SciShow Tangents - Satellites

Episode Date: November 27, 2018

What do the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station, and the Moon have in common? They’re all satellites that orbit the Earth! This week, we’re going extraterrestrial to talk about the dreams, discoveries, and debacles that went into Mir and other weirdly cool human-made satellites. Plus, we dig into burning questions, like whether the Sun can be considered a satellite. And we’re big enough space nerds that we try to explain some celestial mechanics.Sources:[Truth or Fail]https://www.wired.com/2014/07/orange-juice-toothpaste/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3354153/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4684458/http://wayback.archive-it.org/7993/20171114232622/https://www.fda.gov/Food/RecallsOutbreaksEmergencies/SafetyAlertsAdvisories/ucm247099.htm[Fact Off]Moon dust: https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/30jan_smellofmoondustBees and Pesticides:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180828204911.htmhttp://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/285/1885/20180655https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/187907/the-more-pesticides-bees-more-they/[Ask the Science Couch]Developing taste: https://www.npr.org/2011/08/08/139033757/babys-palate-and-food-memories-shaped-before-birthhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7583013http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/107/6/e88.full[Butt One More Thing]Sea cucumber eating:https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/03/14/giant-sea-cucumber-eats-with-its-anus/

Hello listeners, just a little disclaimer before the episode starts, we recorded this one before Halloween, which is why there are a number of references to Halloween and Halloween music. So don't worry, you have not fallen into a time warp, and I do not listen to Halloween music in November. At least, not that I would publicly admit. Okay, enjoy this week's SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. Hello, everyone. Today we're joined by Stefan Chin. What's your tagline? Oh, rip him up, Scotty. And also Sam Schulten. Hello, everyone. Today we're joined by Stefan Chin. What's your tagline? Rip him up, Scotty. And also Sam Schultz.

Hello. What's your tagline? Already listening to Halloween music. By the time this comes out, that won't be weird. But at the time we're recording it, it's a little troubling. We're also joined by Sari Riley over here on the science couch. Hello.

Tagline lady. Soup boy. Soup boy. Soup boy. Soup boy, get over here. And I'm Hank Green. Pan fried lattes. So to explain what we're doing here at SciShow Tangents, every week we get together and we

try to one up each other. We try to amaze each other. We try to delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory, but we are also keeping score, and we will be awarding Hank Bucks to people who do well on our challenges. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but judging by the previous conversations we have had

before, we will not be good at that. So, if you want to go on a tangent, this rule is a matter of debate amongst the panelists. We're still feeling it out. We're still feeling it out. You have to spend a Hank buck to go on your tangent. I would gladly lose every round, every game.

Just do it. Just for my tangent. I think it's okay. I think it's okay to not win. Phew, you're right. You don't seem like the kind of person who is always trying to win at the games. Little games is fine. Board games, love to win them.

Video games, can't get enough of winning them like life and stuff this is just that's right it's too hard that's right life is not a game yeah it's not there's nothing it's not a game to win or lose yeah it's a health that's healthy of me yeah very thank you for that thanks thank you for that dose of wisdom sam Sam Schultz. We're going to start out, as we always do, with a science poem. And this week, I, Hank Green, am your science poet. So have any of you ever played the game Kerbal Space Program? I've seen people play it. I've watched people play it.

It's a game where you run a space program and you try and get your little kerbals into space. And so this is a poem about my general experience playing Kerbal Space Program. The engines on her rocket were lit. I instructed her booster to floor it. But then my mom called and I didn't press pause. She ran out of fuel in her orbit. Orbital mechanics give me the panics whenever I play KSP. My rescue sped faster, but then flew right past her.

A satellite she always will be. Oh. That was beautiful. That game's not that old that you were living with your mom while you played. No, my mom called on the phone. Oh. Sorry to imply that you were living with your mom. imply that you were living with your mom.

And yes, I have left many a Kerbin as artificial satellites around the planet Kerbal because it's very hard to get them back down once you do that. And so if you look at my game, there's just a lot of them floating around up there. And they all seem fine.

