Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - The Unexpected Space Center: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Episode Date: September 11, 2019

This US research center has been part of more than 200 space missions, but it’s not a NASA facility! The Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico gave the Voyager spacecraft their power sources, is building nuclear generators for future Martians, and accidentally invented the field of High Energy Astrophysics. That’s just some of what we’ll learn from Lab historian Alan Carr and longtime Lab astrophysicist Ed Fenimore. The Planetary Society’s Jason Davis has the latest news about India’s lunar lander, while Bruce Betts and Mat Kaplan go where no acronym has gone before. Learn more about this week’s guests and topics at:  http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/0911-2019-carr-fenimore-los-alamos.htmlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Exciting space exploration from a surprising source, 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. The Los Alamos National Laboratory may not be the first place that comes to mind when you think about space, yet this Center for Nuclear Research and Development has had a hand in more than 200 missions. Join me for an eye-opening conversation with two longtime members of its staff. I'm looking forward to telling Planetary Society Chief Scientist Bruce Betts that I finally got a good look at Jupiter. That'll happen in this week's What's Up segment, along with all the other usual hijinks. We begin with last week's attempt by India to become only the fourth nation to soft-land a spacecraft on the moon.

Jason Davis is the Planetary Society's digital editor. Jason, welcome as always. Thank you for the updates on the Chandrayaan-2 mission. Your last one on our website, as we speak anyway, on September 6th. And there has been at least one development since then that the rover may have been found. Yeah, the Indian Space Agency's Chandrayaan-2 orbiter. So just as a quick recap, both spacecraft launched from Earth as one combined unit and then separated in lunar orbit. The lander carrying the rover went on down to the surface and the orbiter is still going strong about 100 kilometers above the moon's surface.

Anyway, that orbiter has all kinds of different scientific instruments on it, including a good imaging system. And they have seen at least, it's a little unclear what kind of image it was, whether it was an infrared image or a visible light image. But they have seen or spotted the lander on the surface. Haven't said much about what kind of shape it's in. Is it in one piece? Or what exactly happened to it? They are trying to contact it and listening for it from Earth, but so far, no communications with that lander. Well, we wish them luck, of course, in those attempts to contact it. But the similarities with what we saw not long ago at all with the Beresheet landing attempt are pretty striking, aren't they? Boy, it sure was. Watching the real-time coverage of the mission, everything was going great right down to the last minute.

And then suddenly the telemetry and mission control did not update. It kind of froze. So it looked like it was just like a kilometer or two above the surface coming in for its landing. And then all the screens froze. And you can just sense the atmosphere in the room change. You know, it happened with Beresheet, people staring at computer screens with very concerned looks on their faces. And you think, well, you know, maybe there's nothing, you know, maybe there's just a little communications dropout or a glitch, or they just haven't received confirmation. But then the seconds keep dragging on, and you don't hear anything until finally it becomes clear after several minutes that something is not right here.

And yeah, it just really was a lot like Beresheet and just heartbreaking to watch. It really was. There were several of us watching at Planetary Society headquarters, including the boss, Bill Nye. And, you know, we shared in there the desolation that I think it's fair to say that you could see in their faces. And there, of course, also was Modi, the Indian prime minister, just as the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, had been there for the Beresheet landing. Yeah. And in both cases, you have that moment where it's like the big boss is sitting up, you know, behind the glass screens watching everything.

And, you know, finally someone from the flight team has to come up and kind of give them an update on what's going on. And so we saw that happen with Kay Sievan. He's the head of ISRO, came up and gave an update. There were also some really touching moments online. Somebody shot a scene where he was, Modi was leaving the building and Steven was walking out with him

and just kind of broke down and they hugged each other. I mean, it just really shows you how much emotion, emotional capital gets poured into these missions, the heart and soul of these things. And, you know, we kind of take it for granted with NASA. They've had so many planetary successes lately. But, you know, not long ago, this is what NASA scientists were dealing with and still could deal with. So it really is one of those exercises where you see the human side of space exploration.

And how sadly everybody gets to deal with this stuff now and then. Space is hard. Landing is harder, as I've said before. Before we go, over on a different side of the moon, China still successfully exploring. And there has been this report. I had no idea about this until somebody, a friend of mine, happened to mention to me a couple of days ago, asked if I knew anything about this, quote, gel-like substance, unquote, that had been found by the Yutu rover from China, part of the Chang'e 4 mission. And this was news to you too, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah. Thanks for bringing this to me.

