Paul: 0:00

Kilon ovas, solar Flares and Astronaut pee. Yup. It's all coming up right here on Space Week. Music Plays. Hello everyone, and welcome to Space Week, where we bring you weekly space for everyday people. I'm Paul Miller and I'm Blake Brown. You probably noticed our intro is a little different, kind of a combination between our old and new. We're just trying things out, so let us know what you think. Speaking of which, we're looking into Patreon and Podfan. We're weighing the pros and cons of each for both ourselves and you, the listeners. If y'all have any preference between the two, let us know on Facebook, twitter or our email Contact at spaceweekco. We're also looking into starting up an Instagram page as a means to post quick topics and pictures of things talked about on the show, rather than writing up entire articles on the website. Moving on, In today's episode, we have some interesting topics, that's for sure. So before we get into astronaut urine, I'll go ahead and get us started off with this week's rocket launches. Now we have one that I'm really excited about here. Just starting us off, spacex kicked off the month at 8. I'm sorry, 11.12 am.

Paul: 1:26

Saturday, july 1st, as a Falcon 9 took the Euclid mission to a Sun Earth L2 transfer orbit, otherwise known as Lagrange Point 2. This is the same location as the James Webb Space Telescope. So you're probably wondering what is a Lagrange Point, right? Lagrange points are locations in space where the gravitational forces of the Sun and a planet like the Earth equal out, so an object can stay there with very little energy. You're essentially orbiting empty space between two celestial bodies. It's pretty cool. You'll actually find like asteroids and stuff there too. They're just kind of trapped. Yeah, lagrange points are great for deep space telescopes and equipment because they can remain pointed away from Earth and the Sun at all times, hence why we sent Webb there. 3,500 people from 21 countries helped to make this mission a reality. Euclid will undergo a month-long commissioning phase to reach L2. Thereafter it'll complete two months of performance verification before science actually begins.

Paul: 2:34

The first images are expected in the fall, so actually pretty soon. I'm really excited about this. That's pretty quick, yeah. So here's what it's all about.

Paul: 2:44

Euclid will be on the lookout for dark matter and energy in our vast and expanding universe. Here's a fun fact Visible stars and galaxies make up less than 5% of the universe's total matter and energy. So, yeah, kind of think about that. Euclid will image roughly one-third of the sky and map billions of galaxies and stars. The resulting 3D image you heard that right?

Paul: 3:13

A 3D image of the universe will help us see the influence of dark matter and energy that it has on the motion and shapes of galaxies, furthering our understanding on the origins of the universe and what part these dark forces play in it. So, essentially, right, they're going to make a 3D map and they're going to see how these galaxies are expanding and moving so we can, in a way, see the dark energy between them. I know that sounds kind of weird, but you're kind of looking for the invisible between the visible. It's really odd, but still really neat. Esa's I'm going to call it S-Track Network of Deep Space, intenas these are the kind that look like huge satellite dishes have been upgraded to handle the amount of data in estimated 170 petabytes or 170,000 terabytes, just an unfathomable amount of data right there.

Paul: 4:15

Yeah, I'm seeing Blake shake his head. It's insane, right? And us gamers complain about a 100 gigabyte video game. Thanks, modern Warfare 2. Yeah right, nine data centers will archive the data. That's nuts, I think. Eight are going to be in Europe and one in the States. Wow, so we're just holding this entire map of the universe, like between nine data centers across the globe. It's just crazy. We're about to find out so much in astronomy and astrophysics over the next few decades. It's really going to be unreal.

Paul: 4:51

I can't wait to see what we actually discover from all this information that we're gathering Exactly, and I believe they're going to actually team up with web on this, so they're going to kind of like tag team and really just see what's out there. This is going to be so cool. That's awesome. Now that's tough to follow up on, Super hard to beat.

Paul: 5:09

But this next one's still very noteworthy and marks another historic launch, and Ariane 5 lifted off for the final time Wednesday night, July 5th. On board were two satellites destined for a geosynchronous orbit the French Syracuse 4B and the German Heinrich Hertz satellite. The Syracuse 4B is a secure communications set that will relay information between French military aircraft, ground vehicles and naval vessels. The Heinrich Hertz will test new communications technologies like furthering broadband for mobile end users. Ariane 5's have completed 117 flights over 27 years. Its ability to carry two geosynchronous satellites at once made it a key player in the commercial industry. Ariane 6 will be the successor, but currently faces delays and may not launch until 2024. This is its own issue and topic for another day, really, but we now see Europe turning to SpaceX, with the lack of European launch vehicles and absence of Soyuz during the war in Ukraine.

Blake: 6:18

Interesting. So Ariane 5, now correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the one that launched a little satellite that landed on the comet right. It might have been yeah, yeah pretty cool, right? Yeah, what a great launch vehicle. Yeah, I mean, it's really got some.

