Speaker 1: Welcome to my world.
Speaker 2: Bitch, wow god good here.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one hundred and seventy eighth episode of
Speaker 1: the Supernatural Occurrent Studies podcast.
Speaker 3: So Astrologically Paranormal.
Speaker 1: Good one. My name is Jason Knight, host of this show,
Speaker 1: and with me as always is Oscar Spector, producer extordinaire
Speaker 1: and podcast co host. Did you have a little hiccup there?
Speaker 1: A little no?
Speaker 3: I wanted to give you a pause. Oh so you
Speaker 3: can freak out because you're waiting for me to say it,
Speaker 3: So you can just get right into the next line.
Speaker 1: That's right. So I was trying to throw me off
Speaker 1: my Yeah, I am. That's all right, That's all right.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm off tonight. This is This is
Speaker 1: a long one, but a good one. What has been
Speaker 1: up with you man since last month? Catchup month?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so I got that tattoo. I mentioned that
Speaker 3: I was going to get. Uh Furthermore, there was a
Speaker 3: discussion we were having while I was at getting my
Speaker 3: first tattoo, because I've gone two this year, and just
Speaker 3: two I will be getting until next year and after
Speaker 3: my first. I got my first one in at the
Speaker 3: Chicago Villain Arts Tattoo convention, And while I was there,
Speaker 3: the artist that was doing that tattoo, that was doing
Speaker 3: mine had his brother, who was also an artist the
Speaker 3: booth right next to him, and he was offering It's crazy, Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is crazy. He was offering free, like twenty minute sessions,
Speaker 3: free paint tattoos. The taint, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: it's the space between your asshole and your genitals. That's
Speaker 3: the one right the landing strip. There's many calls or
Speaker 3: not the landing stripe that's but the runway right to
Speaker 3: the ass hole. So he was offering them for free.
Speaker 3: It wasn't for like the whole day or anything, but
Speaker 3: it was such a such a weird left turn to
Speaker 3: know this like thing that this guy was doing.
Speaker 1: I was seeing.
Speaker 3: I mean I couldn't see very well from because I
Speaker 3: was getting tattooed, but before doing my break or whatever,
Speaker 3: I would see him and wide open in front. It
Speaker 3: wasn't no curtains. Wow, you know, just like you would
Speaker 3: just doing.
Speaker 1: Them, So you saw people getting their taint.
Speaker 3: I didn't like to go in there and see, but
Speaker 3: yes they were doing it.
Speaker 1: Yes they were in front of garden everybody.
Speaker 3: And had I either done this, had I anticipated it
Speaker 3: or had my artists finished early, which of course I'm
Speaker 3: not going to rush my artist. I would have gotten one.
Speaker 1: You were going to do it.
Speaker 3: So I told a guy like, I want to get one.
Speaker 1: That's what we were going to talk about. Because the
Speaker 1: show last time, you didn't want to.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to because I did in case. I
Speaker 3: didn't do it at that time because there was that
Speaker 3: weekend that we were recording, and I'd gotten in an
Speaker 3: extra free ticket to come the next day, the last
Speaker 3: day of that convention, and the brother was an offered
Speaker 3: free tank tattoos. The next day is tanink tattoos and
Speaker 3: the guy want for the best worst tattoo in like
Speaker 3: a year or something.
Speaker 1: That's worst. That's funny.
Speaker 3: Him and his other artist friend they tattooed each other's
Speaker 3: taints and that's how they won.
Speaker 1: That's get together and do podcasts. Some people get together
Speaker 1: and they write tattoo their taints.
Speaker 3: I think it's great. I mean, if they're not bonded
Speaker 3: for life, I don't know what bonds you. I don't
Speaker 3: know what does it better than that? So my idea
Speaker 3: for what I wanted to get is to have the
Speaker 3: word love or something love. So it could be a
Speaker 3: tainted love like the song that's what I wanted to
Speaker 3: get it's perfect.
Speaker 1: Jay, whereas the show going and just like it's a
Speaker 1: perfect could we put in a clip of that.
Speaker 3: I almost couldn't contain myself. I was supposed to be
Speaker 3: still that I was. I almost cann't contain myself with
Speaker 3: glee at the idea that I might get a taint tattoo,
Speaker 3: which is so impulsive, something like something I would I'd
Speaker 3: never imagined getting. By the way, it's not like a
Speaker 3: I've been looking for a taint artic.
Speaker 1: I forget it even exists, right, But it was.
Speaker 3: Such an impulsive thing that I was so yes for
Speaker 3: because it's so unique and literally only the people that
Speaker 3: know me best will ever get to see it.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's great, it's a cocktail story, it's great,
Speaker 3: it works on so many levels.
Speaker 1: But tainted love, yes, God, yes. So to be clear
Speaker 1: for the audience, you did not get your taint tattooed?
Speaker 3: No, because because he was he was done offering it.
Speaker 3: He was doing regular sessions by appointment that he had money. Yeah, right, yes,
Speaker 3: so he wasn't offering it and I didn't go next
Speaker 3: day because I just felt like shit, I just didn't
Speaker 3: feel like getting out of the house. I think I
Speaker 3: depleted all my social networking that I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: All the people was on a.
Speaker 3: Saturday, you know, because I because after that tattoo, I
Speaker 3: also came to see you raf, so like I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's been out all day. I don't want to do Yeah,
Speaker 3: stayed home basically on that Sunday.
Speaker 1: But you did get another tattoo on your leg.
Speaker 3: Yes, I got this about two weeks ago, a little less.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, two weeks so, and uh, I forget where in Kankakee, Illinois,
Speaker 3: that's where I went. Okay, Yeah, And it's a tattoo
Speaker 3: on my leg on my right shin area, not the
Speaker 3: shin because the shin is like only the front right,
Speaker 3: Oh shin is front.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah exactly. And it's it's another Kirby tattoo. So
Speaker 3: it's a Kirby tattoo with it's a Kirby tattoo that
Speaker 3: ate an umbryon, which is an evilution evolution from Pokemon.
Speaker 1: So if there's Pokemon people out there, they know what
Speaker 1: you're talking.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm brand is my favorite probably my favorite
Speaker 3: Pokemon ever and at least my favorite evil ev Luciens.
Speaker 3: And basically I just made a or not made, but
Speaker 3: this hardest did a Kirby that ate and transformed into
Speaker 3: an umbry on because that's what I'm doing. I'm doing
Speaker 3: a whole Kirby leg over time. And this one artist
Speaker 3: that I'm seeing is my second time seeing her, is
Speaker 3: going to be doing more Kirby ideas that I'll be having.
Speaker 1: Can we put a because I'm sure there's the majority
Speaker 1: people out there, like, what the fuck is it? So
Speaker 1: we can put a picture on Instagram?
Speaker 3: What is our demographic of age groups that we we
Speaker 3: tend to like attract?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I would say everybody?
Speaker 3: Everybody? Just everyone?
Speaker 1: Really? Yeah, I mean we've got you know, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say.
Speaker 3: So, and fucking ask your kids.
Speaker 1: Sorry, our demographic is wide, it's varied.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna try to find this sentence to you now
Speaker 3: before I forget.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'll put it up on Instagram. You got
Speaker 1: some likes on the last tattoo that I put up there?
Speaker 1: Oh cool? Yeah, so I too, I too got something new.
Speaker 1: I know on the last show we talked about I
Speaker 1: was in the market for a new car, right, and
Speaker 1: so I did get a new car. The car buy
Speaker 1: and I said in the last episode, I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: it again, the car buying process is fucking terrible. There
Speaker 1: should be laws around this shit. It's an awful experience.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if your car salesman out there, but fuck
Speaker 1: man horrible. I didn't get a Tesla, and I guess
Speaker 1: partially partially it was you know what, if I am
Speaker 1: driving somewhere and some asshole who can't separate cool tech
Speaker 1: from politics sales are bricked through my window or I'm
Speaker 1: parked at a restaurant and someone keys my car. I
Speaker 1: don't want to fucking deal with that shit. And it
Speaker 1: sucks because I really really had my heart set on Tesla,
Speaker 1: but I still got an EV but I went with
Speaker 1: the Cadillac EV. So I got what's called a Cadillac Optic,
Speaker 1: and it is I'm glad I went with that instead
Speaker 1: of the Tesla for sure. Okay, so I'm excited. I'm happy.
Speaker 1: It's still it's not home again because when they I guess,
Speaker 1: took it off the truck, there were some dings on it,
Speaker 1: and uh, I said, nope, it's not brand new, so
Speaker 1: they're gonna if they're fixing it right now, they're doing
Speaker 1: some paint touch ups. So I have a loaner. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just a horrible nightmare. I turned into a
Speaker 1: person that I am not. I am not a person
Speaker 1: who returns food. I am not a person who complains.
Speaker 1: I'm a person who understands. People have bad days, things
Speaker 1: go wrong. You know, people wake up with devastating news,
Speaker 1: right this, these are these are first world problems that
Speaker 1: I have. But but I had enough and I went
Speaker 1: into that dealer like a fucking rage and maniac. And uh,
Speaker 1: I'm not proud of it, but that's where they pushed me.
Speaker 1: They pushed me the edge with this shit.
Speaker 3: Well that's that's how they live. They live on that
Speaker 3: because they most people would just want to just forget
Speaker 3: it and you know, go with thee by the time, yeah,
Speaker 3: so they can get out of there.
Speaker 1: So but I did. I got a new car. I'm
Speaker 1: very excited. I'm very happy. It's a beautiful ride.
Speaker 3: Well, it doesn't exist, Jay, until I see it myself.
Speaker 1: Right, No, I had it. I turned it in two
Speaker 1: days ago to get that those touch ups done, so
Speaker 1: that should be back by mid next week, so it'll
Speaker 1: be here next time you come. Okay, I'll take you
Speaker 1: for a ride. It's so cool, different, so different.
Speaker 3: We should do you want to record the next episode
Speaker 3: in your car as we're driving?
Speaker 1: People would hate us.
Speaker 3: Well, you can't focus.
Speaker 1: I can focus.
Speaker 3: What the fun? We can do it?
Speaker 1: It's got self driving.
Speaker 3: You're you're making us easier, that's true. Why I don't
Speaker 3: know why I'm pitching this.
Speaker 1: Tesla undoubtedly has some better tech, more advanced tech. Hands down,
Speaker 1: when it comes to ev technology, Tesla's got it by
Speaker 1: the balls for sure. But the luxury that the Cadillac
Speaker 1: brings and still has some of that tech that people
Speaker 1: love in the Tesla, just to a little lesser degree.
Speaker 1: It just still what a great choice. So I'm happy.
Speaker 3: I'm happy. Also, thanks, So you didn't get this?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, one day, who knows, we'll see, but for now, Cadillac, ummm, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's about it. Should we take a break? Yes, that
Speaker 1: it's a long and oh do it? We're drinking whiskey?
Speaker 1: Of course? Did you stop it? No? I did not.
Speaker 1: We're drinking belfour belfour whiskey.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Jordan belfour it got.
Speaker 1: Well, that's right. No, this is whiskey finished with pecan
Speaker 1: wood and panties talks.
Speaker 3: Sell me this pen, sell me this whiskey bottle.
Speaker 1: But ed belfour, So this is a celebrity sponsored whiskey
Speaker 1: and it's not bad.
Speaker 3: Jordan's pretty famous.
Speaker 1: You could know ed belfour. He's hockey.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to confuse you again.
Speaker 1: Chicago Blackhawks, San Jose Sharks, the Maple Leafs.
Speaker 3: Can't say black Hawks anymore, I should, my dear.
Speaker 1: I wonder did they take away the logo?
Speaker 3: Well, well, you know, we know, my Jerry about how
Speaker 3: we get with like the Indians and black You can't
Speaker 3: say that. No, but there was a spits team sport.
Speaker 3: No I know, but just in case someone out there doesn't,
Speaker 3: because apparently our demographic wages from child to eighty years old,
Speaker 3: we're like a Jigsaw apostle game.
Speaker 1: Whiskey would do other?