Apparently, as you said, the rover spotted this mysterious quote. This is translated from Chinese, but the quote was a gel with a mysterious luster in the center of the crater it was exploring. And this was the little U-22 rover. And so they're not quite sure what this substance is. The word gel was pretty loaded there, so we're not sure whether that was something lost in translation or whether this is some truly exotic substance or it's just a run-of-the-mill scientific curiosity, I guess. But yeah, over there, the mission, as far as we know, is still going on doing its science. As we speak, still no pictures of this mysterious substance, although there has been a lot of speculation that maybe it's just glass, like volcanic glass that was formed,

maybe after a meteorite, a meteor hit, which does tend to heat things up quite a bit. Anyway, we'll just have to wait for China to release more information. Good evidence that there's much to discover and do on the moon still. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Good evidence that there's much to discover and do on the moon still. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think it's important to know too with Chandrayaan too, you know, as sad as we are about the lander, India still has a healthy orbiter up there and it's going to do some good science for the next year, including looking for ice and water at the lunar poles and some of these permanently shadowed craters. So, you know, still a lot of cool science going on up at the moon and more to come.

So congratulations to ISRO, the Indian Space Agency, for that and to all of India. More to come, I'm sure. And more to come from you, Jason. Thanks very much for all this. Thanks, Matt. Always good to be here. Take a look at planetary.org if you want to check out Jason's report. The most recent is We Speak, as I said, is a look at planetary.org if you want to check out Jason's report. The most recent

as we speak, as I said, is a September 6th report. And from there, you can link to our mission page about Chandrayaan-2, about that entire mission. We have lots and lots of these mission pages, which will give you a good start on learning about things that are happening all over our solar system from robotic spacecraft. Less than an hour northwest of beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico, is one of the most storied scientific and technology centers on Earth. The Los Alamos National Laboratory was founded in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, the massive top-secret effort to create the atom bomb. Its mission still includes work on nuclear weapons, but the lab has also gone in many other directions

over the decades. Several representatives of the lab came to the Santa Fe Institute's Interplanetary Festival last June. That's where I hosted spacesuit author Nicholas de Monchaux for the fascinating conversation you may have heard in our August 14th episode. There were many more surprises in store when I sat down with two of the visitors from Los Alamos. My name is Alan Carr. I'm a historian at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. I've been there for a little over 16 years now. Most people that I get to meet around the laboratory and beyond think that I have the best job there, and I don't know if I could disagree with them. Ed disagrees. Yes. Okay, we've got a challenger. Introduce yourself, Ed. Okay,

my name is Ed Fenimore. I've been an astrophysicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for 45 years. I sort of retired a while ago, but that was just so I could come back and work for free. They actually let me come back and work completely for free. So obviously I have the best job there at the laboratory. I suppose. I guess you give each other a run for your money. But since I'm a non-scientist, it's you that I'm most envious of.

We just left the stage here at the Interplanetary Festival in Santa Fe, and so I feel very fortunate to be able to catch the two of you, and very sorry that your two excellent compatriots, your colleagues, actually three colleagues, weren't able to join us for purely technical reasons because I've only got two microphones for you guys. So you're going to have to cover for them as well, I'm afraid. Sure, they'll be with us in spirit, I'm sure. I'm sure. Alan, the first thing that comes to mind is Los Alamos National Laboratory,

not a NASA lab, it's not a NASA center, it's a national lab. Right. And yet I learned here that you've had a tremendous amount of involvement with space exploration, space science. That's right. At the laboratory, we make technology to enable policymakers to give them options. And so when there's a great national crisis or a need for something, Washington turns to the national laboratories. That's how we started in World War II. We thought that the Germans were going to develop nuclear weapons. You could imagine a world in which Adolf Hitler has a nuclear monopoly. Well, where are we going to turn to do that? And that's kind of the creation

of the national laboratory system, starting with Los Alamos. And of course, there were many other sites in the Manhattan Project as well. We were a nuclear weapons laboratory early on. Then we evolved into a nuclear science laboratory because the needs of the nation changed. And they changed again in the 70s. And in the 70s, we became a multidisciplinary laboratory. We do science in just about every major field that you can think of, again, because the nation has a problem, a technological problem, they turn to us to try and solve them. And again, not just Los Alamos, but many other laboratories as well. And so yes, space, there was a space race going on in the Cold War. And we were already doing work on nuclear rockets at the time Sputnik was launched in late 1957. And our nuclear rocket technology was adopted

to explore the solar system. And I'm going to come back to those nuclear rockets in a few minutes anyway, because that is a fascinating topic that has started to arise again. Yes. Typically, you know, there's some mission that we're doing and then we need the background science to do that. But that often means we need to connect to the whole scientific community of the whole world. So we don't just do the mission. We do all the associated science associated with it to make sure we're right on top of every topic. You know, a few years ago, we celebrated our 50th year in space, and we counted up something like 230 launches that we've been involved in.