Are they alive? Are they dead? They don't die. You can kill Kerbals, but by starvation they have to blow up or something yeah you have to blow them off can you get them back you can get them back if you're exceptionally skilled player at the game and have the time to do it okay but before we continue to talk about kerbal space program for the rest of the episode sari can you define what a satellite is for the listeners at home and also maybe me? I had to look this up too because I'm not a super intense space person. It's, to my knowledge, an object that orbits around another bigger object. So it can be natural like a moon, or it can be artificial like a metal chunk that we put up there to do something.

So we don't put a metal chunk? A metal chunk with purpose? Yeah, a purposeful chunk. It's got more than metal. It's a chunk of metal and silicon. Other elements in there. Yeah, space age rubber. It's got space age rubber. Gaskets.

Yeah, got some nice stickers maybe. Is the sun a satellite? Yes. Yes. got some nice stickers maybe is the sun a satellite yes yes i guess satellites are defined relative to the system that they're in yeah maybe but i guess like because the sun is part of the galaxy i guess it's like the earth is part of the solar system yeah it orbits the center of the galaxy there's the black hole there too yeah so like the more is part of the solar system. Yeah, that's true. It orbits the center of the galaxy. There's the black hole there, too. Yeah. So, like, the more massive object that the sun orbits is all of the other mass inside of the solar system. But is that considered enough of an object for the sun to be considered a satellite?

I don't know. Is the sun a satellite, you guys? I'll tell you what. The Internet doesn't seem to have any strong thoughts on whether the sun is a satellite. I'm going to call it it is. Okay. That is my thoughts on whether the sun is a satellite. I'm going to call it, it is. Okay. That is my opinion, is that the sun is a satellite. The science couch declares, I'll get on board with that, just for the heck of it. Science couch declares the sun is a satellite, a natural satellite.

You heard it here first, folks. You heard it here first. And if we're wrong, you let us know and we'll issue a correction. This is why space episodes make me nervous because I can just say whatever. I don't know if it's right anymore. Well, that's the thing. But at least you're not supposed to know. Yeah.

Which is why it's so great to just be a general science dilettante like me. If we hit a biochemistry episode, I'm going to feel super pressure to not get things wrong. But generally, I just read pop-size stuff, so I'm not supposed to really know. The real answer would drive you mad. That's good. Yeah. But we should say that more often. That's my excuse.

Can't look too deep into the abyss. Our first segment of the episode is... Truth or Fail. One of our panelists has prepared three science facts for our education and enjoyment, but only one of them is true. The other three panelists have to figure out,

either by deduction or wild guesses, which is the true fact. If we get it right, we get a Hank Buck. If we are tricked, the presenter gets a Hank Buck. Everyone, Sam, this week has brought

three science facts for us to noodle over. And I'm very excited to find out what they are. Sam. Ooh, all right. You guys ever heard of MIR? MIR? MIR. M-I-R?

The space station. Space station. Yeah, space station launched in 1986. Its name can be translated to mean peace or village or something else. There were three. That's two of them. So the Soviet Union launched this space station, and it was up there for like almost 20 years.

Then it crashed into the Pacific Ocean. But on purpose, to be clear. It wasn't like people in it at the time. No, no, they all got out of there. They have plenty of warning that it's going to crash into the ocean. But in its decade of service, some weird stuff happened on it. Here's three potential weird things. Oh, I know.

All right, number one. Mir was riddled with giant free-floating hairballs that jammed vital systems. Oh. Two. What? Wait. Okay. Gross.

You keep going. Mir launched and tested a giant mirror that redirected the sun's light to combat the long, dark Russian winters. Okay. Or three, mirror smelled like caramel popcorn and nobody could figure out why. I mean, considering what I imagine space to smell like, that sounds great. Like, my thought has always been like, well, you're, it's basically like being in a car with the doors closed and the windows up all the time. For like a year.

And everybody's like probably stress sweating constantly. Yeah. And like no easy way to take a shower. Yeah. And also, I'm not entirely clear on how pooping works. So what are our facts again, Sam? Okay. Free-floating giant hairballs,

infested mirror, the giant space satellite mirror, and the caramel popcorn. It smelled like caramel popcorn. Well, I feel like if there were giant floating hairballs, people wouldn't know.

People would, and it'd be pretty easy to clean up. I'm also dubious about hairballs because I feel like that's a solvable problem. Also, they'reballs. I feel like it'd be easy to clean up. Because I feel like that's a solvable problem.