Paul: 6:34

Yeah, it's got some good history and, yeah, 27 years. So its first flight, I think, was in 96. I don't think it was successful. I want to say it had two or three sort of kind of sort of test flights and then, before it's actual, like first successful one. But it really has been the workhorse for for ESA for a long time.

Blake: 6:56

Yeah, for a really long time, and they're moving up. It's great to see.

Paul: 6:59

Yeah, it's good to see. It sucks that it's kind of delayed, but we'll see what comes of it. It's going to be an awesome new rocket, for sure. Now, blake, I'm sure you can guess what. Maybe our next launch is Starlink. It's a Starlink launch, of course. So early afternoon on Friday, july 7th, a Falcon 9 launched another set of version 1.5 satellites out of Vandenberg, with the booster landing on a drone ship in the Pacific, and that's about it. Space X will continue to launch thousands of these Starlink satellites, with a growing concern for congestion and collision. However, I actually read an article recently that they've had to make 25,000 collision avoidance maneuvers in just the past six months.

Blake: 7:45

See, this is a problem with having so much space junk. We talked about that last episode. I really hope the startup companies get going and get that started.

Paul: 7:55

Yeah, I agree too. The numbers are growing exponentially, which is scary looking at the total number of satellite SpaceX plans to have. So it's not just like one collision per new satellite, I mean, it grows exponentially, it's an exponential curve. So it's really quite frightening. The maneuvers are done autonomously when the satellites calculate a 1 in 100,000 chance of collision, which is actually quite good and a reason why we see the number of maneuvers being so high. But there are some that fear, as the number of satellites grow, along with the chances of error in the calculations due to sudden changes in space weather, the likelihood of collisions could increase dramatically. So definitely still something to keep an eye on.

Blake: 8:38

And then, moving on from space launches, we actually have another really exciting space launch that I wanted to talk about today, which was Virgin Galactic. This actually happened on June 29th, which I believe was the day of or the day before we recorded our last episode, but you know, that's a side point. The flight departed Spaceport America in New Mexico and reached suborbital flight about 58 minutes after departure. It reaches Apigee, which is about the highest point of its suborbital flight of about 52.9 miles, which is 85.1 kilometers for our metric friends, which is quite high up but still just barely breaching the upper levels of the Earth's atmosphere. Yeah, just about. So am I saying that they didn't reach space? Well, kind of, but not really. There's layer city Earth's atmosphere which we start in the troposphere, which is where we are, the lowest layer A majority of commercial airplanes fly here the ozone layer for Earth's breasts, at the top of the troposphere, and carries over into the whole stratosphere which is about where most weather balloons end up.

Blake: 9:45

And also, we're extremely powerful fighter jets and spy planes fly. You all are familiar with the SR-71, that's where that one flew, yeah.

Paul: 9:53

I think like upwards of 70,000 feet or something crazy like that. Yep.

Blake: 9:58

The mesosphere, which is where most meteorites vaporize, but they'll actually begin burning up in the thermosphere where the Sun's radiation begins to disperse and enter the lower levels of the atmosphere. This is essentially the edge of space. Past the thermosphere, we have the exosphere. Where we truly reach space. It's way up there. You know, that's where the ISS is, that's where the space shows go, that's where all the rockets and stuff are Gotcha. The upper part of the mesosphere is where this flight reached. It barely missed the thermosphere by about three miles in altitude. And you know, thermosphere begins at approximately 56 miles above the Earth's surface.

Paul: 10:38

See, I think that there's. I want to say NASA will consider you an astronaut at like 50 miles or something like that, but there are other organizations around the globe I want to say including ESA that will tell you it's something like 56 or 58. So it kind of coincides with that.

Blake: 10:55

Yeah, it's. I read this in an article. It's 100 kilometers, I believe. Oh, okay 100 kilometers for ESA, which I think is maybe about 60 miles, yeah.

Paul: 11:07

I'm trying to remember the conversion off the top of my head. I'm supposed to know that I can't do math while I'm doing a podcast.

Blake: 11:14

Well, anyways, enough teaching, let's get back to Virgin Galactic's historic flight dubbed Galactic 01. But first we had a listener question come in about Virgin Galactic. The listener simply stated that they thought Virgin Galactic went bankrupt. So I thought I'd clear this up real quick. Virgin Galactic is a separate entity from Virgin Orbit, virgin Orbit, of course, being the one that went bankrupt, sold all its assets and it's no longer existing. Virgin Galactic is a tourism space flight company that specializes in suborbital flights, like the one we're talking about right now. Virgin Orbit is a commercial space flight, a commercial space flight company that specialized in launching satellites to orbit using the same method that Virgin Galactic is using for their space tourism. Back to the flight. Everything went smoothly Good. Yeah, I know, it was great news. I mean, I watched a little video about it and you know these guys. They reached their apogee, I think, and they took their seat belts off and they went around the little cabin.