That's a huge number. I'm sure it's much more than JPL because they do different types of missions. Yeah. Probably is in the top two or three in the whole world. And here we are in New Mexico doing that. But a lot of it is to keep us sharp. We're doing a mission, so we do a lot of other missions, and we see if that technology can be used for the missions that we're here for.

And a lot of that's nonproliferation to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. I would say half the laboratory is working on nuclear weapons. The other half is working to stop them. What an interesting balance. One would hope, anyway. Alan, you alluded to this, but the lab's involvement with space, you said, really predates NASA. Yes, by a few months at least. We had a nuclear rocket program that started in 1955, originally envisioned as a delivery system for really big, heavy thermonuclear weapons. Looking back, not really a good idea for that purpose.

And thermonuclear weapons got smaller very quickly. A lot smaller. That's right. And so you could use conventional chemicals, things like that, to deliver them instead. And so just as the nuclear rocket program was about to go away, the Soviets put Sputnik in space, we're in the space race, we've got to have a response. And as NASA was being formed legislatively, our program was being repurposed to explore the solar system. And it wasn't long after that, that apparently the lab was looked to, it's that preventing nuclear weaponry and making sure we know about what's going on elsewhere around the world, that you talked about a good deal, Ed.

And because Los Alamos was looked to, to help us discover if any of these were going off either on Earth or in space, more importantly. Right. more importantly. Right. We had a treaty, and within 10 days of signing that treaty, we launched our first satellites, the Vela satellites, to make sure nobody was setting off nuclear weapons in space. And nuclear weapons, you know, they produce very short bursts of x-rays and gamma rays. Should be pretty easy to find, because you can put an x-ray and gamma ray detector up there. And at the time, since we thought that stars don't, probably don't even make x-ray and gamma ray detector up there. And at the time, since we thought that stars don't, probably don't even make x-rays and gamma rays, much less stars don't turn on and turn off in a second. So this had to be a really sure way with absolutely no false events at all, because

who would imagine, who could imagine that there would be stars up there that could turn on and off in a second. And yet, and yet, yes, after a few years they actually looked at the data to show that there was nothing up there and they discovered that about once a month something up there was bursting. It would make a burst lasting a couple seconds, some more bursts, maybe ten seconds later a couple more bursts, then turn off and never come back again. And it actually took us 25 years to figure out what they were, and that involved a lot of our missions in space

because we had to spread satellites over through the whole solar system in an attempt to triangulate to figure out where they were coming from. So it was a huge effort to try to explain these really unexpected. Everybody thought stars were just sort of steady. Go a little bit further in describing these little peaks in the data that you saw for what, both X-rays and gamma rays? Yes. And mostly with the gamma rays, these weren't little peaks. These were huge. Later on, we found some that are so huge that the number of X-rays hitting the Earth's atmosphere actually jars the

atmosphere. And some of them vastly big. I once had a slide where I showed, here's the biggest we actually expected to see on one of our satellites. I couldn't show how big we actually saw one because it would go up a quarter of a mile. And so the idea that stars somehow were able to do this, that's one of the reasons why it took so long to figure out what they were. But we did, as you explained a few minutes ago on stage. How did we figure out what these are and what were they? Where were they coming from? Well, the key question is actually where they were coming from.

If you needed a good location, you could then take the Hubble Space Telescope, go there and look and see what it is. So we built a large number of satellites in the whole solar system to triangulate. We developed new techniques of imaging, gamma ray imaging, so we can on one satellite locate them. We built all around the world, but particularly here at Los Alamos, we built automatic telescopes that could look at the sky and catch these flashes of light. And then finally, we got some coincidence. We were able to see them on our satellites with the X-rays, get a telescope within a few seconds to slew over their look, and we finally found a very good location.

And where was it? Well, we figured these things are really bright. It's got to be some star. And so we went to look to see what star it was, and there was no stars there. All there were were the faraway galaxies. And then we go, uh-oh, we're in trouble. Because we couldn't figure out how a nearby star could produce this many X-rays, and now we've got to produce them from across the entire universe.

And this was the discovery of gamma-ray bursts. GRBs. GRBs, yeah. Which, if it points your way, could ruin your day. Yes, if you're close by, yes. If it's in your same galaxy, yes. But fortunately, these were discovered to be in other galaxies. Yes, extremely far away.