Also, they're soft. So, like, you don't want other things flying around. So, maybe if someone, like, lost a hair clump, you could collect it. It wouldn't be an immediate crisis. Right. The popcorn smell sounds interesting. That sounds real, too. That one sounds the most real.

It sounds the most real. Because, like, people talk about the metallic smell of space all the time. So it would make sense that we did something wrong and it smelled sweet instead. Of space or spaceships? Of spaceships. Spaceships. I can sort of imagine that smell coming off of something going a little bit weird with the electronics. Yeah.

And a little bit of a burned smell. What was the purpose of the mirror? It was to warm up Russia. This is a little bit of a burned smell. What was the purpose of the mirror? It was to warm up Russia. This is a thing that I did hear about. That like Russia definitely did this. I don't know if it was launched from Mir. And I don't know if it actually happened. Maybe I'm getting confused and it was just planned.

But they launched a giant mirror into space to like shine light, like extra light on areas of Russia to like make it brighter so they could see better at night or so they would be a little warmer. Because you never want to stop working. Because you don't want to stop working. It's Russia. And screw the rest of the world. We put something in space. So let's just use the mirror for just us. Well, it's like a tiny little dot.

They can't use it to shine all. You could do more. You could do a bunch of them. Well, you could do a bunch of them. And in fact, there have been proposals to send mirrors up to reflect light away from Earth. Oh. To fix the jam we've gotten ourselves into. I've heard about that, yeah. So not to, like, not now, not like as things currently are, but if stuff starts to get really bad and sort of like a runaway thing that's leading us toward, like, Venus,

and sort of like a runaway thing that's leading us toward like Venus that you could put a bunch of stuff at like L1, the point between, the gravitationally stable place between Earth and the sun. You put a bunch of like mirrors that would shine light away.

Like just block. Do you even need mirrors? Well, it turns out that mirror is a, like mirror material is the easier thing to do than like a black material because the black material would get really hot.

So you want to reflect it away. Makes sense. What a sad state of affairs that would be. Hey, it's better than boiling oceans. As soon as the oceans

start to boil, that is really, then it's like all, it's basically over. Because then all the water vapor is like a really strong greenhouse gas and that's in the air

and that's trapping the heat too so you really it would have to get way way hotter for that to happen right? yes

yes the ocean is nowhere near boiling anywhere right it's at very high temperature would we be around still when the ocean's boiling? I bet there'd still be

some people okay not the number we have now yeah probably not so we haven't so the space mirror I know that this is a thing. I think that they did it.

They did like a small-scale test version of it. But I don't think that it launched from Mirror. I don't think they did it. And I also don't think that it went up on Mirror because I don't think they did it. Okay. Insubordination. Insubordination. Well, we're going to find out.

We'll find out, yeah. Because that is definitely a partial true fact. I'm going to go with Space Popcorn, you guys. Yeahubordination. Insubordination. Well, we're going to find out. We'll find out, yeah. Because that is definitely a partial true fact. I'm going to go with space popcorn, you guys. Yeah, me too. I also love space popcorn. We're all in on space popcorn. Did we get it wrong? Did we get it wrong?

It was the space mirror. It was the mirror. Oh, no. Oh, my God. Sam's rolling in the Hank books. All right, so. Yikes. Oh, man, I should have gone for it.

Ow, my God. Space mirror is weird. I thought it was just hypothetical. And it was going to get weir. All right, so. Yikes. Oh, man, I should have gone for it. Ow, my God. Space mirror is weird. I thought it was just hypothetical. And it was going to get weirder. No, so Vladimir Sero-Myatnikov was a Russian scientist who invented a lot of the early ways for space capsules

to, like, hook onto each other. So, like, some kind of sealing thing that two space capsules would meet and connect to each other. But what he really wanted to do was make solar sails so that they can explore space but the soviet government convinced him that he should concentrate on something more practical so he changed his research to be about the space mirror and redirecting light to russia so that people could work longer and there'd be