Blake: 12:12

You know it was really cool. It was a fun little video to watch. I think it was like five minutes and they showed the highlights of the flight.

Paul: 12:18

Cool.

Blake: 12:19

This flight conducted was primarily for research purposes, as the people on board carried a variety of sensors in their suits to conduct research. The people on board were a trio of Italian researchers, like I mentioned in our previous episode, all of which are involved in the Italian Space Force, space Force, air Force, I mean.

Paul: 12:39

Sorry.

Blake: 12:40

You would think it's the Space Force, but really it's the Air Force here.

Paul: 12:42

Yeah, us Americans, we got to do it all. Space Force, here we go.

Blake: 12:48

So before proceeding, I'd like to say I'm probably going to butcher the pronunciation of these names, so just give me some credit here.

Paul: 12:58

Hey, yeah, it's kind of a common theme on this show. Yeah, I know.

Blake: 13:03

Colonel Walter Villade, I think is how you pronounce it, lieutenant Colonel Angelo Landolfi Pantelioni.

Paul: 13:13

Carlucci? I think I don't know. I'm looking at these names now on your notes. You tried, yeah, I could maybe only try Angelo. That's about it. I'm just going to leave the other two to your mercy, yeah right, I'm sorry, please forgive me.

Blake: 13:29

Anyways, carlucci was a strategic project, a strategic project coordinator for the CNR Stratospheric and Air Launch Platforms. The fourth passenger on board was Virgin Galactic Astronaut Instructor Colin Bennett, and then, along with the rest of them, was Commander Mike Masucci and Pilot Nicola Paseel. But yeah, you know, really cool little flight. I'm super excited for it. I mean, they're planning, according to the article I read, they're planning to do daily space flights on these things. They're going to have a fleet of these launch vehicles.

Paul: 14:02

The new like Delta series we were talking about. Yeah, I'm just super excited for all this, because I remember seeing Virgin Galactic for like the first time, like seeing Richard Branson and them kind of like brainstorming the idea and seeing like Spaceship or Starship or whatever you want to call it, and I was like, oh my God, this is actually happening, you know.

Blake: 14:24

Yeah, right, I mean, I remember first time we heard about it was back in probably before high school or way before high school.

Paul: 14:33

Yeah, we're almost 30 now. Yeah, it's been years and I really couldn't tell you what year, but I remember seeing it for the first time. I was like, oh my God, we're going to space, everyone's going to space.

Blake: 14:43

Everyone's going to be able to afford space flight. Little did we know it's actually $450,000 a ticket. Yeah.

Paul: 14:50

Oh man, well, moving forward. Now SpaceX and the FAA are pushing back against the Starship lawsuit from environmental groups. You may remember us talking about this when Starship first launched, there were several environmental groups that filed suit, saying the FAA didn't properly assess the impact Starship would have during its first test launch. The lawsuit calls for the FAA to write up an environmental impact statement, or EIS, for the operations at Starbase in South Texas. This would be a much more detailed review and, if implemented, could potentially delay Starship for years. Both SpaceX and the FAA have filed to dismiss the lawsuit. The FAA claims that the groups quote lack legal or lack the legal standing. Blake and I were kind of used to this. We deal with the FAA a little bit at work and that's kind of a common theme.

Blake: 15:48

Yeah, people sue whatever company because they can. It's America, it's slap lawsuits and all that stuff.

Paul: 15:56

Yeah, and it's a government entity that you're up against. So I mean you really got to have a good leg to stand on. Spacex, on the other hand, said the launch provided no cause for the FAA to conduct a new assessment. If you want all the nitty gritty details, you can find the article on spacecom's news space flight subsection, where they have a link to the lawsuit. I actually glanced over it for a second. If you're into that kind of stuff, it's pretty neat. It's not every day you get to read a lawsuit against a heavy rocket launch.

Blake: 16:27

Yeah, no kidding.

Paul: 16:27

Yeah, speaking of rockets and launch vehicles, orion got its heat shield. Following up on the topic from our previous episode, where the Orion spacecraft service module was officially handed over to NASA, the capsule now has been fitted with its heat shield. This article comes courtesy of spacecom as well. The five meter or 16 and a half foot diameter shield serves to protect the capsule and the astronauts inside during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. At the end of the Artemis II mission, orion will hit the atmosphere, traveling more than 25,000 miles per hour, where temperatures will reach as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit or 2,760 degrees Celsius. Following installation of the shield, orion still has additional hardware, installations and vehicle qualifications before it's ready for launch in late 2024. Can't wait, can't wait. Yeah, same here. So bring it on, let's go.