Speaker 3: You? Fuck?
Speaker 1: That burns so good. Cradle the Grave, Baby, Cradle.
Speaker 3: The Grave, that's all that MX, right, fuck, there's a
Speaker 3: movie called Cradle through Gray with Jetley and d MX.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, remember I do anyway do what the
Speaker 3: fuck was I saying?
Speaker 1: I didn't get a waiting and you just's like apparently
Speaker 1: a typocrat. Oh fuck, that was funny. I can't laugh.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Fuck, I don't remember.
Speaker 3: It was so good talking.
Speaker 1: We're talking hockey.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah. So apparently the reason why it's easier
Speaker 3: to get away with saying black so we're having a
Speaker 3: team back that or whatever is because unfortunately most of
Speaker 3: the people that would care about that are dead. They
Speaker 3: were we did such a good job exterminating them over
Speaker 3: we as in Americans I mean and and by way,
Speaker 3: I mean really white Americans, and did such a good
Speaker 3: job that there's no one around to care.
Speaker 1: You know. Well, maybe there's a little truth to that
Speaker 1: or less an. I don't care.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying no one, but so it's it's not
Speaker 3: that's a terrible thing. I'm just it's just an observation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean he did this, mister belfour did
Speaker 1: play for and I think I'm hitting the table, and
Speaker 1: so I apologize. He did play for the Chicgo black Hawks. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's the whiskey we're drinking. It's good. I like it.
Speaker 1: Check it out, Oscar. Can we take a break?
Speaker 3: Are you sure this time?
Speaker 1: Yes? Welcome back to the show listeners. Well, the lights
Speaker 1: are turned down low or not the ceremonial candle. Of
Speaker 1: course they are. Look it's almost romantic.
Speaker 3: And take your next line.
Speaker 1: The ceremonial candle is lit.
Speaker 3: Where is the candle?
Speaker 1: Fuck? And the drinks are flowing. Let's start this show.
Speaker 1: So the title of this episode, Oscar is what goes up?
Speaker 1: This has taking a hard right turn for us based
Speaker 1: on the last I don't know dozen or two were
Speaker 1: going republic episodes that had to do it like serial
Speaker 1: killers and shit, it's way different. What goes up? This
Speaker 1: is a out man made space objects that make re entry,
Speaker 1: whether intended or not. And I got this idea when
Speaker 1: my wife and I were watching a new movie called
Speaker 1: Cold Storage with Joe Was it Joe carry Joe carry
Speaker 1: Kearney from Stranger Things? You know what I'm talking about? No? Yes,
Speaker 1: you do? You fucking do?
Speaker 3: Yeah? We talked about this off air, folks, right, yes, no?
Speaker 1: Or do you know who I'm talking about? And in
Speaker 1: this story, the mirror space station, the Russian space station
Speaker 1: comes down, and on that space station is this goo,
Speaker 1: and that goo is deadly and has a mind of
Speaker 1: its own right, So that gave me an idea.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, like Nickelodeon's Ghak the get oh.
Speaker 1: From You can do that on television? Do you remember
Speaker 1: that when they got slimed?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is like a slime.
Speaker 1: Did slime become Ghak for your generation?
Speaker 3: I think so?
Speaker 1: Huh kind of Uh. So that's what gave me the
Speaker 1: idea for this this show, what goes up must come down?
Speaker 3: Right but before as above, so below and yang.
Speaker 1: Before we begin the episode though, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of detail in here. Once I started.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he knows Jay, but we started
Speaker 3: the episode.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of detail in here. Once I started
Speaker 1: researching this, I couldn't stop. It was so fascinating. But
Speaker 1: I just want to talk about some of the sources
Speaker 1: for this story. I relied on primary sources and official
Speaker 1: records wherever possible, but I would say the most valuable
Speaker 1: single resource was the public tracking data and commentary of
Speaker 1: someone named Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
Speaker 1: who spent decades cataloging every man made object that re
Speaker 1: enters Earth's atmosphere. NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office, through its
Speaker 1: quarterly newsletters and incidence reports, provided detailed count of multiple
Speaker 1: re entry events that we talk about in this show.
Speaker 1: The European Space Agency published technical reports of two of
Speaker 1: its missions re entries, while the US Space Command and
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense to classified internal memos and public
Speaker 1: summaries related to specific space debris incidents. The Canadian and
Speaker 1: Australian governments released final reports on separate entry events in
Speaker 1: their territories. China's Manned Space Agency shared tracking data for
Speaker 1: one of its decommissioned spacecraft, and the Russian Federal Space
Speaker 1: Agency issued a technical summary of one of their major
Speaker 1: control the orbits. So I tried to get incredibly official
Speaker 1: sources to put the story together.
Speaker 3: Okay, I have a good iron of this. Yeah, please
Speaker 3: don't mind, I'm acting. I'm only asking now because I
Speaker 3: don't know where in the story will be best to
Speaker 3: fitted in. So, you know, I from what I little
Speaker 3: I know this, which is not much. Is that this
Speaker 3: happens all the time, like things come all the time.
Speaker 3: Is that correct?
Speaker 1: It is?
Speaker 3: So, it's correct.
Speaker 1: But most things burn, they burn, well you know, yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: Pre entry means that they probably disintegrate, and that all
Speaker 3: of them rights not all of them do. I mean,
Speaker 3: if anyone's seen the first episode of Dead Like Me,
Speaker 3: the main character gets killed by a falling space toilet
Speaker 3: that hits her from space. I remember that that's a
Speaker 3: show though, Yes, okay, you're flying that's toilet that's from space.
Speaker 3: But this reminds me of a story from a show
Speaker 3: called The West Wing. Really, in The West Wing, there's
Speaker 3: a character Donna, who finds a report. You know, she's
Speaker 3: she works at the White House. In the show, she
Speaker 3: finds this report that says that a decommissioned Chinese satellite
Speaker 3: is due to re enter and parts unknown, like, they
Speaker 3: don't know what's going to land. It's going to land
Speaker 3: that day. That the day she gets a report, right,
Speaker 3: and she starts freaking out telling everyone about it and
Speaker 3: like we got a duck and cover, you know, we
Speaker 3: gotta do something. And then at some point later on
Speaker 3: the episode, everyone in doors. At some point later on
Speaker 3: the episode, her boss goes like, like, here's about it,
Speaker 3: and someone else goes, that's just does she know that
Speaker 3: this happens all the time? Like, no, she doesn't know. No,
Speaker 3: it happens all the time, and no one's ever been
Speaker 3: hit by one. Well that's just a TV show though,
Speaker 3: But apparently in that show, in that world. Maybe at
Speaker 3: that time it's really right to get hit by one,
Speaker 3: but it does happen all the time, and there's no
Speaker 3: cost for our alarm.
Speaker 1: So I open up this this whole show with a
Speaker 1: story or someone getting hit. Yeah, someone actually got it.
Speaker 3: Okay, crazy, I mean bound to happen.
Speaker 1: But you're right, it does happen all the time, and
Speaker 1: people don't realize this. Yeah, we are fucking up space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like we're fucking up the Earth. Yes, you can't
Speaker 1: contest that. This isn't political. You can't contest we're fucking
Speaker 1: up the Earth. We're fucking up space too, and there's
Speaker 1: some very important orbits up there that we should not
Speaker 1: be fucking up where we keep very important satellite equipment
Speaker 1: and you know, reconnaissance equipment and things like the International
Speaker 1: Space Station, things like this, very important orbits that we
Speaker 1: are destroying. And it's frightening because you can't. Once they're
Speaker 1: up there, what do you do. You can't. They're gonna
Speaker 1: come down eventually, or they're going to destroy something, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like gravity when they all start crashing each other
Speaker 3: and they destroy the space stations and stuff exactly like that.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I really got into this. I hope you
Speaker 1: do too, So let me let me begin with this story.
Speaker 1: On a warm January night in nineteen ninety seven, Lottie
Speaker 1: Williams went for a walk in a park with some
Speaker 1: friends in Turley, Oklahoma. It was about four am, and
Speaker 1: the kind of hour reserved for INSOMNIAX and the very dedicated.
Speaker 1: She saw a huge fireball streak across the sky, a
Speaker 1: shooting star, she thought, but it was brighter and slower
Speaker 1: than usual. She didn't think much of it. Later, as
Speaker 1: she walked back to her car, something small and light
Speaker 1: tapped her on the shoulder. It almost felt like an
Speaker 1: empty soda can. She looked down. On the ground lay
Speaker 1: a crumpled, blackened piece of fiberglass about the size of
Speaker 1: her fist, and it was warm. What Lottie Williams had
Speaker 1: just experienced was a one in a trillion event. She
Speaker 1: became the first person in history to be hit by
Speaker 1: human made space debris. The object that tapped her on
Speaker 1: the shoulder was later confirmed to be a fragment from
Speaker 1: the second stage of a US Delta to rocket, specifically
Speaker 1: an aerojet Aja ten Dash one one eight K engine section.
Speaker 1: A year earlier that rocket launched from an Air Force satellite.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry a year earlier. That rocket launched an Air
Speaker 1: Force satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on
Speaker 1: April twenty fourth, nineteen ninety six, and it spent. Stage
Speaker 1: had been circled circling Earth in a decaying orbit ever since.
Speaker 1: On the night Lotty was walking or morning Lotty was
Speaker 1: walking Interley, the stage re entered the atmosphere at about
Speaker 1: forty two nautical miles above Topeka, Kansas, scattering debris across
Speaker 1: Oklahoma and Texas. The largest piece, a five hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty one pound propellant tank, landed just one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty four feet from a farmhouse in Georgetown, Texas. That's
Speaker 1: fucking heavy. Five hundred and fifty one pounds. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the small, blackened piece that found Lotty's shoulder had spent
Speaker 1: twelve months in orbit, enduring hundreds of degrees of temperature swing,
Speaker 1: until atmospheric drag finally pulled it down. The fragment now
Speaker 1: sits in a drawer somewhere, A souvenir of the only
Speaker 1: confirmed case of a human being struck. A human being
Speaker 1: being struck by fallen hand human made space debris now.
Speaker 1: Jonathan mcdaie Powell has spent decades tracking this kind of debris.
Speaker 1: An astronomer astronomer at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
Speaker 1: he maintains one of the world's most detailed public databases
Speaker 1: of re entering space objects. When asked about Lottie's close call,
Speaker 1: he didn't sound surprised, just weary. Quote. We've been lucky,
Speaker 1: he said, But when you do this for fifty years,
Speaker 1: eventually you're going to get unlucky. And that's really that's
Speaker 1: the unsettling truth here. The situation overhead is no longer
Speaker 1: just a concern. It's a full blown crisis. The European
Speaker 1: Space Agency now tracks forty four, eight hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: human made objects longer than ten centimeters, about the size
Speaker 1: of a softcover book. But those are just the pieces
Speaker 1: we can see. The true count of orbiting debris larger
Speaker 1: than one centimeter, a size capable of shredding a space craft,
Speaker 1: thermal blanket or shattering a solar planel has surpassed one
Speaker 1: point two million, and for every one of those, there
Speaker 1: are an estimated one hundred and forty million fragments smaller
Speaker 1: than a centimeter invisible to radar, but moving with the
Speaker 1: force many times that of a bullet. The total mass
Speaker 1: of this orbiting junk, from dead satellites to frozen blobs
Speaker 1: of reactor coolant, has balloon to fifteen thousand, eight hundred
Speaker 1: metric tons, heavier than the Eiffel Tower or three large
Speaker 1: cruise ships or fifteen eight hundred cars. And take a drink.
Speaker 3: I really try it this one.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, that was a good one. I can't now.
Speaker 1: Even more alarming is the debris density in the most
Speaker 1: popular orbital lenses lanes in the three hundred and forty
Speaker 1: two mile altitude altitude band, which is prime real estate
Speaker 1: for Internet constellations like Starlink. The number of hazardous debris
Speaker 1: objects now rivals the number of active satellites. This congestion
Speaker 1: forces operators to perform a staggering number of collision avoidance maneuvers.
