the solar system, not planet by planet, but process by process. Instead of just taking a catalog of the planets and telling you a little bit about each one chapter by chapter, our chapters focus on the sun's family of planets in comparing the forces that act to shape the visible surfaces of the planets that we see. So we have a chapter on tectonics and another on volcanism, another on cosmic impact, another on erosion of various sorts. And then we wind up with the existence of life on Earth and the origins of it and whether we'll find it out there in the solar system or in the other planets

that we're finding around the Milky Way galaxy. So I like today to talk about this because this is the week that I was taking my first space flight 15 years ago. Ellen Stofan, my colleague from Jet Propulsion Lab back then, was on the ground science team for the space radar lab mission I was flying, and I was on the space science team side of the team, and we joined forces to pull off that radar examination of the Earth's surface and biosphere and climate. And we kept up our friendship and our common interest in the forces that shape the planets over these past 15 years. And finally, it resulted in this book that we're very happy about. Happy anniversary. I had no idea.

Well, it's a great privilege to fly in space, and you'll always remember your first space flight perhaps most vividly because of that fresh new experience. measuring with our radar instrument from space and making sure that the ground truth was comparing well with what the radar measurements the images that we were sending home were producing so that was a great relationship that we forged in training and then sharing that in space and over the years I think that's that common experience has always made us focus on getting this new book out planetology is a combination of field experiences from her work as a volcanologist and as a planetary geologist and, of course, my experiences in space. And I want to mention, of course, that it is on Amazon

along with some of your other past works like Hellhawks and your memoir, Skywalking, an Astronaut's Memoir, and the book that we talked about a while back, The Complete Idiot's Guide to NASA, which is great fun. They all have lots of stars. We'll also direct people to your website, www.astronauttomjones, all one word,.com. And, of course, we'll put up a link to that at planetary.org slash radio. There is one other topic in the couple of minutes that we've got left that I want to mention to you.

And it's something that I've heard you quoted regarding several times. And that is this idea that once we have spacecraft that are capable of doing this once again, like the Orion, the Orion capsule, that there might be places other than the moon which would be very worth going to and a lot easier than Mars. Well, I think it's a natural progression out into deep space that we need to undertake. And we've been to the moon, and there may very well be resource reasons and scientific reasons to continue our exploration of the lunar surface. But if we build a spaceship, Matt, that can take us to the moon and put us into orbit around it, let us descend to the surface. That same spaceship inherently has the required amount of rocket power then to leave Earth-moon space behind and visit the nearby asteroids that populate the inner solar system. These are the objects that come closer to us even than the moon.

And yet, because of their small size and very low gravity, they're actually easier to reach and then to depart from than the moon. So the new Orion spacecraft that NASA is planning to field after the shuttle is capable of taking human explorers to nearby asteroids, voyages that might cover millions of miles and take up to three or four months. to three or four months. And it's a great physical and intellectual stepping stone out towards Mars one day, because we'll get to stretch our legs on an expedition to an asteroid for several months. We'll have to do the flight control and operations problems that we'll need in deep space one day for a Mars voyage. We'll even have to contend with the delays in communication caused by the speed of light over the several million miles to an asteroid. And finally, we'll reap an entirely new brand of science result from visiting these planetary bodies.

They're the small leftovers from the formation of the solar system. We're going to get samples of solar system materials that are very different from the battered face of the moon and from the very evolved geological samples we'll bring back from Mars. I'll mention one additional benefit that comes to mind, and that is the tremendous excitement that I think a mission like this would generate in the public. If you can imagine it here on the radio, think of the Apollo 8 picture of the rising Earth seen above the lunar horizon from 40 years ago on Apollo 8.

And now on an asteroid voyage, you would be circling a small body, maybe half a kilometer across, just the size of a giant football stadium or something. And looking back at our home planet, you would see the Earth reduced to the size, not just of a BB, but something even like a pinhead looked at at arm's length. And so our entire world, our entire history and existence, six billion plus members of the human species would all be viewed in that tiny dot that an astronaut crew would see from that distance. And I think that would be a transportingly exciting and awesome perspective to bring back to all of us here from that distance.

One might even say a pale blue dot. It's a concept that I'd love to see with my own eyes. So would I. Tom, thank you so much. This has really been a pleasure, and I look forward to talking to you, and hopefully to Ellen as well, about planetology. We'll look forward to that. Tom Jones, Dr. Thomas Jones, is, among other things, a member of the Planetary Society's Advisory Council, but he's also most recently the author of Planetology, the book that we've mentioned, and a veteran of four trips,

count them, four, on the space shuttle, an experience that most of us listening to this program I think would love to share with him. He has joined us here on Planetary Radio and hopefully will again sometime soon. And we'll be talking with Bruce Betts in a moment as we take a look with him at the night sky during this week's edition of What's Up. It is such a pleasure to once again be sitting directly across the table from the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society,

ready now to record face-to-face what's up. Welcome back. Thank you. It's so exciting to be here in the same room with you, Matt. And I'm glad you feel that way. You too. Much more rewarding than a computer screen. Thank you.