Paul: 17:32

Nasa also had a new breakthrough, it seems NASA's X-59. New photos and a post from NASA seem to suggest their X-59 supersonic jet is almost ready for its maiden flight. So this is going to be pretty cool. The supersonic jet, designed to shape and dramatically reduce the shockwave generated by a sonic boom, has finished construction and structural stress testing and now sits parked on the flight line at Lockheed Martin Skunkworks facility in California. So we've all kind of heard of Skunkworks.

Paul: 18:05

Some people may have not, but yeah you know where all the somewhat hush hush stuff happens, not quite Area 51 type things, but it's sort of hush not hush.

Blake: 18:17

It's not like they do. They allow media coverage over it. I think is what their thing is.

Paul: 18:23

They release things when they want to kind of thing yeah.

Paul: 18:27

The plane will undergo a series of test flights ahead of its main mission to surpass Mach 1 or the speed of sound, without generating the loud sonic booms generated by previous aircraft. Sonic booms are part of the reason why we don't see supersonic airliners anymore, at least over land that is. United has partnered with Boom Supersonic on a future supersonic airliner that at least has been approved for operations overseas. Sonic Boom's overland have been known to create quite the disturbance and can shatter windows in some cases. The Sonic Boom of X-59, however, aims to be only as loud as the slamming of a car door. Wow, that's, that's insane. That is a dramatic increase. That's, that's crazy. So this could lead to the return of the supersonic airliner and could possibly become the norm in the future.

Blake: 19:18

Yeah, especially for long-haul flights. I know I've seen some technology and it's very interesting technology of how they would overcome like a Sonic Boom, and there was this one. It's a concept a long time ago, back when we were in high school I'm pretty sure, and I was just getting interested in aerospace engineering. There was this airplane that would launch up like a rocket and then kind of keel over and fly like an airliner, but in space.

Paul: 19:48

Huh.

Blake: 19:49

And then they would bring it back down. I'm not sure how it would survive.

Paul: 19:52

Are you thinking of the? Is it the X-57? I'm trying to remember what it was. I can not remember the concept it looks like a flying wing version of the space shuttle with, like a aero spike engine on the back.

Blake: 20:08

No, I'm thinking of something else. At least from these very elementary illustrations that they had it looked like a, like you know, the conventional commercial airliner bus shape and they had like these wings on the side, and then it had like these other. I don't know, it might have been a flying wing?

Paul: 20:26

Was it boxy on the back? Yeah, a little bit, and white. Man, I seem to remember this thing and I can't remember for the life of me what it's called. But yeah, I mean that would make sense, right, because you're launching straight up and then the supersonic boom is more localized right to the area that it's directly over. Yeah, so it would launch up boom and then go horizontal after the boom.

Blake: 20:48

Well, I don't even think it would sonic boom, because it'd be in space. So therefore it wouldn't be fighting against air, not creating the, the boom itself. That's what.

Paul: 20:56

I mean, though, is like when it reaches the speed of sound in atmosphere as it's launching, like as most rockets do, oh yeah, it would. It would boom then, but then after the fact, yeah, there would be no boom because you're, you're out of the yeah.

Blake: 21:08

Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying though. Yeah, I believe that was the concept. It would the. The kicker was it would only carry about 10 people and for it to be comfortable, these people had to like sit on these seats that were in like rails, that would.

Paul: 21:21

Oh, pivot from like horizontal to vertical or vice versa.

Blake: 21:25

Yeah, exactly so that way, like you know, whenever they're flying upwards, they're still like sitting in a seat that felt normal and then, whenever the plane keeled over, they would pivot down and it would still feel like they're.

Paul: 21:39

Oh yeah, that'd be heavy and expensive, as I'll get out.

Blake: 21:41

Super expensive and that's why they could only carry like 10 people or something like that. Anyways, it'd be great to see the Concorde come make a comeback, or something like that, if they could retrofit it with this technology.

Paul: 21:52

Right, right something like it.

Blake: 21:54

Speaking of our aviation enthusiasts and stuff like that we have. Ingenuity is back online. I spoke about this previously, where the Martian helicopter went offline for about six days, but this time it went dark for about two months.

Paul: 22:10

Yeah.

Blake: 22:11

From a stretch of April 26th to June 28th. This is the longest stretch it has gone without communication since it has landed on Mars. However, nothing to be alarmed about, as it sounds like lost comms are pretty normal for the little four pound helicopter. They used a heli to scout out locations for its partner. Perseverance, and they'll push the limits, if you will, with range and terrain that the helicopter can reach back to its companion. I believe in this example they landed it in like a very steep crater or something like that. And perseverance, was it quite over the ridge of the crater so it couldn't?

Paul: 22:49

It lost line of sight. Yeah, yeah.

Blake: 22:52

Not to worry, though. Previous tests suggest the helicopter is still in good health, so it'll continue flying and it'll remain perseverance scout.