Speaker 1: In just the first half of twenty twenty five, the
Speaker 1: Starlink constellation moved to dodge potential impacts one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty four four hundred and four times.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: That's a collision warning every couple of minutes for six
Speaker 1: months straight. Wow. According to a recent NASA study. If
Speaker 1: a major solar storm were to knock out our ability
Speaker 1: to track and maneuver, a catastrophic collision would likely occur
Speaker 1: in less than three days. And this scenario has a name.
Speaker 1: It's called the Kessler syndrome. Proposed in nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler. The Kessler syndrome describes
Speaker 1: a runaway chain reaction in low earth orbit. Imagine two
Speaker 1: large objects colliding up there, say, a dead satellite and
Speaker 1: a spent rocket stage. The impact shatters them into thousands
Speaker 1: of fragments. Those fragments hit other objects, creating even more.
Speaker 3: Fragments, like a cascade.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at a certain threshold, the debris field becomes so
Speaker 1: dense that collisions cascade beyond control. Even if we launched
Speaker 1: nothing else, that junk would keep multiplying, shredding satellites and
Speaker 1: spacecraft for generations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just like Gravity. That's exactly the plot of Gravity.
Speaker 3: The movie, is it really?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Have you never seen it?
Speaker 1: I did, I just don't remember.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that's how it opens. That's the first disaster,
Speaker 3: and that disaster starts cascading into other parts that she's
Speaker 3: just trying to get away by escaping from the initial
Speaker 3: American Nazi station to the ISS. That's right, and that
Speaker 3: starts getting also bombarded by all the satellite debris that's
Speaker 3: simply circling. That's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what they're They're acting on the Kessler syndrome,
Speaker 1: and some of our important orbital bands could be unusable
Speaker 1: for decades or even centuries. Now. The good news is
Speaker 1: we're not there yet, but according to Kessler's models, some
Speaker 1: altitudes are already approaching that tipping point. The question isn't
Speaker 1: whether a cascade will begin, but when it will begin.
Speaker 3: It's like everyone's obsessed. It's like we're obsessed with making
Speaker 3: and building the future via rockets and uh, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't habitats or going to mark you know, fancy
Speaker 3: things that makes us feel glorious, But no one wants
Speaker 3: to do the cleanup. No one wants to do clean
Speaker 3: cleanup is never sexy. That's making a road is never sexy.
Speaker 3: Things we need are never attractive to do. Always by
Speaker 3: kicking and screaming do we have to do them? And
Speaker 3: almost always after already a big disaster has happened. That's right,
Speaker 3: how we learn because we're stupid but yeah.
Speaker 1: And to your pointive it or not. Every week, on average,
Speaker 1: a piece of human made junk re enters our atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Most of it burns up, a brief man made meteor
Speaker 1: that you'd make for making mistake for a shooting star,
Speaker 1: make a wish on, fake a wish on a piece
Speaker 1: of flaming poop, and when it doesn't happen or turned
Speaker 1: against you, now you know why. Yeah, But sometimes that
Speaker 1: math goes wrong. Sometimes the heat shields they hold, Sometimes
Speaker 1: the rocket misses the ocean by a few miles, and sometimes,
Speaker 1: very rarely, a piece of space debris taps a woman
Speaker 1: on the shoulder in an Oklahoma park. Now, what follows
Speaker 1: is a brief catalog of debris, both controlled and uncontrolled,
Speaker 1: that fell from space. Some were designed to come home,
Speaker 1: most were not. Their stories trace the arc of our
Speaker 1: species reckless, brilliant, and often careless expansion into the cosmos.
Speaker 1: And they also raise a question that no one's yet answered.
Speaker 1: Who cleans up the sky?
Speaker 3: You need to do, yeah, and needs to be done,
Speaker 3: and to make a giant nets or whatever the hell
Speaker 3: we have to do to do it. But we have
Speaker 3: to do it, and it was not gonna happen, but
Speaker 3: we have to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the first one I want to get a
Speaker 1: little bit more into Lottie Williams, the woman who got
Speaker 1: tapped on the show. It was a little bit deeper.
Speaker 1: So this is the Delta too rocket stage, the one
Speaker 1: that hit a woman. So the Delta two was a
Speaker 1: workhorse of American spaceflight for three decades. On November nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety six, one of them lifted off from Vanderberg Air
Speaker 1: Force Base in California, carrying a GPS satellite for the
Speaker 1: US Air Force. After the satellite was deployed, the rocket's
Speaker 1: second stage remained in orbit. A dead hulk of aluminum
Speaker 1: and steel. It circled Earth once every ninety minutes, slowly
Speaker 1: losing altitude. On January twenty second, nineteen ninety seven, that
Speaker 1: stage re entered. Most of it burned up, but not all.
Speaker 1: A small piece a woven composite material from the stage's
Speaker 1: motor casing survived three thousand degrees heat of reentry. It
Speaker 1: fell toward Turley, Oklahoma, at terminal velocity, which for an
Speaker 1: object that small, is about one hundred miles an hour fast,
Speaker 1: and that's fast enough to sting, but thankfully not fast
Speaker 1: enough to kill Lottie. Williams saw the fireball, felt the
Speaker 1: shoulder tap, and later handed the fragment to the local sheriff.
Speaker 1: The US Space Command confirmed that re entry window matched
Speaker 1: the time and location where Lottie got hit, So this
Speaker 1: is really it was a piece of this rocket. To
Speaker 1: this day, she remains the only person to have ever
Speaker 1: been hit by a piece of human made space debris.
Speaker 1: The case is often cited as a lucky near miss,
Speaker 1: but also a warning. As Jonathan McDonell puts it, the
Speaker 1: probability is low, but the consequence is high, and we're
Speaker 1: putting more objects up there every year. End quote that
Speaker 1: while the odds of any particular piece of debris hitting
Speaker 1: a person are extremely low, yeah, the consequences of a strike,
Speaker 1: especially from a larger object or one containing toxic or
Speaker 1: nuclear material, which we'll talk about here shortly, could be catastrophic.
Speaker 1: And McDonald's warning is simple. Luck is held so far,
Speaker 1: but statistics suggests it won't hold forever.
Speaker 3: No, it will not. And it also reminds me of
Speaker 3: a raining debris like that. It reminds me of this
Speaker 3: book called Seven Eves. It's a sci fi book, sci
Speaker 3: fi meaning fiction, but in this scenario, the Moon cracks basically,
Speaker 3: and debris from the Moon starts shattering and hitting our atmosphere.
Speaker 3: And the way that the book gets very accurate the book,
Speaker 3: and the way that the science the fake is of course,
Speaker 3: at the Moon that will ever crack, that's the only thing.
Speaker 3: But what happens to Earth is what's kind of realistic
Speaker 3: and taken in scientifically, I guess as much as you can.
Speaker 3: And in it it depakes this picture of all the
Speaker 3: spikes shooting down pieces of the Moon over time, blanketing
Speaker 3: first our atmosphere and then shooting down endlessly for I
Speaker 3: think they put in the book one hundred two hundred,
Speaker 3: three hundred years straight hitting. You know, I'm not saying
Speaker 3: that we're getting to that point, but the idea of
Speaker 3: raining debris would be like bullets being shot from three
Speaker 3: or four miles up right around four miles it's five.
Speaker 3: So that's crazy.
Speaker 1: It is crazy. And now we're going back strong. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at Artemis. That just happened, Yeah, Utomius, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: The goal is to put a base on the Moon,
Speaker 1: from which.
Speaker 3: I mean, someone's been watching for all mankind, for.
Speaker 1: All mankind, and they should we should totally do that.
Speaker 1: Trump has been watching for all mankind a purpose of
Speaker 1: which to obviously have something that's that's habitable up there,
Speaker 1: but to also launch to Mars eventually. That equals a
Speaker 1: lot of junk.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of junk yet, you know, and a
Speaker 3: lout of mistakes, a lot.
Speaker 1: Of refueling missions, a lot of supply missions, a lot.
Speaker 3: Of if they commercialize it in any way, which they will,
Speaker 3: they will not in our lifetime. Maybe well maybe we're
Speaker 3: too old to go at that time. But like they
Speaker 3: will do it, it's gonna be a lot worse. We
Speaker 3: can help, we can't help. But treat everything like like
Speaker 3: a landfill, right, you just can't help it.
Speaker 1: Yep. So though, yeah, interesting this topic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally and this is totally mate.
Speaker 1: Now, the next example I want to talk about is
Speaker 1: Cosmos N four, the nuclear spy that fell on Canada.
Speaker 1: This one, this is the one that keeps safety analysts
Speaker 1: awake at night. On September eighteenth, nineteen seventy seven, the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union launched Cosmos NUR for the Bangkoor Cosmodrome. Cosmos
Speaker 1: n was a radar surveillance satellite designed to track and
Speaker 1: spy on American aircraft carriers from space to power its radar.
Speaker 1: It carried US small nuclear reactor, specifically a BS five reactor,
Speaker 1: containing about fifty kilograms of enriched uranium two three five.
Speaker 1: You could probably see where this is going for months later,
Speaker 1: excuse me. Four months later, a satellite, of course malfunction.
Speaker 1: The reactor failed to separate and boost itself up into
Speaker 1: a higher what's called a disposal orbit as designed. Instead,
Speaker 1: the entire spacecraft began to tumble, its orbit, decaying with
Speaker 1: each passing day. Western intelligence agencies and media watched with
Speaker 1: growing alarm. The New York Times called it Russian Roulette
Speaker 1: in space. On January twenty fourth, nineteen seventy eight, Cosmos
Speaker 1: nine five four re entered Earth's atmosphere over northwestern Canada.
Speaker 1: It broke apart, scattering radioactive debris across three hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy three miles swath of northwest territories Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Speaker 1: Some fragments admitted up to two hundred renngins of per hour,
Speaker 1: in other words, enough radiation to cause acute radiation sickness.
Speaker 1: The US and Canadian militaries launched Operation Morning Light to
Speaker 1: find and clean up the mess. Recovering more than one
Speaker 1: hundred radioactive pieces. The Soviet Union eventually paid Canada three
Speaker 1: million dollars in compensation, a fraction of the actual fourteen
Speaker 1: million dollar cleanup cost. Cosmos nine four remains the closest
Speaker 1: the world has ever come to a nuclear disaster falling
Speaker 1: from the sky. And the real legacy of Cosmos nine
Speaker 1: five four, however, is not the money. It's the fact
Speaker 1: that it forced the world to recognize that space is
Speaker 1: not an empty void, but a shared environment, and that
Speaker 1: what goes up, especially when it contains a nuclear reactor,
Speaker 1: must eventually come down. In the wake of the incident,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union redesigned its nuclear power satellites to boost
Speaker 1: their reactors into thousand year disposal orbits. But the older
Speaker 1: ones are still up there and some are still falling
Speaker 1: thousand year disposal orbits. Isn't that crazy? It doesn't even
Speaker 1: make sense.
Speaker 3: I don't get it.
Speaker 1: How do you calculate? Like it's it's mind blowing, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: I don't get it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there we actually have disposal orbits. Crazy. This
Speaker 1: next one's an interesting one. This is Skylab, America's first
Speaker 1: space station. So Skylab was America's first space station. It
Speaker 1: was a convert a converted Saturn five rocket stage, weighing
Speaker 1: seventy five point seven tons, a behemoth that remains the
Speaker 1: largest single object ever placed into orbit by the US.
Speaker 1: It was launched in May nineteen seventy three, and three
Speaker 1: crews of astronauts called it home. For the next two years.
Speaker 1: They conducted experiments in microgravity, observed the Sun, and proved
Speaker 1: that humans could live and work in space for months
Speaker 1: at a time. By nineteen seventy nine, though Skylab was empty,
Speaker 1: it was essentially abandoned due to the combination of budget
Speaker 1: cuts and major strategic shifts at NASA, mainly focusing energy
Speaker 1: and funds on the brand new Space Shuttle program, leaving
Speaker 1: Skylab in a powerless, uncrewde parking orbit.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, Skylab's orbit decayed faster than NASA predicted, thanks to
Speaker 1: higher than expected solar activity that expanded the Earth's atmosphere
Speaker 1: and increased drag, which accelerated Skylab's fatal descent. Skylab was
Speaker 1: going to fall, and all NASA could do was aim it.