Meanwhile, up in the sky. It's a bird. It's tweeting. No, we've got a bunch of stuff in the sky. Let me tell you about it. We've got Mercury in the early evening over the next couple weeks doing one of its short apparitions. Look over in the west after sunset, and you will appear as a bright-looking star. If you look through a small telescope, you can probably even check out it has phases like Crescent and such,

just like the moon does because Mercury goes inwards of the Earth compared to our orbit. So we get all these cool phases. We've also got Saturn still hanging in there solid in the evening sky up high in the east after sunset and staying high throughout the night. And it's below Leo. Quite exciting. But you know what's really exciting? No. Well, if I ever got up in the pre-dawn,

it would be exciting to look over in the east because there are three planets. You've got Jupiter looking like a really bright star, easy to see, kind of high up over in the east. Below it to the left, you've got Venus low down by the horizon looking like an even brighter star-like object, and kind of between them much dimmer reddish mars so lots of planets you can also check out if you're in western north america

in the pre-dawn the moon will pass in front of venus on april 22nd that would almost be worth getting up for spooky and exciting also for those who like pretty pictures in the sky april 26th mercury right near the thin crescent moon. Or if you're just not sure where Mercury is, check out the thin crescent moon April 26th. On to this week in space history. Can you believe it? It was 1990 when the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed, now waiting for its final fix-up from the shuttle and astronauts in a month or so. Wow, almost two decades.

That really is pretty amazing. You know what's even more amazing? What? Is that the shuttle that brought it up there had been flying for years prior to putting Hubble in orbit. It really is, it's like, it's achieving like DC-3 status now. Oh, yeah. Or like B-52.

Yeah, yeah. You're right. That's even better. Though it's never dropped anything on anyone, to our knowledge. Probably good. I don't know. So instead, I'm going to move on to... Wait.

There's a lot of pressure doing this in front of you again. Oh, I know what's coming up here. I don't blame you. I can understand because you've really been pushing the envelope here. I know. A bleeding edge. And face-to-face, you know, good audio quality. I say just take your best shot. All right. Me, me, me, me, me, me. Random Space. Oh, oh, oh, bravo. You know, as much as I enjoy Skype, it just couldn't have done that justice.

And what you achieved, I mean, it started out very operatic and then went into this, you know, Warner Brothers cartoon kind of thing. I love the contrapuntal quality. Wow. Me too, because I hate those puntal things. Oh, yeah. Disgusting. Terrible. Random space fact.

Oh, yeah. Disgusting. Terrible. Random space fact. Kepler, the recently launched NASA planet-finding mission, has achieved first light, pictures of lots and lots and lots and lots of stars. What Kepler does is it stares at one piece of sky for the next several years. That piece of sky is 100 square degrees. You may ask yourself, self, 100 square degrees, what is that like?

Well, it's equivalent to two side-by-side dips of the Big Dipper. You know, the cup part. If you put two of those next to each other, it's about that. Nice analogy. I like that. Thank you. Thank you. I liked it too when I read it in mass press release.

But I liked it. So that's what I brought it along with us. That region contains an estimated 14 million stars, more than 100,000 of which were hand-selected to be excellent candidates to stare at for the next few years to look for dips in light due to planets crossing in front of them. Isn't that kind of creepy, though? I mean, if I was E.T., I would be sending us a message saying, Turn that damn thing around! Give me some privacy! Yeah, well, we'll see if we get that message. Wouldn't

that be nice? I'd call that a successful mission. In the meantime, we'll go on to our trivia contest. And we asked you about International Space Station. Name the three science modules. The science modules, how'd we do? Well, we did great. Lindsay Dawson did even better. Lindsay, who can always be counted on to give us a wonderful piece, didn't just give us a list of every module. He only asked for science. He gave us every module, but actually gave us a little bit of history of each one. And he mentioned, and I had never heard of this before, the alpha magnetic spectrometer. It's not really a module, but it's so big. It's like 15,000 pounds, 6,700 kilograms. This thing was meant to be taken up by a shuttle and attached to an ISS truss.

And it's basically like an antimatter detector. It was going to help find dark matter. Well, it's sitting on the ground. It can't get a ride. It's been standing out there on the street with its thumb out, and the shuttles just keep flying by. That is so sad. It is really sad. It's very sad. But there it is. There you go. But he didn't win. Evan Dembski is our winner this week.

Evan, who, get this, waited, as far as I can tell, four and a half years since the last time he won the trivia contest. You love checking your records. It's so handy, you know, and it's so impressive. Well, good job. records. It's so handy, you know, and it's so impressive. Wow. Well, good job. Evan, who's out of Southdale-Gateng in South Africa. Yes, we have listeners everywhere, Virginia. He said the U.S. built Destiny Lab, the Japanese Kaibo experiment module, and Europe's Columbus Laboratory are the three science modules on the ISS. That is correct. What does he win? A Planetary Radio t-shirt, Bruce. And if he wants it, an Oceanside Photo and Telescope Rewards Card.

Excellent. Well, if you'd like to win those very same things, compete in the following contest. As seen from the surface of the Earth. How big? How big is it? How big is the Moon in angular size to the nearest tenth of a degree of arc? Go to planetary.org slash radio.

Find out how to enter. You've got until Monday, the 27th of April at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us that answer. Okay. All right, everybody go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about the miraculous cardboard. Cardboard. Corrugated cardboard. Yeah. It holds things. It ins. Corrugated cardboard. Yeah, it holds things.

It insulates things. It's cool. And it's so good with the right cheese. I like cheddar. He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. And no one's named a treadmill after him, but he joins us every week here for What's Up. They once named a rusty barbell after me. Dan Durday is our guest next week.

He'll tell us about the latest winners of Shoemaker Near-Earth Object Astronomy grants from the Planetary Society, which produces this show in Pasadena, California. Have a great week. Редактор субтитров А.Семкин Корректор А.Егорова