Paul: 23:00

Continuing on with vertical space planes and things that launch vertically. If you want to see endeavor space shuttle endeavor in its horizontal orientation, you have less than a year. The California Science Center in LA has set the date to begin work on endeavors new vertical display. On July 20th, the skirts of the twin rocket boosters will be hoisted into place at the Samuel Ocean Air and Space Center, which in of itself is still under construction. All of you guys in California probably know how that name is pronounced. I do not, or in Texas, but you have until the end of the year to see endeavor before she goes away for a few years to come. Once complete, she'll stand over 180 feet tall in the launch orientation, mounted on the external fuel tank with both rocket boosters. The engineering behind this is really rather incredible. The booster skirts, measuring seven and a half feet tall and 18 feet wide, will need to be within 1 1 6th of an inch of alignment.

Paul: 24:08

That's because a tenth of an inch of air can mean being more than an inch off at 150 feet up. So a tenth of an inch brings out an inch of air once you're up at the top. So that's the rough height of the boosters themselves 150 feet. I think. Just under that, engineers will be surveying the skirts 20 ways to ensure the best alignment possible. Misalignment could mean the booster attachment points to the external fuel tank won't be level or won't align with one another once assembled A big issue when you're talking about boosters that stand almost 150 feet tall.

Paul: 24:47

Yeah and they're super heavy. Yeah, I mean, it's like imagine fastening up two of those and then realizing, once you put the external fuel tank in place, things don't line up.

Blake: 24:57

It's crooked, that's just. That looks a little weird.

Paul: 25:00

That looks off yeah, the leaning tower of endeavor. But what I find really cool is most everything on display will have real history to it. Almost everything, minus motors, are parts that have actually been flown, including the booster skirts that everything will sit on top of. And, don't worry, the stresses on these parts come nowhere near the stresses they faced while going to space. Even over the years, they'll be on display.

Blake: 25:31

Awesome. Yeah, I did get to see one of the space shuttles. I forgot which one it was. It might have been the discovery on display at Kennedy Space Center.

Paul: 25:42

God, I still need to go to KSC.

Blake: 25:43

so bad it's super cool, you're missing out.

Paul: 25:46

I can't believe I've been to Orlando so many times and haven't made the drive.

Blake: 25:49

Yeah, it's super awesome. I mean, in this display they played like a video or something. You're looking up at the screen and then this I guess it was mesh or something that's concealing the shuttle raises up and you see the shuttle.

Paul: 26:08

Oh, that's cool.

Blake: 26:09

Yeah, yeah, so it's all on this video. It's all about the shuttle and stuff like that. And then it raises up and you see the shuttle.

Paul: 26:16

Oh man, you got to check. I got to go. That would give me chills.

Blake: 26:20

Dude, yeah, I vivid memory to this day of that happening.

Paul: 26:24

I hope they're still on display like that, I don't know. Hopefully someone will chime in and let us know. Okay, well, this is the topic you've all been waiting for. Nasa just recycled 98% of all astronaut pee, and it's awesome.

Blake: 26:45

No, I'm kidding, this is actually really interesting. Like, honestly, I didn't even think about doing something like that, yeah.

Paul: 26:51

So I knew they did it, just not to this amount of efficiency. Pets aboard the ISS have managed to recycle 98% of their sweat in urine. Heads up. If you're squeamish about this sort of topic, feel free to skip ahead. You're about to find out more than you want to know about your own drinking water.

Blake: 27:10

Yeah, I'm going to just tune out, just tune out, have fun yeah.

Paul: 27:15

So I'm by myself now? No, not really, but this is an important step forward for teams on board the station, as this achievement is huge towards the efficiency of life support systems and means fewer gallons of water needed during resupply missions. I'm about to start spinning out a bunch of long names and acronyms, so stay with me as best you can here. The milestone was achieved by the Environmental Control and Life Support System, or ECLSS, and the Urine Processor Assembly, or UPA. The ECLSS has a water recovery system that collects wastewater and dehumidifiers that collect moisture in the air from breath and sweat. This collected water is then sent to the water processor assembly, or WPA, which produces drinking water. The UPA distills urine, which then brine is produced as a byproduct. The brine still contains some unused water, and a brine processor assembly, or BPA, was added to the UPA to extract this remaining water. The addition of the BPA is what brought the entire ECLSS to its 98% goal. Before, the BPA, efficiency was closer to 93 to 94%. So are the astronauts really drinking their pee?

Paul: 28:49

Well yes and no. The amount of filtration and purification this undergoes far surpasses the municipal water systems here on Earth. Yeah, you heard that right. The recycled pee water on the space station is cleaner than what we drink on Earth.

Blake: 29:09

So I'm looking at a glass of water I have right next to me. Thanks for ruining it, Jerk.

Paul: 29:17

I have ruined water for everyone.

Blake: 29:19

now, More on the topic of recycling and reusability. We have more news on reusable and the Chinese.