Speaker 1: So on July eleventh, nineteen seventy nine, Skylab made its
Speaker 1: final descent. NASA controllers tried to target the Indian Ocean
Speaker 1: as a crash zone, but Skylab had other ideas. It
Speaker 1: broke apart over western Australia, scattering debris across a ninety
Speaker 1: three mile stretch between the towns of Esperance and Wallina
Speaker 1: or Wallina. Residents reported large sonic booms and the sight
Speaker 1: of burning metal streaking across the sky. Some pieces were large,
Speaker 1: including two ton oxygen tank that punctured a crater into
Speaker 1: the ground and a lead safe. They had it in quotes,
Speaker 1: a lead safe the size of a file cabinet, a
Speaker 1: filing cabinet. But the most surreal detail emerged days later
Speaker 1: when a San Francisco newspaper offered a ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: prize for the first piece of debris delivered to their office.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: A seventeen year old local named Stan Thornton pulled the
Speaker 1: fragment from his roof, hitched a ride to the airport,
Speaker 1: and flew all the way to California and claimed the
Speaker 1: prize and cementing Skylab's strange legacy as the world's most
Speaker 1: chaotic treasure hunt. And thankfully, after all this, no one
Speaker 1: was hurt during this massive re entry well and.
Speaker 3: Went into Australia. Right. Yeah, so I'm saying, if you
Speaker 3: have to go somewhere Australia, Siberia, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: space which is nothing there.
Speaker 1: So well that's exactly why they tried to aim it
Speaker 1: at the Indian Ocean.
Speaker 3: No, I get that. Yeah, I'm saying Australia is not
Speaker 3: it's not that bad.
Speaker 1: It's not New York City, right.
Speaker 3: Or it's you know, some other country that have millions
Speaker 3: more people circle, you know, surrounded.
Speaker 1: No, you're right, so I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: the square mileage of the outback, but I'm guess huge
Speaker 1: million upon millions, huge ins of square.
Speaker 3: Miles have more space. They have way more space that
Speaker 3: they don't use than they use.
Speaker 1: Oh good, it's a good way to put it now
Speaker 1: as a joke that has gone down an infamy. The
Speaker 1: town or shire they call it in Australia, I guess
Speaker 1: of esperance actually sent NASA a four hundred dollars fine
Speaker 1: for Lloyd littering no Way, which was never paid. Of course,
Speaker 1: decades later, a California radio station raised the money to
Speaker 1: settle that debt, but NASA's never cashed the check. The
Speaker 1: Skylab debris however, it's still there. Some pieces were recovered
Speaker 1: and put on display, others remain scattered across the outback
Speaker 1: still to this day. I was about to ask, just
Speaker 1: slowly resting away, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was about to ask about that, Like, there's
Speaker 3: no way you don't make a thing out of it,
Speaker 3: or an attraction to look at the craters or something.
Speaker 1: You know, it's fascinating. I would check that out totally.
Speaker 1: So Skylab's fall was an embarrassment for NASA, but it
Speaker 1: also galvanized international efforts to track space debris. Today, the
Speaker 1: US Space Surveillance Network tracks more than twenty thousand objects
Speaker 1: larger than a softball, and Skylab is the reason we
Speaker 1: know where most of the big stuff is.
Speaker 3: I mean you mean the incident of Skylab, right, meaning yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: because of what happened with Skylab.
Speaker 1: Not in the sky, right because the Skylab, but the
Speaker 1: incident we started tracking.
Speaker 3: I should look into that one. I'm curious how why
Speaker 3: I looked Skylab when it was over.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm listeners, I should have mentioned this. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have tons of photos in the show notes. I don't
Speaker 1: have photos. I don't think we have photos. I don't
Speaker 1: think photos exist of Skylab too late.
Speaker 3: I mean as late as the seventies, right, so.
Speaker 1: I certainly didn't find any photos of it entering the atmosphere.
Speaker 3: No, no, what I mean that, I mean Skylight. That's
Speaker 3: how I'm curious about that show notes, because it's cool
Speaker 3: it's in there, like we had crazy things up there,
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, some of the shits gone from me,
Speaker 3: and it was gone before I was born, so like
Speaker 3: that sucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. No, in the show notes, I have
Speaker 1: pictures of all this stuff.
Speaker 3: Yep, you were already eighteen and one.
Speaker 1: Oh Jesus, I was born in seventy seven. The next one,
Speaker 1: number four is the Long March five B core stage,
Speaker 1: the rocket that flew over every city. On May fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, China launched the maiden flight of its Long
Speaker 1: March five B rocket, successfully delivering an experimental crew spacecraft
Speaker 1: to orbit. An experimental spacecraft to orbit. But then something
Speaker 1: unusual happened. The rocket's massive core stage, ninety eight point
Speaker 1: five feet long and weighing seventeen point eight tons, also
Speaker 1: reached orbit. Unlike most rockets stages, which are designed to
Speaker 1: fall back to Earth shortly after launch, the Long March
Speaker 1: five BEES core stage was placed into a low orbit
Speaker 1: where it didn't belong, and that's where it stayed for
Speaker 1: five days. Trackers watched in horror as the stage's orbit decayed.
Speaker 1: The predicted re entry path passed directly over Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: New York, Beijing, and a dozen other major cities. This
Speaker 1: is a quote. I'd never seen a major re entry
Speaker 1: pass directly over so many major metropolitan areas, tweeted Jonathan McDowell.
Speaker 1: Remember he's an astronomer at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for
Speaker 1: Astrophysics and leading expert on space debris and uncontrolled re entries. Now,
Speaker 1: the uncertainty of the long March five bees Core stage
Speaker 1: re entry point was maddening, and because the stage was tumbling,
Speaker 1: its drag profile was unpredictable. Re Entry windows shifted by
Speaker 1: the hour. On May eleventh, twenty twenty, the stage re
Speaker 1: entered over the Atlantic Ocean off Mauritania. Mauritania, it's a
Speaker 1: country off of northwest Africa. I've never heard of it
Speaker 1: splashing down far from land in the ocean. No debris
Speaker 1: was covered, recovered, and thankfully no one was hurt, but
Speaker 1: the incident exposed a glaring gap in international space law.
Speaker 1: There's no rule that says you have to aim your trash.
Speaker 1: China had done nothing illegal, but it also done nothing
Speaker 1: to minimize risk. The world held its breath. The long
Speaker 1: March five bees design had been used several more times
Speaker 1: with similar uncontrolled re entries. And each time the world
Speaker 1: holds its breath, and so far each time the rocket
Speaker 1: falls into the ocean. But so far isn't a safety guarantee.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, you know, the grand majority of the
Speaker 3: earth is covered by water, so most times when something
Speaker 3: falls ill most likely hit the water, but not everything
Speaker 3: out of your time, that's right. I feel like I
Speaker 3: get why we don't have ethics communities anymore, or some
Speaker 3: sort of version of responsibility crew or charters or laws
Speaker 3: that are kind of a blanket thing to account people
Speaker 3: that are accountable for things in this case China or
Speaker 3: US or in many ways Russia. Those are top three
Speaker 3: con topic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like.
Speaker 3: Because as at least to a lot of horrible corruption
Speaker 3: and horrible things happening, as attested from America in the sixties,
Speaker 3: but like or forties. But man, it feels like we
Speaker 3: needed some accountability about some of these near misses are
Speaker 3: happening left and right, a lot of near misses.
Speaker 1: Yes we do all right. Number five Cosmos four to
Speaker 1: eight to two, the failed Venus probe that took fifty
Speaker 1: three years to come home. In March nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union launched a pair of Venus probes. Veniera
Speaker 1: eight made it to Venus and sent back data for
Speaker 1: fifty minutes before succumbing to the planet's crushing heat and pressure.
Speaker 1: Its twin, Cosmos four eight two, never made it. A
Speaker 1: rocket failure left it stranded in Earth orbit, which it
Speaker 1: circled for our planet for fifty three years, A forgotten
Speaker 1: ghost of the nineteen seventy space race. Cosmos four eight
Speaker 1: two was a time capsule of Cold War space engineering.
Speaker 1: It carried a spherical landing capsule designed to survive Venus's
Speaker 1: eight hundred and sixty degree fahrenheit surface temperature and ninety
Speaker 1: atmospheres of pressure, or the pressure of being about point
Speaker 1: six miles deep in the ocean. That same heat shield
Speaker 1: intended for the hell of Venus, also made it capable
Speaker 1: of surviving re entry into Earth's atmosphere. Not good for decades,
Speaker 1: the satellite was just an afterthought, one of thousands of
Speaker 1: pieces of space junk in orbit, but as its orbit decayed,
Speaker 1: experts began to pay attention. In May twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: the European Space Agency issued a warning Cosmos four eight
Speaker 1: two would re enter within days. The landing capsule, weighing
Speaker 1: about one one hundred pounds, might survive. Where it would
Speaker 1: land was anyone's guess. On May tenth, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: Cosmos four eight two re entered over the Indian Ocean
Speaker 1: west of Jakarta, Indonesia. The landing capsule's parachute system, designed
Speaker 1: after fifty three years in the vacuum of space, likely failed.
Speaker 1: No debris was found. For a few tense days, the
Speaker 1: world watch a Cold War relic fall home, and then
Speaker 1: it was just gone. It was a reminder that orbital
Speaker 1: debris doesn't care about policies or treaties. It just orbits
Speaker 1: patiently until it doesn't all right. Number six is Salute seven,
Speaker 1: the space station that missed the ocean. Salute seven was
Speaker 1: the last of the Soviet Union's first generation space stations.
Speaker 1: Launched in nineteen eighty two, it served both scientific research
Speaker 1: and military reconnaissance for nine years, hosting crews who performed
Speaker 1: daring repairs, including one famous dramatic mission that kept the
Speaker 1: station alive after a total power failure in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: the new Mirror Space Station had taken its place, and
Speaker 1: Salute seven was abandoned, but the Soviets didn't just leave
Speaker 1: it to drift. That same year, they boosted the vacant
Speaker 1: station into a higher orbit, a two hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: five mile by three hundred and six mile perch, where
Speaker 1: they expected it to remain until nineteen ninety four. They
Speaker 1: even considered retrieving it using the Bronze Space Shuttle, the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union's answer to the NASA's orbiter, but the plan
Speaker 1: never materialized. Bron flew only once, an uncrewed test flight
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight, and the program was canceled soon
Speaker 1: after Salute seven was on its own. Salute seven side
Speaker 1: was Cosmo sixteen eighty six, a modified cargo spaceship that
Speaker 1: had arrived in nineteen eighty five, carrying nine hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty one pounds of supplies and nearly doubling the station's
Speaker 1: habitable volume. Together, the complex massed forty three tons heavier
Speaker 1: than a Boeing seven thirty seven. After the final crew
Speaker 1: departed in nineteen eighty six, Both Salute seven and Cosmo
Speaker 1: sixteen eighty six suffered major system failures, making the complex
Speaker 1: impossible to control from the ground. The Soviets had planned
Speaker 1: to fire Cosmo sixteen eighty six's engines for controlled deorbit,
Speaker 1: but the propellants. The propellant supply had dwindled to just
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty four pounds, far short of the
Speaker 1: one hundred and two pounds required for a safe descent.
Speaker 1: For five years, the dead station drifted. In early nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, Soviet controllers made one less attempt to aim
Speaker 1: it at the Atlantic Ocean, firing thrusters to lower its orbit,
Speaker 1: but the tumbling, lifeless complex had other ideas. The official
Speaker 1: Soviet news agency, called Tasks or the Telegraph Agency of
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, insisted that no one was to blame
Speaker 1: the unexpected increase in solar activity, they said, had made
Speaker 1: the orbit impossible to predict, but some Soviet scientists were furious.