free light and heat. So he worked on that for a long time. He started before the Soviet Union fell and it's the project survived the fall of the Soviet Union. Eventually he developed Znamya, which was a 65 foot satellite mounted mirror. And they shot it up into space and it sat on the mirror for a little while. The mirror sat on the mirror and eventually they sent it out and it opened up and it sat on the mirror for a little while. The mirror sat on the mirror and eventually they sent it out and it opened up and it bounced a five kilometer wide beam of light

about the intensity of the full moon back at the earth. The clouds kind of messed it up so it wasn't that impressive. But it technically worked. The Russian government got really excited and they had this big plan to do more mirrors so that they could light a bunch of stuff at once. So they sent another one one into space they launched that one off the mirror but it got stuck on the mirror and it got all smashed up so then after that they were like yeah we don't really

care anymore so the plan just kind of like stopped in its tracks but people were starting to get worried because it would be like people's rhythms are going to get screwed up there's going to be like these big space mirrors everywhere yeah do we need to throw more energy at the Earth right now? Yeah. It'd be nice to have them up there just in case you want to flip them around, though. Be like, hey, sorry, less sun. We want less sun. Yeah, well, if you live in Siberia, maybe you want more sun. Right.

But for Phoenix, Arizona, maybe just level a little disk up there, give them a little shade around noon. Yeah, just make one. How big is five kilometers? I don't know large that's a question yeah it's pretty big

that's not the size of the mirror though that's the size that was the size of the shadow it made yeah so they could just go hang out in the big circle

of shade for the day that'd be great that does sound nice when the eclipse happened we were here I was here in Missoula and it it was only like

70-80% but the temperature dropped like 10 degrees in that period of time. And I was like, this is cool and weird. So anyway, the other two are based on stuff also. So the giant hairballs, they actually were floating globs of water that were filled with dozens of different funguses and bacteria, protozoa, dust mites, and everybody was really worried that something would happen

and they would get sucked into the air and give everybody horrible diseases. Then they were worried that when they crash-landed, they would have mutated somehow. Well, people were worried about it, but they all just burned up. It was fine. And then the other thing is it smells like caramel popcorn. It actually just smelled like shit, basically. There was this weird fungus that infected the like a metal eating

fungus got into the ship and it was melting the metal and making it stink that's a plot of a Star Trek episode literally a plot of a Star Trek episode well they stole it from Mir did it make everything stink in the episode no no but it was causing a lot of problems

on the USS Enterprise, I'll tell you that. Yeah, people said by the end of the mirror, the mirror smelled real bad. So I get three bucks. Alright, well you keep loading them up, Sam. In the meantime, we have to earn some real bucks for all of us. So we're going to hear from a couple of our sponsors.

And we're back. I have one point. Sam, you have all the rest of the points. That's what I like to hear. That's three points and nothing for Stefan or Sari. So let's see how this goes in the end. I think you're probably going to win. I think it's impossible for me not to. It is now time

for the SciShow Tangents Fact Off. So, two of our panelists have brought science facts to present to the other panelists in an attempt to blow their minds. The presentees each have a Hank Buck to award to the fact that they like the most. And we can choose not to award the Hank Buck if we just want to throw it in the trash. And to decide who goes first, we're going to go with who likes Dave Matthews Band the least.

The least? The least. Who likes Dave Matthews Band the least? I've never listened to Dave Matthews Band. Do you have an opinion of Dave Matthews Band? Pretty neutral Pretty neutral? Yeah

Okay, Sari I don't know who they are I didn't know they existed before You didn't know that was a thing Before those words were just said? Before those words were just said, yes No, Dave Matthews and his band I don't even like them and I know everything about them

Yeah, he's a man, his name is Dave Matthews Band Anyway, I think by default, Stefan probably dislikes them more because he's actually aware of who they are and made the choice not to listen to them. Oh. That's right. I guess. Whereas Sarah has never consciously made a choice to not

get into Dave Matthews Band. She could have just learned about her favorite new band. Yeah, check it out. Go home. Listen to Satellite. Don't drink the water and such. How much do you like Dave Matthews fans? I don't listen to music

regularly at all. Do you like something? Is there some kind of music that is good for Sari? Is it just like you're into classical

or like musical or something? What do you listen to? I don't listen to anything. Audiobooks? You just sit in silence? Yeah, you've ridden in a car with me before. It's just silence. I just live with my own thoughts in this hellscape.