Paul: 29:29

Okay, I was about to say no more pee topics.

Blake: 29:34

A Chinese rocket firm, space Pioneer, has secured more funding for further development of their medium-lift reusable launch vehicle. And you know, I feel like this is the next step. Everyone moves towards, or as close as possible to, 100% reusability for space vehicles, and I mean think about sci-fi spaceships. They go up and down without much issue, so they're completely reusable and serviceable. That's about it. That's the next step. Spaceflight becomes so much cheaper than what it is right now. When that happens.

Paul: 30:04

Yeah.

Blake: 30:06

Anyways, it's great that another player enters the reusable rockets market, and the funding that Space Pioneer has secured will be used to develop a new launch vehicle, the Tianlong 3, as well as a dedicated launch complex for it.

Paul: 30:20

Okay.

Blake: 30:21

Tianlong 3 will be used as a two-stage vehicle to launch commercial satellites as well as strategic launches for China's new internet satellites. So yay, more space junk right.

Paul: 30:31

Yeah, we're going to have Chinese Starlink now.

Blake: 30:34

Yeah.

Paul: 30:34

Here we go.

Blake: 30:36

Actually, I think they were going to scale it up to that point too.

Paul: 30:38

So it's like, yeah, this is going insane.

Blake: 30:40

It's double Starlink, it's yeah, this whole talk about space junk and Kessler syndrome really gives me nightmares. And you know what else is giving me nightmares? Our new segment, nightmare Fuel.

Paul: 30:53

Nightmare Fuel. Yeah, here we go. Alright, I'll go ahead and kick it off. An object hotter than our sun is orbiting a distant star at ludicrous speed, like the wrapper. Yes, the object named WD0032-317B I'm just going to call it 317B is a brown dwarf. I've mentioned these before, but essentially brown dwarfs are like superjupiters that have enough mass to fuse some hydrogen, but not really enough to ignite into a full-blown star. They normally burn around 4000 degrees Fahrenheit or 2200 Celsius. 317b, on the other hand, has decided its surface temperature should be closer to nearly 14,000 degrees Fahrenheit, several thousand degrees hotter than our own sun, which has a surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees. This should be impossible. But 317B is like our other suicidal gas giants we've been talking about in previous episodes. It orbits its star so close that its year lasts just 2.3 hours. That is ridiculous.

Paul: 32:13

Okay, I can't imagine a planet several times the size of Jupiter orbiting around a star in a little over two hours. It's just nuts. That's insane. Yeah, it's tidally locked, meaning one side always faces the star. So the star side is what reaches the blistering temperatures of 14,000 degrees. Meanwhile, the dark side hovers between 2 and 5,000 degrees, so this is likely the reason why the brown dwarf hasn't ignited, despite its high surface temperatures.

Paul: 32:46

So, one side is really hot. One side is still really hot, but not hot enough for the whole thing to kind of light off.

Blake: 32:53

Yeah, light off, yeah. Well, we talked about iron rain last week. We sure did. We're going to talk about titanium rain.

Paul: 33:03

Titanium rain, so we're getting even hotter this time.

Blake: 33:06

Yeah, I believe so. Jeez, this article is actually sent to me by a friend of mine and I thought I'd bring it on board to our nightmare fuel segment this week. You thought iron rain was bad last week? Try titanium rain baby, A scorching hot world discovered in 2020, astronomers have announced this is the most reflective planet we've ever recorded. At 260 light years away from Earth, LTT 9779B reflects 80% of its star's light back. Wow, that's a lot.

Paul: 33:38

Yeah.

Blake: 33:39

I'm not sure how reflective Venus is, but they said it's about that much Really, mm-hmm. The Neptune sized planet orbits its star in just 19 hours. I thought, wow, 19 hours, that's crazy.

Paul: 33:51

And you just had to, I just had to warm up you, my goodness.

Blake: 33:56

That 19-hour orbit makes it so close that the side facing the star is a whopping 2,000 degrees Celsius. They believe this exoplanet couldn't have clouds, but it did. Perplexed, they theorized that some metal could be the cause of these clouds. And lo and behold, titanium rain was born. Oh my gosh. Yeah no. Iron rain, titanium rain. What's next? Platinum rain? Yeah right.

Paul: 34:24

Goodness, that's just nuts Lead rain or uranium rain.

Blake: 34:29

Uranium rain. Just die from nuclear radiation.

Paul: 34:32

Yeah, well, speaking of those metals, okay, we're going to continue here. James Webb just spotted a Kilonova. All right, you prepared to educate the class? I shall educate.