Speaker 1: A veteran a scientist who was a veteran of the
Speaker 1: Military Industrial Commission claimed he had warned for five years
Speaker 1: earlier that the station lacked enough fuel for controlled re entry.
Speaker 1: The director of the Institute of Applied geophysics was blunter
Speaker 1: when he said, quote, it's insulting to hear the report
Speaker 1: that solar bursts are unpredictable. That burst was not a
Speaker 1: surprise at all. Typical Russian cover up, you know. On
Speaker 1: February seventh, nineteen ninety one, at eleven pm Eastern Salute
Speaker 1: seven re entering it over Argentina, traveling at more than
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand miles per hour, the forty three ton complex
Speaker 1: left the trail of fire across the night sky. Witnesses
Speaker 1: described it as a video game come to life, a
Speaker 1: glowing object that broke it into seven or eight luminous
Speaker 1: spheres before disappearing. One man in San Juan, stepping to
Speaker 1: his window to light a cigarette, watched the station disintegrate
Speaker 1: and thought for a moment he was seeing a comet.
Speaker 1: A policeman took it and mistook it for a plane
Speaker 1: falling in flames. The station split into an estimated two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty pieces of debris, with surviving fragments weighing
Speaker 1: somewhere between two thousand, six hundred and forty six pounds
Speaker 1: to three thousand, six hundred and three nine hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty eight pounds. Massive very act numbers of debris. Thinks
Speaker 1: the debris scattered across hundreds of miles San Juan, Santa Fe,
Speaker 1: Andre Rios, Venado, Twerto, even as far south as Perto.
Speaker 1: I don't know these places. That's where it was. The
Speaker 1: largest piece, a hatch or bulkhead the size of a
Speaker 1: washing machine, crashed into the patio of a house in
Speaker 1: Capitin Bermudez, a town of about thirty thousand people, and
Speaker 1: remarkably no one was killed or injured. The station's pre
Speaker 1: dawn arrival around one am local meant that more residents
Speaker 1: were indoors, not standing in their yards or in the streets. Today,
Speaker 1: fragments of Salute seven are on display in museums across Argentina,
Speaker 1: at the Ouro Verde Astronomical Observatory in andtre Rios, at
Speaker 1: the local museum in fermat and at the famous UFO
Speaker 1: Museum in Victoria, which preserves a large piece of the station.
Speaker 1: Spherical metal tanks, charred and scarred by entry, sit under glass.
Speaker 1: These strange souvenirs of the night at Soviet space station
Speaker 1: fell on South America. Salute seven was a near disaster.
Speaker 1: It showed that even when you try to aim a
Speaker 1: falling space station. Space station you can miss, and when
Speaker 1: you miss, people can die. The fact that no one
Speaker 1: did was just pure luck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, crazy, right, it's funny as so how so far
Speaker 3: all these stories feel like a warning. They all feel
Speaker 3: like warnings almost like verty much not really threats, but
Speaker 3: the kind of they're like just warnings very much, so hard.
Speaker 3: They're like they're like adult, realistic bad time stories you
Speaker 3: tell like the equivalent we tell children to like cautionary tales,
Speaker 3: warn them of strangers by telling them a story about
Speaker 3: this or that or whatever, riding hood or whatever, and
Speaker 3: three little bears. It is like that, but for silence.
Speaker 1: And the moral of this story is we're a.
Speaker 3: Helmet, right, We're a helmet. Build a metal canopy over
Speaker 3: your home or something.
Speaker 1: In metal dome. Could you imagine being this, this old
Speaker 1: dude that just walked to his window to light a
Speaker 1: cigarette and see this massive hulk of metal. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: expecting what do you even mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Ah man to see something like that. Ow cool now.
Speaker 1: The next two these are Tragic Number seven, the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle Columbia, the Data Charlotte, The day the Shuttle came
Speaker 1: apart on February first, two thousand and three, the Space
Speaker 1: shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re entry over Texas, scattering debris
Speaker 1: across eastern Texas and western Louisiana. The cause was a
Speaker 1: piece of insulating foam that had broken off the external
Speaker 1: tank during launch, and it struck the left wing, punching
Speaker 1: a hole that allowed superheated gas to melt the wing
Speaker 1: structure from the inside. Columbia had spent sixteen days in orbit,
Speaker 1: a science flight that carried seven astronauts, Commander Rick Husband,
Speaker 1: pilot William McCool, payload commander Michael Anderson, mission specialist kalpan Chawla,
Speaker 1: mission special list David Brown, mission specialist Laurel Clark, and
Speaker 1: payload specialists, and first Israeli astronaut Elin Ramon. All seven
Speaker 1: souls were lost. The breakup scattered debris across twenty nine thousand,
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy four square miles, an area larger
Speaker 1: than West Virginia, creating a debris field that stretched roughly
Speaker 1: two thousand miles from the California coast to western Louisiana,
Speaker 1: a distance the shuttle covered in about seven minutes while
Speaker 1: still traveling at roughly twelve thousand, five hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 1: Recovery teams including the FBI and the US military, fanned
Speaker 1: out across the piney Woods of East Texas, a region
Speaker 1: of dense forests and swamps home to wild hogs and bobcats.
Speaker 1: The largest ground search in US history eventually collected more
Speaker 1: than eighty two thousand pieces of the shuttle, weighing about
Speaker 1: eighty four thousand, eight hundred pounds, and that's only thirty
Speaker 1: eight percent of the show shuttle. The rest was either
Speaker 1: vaporized or remains to this day scattered in the woods
Speaker 1: and swamps of the South. Now, pieces of Columbia are
Speaker 1: still being found, often uncovered by drought or land development.
Speaker 1: The FBI notes that its offices still receive calls about
Speaker 1: potential Shuttle debris, and NASA's Columbia Research and Preservation Office
Speaker 1: receive about two to three of reports each month, though
Speaker 1: many turn out to be something else, but from what
Speaker 1: I could find. As recently as twenty twenty two, a
Speaker 1: severe drought in East Texas dried up a portion of
Speaker 1: Lake Natdochis, exposing a long buried piece of the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle Columbia. NASA officials recovered the fragment for analysis a
Speaker 1: reminder that the disaster's physical traits are still emerging from
Speaker 1: the landscape nearly two decades later. Today, the recovered fragments
Speaker 1: are stored on the sixteenth floor of the Vehicle Assembly
Speaker 1: Building at Kennedy Space Center, the same facility where Columbia
Speaker 1: had been prepared for its twenty eight launches. Some of
Speaker 1: the debris has been loaned to research as to study
Speaker 1: how to build safer spacecraft components, and a portion is
Speaker 1: used in an educational program to teach future engineers the
Speaker 1: lessons of disaster now. The search for the astronauts remains
Speaker 1: were grim and methodical. Within an hour of the breakup,
Speaker 1: the first remains of a crew member were found. Searchers
Speaker 1: working near Hemphill, Texas, about one hundred and seventy miles
Speaker 1: north of Houston, recovered a charred torso, a thigh bone,
Speaker 1: a skull with front teeth, a charred leg, and a
Speaker 1: finger with a ring still attached. An empty astronauts helmet
Speaker 1: was also found, potentially containing trace DNA. Nasha initially stated
Speaker 1: that the remains of all seven astronauts had been recovered,
Speaker 1: then retracted the statement amid the chaos of the early
Speaker 1: identification process. By February thirteenth, two thousand and three, the
Speaker 1: agency had positively a day the remains of all seven
Speaker 1: crew members. The remains of the six American astronauts were
Speaker 1: taken to the Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs
Speaker 1: at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the same military
Speaker 1: morgue that had identified the victims of the Challenger disaster
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty six, which will cover next and the
Speaker 1: September eleventh attack on the Pentagon. Israeli astronaut Elon Ramon
Speaker 1: was buried in his country. Forensic experts used DNA analysis, fingerprints,
Speaker 1: and dental records to make the identifications. Remarkably, investigators believe
Speaker 1: that if the astronauts had remained inside the crew cabin
Speaker 1: during re entry, portion of the cabin's structure might have
Speaker 1: shielded their bodies from the worst of the heat, allowing
Speaker 1: for recovery and identification. The families of the crew later
Speaker 1: praised recovery volunteers. John Clark, husband of astronaut Laurel Clark,
Speaker 1: told the gathering in Texas, you welcomed their family home.
Speaker 1: For that I could never repay you. The Columbia Accident
Speaker 1: Investigation Board convened within days of the disaster and issued
Speaker 1: its final report on August twenty six, two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: The board determined that a piece of foam insulation weighing
Speaker 1: about one point sixty seven pounds that's it, had broken
Speaker 1: off the external tank eighty two seconds after launch and
Speaker 1: struck the leading edge of the left wing, damaging the
Speaker 1: carbon heat shielding panels. But the report went further, exposing
Speaker 1: a culture of complacency at NASA. Foam shedding had occurred
Speaker 1: on every prior Shuttle flight and was well known, but
Speaker 1: management had come to treat it as an acceptable risk.
Speaker 1: The investigation also uncovered deeper structural problems. Columbia's wings and
Speaker 1: fuel tank were found to be riddled with pinholes and cracks,
Speaker 1: a flaw in NASA had known about since the early
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties but failed to address properly. Investigators discovered that
Speaker 1: many of the these surface pinholes were openings to far
Speaker 1: more extensive breeches underneath, namely erosion that had compromised the
Speaker 1: structural integrity of the wings. This was particularly acute for Columbia,
Speaker 1: which was on its twenty eighth mission when it broke apart.
Speaker 1: In the immediate aftermath of the disaster. As the nation mourned,
Speaker 1: the Internet, of course, filled with speculation. Within days, message
Speaker 1: boards and chat rooms remember those, were buzzing with theories
Speaker 1: of aliens, booby trapped satellites, and space lasers one communist columnist.
Speaker 1: One columnist speculated about a bomb aboard the Shuttle or
Speaker 1: a terrorist missile intercepting the spacecraft at twelve five hundred
Speaker 1: miles an hour. Another post suggested that Israeli astronaut Elon
Speaker 1: Ramon was a Masad agent supervising the retrieval of a
Speaker 1: spy satellite that had booby trapped by Chinese. One message
Speaker 1: board asked who shot down the Columbs and proposed that
Speaker 1: a space laser a weapon system was to blame. Of course,
Speaker 1: NASA dismissed these theories as highly unlikely, but the rumors
Speaker 1: persisted for weeks. The official investigation ultimately concluded that sabotage
Speaker 1: wasn't a factor. The investigation that followed the disaster led
Speaker 1: to the grounding of the Shuttle fleet for more than
Speaker 1: two years, and ultimately to the decision to retire the
Speaker 1: program in early twenty eleven. Columbia isn't a piece of
Speaker 1: space debris in the usual sense that we've been talking about.
Speaker 1: It was a crude spacecraft on a scheduled return, but
Speaker 1: its fate is the ultimate example of what happens when
Speaker 1: re entry goes wrong. Its wreckage, stored in a hangar
Speaker 1: at the Kennedy Space Center, serves as a memorial and
Speaker 1: a warning. The atmosphere is not forgiving. And if you
Speaker 1: guys want to see what happened to Columbia, I left
Speaker 1: a link in the show notes to that re entry video.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to watch, but it's there if
Speaker 1: you want to see it now. The next one, of course,
Speaker 1: is Space Shuttle Challenger, the disaster that grounded a generation.