These are the, at one time, the ones we saw with one of our satellites, it's the furthest object ever seen. Yeah, I think it's close to 13 billion light years away. In a universe that's only 13.7 billion years old. This is one of the very first stars made after the Big Bang. And back then, they made much bigger stars. And they used up their energy much faster, which means they would collapse

only in a few million years. And this was the birth of black holes. We're actually seeing black holes being born. And during that process, particularly stars that were rapidly rotating, if we just happened to be lined up with that rotational axis, stuff would squirt out of that rotational axis as the black hole was collapsing. And that stuff, small pieces like the size of the earth, they're actually moving at 0.9999 the speed of light. And then there'll always be one that's moving 0.9998 the speed of light. And those two

would collide with each other and release the energy of that collision as a burst of x-rays and gamma rays. And that's one of the type of objects collision as a burst of X-rays and gamma rays. And that's one of the type of objects that we discovered with this program. I would say incredible, but it is very credible because you have the proof. And you're talking about the events like this happening not long after the beginning of the universe, 13.7 billion light years away, 13.7 billion years ago, and still powerful enough once they reach us to disturb our atmosphere. Well, the ones that disturb our atmosphere are a different process that occur in our galaxy.

Oh, okay. And they, we think, are neutron stars. And neutron stars, as probably most of your listeners know, are very small, compact stars, but they also have a crust. I mean, their surface is actually hard, and you can have starquakes. So we're seeing the effect of a starquake, where the neutron star surface fractured, that jiggled the magnetic field, but the energy stored in a neutron star's magnetic field is huge, and that energy is released, and that's what we're being hit. They're next door.

The ones that disturb our atmosphere are just 10,000 light years away. Yeah, that's all. Yeah. Nothing. But, boy, do they make big pulses in our detector. Now, farther away, lucky for us, are these colliding neutron stars and colliding black holes. And you drew a great parallel.

You said, yes, we've been able to detect some of these optically now. Are we also now combining this with the new field of gravitational astronomy, LIGO? Yes, yes. A long time ago, it was figured out that there's probably two types of these very far away gamma ray bursts. One, the spiky type, and that's the collapse of black hole into a black hole. And then there was these narrow, very narrow, sometimes lasting only a hundredth of a second, and very often less than a second. By locating where they were occurring in the galaxies, we determined that they were probably colliding neutron stars, or neutron stars that were in orbit with each other that eventually they coalesce.

And now that same event has been seen as gravitational waves. Also, for decades and decades, I mean longer than that, we never really knew where materials heavier than iron came from. Where does gold come from in the universe? Everything up to iron comes from stars that eventually blow up as supernovas, but we never really knew where the heavier ones were, and it turns out it's coming from these colliding neutron stars. This was a result from some of our satellite that we were able to see that happen

and then study the remnants of it and realize that's where these heavy elements are coming from. You've said that this essentially generated the whole new field of high-energy astrophysics. Yeah. And all because we wanted to make sure nobody was cheating on a nuclear treaty. Yes, yes, that's right. And I would say, I would add to that, the development of that technology, I think, altered the course of the Cold War. And that's often forgotten. I think we really did change history. I think of this in terms of three

Octobers. October 1961, the Soviets conduct the largest test in human history. This was known as the Tsar Bomba, and it produced a nuclear yield of roughly 50 megatons. Now that's very roughly 3,500 times as powerful as Little Boy, the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. So that's October 61. October 1962 is the Cuban Missile Crisis. And so the world comes very, very close to going to nuclear war. So things are really getting out of hand at this point in time. We couldn't sign a treaty with the Soviets to ramp down tensions because the technology did not exist to enforce it until 1963, when our folks pioneered the development of Vela satellites. And so in October of 63, I believe, as Ed mentioned earlier, we signed the limited test ban treaty. One week after it goes into effect, our satellites are launched to make sure that

everybody's playing by the rules. And after that, the era of detente kicks in. We sign treaty after treaty with the Soviet Union. Of course, the Vietnam War is going on at this point in time. But tensions between the great powers significantly de-escalate. And I don't think it's an overstatement to say that Los Alamos technology helped open up that new era in the Cold War. That's quite an accomplishment. Let's talk about more benign uses of nuclear power, as you addressed on stage, Alan, beginning with nuclear rockets. You talked about the rover

program, and you mentioned it a few minutes ago as well, that because these thermonuclear bombs were so huge, we needed really powerful rockets, and apparently made a lot of progress. Well, we did make a lot of progress. And of course, you know, I know that many folks who are listening on this podcast will know that, you know, that's not really a good way to deliver something. But again, this is pioneering science in the mid-1950s. The technology was repurposed as part of our response to Sputnik to explore interplanetary space. And so we, the laboratory, produced three working nuclear rocket engines. They were prototypes that could have been adapted for flight testing. The reason that they weren't

was because of funding. At the end of the 1960s, there were many other competing projects, not a lot of dollars, things such as Apollo, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the Vietnam War was going on. Putting somebody on Mars at the same time that we were trying to still put somebody on the moon just seemed like something that we could cut. But we were allowed to continue with our research, at least. And out of that research, the first working nuclear rocket engine was called the Phoebus 2A. It was tested in the summer of 1968. And it was the most powerful reactor of any type ever developed. You made a comparison to one that most of us have heard of. Right. So Three Mile Island. And so again, the viewer or the listeners and the audience,

they will appreciate the significant difference between producing nuclear energy versus propulsion. So they're designed for completely different things. But Three Mile Island is still producing power today, and I believe that Three Mile Island produces something like 800 to 850 megawatts of power. Now, again, completely different purpose for propulsion here, but the Phoebus 2A produced 4,080 megawatts of... So over 4 gigawatts, about 5 times as powerful. Very significant, right. But much smaller. But much smaller.