Paul: 34:47

Astronomers have traced a gamma ray burst to the collision of two neutron stars. Such collisions, called Kilonovas, are thought to be the birthplace for heavy elements such as gold, platinum and uranium, as they are too heavy to be synthesized in traditional star cores. Oh, wow, okay, yeah, so you know, the ring on your finger could have come from one of these. Cool, that's pretty neat, right, I want a space rock. This is the first time Webb has detected such an event. The team of astronomers detected the creation of lathenides I believe you got that. Yeah, metals that are heavier than lead. The gamma ray burst in question was first discovered on March 7th by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope and is the second brightest ever observed. It lasted several seconds, allowing several other telescopes to home in on its exact location. Webb observed the burst twice and astronomers determined its Kilonova origin through its rapid fading and transition from blue to red light. So yeah, not sure the exact science and wavelengths given off on a Kilonova, but yeah, they happened and fade very quickly versus supernovas from stars that explode, wow.

Blake: 36:12

Yeah, okay, so you said that this was a collision of two neutron stars.

Paul: 36:16

Two neutron stars. They can also be a collision between a neutron star and a black hole.

Blake: 36:22

Okay, well, that took it from 10 to 11.

Paul: 36:26

And then they can also create ripples in gravity and space time.

Blake: 36:33

Yeah, actually I think I saw something about that this past week on Reddit or something you know, whatever. Anyways, what are neutron stars?

Paul: 36:41

Neutron stars are basically collapsed dead stars that didn't really become black holes and you got type 2 supernovas and things happen and blah, blah blah.

Blake: 36:51

And they collapse.

Paul: 36:51

Science, science, science, Basically a giant ball of neutrons and particles that are super dense, super heavy and just absolutely chaotic. Looking to them, that's a nightmare fuel. Hey, there you go.

Blake: 37:03

I'll have to look it up, All right, Well moving on to stars, well, a different star, if you will. The sun has blasted an X-class solar flare, which is the, so in solar flare terms, it's the highest on the magnitude.

Blake: 37:21

Lovely, I thought it was, I wasn't sure, a giant and I do mean giant Sunspot exploded on Sunday, july 2nd, creating a powerful solar flare that lashed Earth's atmosphere and caused radio blackout over parts of the US and the Pacific Ocean. And here's where the nightmare fuel comes in the sunspot that the solar flare erupted from AR-3354, is 7 times the width of the Earth.

Paul: 37:51

Nice, that's just great.

Blake: 37:53

Yeah.

Paul: 37:53

I just love being on a little blue marble out in the vastness of space.

Blake: 37:59

Oh God, all right. The solar flare was classified as an X-flare as, like I said, it's the strongest that exists. What's even crazier is that this is well, it's only the 10th to 14th biggest solar flare so far this solar cycle Cool.

Paul: 38:21

Cool. It's comforting Cool. When's this thing over?

Blake: 38:25

I don't know. I'm not familiar with the current cycle of the solar stuff. Well, that'll be it for the news this week. Time to move into our next segment, which is one of my favorites Listener questions.

Paul: 38:40

Listener questions.

Blake: 38:42

Remember you can send in your listener questions by messaging us on Facebook or by clicking at us on Twitter at spaceweek underscore, or you can send us an email at contact at spaceweekco. Reach out with your most pressing questions and we'll choose our favorites and answer them on the show. Our first question is to fly rockets, do you have to build rocket hours like you do with building plane hours? And I'm just going to go ahead and start us off with short. Answer is no, but I believe Paul has more education in this area.

Paul: 39:10

Yeah, kind of. So I mean, yeah, you're not really going to build rocket hours per se like you would plane hours, because in order to build rocket hours you got to go on a rocket.

Blake: 39:21

That doesn't happen normally.

Paul: 39:24

Yeah, so, but really, when it comes to your team of astronauts, right, it's more of a chain of command thing nowadays, right, You've got the mission commander, you've got the mission pilots and you got mission specialists and you know, back in the we'll say Apollo and prior arrows. You know, the pilot really did kind of have a pilot role aboard these capsules. They were more analog and hands on.

Blake: 39:48

Yeah Same thing with the space shuttle right Like they. The pilot was like an actual pilot.

Paul: 39:53

Yeah, they actually yeah.

Blake: 39:54

I believe all of them were, but the commander and pilot were the guys in the front seats.

Paul: 39:58

Yeah, bringing it back. Yeah exactly Now. Nowadays, with our more modern capsules, everything's much more automated, so it's less of a piloting role and more of a monitoring and knowing of the systems type role. It's very similar to us, as you know, airplane pilots right, we have autopilot now. And people are like, oh you know, with autopilot, can you see your dog going away?

Blake: 40:21

No, it's not a pilot's job anymore. It's to monitor the systems and correct things when things go wrong.