Jesus. That's horrible. You should listen to music. There's science that says that people who listen to happy music for two weeks every day become happier people. I read an article about it today and the happiest song that they found of all the people rating which songs were happiest

was Don't Stop Me Now by Queen. Oh, that's a great song. Very good song. You know that song? Yes, I know. Maybe. Hey, I have a whole playlist of Halloween music I can sing.

If you want to dip your foot in with novelty music from the 60s. All right. Okay. Stefan. Okay. So earwigs have wings, which is not a thing that I knew before looking this up, but they do. And they look kind of like those like japanese fans that you like flick your wrist and they fold out so they have all these little folds in them and their wings don't require any muscle activation to open or close they like release a special joint and they pop open and then it must it's like a similar action and they completely fold up and they're stable in both

positions but they sort of unfold and fold automatically and they're fold up. And they're stable in both positions, but they sort of unfold and fold automatically. And they're also, they are the smallest when compact compared to when they're open. They have the best ratio out of all winged things in the animal kingdom. But basically, researchers have figured out how their folding mechanism works.

And they think that that can be used for a variety of things like better maps and tents and like all kinds of shit but also potentially for like solar sails or different appendages on satellites. I've read something similar about ladybug wings which I watched like a slow-mo video

of how ladybug wings work and how they fold up inside of their casings which you don't think about but yeah. They described them as origami in this sort of way, but they don't obey the laws that origami does. Part of how it works

is that you have to have elasticity in the folds to basically store energy in a way and act as a spring. And so they 3D printed a bunch of models like, models of this where it's, like,

these hard plastic sheets that are connected with softer elastic bits. And by varying the thickness of those bits, like, you can get it to, like,

form the shape that you want. Boy, what a beautiful thing, too. If you go and Google some earwig wings on Google, you'll find some Really pretty ones. Wait, so have they made

satellites with this technology yet? No, so this was actually fairly recent. This was a few months ago. They sort of figured this out. So it's prototyping. It sort of reminds me

of a slap bracelet in a way. In the way that you push the end and then it slaps into the other position. Oh, yeah. It's very weird. And then you get it out and then it slaps into the other position. Oh, yeah. It's very weird.

And then you get it out and then it stays. It's stable in both positions. It's stable. Yeah, exactly. So it takes muscles to put them back in position, though. I'd imagine, right? It must. The phrase was like, release a special joint.

So it seems like there's a thing, a locking mechanism. And when they release that it it like automatically snaps together yeah okay uh okay i think we have heard and thought enough and it is time for sari to lay down her fact for the fact off three two one begin okay so before we had satellites that could communicate by sending radio waves uh to send signals back to antennas on the Earth to get pictures beamed back to us. TV? Is that TV? TV and also just like images of the Earth. Oh, sorry.

We had film cameras and early spy rockets, which I didn't learn until today, had to take film. spy rockets, which I didn't learn until today, had to take film. So they took up like up to 60 miles of film, recorded it for 124 days, and then launched it back towards the Earth. Oh my god. And then a plane had to swoop by and try and grab

this film to take it back to get developed so that researchers had to scrutinize it. Why aren't they just laying on the ground? Because then people would have to pick it up. And one time they did. One time it fell into the ocean and the U.S. had to scrutinize it. Why didn't it just land on the ground? Because then people would have to pick it up. And one time they did. One time it fell into the ocean and the U.S. had to launch a submarine and go find it on a secret reconnaissance mission. One time it landed in Venezuela.

Oops. And it was bad. The end. So why? Explain to me why they couldn't just let them fall on the ground. Is there a parachute are they on a parachute already they're in what was called a bucket it's like this capsule what was it a bucket it's what people call a bucket it was hardware and it had a lid and a

handle it was plastic it was like one of the sandcastle buckets. Just a pail? Yeah. Okay. So it was in what was called a bucket. With a parachute. The plane had to go and catch the parachute. Yes.

And I'm guessing it's just because we can generally target where things land. And I think they intended a lot of these to land in the Pacific Ocean, like by Hawaii or in that empty region. But they weren't sure. They didn't want civilians to know about it. All this was classified till the mid-90s or like I think 2011 was when they did another wave of declassification. So no one had to know that these existed. And so you just had to like send a plane with basically a bug catching net.