And that's the other remarkable thing, is when you're thinking about that kind of power, this was not spread out over acres and acres. It was in a rocket engine that you could probably put a couple of them in the back of an 18-wheeler trailer. So very compact. The thing that occurred to me as you were talking about this, because I think I heard something years ago about Rover, but the program that I'd heard more about for development of a nuclear rocket was known as NERVA, N-E-R-V-A, and I don't remember what the acronym stood for.

Was that also Los Alamos, or was that somebody else's work? So that was in Los Alamos, and the terminology is, I understand it, and I know that we'll probably get some corrections. And I do invite corrections, by the way. The NERVA program, it was nuclear engine, I should have looked it up before, that's right. But anyway, it was kind of the actual craft that the engine would be mated with. And so we weren't the only ones doing nuclear rocket engines. There were also companies like Rocketdyne.

I think Lockheed may have had something, may have been trying to develop these as well. But the idea was, I think that the prototype, again, the engine mated with the craft for flight testing, was the nuclear engine. And I should have, you know. I don't worry about it. I'll come up with it. I'll get it to the listeners. At Los Alamos, we just do acronyms. I mean, that's so.

We're used to that from reporting on NASA work. So you had three of these that were developed and got pretty far and got shelved. But it's only very recently that we have started to hear again from NASA about using nuclear propulsion, which clearly makes a lot of people nervous because it does mean getting a reactor. Maybe it doesn't. You don't use it to get off of Earth, but you activate it in space. You still have to get fissionable material into space. But the potential is tremendous if you want to get to places like Mars in less than the, what, 10 months or so that it takes with chemical rockets. Hopefully far less. And that's the idea

behind the nuclear rocket. And a lot of good stories. But that would be how it would happen. You would put the nuclear rocket engine in space using chemical rockets, and then from there you would go to wherever you want to go. But, you know, the trip to Mars, I don't know, Ed, how long is that going to take with chemical rockets? It takes a good 10 months. 10 plus months. With a nuclear rocket, though,

you're looking at maybe a third of the amount of time, approximately. It's estimated, which is very good, and to be able to get back. It's much more, you know, the specific impulse is just so much more efficient than anything else that you can get. Specific impulse being the measure that most scientists and engineers use for how much oomph you get from a rocket engine. That's right. And so, you know, to go to Mars, any mission to Mars involving people is going to involve nuclear energy in various forms. It could take the form of propulsion. It could take the form of small reactors for producing electricity to do things like produce oxygen and water and things like

that. And you must have known that was where I wanted to go next because there are these wonderful artist renderings coming out of NASA, but now I suspect with the help of you guys at Los Alamos, that show these reactors on the surface of Mars with these big radiator panels generating the power that astronauts would need while they're spending time on the red planet. Right. You know, the laboratory has a web page. We have a lot of videos that we produce from time to time. There's a two- or three-minute video on this. It's called a kilopower reactor, already successfully tested.

So this type of thing is not just an artist rendering. And so the kilopower reactor, from 1 to 10 kilowatts, and people might think, well, that doesn't sound all that impressive. I mean, it's not a 4,080-megawatt rocket engine, right? But again, if you want to continue breathing on Mars megawatt rocket engine, right? But again, if you want to continue breathing on Mars and you want to drink water and things like that, this is perfect because, you know, 10 kilowatts, that would be plenty for powering medium, larger sized house or something like that. And if you can get several of these together,

you could power a community. And so it really does, it's technologies, nuclear technologies like this, that actually make this more feasible. When people say, oh, we should go to Mars. Well, that's not easy. And you're going to need this type of technology if you're even going to have a hope of doing something like that. My understanding is that the long pole in trying to go to Mars is that long flight because of the exposure to the astronauts of radiation. You can't predict the sun far enough ahead of time to know what flares there might be. And the ill effects of microgravity. Right. And our astronauts are mostly in low-earth orbit where they're protected by our magnetic field. So you really need the nuclear power to be able to get over there as fast as possible. You know, back during the nuclear rocket program,

we did a lot of experiments that couldn't be replicated anymore. And one of them, to your point earlier, it was called Kiwi TNT. And so the first generation rover nuclear rockets were called Kiwis. Why? Kiwi is a flightless bird. So these were never intended to fly. They were just science experiments. And so at the end of the Kiwi series, before they moved over to Phoebus, which we talked about before, these could have been adapted for prototypes. The last Kiwi experiment was called Kiwi TNT, transient nuclear test. So what happens if a