Speaker 1: The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster is another scar on the
Speaker 1: American memory. What began as a routine launch of the
Speaker 1: twenty fifth Space Shuttle mission and in a public explosion
Speaker 1: that killed all seven crew members, including a school teacher
Speaker 1: from New Hampshire. For millions who watched live, the question
Speaker 1: wasn't what just happened, it was how NASA could have
Speaker 1: let it happen. Space Shuttle Challenger, NASA's second space rated orbiter,
Speaker 1: had flown nine successful missions before its final flight, including
Speaker 1: the first American spacewalk of the Shuttle program and the
Speaker 1: first night launch. The Challenger mission was to be a
Speaker 1: six day flight with an ambitious agenda. The crew planned
Speaker 1: to deploy the Spartan Haley Astronomy satellite to observe of
Speaker 1: Haley's comment, launched a second tracking in data relay satellite,
Speaker 1: and conduct dozens of scientific experiments. The Challenger crew was
Speaker 1: Commander Francis Dick Scobie, pilot Michael J. Smith, mission specialist,
Speaker 1: Ronald McNair, mission specialist, Allison Onezuka, mission specialist, Judith Redsnik,
Speaker 1: payload specialist Gregory Jarvis, and most famously Christa mcculoff, a
Speaker 1: high school teacher from New Hampshire who was selected as
Speaker 1: the first participant in NASA's Teacher and Space Project. Tragically,
Speaker 1: the seven crew members would only spend one minute and
Speaker 1: thirteen seconds in flight. At eleven thirty eight Eastern on
Speaker 1: January twenty eighth, nineteen ninety six, Challenger lifted off from
Speaker 1: launch Pad thirty nine B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida,
Speaker 1: Wait eighty sixth right, nineteen eighty six. What did I say?
Speaker 3: I I heard you saying, but I could have gotten
Speaker 3: maybe I heard.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah No. January twenty eight, nineteen eighty six. Okay,
Speaker 1: launch Pad thirty eight B Kennedy Space Center. Seventy three
Speaker 1: seconds later, it was gone. At point six seven to
Speaker 1: eight seconds into the flight, cameras registered a puff of
Speaker 1: gray smoke spurting from the aft field joint of the
Speaker 1: right solid rocket booster. More puffs followed as the shuttle accelerated.
Speaker 1: The rubber O rings designed to seal the boosters segmented
Speaker 1: joints had failed. The night before. The launch had been
Speaker 1: unusually cold. Temperatures at Cape Canaveral in Florida dropped to
Speaker 1: thirty six degrees fifteen degrees colder than any previous Shuttle launch.
Speaker 1: Frost formed on the O rings, freezing the rubber and
Speaker 1: making it brittle. Engineers at Morton Thiacol, the contractor that
Speaker 1: manufactured the O rings, had warned that the seals failed
Speaker 1: repeated tests under cold conditions. NASA managers dismissed those concerns.
Speaker 1: At fifty eight point seven eight eight seconds, a flickering
Speaker 1: flame excuse me, A flickering flame appeared on the right
Speaker 1: solid rocket booster. At sixty four point sixty six seconds
Speaker 1: came the first visual indication that the flame had breached
Speaker 1: the external fuel tank. At approximately seventy two seconds, the
Speaker 1: lower strut linking the right booster to the tank was severed.
Speaker 1: The booster rotated around the upper strut, puncturing the hydrogen tank.
Speaker 1: Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen mixed and exploded, enveloping the
Speaker 1: shuttle in a massive fireball. Challenger was traveling at mock
Speaker 1: one point nine to two at an altitude of forty
Speaker 1: six thousand feet. The orbiter broke up under severe aerodynamic loads.
Speaker 1: The crew compartment, still largely intact, separated from the forward
Speaker 1: fusel lodge and continued its upward trajectory, peaking at sixty
Speaker 1: five thousand feet at approximately twenty five seconds after the breakup.
Speaker 1: Then it began its long fall back to the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 1: The crew compartment plummeted for two minutes and forty five seconds.
Speaker 1: Think of that a free fall, and they're likely still
Speaker 1: alive at this point. And it struck the Atlantic Ocean
Speaker 1: at a velocity of approximately two hundred and seven miles
Speaker 1: per hour. The impact force was about two hundred g's,
Speaker 1: far beyond the structural limits of the cabin or any
Speaker 1: chance of survival. You could liken this force to the
Speaker 1: acceleration of a bullet being fired from a handgun. For
Speaker 1: a human, it means your body effectively weighs two hundred
Speaker 1: times its normal amount, a force that would crush bones
Speaker 1: and organs instantly if sustained for more than a few milliseconds.
Speaker 1: They went for minutes. The challengers debris field stretched across
Speaker 1: the Atlantic Atlantic off the coast of Florida, and the
Speaker 1: crew compartment came to rest on the sandy Ocean floor
Speaker 1: in about eighty seven to one hundred and fifty feet
Speaker 1: of water, about seven to eight seventeen to eighteen miles
Speaker 1: off the northeast of Cape Canaveral. The recovery operation was
Speaker 1: the most massive ocean search in history. Navy divers from
Speaker 1: the USS Perseverer worked day and night, often battling strong
Speaker 1: Gulf stream currents that covered wreckage with silt and sometimes
Speaker 1: limited visibility to just six inches. On March seventh, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, six weeks after that disaster, they found the
Speaker 1: crew cabin, described by divers as a heap of rubble
Speaker 1: eight feet high, disintegrated with the heaviest fragmentation and crash
Speaker 1: damage to its left side parts. Of bodies surfaced for
Speaker 1: several days, first Judy Resnick, then the others. A seventh
Speaker 1: crew member was brought carefully to the surface and Ashore
Speaker 1: and the Challenger seven were united. NASA confirmed on April nineteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, that remains of all seven astronauts had
Speaker 1: been recovered. The remains were taken to a military morgue
Speaker 1: at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. We just talked
Speaker 1: about it with Columbia. Seven funerals were held for the
Speaker 1: seven astronauts, and an eighth ceremony for remains that couldn't
Speaker 1: be identified with certainty, plus additional interments for body parts
Speaker 1: that could not be linked to any one astronaut. A
Speaker 1: NASA report concluded that the cause of death couldn't be
Speaker 1: positively determined. The forces of the orbiter breakup were probably
Speaker 1: not sufficient to cause death or serious injury. Imagine that,
Speaker 1: but the ocean impact was so violent that evidence of
Speaker 1: earlier damage was just it was masked.
Speaker 3: You could It makes you want It makes you wish
Speaker 3: that they had died from the explosion instantly, instantly, rather
Speaker 3: than right later on.
Speaker 1: So and to this point, four of the crew's emergency
Speaker 1: air packs were recovered. Three have been manually activated, suggesting
Speaker 1: that at least some crew members were conscious and aware
Speaker 1: after that breakup. In total, about one hundred and eighteen
Speaker 1: metric tons, about forty five percent of the shuttle, was recovered.
Speaker 1: The debris was initially stored at hangars at Kennedy Space
Speaker 1: Center in Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Then, less than
Speaker 1: a year after the accident, the records was buried in
Speaker 1: two abandoned Minutemen missile silos at Complex thirty one on
Speaker 1: the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The silos are ninety
Speaker 1: feet deep and roughly fifteen feet wide. Massive ten thousand
Speaker 1: pound concrete caps were lowered into place, creating a weather proof,
Speaker 1: secure tomb. NASA officials stressed that the debris remains accessible
Speaker 1: for future engineering studies. The concrete caps can be removed
Speaker 1: if needed, but the location of the actual crew cabin
Speaker 1: those remained is a very closely guarded secret. Why do
Speaker 1: you think, yeah, I mean that's where because it's just
Speaker 1: a horrible thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, people's missile sados now as a part of things. Well,
Speaker 3: I mean doesn't that make it kind of worse? I mean,
Speaker 3: I would shouldn't we be it's also a museum thing. Now,
Speaker 3: like why isn't it being displayed not as a part,
Speaker 3: but like as a you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, just for respect to the dead. I guess
Speaker 1: they won't let you know where it is visit it.
Speaker 3: That's crazy, it seems not I mean, does it seem
Speaker 3: unreasonable to you? Still?
Speaker 1: No? I mean it doesn't bother me.
Speaker 3: No, No, but unreasonable that that's still like that buried
Speaker 3: like the way, like so shamefully, like like we can't
Speaker 3: get past it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, No, I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't feel weird about it.
Speaker 1: I don't feel one way or the other. But I
Speaker 1: get it. You know seven seven?
Speaker 3: Would you would you? Would you keep would you keep
Speaker 3: it there?
Speaker 1: Would I keep it?
Speaker 3: Hitting? I say, you got the position of authority to
Speaker 3: decide that or today? Would you change that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I don't think that would be something I would put
Speaker 1: on display. I don't think I would make us back
Speaker 1: to love it. No, oh I'm not.
Speaker 3: I mean not saying, but stamers. I don't think I
Speaker 3: like you would keep it there?
Speaker 1: I think I just yeah, we're closing this chapter. Yep,
Speaker 1: we have other pieces we can study for future generations,
Speaker 1: like it' said.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's part of our history and if it's available,
Speaker 3: I would definitely put it out there.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like people ask, well, why don't you bring up.
Speaker 4: It's going to plantations or whatever, you know, or like
Speaker 4: the It's like, why don't you open a tomb like
Speaker 4: Jefferson's house or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we all went through.
Speaker 1: I think it's different, just like the Titanic. Why don't
Speaker 1: you bring.
Speaker 3: Up with it's way worse because you know.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, no, leave it alone. But as recently as
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, new pieces of Challenging debris have been found.
Speaker 1: A documentary crew searching the bottom of the Atlantic off
Speaker 1: the coast of Florida for World War two wreckage uncovered
Speaker 1: twenty foot segment made of eight inch thermal tiles, one
Speaker 1: of the largest pieces of Challenger found in decades. So
Speaker 1: they're still pulling this stuff up. The official cause of
Speaker 1: the Challenger disaster, determined by the Rogers Commission, was the
Speaker 1: failure of o rings seal on that right solid rocket booster,
Speaker 1: but the commission's more damning finding was cultural NASA's safety
Speaker 1: reporting system was so weak that the commission termed it silent.
Speaker 1: The agency's management structure had suppressed pre launch warnings that
Speaker 1: could have prevented the tragedy. Morton Thiakol, the manufacturer of
Speaker 1: the O rings, first discovered that flaw in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven and reported it to NASA, but the commission in
Speaker 1: charge of the Shuttle project ignored it, even after significant
Speaker 1: erosion of the O rings was discovered during Shuttle flights
Speaker 1: as early as eighty one. Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard
Speaker 1: Feynmann f Fineman yet was member of the Rodgers commission.
Speaker 1: It grew frustrated with the vague testimony and bureucratic evasion,
Speaker 1: and in this now sort of infamous moment, he dunked
Speaker 1: a piece of O ring material into a glass of
Speaker 1: ice water, demonstrating how it lost all resiliency at low temperatures,
Speaker 1: removing all doubt about the technical cause of the explosion.
Speaker 1: And then he accused ness of playing Russian Roulette with
Speaker 1: astronauts' lives, which they kind of did. And of course,
Speaker 1: just like the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy, conspiracy theory surfaced
Speaker 1: about the Challenger disaster too. A recurring theory maintains that
Speaker 1: the Challenger crew members never died, that they faked their
Speaker 1: deaths or are never on the Shuttle to begin with,
Speaker 1: and they're actually saying that about Artemist today, that it's
Speaker 1: all fake, that the astronauts ejected at the last minute.
Speaker 1: Social media posts circulate photos of people who resemble the astronauts,
Speaker 1: claiming they're the same individuals living under new identities. A
Speaker 1: Judith Resnick teaching law at Yale. A Michael J. Smith
Speaker 1: as a university professor. A Dick Scope be running a company. Me,
Speaker 1: that's right, it's awesome. A target. Yeah, it's crazy. These
Speaker 1: theories are crazy, but people swear.
Speaker 3: It's true, buying cookies when he shouldn't.
Speaker 1: NASA's chief historian has stated unequivocally that the disaster did
Speaker 1: occur and all seven crew members they died. Other theories
Speaker 1: claimed the Shuttle was sabotaged by terrorists, by foreign powers,
Speaker 1: or by a secret space based laser weapon. Some conspiracy
Speaker 1: sites suggest the launch was intentionally botched because President Reagan
Speaker 1: was about to deliver some major news and he needed
Speaker 1: a distraction. The Rogers Commission found no evidence of sabotage.