Don't even let it touch the ground. Yeah. Don't let anyone have a possibility of even seeing it and you going to collect this mysterious capsule. I just, I feel like that's, somebody convinced somebody to spend a bunch of money when they didn't need to.

It definitely, like, it made sense to me when I first heard it, but now I'm like, yeah, like if they know where it's landing well enough to like fly a plane right past it then you you know where you can send a boat yeah to just hang out or like you could make it land like outside of area 51 yeah and like a field that you like or just there's a bunch of places that the government owns yeah i have fences around it a A lot of America. They could have dropped it on the White House.

And the president just could have gone up and taken a look. Probably not the White House. Just like this huge capsule coming down. A five-gallon bucket from Ace Harder

with a big parachute on it. Top secret, like Brandon on his side. Interesting. I'm interested in the cameras that they had on the satellites. Were they just like, how good of pictures were they taking?

Do you know? I think they got it down to like one meter to half a meter resolution. Okay. So not as good as the current satellites they had, but not bad. Yeah. I think they had some sort, they usually had two cameras on the satellites and they got bigger and bigger. So they started out, the Corona program was the starting one, but then Hexagon was the biggest. So the Hexagon had two panoramic mirror cameras that rotated and they swept back and forth. So I imagined like kind of a robot like sweeping.

And apparently intelligence officials referred to it as mowing the lawn, which seems like a very weird corporate thing to say. So like the CIA agents were bustling around while just mowing the lawn across China today. I love the ingenuity of things like we went to space too early and then we had to figure out a bunch of weird ways to do things. And we end up with globs of like water behind everything.

Yeah, fungus-y globs of water and dropping giant canisters of miles and miles of film and catching it with an airplane. You have to develop all of it. You have to take it to Walgreens. Here's 60 miles of film.

It says one hour. Hurry up. Alright. Well, so that's good. I think I got to give it to Stefan. I feel like Sari's was really good, but Stefan's is like the future of mankind. I'm a big enough fan of early space flight that I'm a sucker for early space facts. So I'm going to go with Sari.

Noted. And now it is time for Ask the Science Couch, where we ask listener questions to our couch of finely honed scientific minds, of which I am apparently one. So we have a question, and it's read by me,

according to our show notes, so I'm going to ask it. It's from Marie, who asks, who decides where each human-made satellite goes? Well, somebody.

That's a good question. Because they can knock against each other, and you want to make sure that doesn't happen. I sometimes get the picture from people that we're afraid that space is super full, and things are going to start knocking into each other, and then we're going to have a scenario like gravity with Sandra bullock and george clooney and things just suddenly it's just a sphere of pure space trash it's there's a lot of space in space i don't know if you've noticed but earth is big space is even bigger uh and if you have like sort of the sphere around the earth that is like a good place for satellites to be, like an optimal orbit for like being geostationary or something, then like you're looking at going out from Earth into this new sphere with a larger diameter. And so there's a lot of space, but you do have to keep track of it. So that is the thing that I felt that like there's so much space and like,

like we'll never launch enough satellites to fill all that up. Obviously there's a lot of debris from things breaking up and, but I did find, this is a fun side fact a little bit, but I found that in low earth orbit, there's still enough atmospheric drag that it sort of clears itself of debris. And so those orbits tend to be like a space shuttle orbit yeah yeah um but there is a point out in space where the real estate is actually kind of limited and that's at a point directly above the equator about 35,786 kilometers

out into space which is pretty far uh but basically there's this ring that if you're in that at that altitude you're orbiting at the same speed that earth rotates and so to people on the ground you don't move in the sky which is great for like a communication satellite or something right like all the all the tv like the satellite tv when you have you have to point at one point in space and not move your satellite. And so you want the satellite to stay in the same place relative to that person's house. Right. But so there's a limited number of spaces where satellites can be and not interfere with each other.

I'm sure there's still a lot of space, but there is an international body that assigns those slots to people. that assigns those slots to people. And another fun fact, in 1976, eight nations tried to claim the space above their countries as sovereign territory, but everyone else was like, nah, we've got the Outer Space Treaty.

This is in space. That's a different jurisdiction. So claim rejected. Were we one of them? No. Okay, cool. But now we're like, let's militarize space.