reactor blows up? It's going to cause a problem, right? So they took one to Nevada and blew it up and studied it. And so they did look at that. And again, we would not do anything like that today. We couldn't. But we have the data from things like that and other experiments as well. And so, you know, when NASA, for instance, says, you know, wow, you know, it would be cool if we had a nuclear rocket. Well, you know, just taking a reactor and just firing it up in the atmosphere, for instance, could be really challenging. Well, we've done that. And we've done lots of work in there, a lot of records and drawings and different things like that.

And it is kind of fun to watch the video of Kiwi TNT on top of that. And there are going to be a lot of people listening to this, all of whom are space fans, who are going to say, thank you very much. We don't want nukes in space, whether they're for propulsion or bombs. Right. Very understandable. Wasn't there a successful test on a smaller scale recently of what could eventually be the kilopower generator? Yes.

Yes. And that's, I think, just a little bit more than a year old. Yeah, sounds right. You know, I think, again, if you're looking within the confines of nature, going to somewhere like Mars, you've got to look at this type of technology. I just don't think it's feasible. I mean, even with the technology, when we're talking about nuclear technology, it's monumentally difficult. But without it, you know. No, especially on the surface.

I mean, you might be able to do something about getting there faster. I mean, actually, the solar activity has been decreasing from the solar cycles. It's been getting weaker and weaker. But once you get there, you need power. You just need power, and you can't get it from solar. Speaking of power, for decades now, we've seen RTGs, radioisotope thermal generators, which I guess we, again, have Los Alamos to thank in large part for that.

Every single one was built at Los Alamos. And they just work off heat. You just have a ball of plutonium, and it is actually just warm. So it's not a reactor. It's not a rocket. All you have to do is just encapsulate it very, very well, and it seems to be quite safe. And no moving parts, right? And no moving parts, which is wonderful in space.

As a person who builds satellites, that's wonderful. And we know they work. They've worked for, as I said, decades. Decades. And the example that was given by one of your colleagues, of course, As I said, decades. Decades. And the example that was given by one of your colleagues, of course.

You must be very proud to know that the two Voyager spacecraft going on 42 years are still returning science, still talking to us from outside the solar system now, thanks to RTGs. Yes. We are very proud of that. Right. It's space science. You know, people, I think, when they hear Los Alamos, if they're familiar with us, they probably think of the Manhattan Project first, and understandably so. But we do all of these other things as well, and they're very proud to have that as part of our heritage. And to your question a while ago, there's a lot

of fission and fusion happening in space already. And so introducing a little bit more to help unlock our understanding of the universe, I don't think it's a bad idea, and we make pretty good reliable stuff. My colleague Casey Dreyer, who's our chief advocate, he would want me to talk about one other thing related to RTGs, and that was that for quite a while, the special version of plutonium, plutonium-238, not as toxic as the stuff that goes into bombs, was not being made. And we were part of the effort to see the restoration of the process of making plutonium-238, which is now, as I understand it, underway. So it's available for RTGs.

I'm actually not sure what else it's used for. But that's a pretty worthy cause. And yeah, I mean, the information that we have coming back, you know, we talked during the presentation, at least Cassini was mentioned, really cool mission. And so many others, you know, the 230 Ed was talking about, well, you got to have power from somewhere. And we've been in the plutonium handling business for a long time at Los Alamos, we have expertise in it. And to've been in the plutonium handling business for a long time at Los Alamos. We have expertise in it. And to be able to use it for this purpose, pretty amazing.

We could keep going for a long time because you folks at the lab have a long history of innovation in space and elsewhere. Let me close with this. There was a question at the end there, which, you know, we get all the time at the Society and we cover on the show, and that's human versus robotic exploration. Now, our position is these are going to happen together, hand in hand. One of your colleagues said he doesn't see the point of humans being in space anymore. It's too tough to support us fragile, you know, biological units. It is because it's tough is the reason why we do it. You can give the more accurate quote from John Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, but that's exactly it. Yes, our friend Maury Pongrance, he's not here to defend himself.

And so you get to hear the other side of the coin. And that's right. So Ed mentioned President Kennedy. the other side of the coin. And that's right. So Ed mentioned President Kennedy, and everybody will remember President Kennedy's call to put somebody on the moon by the end of the decade. Along with that, he answered this very question. He said, you know, why do we climb the highest mountain? Why did we fly across the Atlantic? You'll remember the initial flight. Nobody thinks anything of that now, but you think of Charles Lindbergh so long ago. And he said, you know, we don't do these things because they're easy. We do them because they're hard. We're explorers. That is the thing. If we take that out of the equation, well, what's the point? What's the point of understanding how the universe works or anything else? It's what we do as humans. And it's exciting. And Ed also mentioned a really great example. Another practical aspect of that is this is how we inspire the next generation. So important.