Speaker 1: Of course, the cause was tragically simple rubber o rings
Speaker 1: and cold weather. One theory that does hold weight. Though
Speaker 1: it's not a conspiracy so much as a suppressed truth.
Speaker 1: Is that NASA managers knew about the ol ring flaw
Speaker 1: years before the launch launched. Anyway, that's not speculation. It's
Speaker 1: in the Rogers Commission report. And if you want to see,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of what happened to the Challenger, millions
Speaker 1: were watching it. It was recorded. I've left a link
Speaker 1: in the show notes to that video.
Speaker 3: You know the worst part about that, and yeah, the
Speaker 3: lives obviously hugely yea. The worst part though, that affects me. Oh,
Speaker 3: that affects some still things day to day. Is that
Speaker 3: about spaceflight and NASA and stuff. Is that we lost
Speaker 3: our confidence with space. I think people lost. The general
Speaker 3: public lost its trust of NASA and governmental approval, I agree,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people in general lost faith or
Speaker 3: confidence into wanting to do space.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like, I think it all went super downhill after that
Speaker 3: one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: That's why it was called That's why I kind of
Speaker 1: called it. You know, that grounded the generation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, No, I totally understand where you're coming from
Speaker 3: for that, because it did feel that way growing up
Speaker 3: in the nineties. You know, I wasn't there and famously.
Speaker 3: Some people have testified not to, but like I have
Speaker 3: given testimonials about them being in school shown the Challenger
Speaker 3: as a big event and seeing the horror or yeah,
Speaker 3: of course, they have so many funny stories.
Speaker 1: About the teachers all over the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I know it did. But I was saying
Speaker 3: I was too young. I was two years old when
Speaker 3: this happened, so I was too young for that. But
Speaker 3: in the nights I was still hearing about it. Still
Speaker 3: beat the big deal, and you could feel that lack
Speaker 3: of confidence about space.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I know, but it's tragic, tragic. I remember my
Speaker 1: mom and my stepdad took me to Florida one time.
Speaker 1: I was a kid, probably Nico's age twelve thirteen, and
Speaker 1: we got to see one of the space shuttles on
Speaker 1: the launching padre from Afar. Yeah, yeah, we have pictures
Speaker 1: of that still, I don't remember which one.
Speaker 3: How many miles were you? We say with ways, But he.
Speaker 1: Had a telephoto lens, like this massive lens got it,
Speaker 1: I mean made it look like you were right there.
Speaker 1: It was really cool to see.
Speaker 3: I've never seen that, ye never seen that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yep, we didn't see it launched, but we saw it
Speaker 1: on a launch pad. It must have been launching the.
Speaker 3: Day anything space related is going through the observatory here
Speaker 3: in Chicago. Has it was crazy?
Speaker 1: Okay? Moving, moving on number nine. It's the GOOCEE, the
Speaker 1: Ferrari of space that ran out of gas. The Gravity
Speaker 1: Field and Steady State Ocean Circulation Explorer or GOCEE. Say
Speaker 1: that five times fast Ahead was a thing of beauty
Speaker 1: built by the EAU, the European Space Agency. It was sleek,
Speaker 1: aerodynamic empowered by an ion engine, a propulsion system that
Speaker 1: used xenon gas to produce tiny efficient thrusts. Its shape
Speaker 1: was unusual, long and slender with fins, which earned it
Speaker 1: the nickname the Ferrari of Space.
Speaker 3: It sounds like it would be on a Formula one
Speaker 3: racing right track.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's cool. And again check the show notes. I
Speaker 1: have a picture of this thing. It's singular mission map
Speaker 1: Earth's gravity field with unprecedented precision. For four years, GOCEE
Speaker 1: circled the planet, revealing the subtle variations in gravity that
Speaker 1: shapes ocean currents, sea level rise, and the structure of
Speaker 1: Earth's interior. Cool some heavy stuff. Yeah, and you know
Speaker 1: it basically was delivering data that scientists only dreamed of.
Speaker 1: But in October twenty thirteen, Goose ran out of fuel.
Speaker 1: Without propulsion, the one ton satellite began a slow, uncontrolled descent.
Speaker 1: On November eleven, twenty thirteen, it re entered over the
Speaker 1: South Atlantic over the Falcon Islands. Most of it burned
Speaker 1: up in the atmosphere, but about twenty five percent, or
Speaker 1: roughly five hundred and fifty one pounds a debris reached
Speaker 1: the ocean.
Speaker 3: Was it the fucking islands? Oh, the Falcon Island?
Speaker 1: Falkland?
Speaker 3: Oh? Okay, okay? I thought you were swearing at islands
Speaker 3: or something like that.
Speaker 1: Fucking islands. GOCE was the first European Space Agency mission
Speaker 1: to make an uncontrolled re entry in more than twenty
Speaker 1: five years. Its fall was monitored closely and the agency
Speaker 1: issued regular updates. But the incident raised a question. If
Speaker 1: a one ton satellite can re enter uncontrolled, what about
Speaker 1: a ten ton one or one hundred ton one. The
Speaker 1: answer is later events show is that it depends on
Speaker 1: how well you plan. It was a quiet reminder that
Speaker 1: even the most elegant machines eventually bowed a gravity.
Speaker 3: Gravity's a bitch, gravity are what is that?
Speaker 1: From?
Speaker 2: That?
Speaker 3: From something No.
Speaker 1: Number ten Okay. Tiengong one, the Chinese space lab that
Speaker 1: lost contact. Tien Gong one was China's first step towards
Speaker 1: a permanent space I'm joking a permanent space date. A
Speaker 1: thirty three foot long, eight point five ton laboratory that
Speaker 1: launched in twenty eleven. Sorry, ah, don't know what happened.
Speaker 1: Over the next two years. It hosted six Chinese astronauts
Speaker 1: who conducted experiments, practiced docking maneuvers, and basically proved that
Speaker 1: China could sustain human spaceflight. In twenty thirteen, the station
Speaker 1: was retired. Shortly afterward, China lost contact with it. For
Speaker 1: five years, Tiangong I circled Earth in a slow, uncontrolled decay,
Speaker 1: its orbit dropping a little more each day. The world
Speaker 1: watched nervously as the re entry window narrowed. The European
Speaker 1: Space Agency published regular predictions, each one shifting by hours
Speaker 1: or sometimes days. On April two, twenty eighteen, Tiangong one
Speaker 1: re entered over the South Pacific Ocean. It burned up
Speaker 1: almost completely. No debris was found the end. The re
Speaker 1: entry was so far from land that no one even
Speaker 1: saw it, but the uncertainty surrounding Tianlong one. The fact
Speaker 1: that no one knew exactly when or where it would
Speaker 1: fall highlighted a growing problem. China had not shared its
Speaker 1: tracking data. Other nations had to track the station themselves.
Speaker 1: Ah And while Tiangong one ultimately caused no harm, it's
Speaker 1: at a precedent for uncontrolled re entries from nations that
Speaker 1: don't always play nice with international tracking systems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, China, like Russia, they keep a lot of things
Speaker 3: just only to themselves, like very close to the that's absolutely,
Speaker 3: I mean, we can't help ourselves if we I mean,
Speaker 3: we would be that way if we had that, you
Speaker 3: know that, if we had that kind of like personality
Speaker 3: as a country. But we don't. We're very loud and
Speaker 3: we say, well, what's what's in our minds all the time,
Speaker 3: So we can't help ourselves. But trust me, we would
Speaker 3: be like them too if because you know, they're huge countries.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Number eleven. The Jewels Vern, the European truck that
Speaker 1: took out the trash Okay. The Uropean Space Agency named
Speaker 1: their first cargo ship or automated transfer vehicle ATV the
Speaker 1: Jewels Vern, the nineteenth century French author whose novels from
Speaker 1: the Earth to the Moon and around the Moon. Imagined
Speaker 1: space travel decades before rockets existed. His stories inspired generations
Speaker 1: of scientists and astronauts, so when the European Space Agency
Speaker 1: built its first cargo ship for the International Space Station,
Speaker 1: they named it after him. The jewels Vern carried handwritten
Speaker 1: pages and copies of the author's books into orbit, a
Speaker 1: fitting tribute to the man who dreamed of the journey
Speaker 1: long before it was possible.
Speaker 3: And Dr Brown, Doctor Brown, Emin Brown from Back to
Speaker 3: Your Future.
Speaker 1: He also, between two thousand and eight and twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: five ATVs delivered supplies of fuel, oxygen, and experiments to
Speaker 1: the ISS. At the end of each mission, each ATV
Speaker 1: was filled with station trash International Space Station trash and
Speaker 1: then deliberately deorbited. The first of these ATVs, the jewel
Speaker 1: Vern Jules Verne, launched in March two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: After seven months in space, its mission was complete and
Speaker 1: it executed a controlled re entry on September twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, over the South Pacific Ocean, and
Speaker 1: the others followed suit, finishing in February twenty fifteen. Now,
Speaker 1: unlike most objects on this list, the ATVs were designed
Speaker 1: to burn up. You see, they had no heat shields,
Speaker 1: Their aluminum structures melted at relatively low temperatures and therefore
Speaker 1: no debris hits the ground. They were a model of
Speaker 1: responsible behavior, a reminder that controlled re entries are possible
Speaker 1: if you plan for them. The ATV program set a
Speaker 1: gold standard for disposal, proving that even a twenty ton
Speaker 1: cargo ship could vanish without a trace. Program also demonstrated
Speaker 1: that international cooperation can work. The spacecraft were built in Europe,
Speaker 1: launched on European rockets, and operated by the European Space Agency.
Speaker 1: They docked with the ISS, a partnership of fifteen nations,
Speaker 1: and when they fell, they were aimed at the South
Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean uninhabited area, the same spacecraft cemetery used by
Speaker 1: Russia and Japan, which we'll get into a little later
Speaker 1: in this episode because it's fascinating, because this place is
Speaker 1: really cool, and we talked about do you remember talking
Speaker 1: about this area of the Pacific Ocean when we did
Speaker 1: the Bump Point NEMO, Right, Yeah, this is all the
Speaker 1: same listeners we did an episode talked heavily about this
Speaker 1: section of the ocean in what the Bloop look up
Speaker 1: that episode. It's fun.
Speaker 3: That's right, That's what it was. I was trying to
Speaker 3: think of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what the bloop. Okay, I'm gonna try to get
Speaker 1: this one right. Number twelve. It's the HTV Kownotry, the
Speaker 1: Japanese stork Kownoturi okay, okay, I mean I can check you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Cow Nory, Japan's H two transfer vehicle or the HTV
Speaker 1: nickname Commentory Japanese for Stork, was another ISS cargo ship.
Speaker 1: Between two thousand and nine and twenty twenty nine, htvs
Speaker 1: delivered supplies, batteries, and experiments up to the orbiting lab,
Speaker 1: just like the Jewels Vern. Each mission lasted two months.
Speaker 1: Each one ended with a controlled re entry, again just
Speaker 1: like Jewels Vern. The first HDV re entered on November one,
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, after a successful mission. The final
Speaker 1: HDV HDV nine re entered on August twentieth, twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: after delivering a new battery system to the ISS. Now,
Speaker 1: Japan took re entry safety seriously, establishing its own regulations
Speaker 1: for controlled re entries and building redundancies into every system.
Speaker 1: Each vehicle could carried multiple navigations systems, backup computers, and
Speaker 1: redundant thrusters. When it came time to to orbit, the
Speaker 1: odds of an actual failure were very low, and when
Speaker 1: the vehicle fell, it fell where it was supposed to,
Speaker 1: into the South Pacific, far from any ship or island
Speaker 1: a person. So overall, the HD program, the HTV program
Speaker 1: was a quiet success story, the reminder that not everything
Speaker 1: that falls from space has to be a crisis. Okay.
Speaker 1: Number thirteen Progress M two seven M, the Russian supply
Speaker 1: ship that went rogue. On April twenty eight, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: Russia launched the Progress M two seven M cargo ship
Speaker 1: to resupply the ISS. Progress was carrying six thousand pounds
Speaker 1: of cargo, including one nine hundred and forty pounds of propellant,
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten pounds of oxygen, nine hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty six pounds of water, and three one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty eight pounds of spare parts, supplies and scientific experiment.