Yeah. It's all good. Why haven't we done that yet? That seems like a no-brainer. Let's put weapons there. Yeah, I'm in. I'm going to sign up. You're going to sign up

for the Space Force? I'm going to be the general of the Space Force. I mean, if anybody, I would want it to be you. That's going to be me. If there's going to be a Space Force

and it needs a general, Sam Schultz is my first choice. Yeah, I'm going to save you from the aliens when they come. That's not what I want from you. Oh, what do you want from me? I want you to use the power of the Space Force to build empathy. Ah, I could do that. We could etch some nice stuff in the moon. Yeah, we could etch some nice stuff in the moon, like Chairface Chippendale does in the tip.

Yeah, but mine will say be nice. How about that? Just the moon with be nice written in it with a giant space laser. Yes. Okay.

We finally got merch for Tangents. The moon, by the way, is 238,000 miles, 384,000 kilometers away. So 10 times farther than GeoSecretist Orbit. So that's how far GeoSecretist Orbit is. It,000 kilometers away. So 10 times farther than geosynchronous orbit. So that's how far geosynchronous orbit is.

It's pretty far away. Are there any other like crowded or useful orbits? Yeah. So also in the geosynchronous orbits or geostationary, I think geostationary is the one point. And geosynchronous is it's just the same speed that the earth is turning which can stay oh at any longitude but the equator is like prime prime real estate because that's the exact same spot there are geostationary operational environmental satellites that send atmospheric information and just constantly monitor and those are mainly for like big storm systems happening so i think

like big water vapor changes, big wind changes, hurricanes, reporting things like that. There are medium orbits, which are around 20,200 kilometers above the surface. And a satellite at that height takes around 12 hours to complete an orbit. So you can go like cross the same spot twice a day.

Is there a certain orbit that people aren't allowed to go into? Like, where the space station is or something? Space station is at one of the Lagrange points, I think. Maybe? No. No. It's just orbiting.

Telescopes are at the Lagrange points, maybe? There are some telescopes at Lagrange points. That's where the James Webb is going. That's probably what I read. Yeah. What's a Lagrange points. That's where the James Webb is going. That's probably what I read. Yeah. What's a Lagrange point? So, there are gravitationally stable points for any two-body system. So, if the sun is part of the system and the earth is part of the system, there's a place

between the sun and the earth where something can sit and not move. And it just orbits the sun and the earth is tugging on it the same amount that the sun is tugging on it. There's another one on the other side of the earth that will always be in the shadow of the earth. So it orbits along with the earth always in a direct line. Like you can draw a line from the sun through the earth to this point. That's gravitationally stable. And it's basically orbiting, from its perspective, the sun and the earth are one body.

And it's orbiting that body. And that's the one where the Webb Space Telescope is going to be because it's always in the shadow of earth. And so it won't be interfered with by the sun. Like there won't be any light there. All right. Well, that seems like a good end. Yeah.

Which brings us to our final scores. Anybody want to guess who won? be any light there. All right. Well, that seems like a good end. Yeah. Which brings us to our final scores. Anybody want to guess who won? Was it me? It was you. The rest of us all have one point.

At least we're on the board, you guys. Sam is a stupid mirror. If you like this show, there are several ways you can help us out and it's really easy to do that

and we really appreciate it. First, you can leave us a review on iTunes. That helps us know how you think we're doing and it also helps get the word out about the show. Second, you can tweet out your favorite moment from this episode. Thank you to at Rodney Rock and at George Garrett and everybody else who tweeted us your questions. And finally, if you want to show your love for Tangents, you can just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I have been Hank Green.

I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Stefan Chin. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is a co-production with WNYC Studios. It's produced by us and Caitlin Hoffmeister. Our art and music are by Hiroko Matsushima and Joseph Tunamedish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno

and we couldn't make any of this without our wonderful patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. So the increase in private space exploration has brought up concerns that private companies will land on the moon and mess up all the sites where the original landers landed,

including the poop that the astronauts pooped and threw on the ground. They're worried. So heritage foundations are worried that they're going to land there and they're going to be like, worried that they're gonna land there and they're gonna be like there's poop everywhere and clean it all up

but it's historic poop this belongs in a museum