Yes. That's it. And Ed, you said you spent a lot of time at elementary schools. Yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. And they're excited about this. So the other people have an argument that when the men are involved and when we have manned spaceflight,

usually can't do very good science from those. I mean, I will actually admit to that. But we do it because of the inspiration and because it's hard. I'm not even sure we'd argue that we do it because of the spinoffs. A lot of those spinoffs probably happen anyways. They happen faster. But it's that inspiration to the next generation is the reason why we do it. And one more thing was an example that you gave toward the end there,

that humans are resourceful and they figure stuff out. Tell us about that example. Yes, I had a mission on STS-39. Space shuttle. A space shuttle. Unfortunately, the duplicate tape recorders both failed in the same way, adding to the argument whether you have redundant systems as duplicates or not. And eventually, through tremendous work on the ground, but also by work with the astronauts,

they were able to go in, find a cable, scrape insulation off it, twist wires together, and pipe it into another downlink and get us our data. Otherwise, the mission would have been 100% failure. Maybe someday robots will be smart enough to be that resourceful, but it's going to be a while. No, I'm not sure. I would contend no, I don't think they'll ever be that smart. Alan, I'll go back to you because you get to watch it. In fact, it's your job to keep track of all this stuff and look back over the history of the lab. You started by talking about how fortunate you are.

I agree. So do I win the contest? No. Almost. Well, you know, the thing is, hopefully our enthusiasm is a reflection of what it's like to work at the laboratory. You know, we have, I think these days, over 12,000 people there from all over the world. And starting again in our earliest days, we had people from all over the world back then who came together during the Manhattan Project. That remains the case today. So you can meet people with all kinds of different perspectives who are doing science that you might not have even known about even working here because it's such a large place.

We have incredible facilities. And yeah, I mean, to be a historian, I'm never going to run out of material. We're still making it every day. And we have up to 2,000 students a year here. That's right. And I believe it's the largest collection of students in the United States outside of a university. You're talking about graduate students?

Oh, high school, undergraduates, graduates, postdocs. I came there as a student, actually. And the program, and I've had such incredible students. I mean, that's actually the reason why I enjoyed it so much, that all the students I was able to have come from all over the whole world and are now back in the whole world as professors at universities passing on what they learned here. I think the inspiration works both ways.

We talked about manned missions into space inspiring young folks. I'm a student mentor. I have been for several years. The young folks who come in inspire us. They rejuvenate us. They bring new ideas from universities to us, and we get to share and collaborate. And I think that's one of the reasons why we've been so successful at the laboratories, the invigoration that we get from the student population. Gentlemen, it has been

delightful talking with both of you. As I said, there's much more we could talk about that is going on or has happened at Los Alamos National Laboratory, but I think you've done a good job giving us a little sample. Thanks again. Let's do part two one of these days. Yes, thank you. Okay, thank you. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is the chief scientist for the Planetary Society. He's back to tell us about the night sky. I have good news about the night sky, but you go first. What? I'm so curious. I think you're going to lead into it regardless.

We'll see. In the night sky, as I'm sure you knew I was going to start with, Matt, Neptune is at opposition. No, no. Talk about Jupiter. All right. Much easier to see than Neptune. Jupiter is quite visible, looking like the brightest star-like object in the southwest in the early evening, Matt. Two nights ago, I dragged the telescope out and got the nicest view of Jupiter I think I've had in ages. Bands clearly visible, four little moons. It was really gorgeous.

It was the night that it was very close to the moon. Well, good, Matt. Did you see anything else? No, I just looked at Jupiter and the moon. It doesn't take much to keep me happy. Well, over to Jupiter's upper left, you could have looked at Saturn. It has rings. Yeah, I should have. Much dimmer, but still looking like a bright yellowish star. Neptune really is at opposition, which doesn't mean you're going to see it with your eyes, but if you want to pull out a telescope and attempt to see a bluish dot, now is a good time. Rising as things

do at opposition around sunset in the east and setting around sunrise in the west and up in the earlier evening. But again, you will need a telescope or very steady binoculars to check it out. It's in Aquarius. You can go find a map online of where it is or use an app. All right, we move on to this week in space history. I know you're a big fan of the X-15, Matt. It was 60 years ago, 60 years ago, the first powered flight of the X-15. You know, if only they had continued its development, maybe gone on to a second generation, we would have had space traveling flying machines a long time before the space shuttle, I suspect. You're right. I am a big fan.