Paul: 40:27

And things, things not to be scary, but you know things do go wrong. You know computers have hiccups and glitches and things. So you're kind of there to watch and know how to interpret what's happening, to make a correction and intervene when needed. So that's kind of more the role at play nowadays. I feel like but yeah, but back to the question do you have to build rocket hours? No, all astronauts do kind of become pilots, though they do get trained in the T-38s over at Ellington Field in Houston. A lot of fun to watch, a lot of fun. It's pretty neat. But but yeah, so there you have it.

Blake: 41:03

Our next question is a really good one, pretty open-ended, but I did toss in some facts in here just to educate. Do you really believe in aliens? If so, why? Yeah, my answer is absolutely, and I mean statistically speaking. The odds of us being the only life in the universe is so infinitesimally small.

Paul: 41:30

I tried to.

Blake: 41:31

I like that word, I just can't say it. Apparently it's ridiculous. To take it a step further, However. Let's look at our home galaxy.

Paul: 41:38

Milky Way.

Blake: 41:39

Yeah, in the Milky Way there are 4.1 billion sun-like stars and important distinction to make here, that's only sun-like stars and stars total, just sun-like stars. We've already discovered some Earth-like exoplanets around these sun-like stars. So, using averages modeled from statistics, we can guesstimate about 300 million of those stars have Earth-like planets. Using that answer, are we really 1 in 300 million? Well, maybe, but extremely unlikely. And let me, let me, let me go a little bit further too. I don't think I can stress this part enough. That's just our galaxy.

Paul: 42:23

Yeah, I was about to say.

Blake: 42:24

There's billions of galaxies I'm not kidding Billions of galaxies across the entire universe, and it scares me a little bit to think about how small everything is compared to the vastness of space. Sorry, I'm having a mini existential crisis here. I can see that.

Paul: 42:42

I kind of did two for a second. I was like, oh no, I'm having one of those so small.

Blake: 42:48

Ah yeah, so anyways, moving on, you think hyperspeed is something that can actually be achieved In first, to sort of rephrase this question, because there's not a proper definition of hyperspeed, except in sci-fi, other than an extremely fast speed. Do we think that speed faster than light speed can be achieved? It's an interesting question. For sure, the theoretical physics will point out that nothing can move faster than the speed of light, because light is massless and therefore is able to reach the speed that it does. It would take an unfathomable amount of energy to even reach close to the speed which is 186,000 miles per second, or 300,000 kilometers per second, and if you ever look at a physics problem dealing with the speed of light, you'll see the little C that's.

Paul: 43:43

Yeah, that's a representation for it.

Blake: 43:44

Yep, yeah, there have been hypotheses that there is in fact a particle that can move faster than the speed of light. These are known as tachyons, and they violate every single law of physics.

Paul: 43:56

Of course they do.

Blake: 43:58

Not really, but they certainly violate quite a few of them. Tachyons are interesting because their existence would imply that time travel is real. It is agreed that tachyons don't actually exist and it's just a piece of sci-fi. Like you know, we're all too hopeful to be able to go back in time and tell our younger selves to buy that stock or buy Bitcoin while it's at less than a cent.

Paul: 44:19

Great Scott.

Blake: 44:22

That aside, however, I believe there may be a scientific breakthrough. We've broken laws of physics before, so what stops us from breaking these laws of physics? Maybe we don't actually travel faster than light, but rather we're able to bend space towards us to get us to where we're trying to go. To kind of visualize imagine you're on a piece of paper and you have to get to the other side of the paper. If you could fold it in half, you could skip a huge portion of that journey. People use this sort of example to explain wormholes by poking a pencil or a pen through the piece of paper, you then travel through the hole on one side of the paper to the other side, thus vastly reducing the amount of travel distance.

Paul: 45:04

Yeah, go watch Interstellar. I think they actually demonstrate that. I think so too. Yeah, I'll just piggyback on it. Yeah, there's definitely the whole wormhole theory. There's the whole we could ride a gravitational wave thing. But then if you ride the gravitational wave, then maybe you can achieve speed of light, but maybe just under it. And then there's the kind of gravity bubble where you're not really traveling at the speed of light, you're just traveling at the speed of light through the space around you. It's all just weird concepts that require immense amounts of energy.

Blake: 45:39

Yeah, yeah. So you know, obviously a lot of things are science fiction here, but I do believe one day maybe not in our lifetime we'll do it, yeah, once we get our hands on that element that has yet to be discovered and probably doesn't reside here on Earth.

Blake: 46:00

Oh man, oh well. Well, that wraps it up for us this week. Thanks for tuning in and listening to us tell you all about the exciting things happening in the aerospace industry and in space. If you like what you're hearing, leave us a comment and a review and a rating. It would help us spread the word and reach more people. We'd really appreciate all of your kind words. Be sure to check out our website, spaceweekco, where you can find links to all of our social medias, such as Facebook and Twitter. We're working on getting an Instagram going as well, so stay tuned for that.

Paul: 46:32

Well, keep your eyes on the skies. This is Paul and Blake signing off.