I know you are too. I am. I am. It was an impressive feat of engineering. 22 years ago, Mars Global Surveyor entered Mars orbit. We'll come back to that in a little bit. And two years ago, Cassini ended its mission by diving intentionally into the atmosphere of Saturn. Hard to believe that we had that big, big night at JPL and Caltech, followed, what, I think two days later by our celebration at Caltech. Standing room only, standing ovation for the Cassini team.

Richly deserved. Indeed. We move on to... Random Space Fact. It sounded like it was a rolling no R. Yes, that's exactly what I intended it to be. So I mentioned Mars Global Surveyor. We have had operating spacecraft in orbit constantly at Mars since 1997's arrival of

Mars Global Surveyor. 22 straight years, humans have been operating spacecrafts in Mars orbit and doing it all the time. Let's keep it up. Okay, let's do that. doing it all the time. Let's keep it up. Okay, let's do that. I asked you, what does the acronym SAFER stand for with regards to astronaut-related equipment on the International Space Station? How'd we do, Matt? We got a lot of very clever listener-created acronyms that I cannot read on the air. But you know who you are.

They were very entertaining. Here's the one that NASA intended us to understand. It comes from Chris Garland, chosen by random.org this week as our winner, I think. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona, one of those Southwestern types like our own Jason Davis, who you heard earlier today, or those guys from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, my special guest. Chris says it stands for Simplified Aid for EVA, Extravehicular Access or Activity Rescue. That is correct. That is safer.

A small self-contained propulsive backpack worn during spacewalks to be used in case of emergency. Chris, congratulations. You are going to get a priceless Planetary Radio t-shirt, a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account, and you're a winner of a signed copy of this new book, Super Cool Space Facts, a fun, fact-filled space book for kids by my partner in this, Bruce Betts, the chief scientist of the Planetary Society. I've got it sitting right behind me here. It's a swell book.

Yay! We got some other stuff. Several people, including Darren Ritchie and Paul McEwen. had some other stuff. Several people, including Darren Ritchie and Paul McEwen. And this response from Judy Engelsberg, very similar thoughts about safer. Judy in New Jersey said, we were promised a personal safer for everyone here on earth. Where's my jetpack? Just in case your umbilical cord broke off. I guess it does in some way. They do that.

Usually they use something sharp. Andreas Ospina, a regular listener for many years down in Colombia, Bogota, Colombia. He says, I thought Sandra Bullock already confirmed that in case of emergency, you can use a fire extinguisher. Well, they all carry those as well, clearly. Yeah, those big old tin can ones. Finally, this intriguing entry from Bill O'Donohue in Atlanta, Georgia. He says, one of my professors in college would refer to this as a second order acronym because it's an acronym, EVA, within another acronym, SAFER. He says, every time I think of

it, I try to come up with a third order acronym. I feel like I know one, but nothing comes to mind. I spent a good, oh, two and a half minutes trying to think of one, Bill, but I couldn't come up with one either. Wow. Now so much, there goes my afternoon. Well, maybe we can get listeners to come up with a good space-related third order acronym for us. Give it a shot. Maybe you'll get extra points. But there is an official contest coming up right now. I think I like that one better. Okay. It's up to you. You call the shots. All right. Let's do that. We'll craft in real time the rules. So they have to come up with

a third order acronym as defined by the listener who was just mentioned. And it has to have to do with space. And it can either be something real that you've found or something to make us laugh. How's that sound, Matt? Sounds good to me. Bill O'Donohue, look what you've done. All right, I'm up for this. I was having trouble thinking of something good today. But what I was going to ask was just boring.

So we'll go with some excitement and third order acronyms. All right. Space related. You have until, oh, did you tell people out, Andrew? I don't think you did yet. Nope. They have no idea. I will tell them, go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Did you tell them how long they have met? No. The 18th. You've got until September 18th. That's Wednesday the 18th at 8 a.m. Pacific time. And somebody, I don't know, maybe we'll come up with some additional stuff. But somebody, at least a grand prize winner, is going to get a Planetary Radio t-shirt.

And a 200-point itelescope.net account. Worldwide nonprofit network of telescopes, ever-improving network of telescopes that you can use to look at Jupiter, Saturn, or stuff down in the southern hemisphere, which is where iTelescope is based. That's it. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about why are orange cones cones?

Why are they cone-shaped? Why are they orange? Think about these things. Thank cones? Why are they cone shaped? Why are they orange? Think about these things. Thank you and good night. It's so obvious. I'm surprised that a well-trained scientist like you couldn't derive this. It's because they look so good on your head. He's Bruce Betts, the chief scientist at the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up.

Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, where we'd love to welcome you as a member. Visit planetary.org slash membership to learn more. And if you're already one of us, thanks. You make our little show possible. Mark Hilverda is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan at Astra.