Speaker 1: Soon after reaching orbit, flight controllers lost contact with Progress
Speaker 1: and the spacecraft began tumbling, and it became clear very
Speaker 1: quickly that no one could regain control of this thing.
Speaker 1: For ten days, Progress M two seven M circled Earth
Speaker 1: in this uncontrolled decay a dead ship with no one
Speaker 1: at the helm. On May eight, twenty fifteen, it re
Speaker 1: entered over the Pacific Ocean. The spacecraft was not designed
Speaker 1: for re entry, It had no heat shield, and it
Speaker 1: was supposed to burn up completely, and in this case
Speaker 1: it did. No debris reached the ground, but the incident
Speaker 1: highlighted a risk even a routine supply mission can go wrong.
Speaker 1: Progress spacecraft had flown more than fifty successful missions before
Speaker 1: M two seven M, but when it failed, there wasn't
Speaker 1: a backup plan. The spacecraft fell where gravity and drag
Speaker 1: took it, and while it falling, it fell into the ocean.
Speaker 1: This time there was no guarantee it would do so
Speaker 1: next time. Now some background, The trouble began almost immediately.
Speaker 1: The Soyuz rocket carrying Progress M two seven M, lifted
Speaker 1: off from the Bayingcore Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April twenty eight,
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, at seven h nine gmt, climbing through a
Speaker 1: clear blue sky. Initial reports suggested a normal ascent, but
Speaker 1: within minutes something went wrong. The spacecraft separated from the
Speaker 1: rocket's third stage improperly, leaving it about thirteen miles short
Speaker 1: of its intended altitude and in the totally wrong orbit.
Speaker 1: Telemetry later showed consecutive leaks in the occident and fuel
Speaker 1: tanks of the rocket's third stage, followed by an emergency separation.
Speaker 1: Fuel leaks from the booster had also occurred, meaning the
Speaker 1: spacecraft was not only lost but potentially damaged right from
Speaker 1: the start. On board video later released by ros Cosmos,
Speaker 1: or the Russian government agency responsible for the Russian Federation
Speaker 1: space program Star for All Mankind so ros Cosmo, showed
Speaker 1: the Earth spinning wildly outside the window, confirming that progress
Speaker 1: was rotating about its axis. The spacecraft was tumbling so
Speaker 1: fast that a full rotation only took one point eight seconds. Wow. Right,
Speaker 1: that is blindingly fast fast. This rapid rotation meant its
Speaker 1: solar panels couldn't track the sun, draining its batteries. With
Speaker 1: no way to stabilize the craft, Russian flight controllers called
Speaker 1: off the rescue effort. On April twenty nine, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: The US Air Force Joint Space Operations Center began tracking
Speaker 1: the spacecraft and soon reported forty four pieces debrias along
Speaker 1: its orbit fragments that had broken off even before re entry,
Speaker 1: suggesting the spacecraft might have already been coming apart for
Speaker 1: ten days. The world watched as the tumbling Progress decayed.
Speaker 1: The European Space Agency's Space debris Office, led by doctor
Speaker 1: Holger crag Strong name Yeah Hulger Kraft.
Speaker 3: Would be like a Swedishian or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah probably, issued regular predictions, noting that in an uncontrolled
Speaker 1: re entry, the vessel could fall anywhere between fifty one
Speaker 1: degrees north and fifty one degrees south latitude, a band
Speaker 1: that includes most of the world's population. The uncertainty window
Speaker 1: was huge. At oral speeds, a time uncertainty of just
Speaker 1: a few hours translates into thousands of miles of possible
Speaker 1: re entry points. On May eighth, twenty fifteen, at two
Speaker 1: oh four UTC, Progress M two seven M re entered
Speaker 1: over central Pacific Ocean. Ross Cosmos announced simply the Progress
Speaker 1: M two seven M spacecraft ceased to exist. Most of
Speaker 1: it burned up during re entry as designed for a
Speaker 1: spacecraft with no heat shield, and any surviving fragments fell
Speaker 1: into the ocean far from land. The US military tracking
Speaker 1: refined the time of entry to two twenty UTC, still
Speaker 1: over the Pacific, and then it was gone. The official
Speaker 1: ros Cosmos investigation concluded that an improper separation from the
Speaker 1: third stage of Saiu's rocket, combined with fuel leaks, had
Speaker 1: doomed the mission progress. M two seven M was not
Speaker 1: the first progress to fall. In twenty eleven, a similar
Speaker 1: third stage engine failure caused a progress to crash in Siberia,
Speaker 1: but M two seven M was different. It reached orbit
Speaker 1: before falling, turning a routine supply run into an uncontrolled
Speaker 1: re entry with a one in two thousand chants of
Speaker 1: causing a ground casualty, well above the one ten thousand
Speaker 1: risk threshold considered acceptable for uncontrolled re entries. So let's
Speaker 1: talk this real briefly. One in ten thousand is an
Speaker 1: acceptable risk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like accepting radiations that are harm but not
Speaker 3: gonna kill us. That's that risk though, Like that's usually
Speaker 3: money that's created sort of thing. But yeah, there is
Speaker 3: got to be a limit, and it's got to be
Speaker 3: an upward it's got to be a ceilion, a floor,
Speaker 3: two things.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that's the way they look at it, right,
Speaker 3: And if they're I mean, and that's how they started, right, What.
Speaker 1: Is the acceptable risk in order to keep progress moving forward?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Ten thousand, Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know when you consider all of human
Speaker 3: history that the human risk plus watch worse and you know,
Speaker 3: I can like it doesn't matter. Yeah, right, departments were
Speaker 3: built on the blood of a lot of people, for example.
Speaker 1: True. Yeah, well, luckily, you know a lot of these stories,
Speaker 1: they end pretty pretty well scary when it's happening, but
Speaker 1: they end pretty positively right. All right, Moving on number fourteen, Oscar.
Speaker 3: You're still with me on this, Yeah, we're halfway.
Speaker 1: Right, listeners are still with us. Number fourteen iss EP
Speaker 1: nine the NASA battery palette that hit house. Oh hit house.
Speaker 1: So this is the most recent and in some ways
Speaker 1: kind of the most alarming. On March eighth, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: so this is really this is the recent A small
Speaker 1: metal cylinder crashed through the roof of a home in Naples, Florida.
Speaker 1: It tore through two floors and missed the homeowner's son
Speaker 1: by two rooms, and embedded itself in the floor. A
Speaker 1: home security camera captured the whole impact. The object was
Speaker 1: a one point six pounds stanchion made of a rugged
Speaker 1: metal alloy designed to survive extreme conditions. NASA Lata confirmed
Speaker 1: that it came from a cargo pallet called the Exposed
Speaker 1: Pallet nine or EP nine, which had been jettison from
Speaker 1: the ISS in March twenty twenty one. The pallet overall
Speaker 1: weighed fifty eight hundred pounds and carried spent nickel hydrogen batteries,
Speaker 1: the heaviest piece of trash ever tossed overboard from the station.
Speaker 1: NASA had predicted the hardware were would burn up harmlessly
Speaker 1: after two to four years in orbit, but instead that
Speaker 1: stanchion survived and found its way to a house in Naples,
Speaker 1: and the incident raised kind of uncomfortable questions. Who's responsible
Speaker 1: when space debris hits a house? What happens when a
Speaker 1: planned disposal goes wrong? Now, under international space law, the
Speaker 1: launching state is liable for damage caused by its space objects,
Speaker 1: but NASA's a government agency, and the homeowner, Alejandro Otero,
Speaker 1: has since sued the agency for damages. Arturo said he
Speaker 1: was shaking and completely in disbelief, adding quote, what are
Speaker 1: the chances of something landing on my house? Was such
Speaker 1: force to cause so much damage? The Naples incident is
Speaker 1: now milestone the first space debris insurance claim in American history.
Speaker 1: NASA offered to settle the case on November twenty two,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, and the family accepted with no confidential restrictions.
Speaker 1: The agency paid a total of forty four thousand and
Speaker 1: fifty one dollars and twenty two cents to the Taros
Speaker 1: for their homeowners and their homeowners insurance carrier. Though modest,
Speaker 1: the settlement set a powerful precedent. When something falls from space,
Speaker 1: someone's ultimately responsible. It's a warning to space faring nations
Speaker 1: and a small measure of justice for a family caught
Speaker 1: in a one in a trillion event.
Speaker 3: Can I say that sounds like a I mean, borring
Speaker 3: any psychological effectors doesn't seem to be any. Is that
Speaker 3: that sounds kind of a reasonable probably the most reasonable
Speaker 3: sounding settlement I've ever heard. You think, I think it
Speaker 3: costs what it's a it's for the damages, maybe a
Speaker 3: little more. How much more can it be? Yeah, it
Speaker 3: sounds right to me. I mean that sounds actually reasonable.
Speaker 4: Millions kid one, Well, if you kill the kid a
Speaker 4: different style, it's a different story.
Speaker 1: If it kills a kid, obviously Donnie Darko's style.
Speaker 3: Right. It is not that I was a jet engine,
Speaker 3: though it was. That was a much bigger thing. But
Speaker 3: but you know what I'm saying, you don't often hear
Speaker 3: reasonable settlements. So okay, everyone expects millions off flick a
Speaker 3: punch in the face or whatever, like it's just a barf.
Speaker 3: I settled down.
Speaker 1: But like you know, forty four thousand, couple hundred and
Speaker 1: some change forty one point two two.
Speaker 3: That's more than it's extra leftover for a low vacation.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good to me. Yeah, you know, right, you
Speaker 1: know what, take it, take it, take the take the publicity,
Speaker 1: have a little celebrity for a little while.
Speaker 3: Also that I mean true, I tell a story for
Speaker 3: the ages, right, sure, that's cool.
Speaker 1: For sure, it got fixed.
Speaker 3: It's cool. No one died or got hurt, thankfully, as
Speaker 3: a dog fell through the hole or something after chasing
Speaker 3: her something terrible.
Speaker 1: How much then would forty four thousand be acceptable? Then
Speaker 1: if they lost a dog?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, no, I don't know how it works,
Speaker 3: but I think I mean I would put a fire
Speaker 3: like a fireman's pole thousand of through the hull.
Speaker 1: Sir, we gave you that money to fix your house.
Speaker 1: Fuck you, I wanted my fire pole, all right. Number fifteen.
Speaker 1: Now this is the mere space station the controlled end
Speaker 1: of an era. Mirror was the largest space station of
Speaker 1: its time, one hundred and twenty ton modular complex that
Speaker 1: orbited Earth for fifteen years. It hosted crews from the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, Russia, the US, and other nations, a symbol
Speaker 1: of Cold War cooperation turned post Soviet endurance. But beneath
Speaker 1: the diplomatic veneer, Mirror was a floating catastrophe. It had
Speaker 1: been built to only last five years. Oh, it was
Speaker 1: kept a law for three times that long, and by
Speaker 1: the late nineteen nineties it was falling apart. The station
Speaker 1: suffered a catalog of crisises that read like a horror novel.
Speaker 1: A fire that nearly burned through the hole, a collision
Speaker 1: that punctured a module and sent air hitsing into space,
Speaker 1: computer crashes that left a station adrift, and a mysterious
Speaker 1: fungal infestation that began eating the station from the inside out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: crazy cosmonauts or Russian Russian astronauts right. Cosmonauts described Mirror
Speaker 1: as quote someone's very old garage where there's just been
Speaker 1: stuff put away for years on end and nobody's moved
Speaker 1: it end. Quote. I love that quote.
Speaker 3: It's space horror.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like yeah. NASA officials privately called it an
Speaker 1: orbiting lemon, so she wasn't doing good. Shortly after dinner
Speaker 1: on February twenty fourth, nineteen ninety seven, cosmonaut Alexander Lezupkin
Speaker 1: activated a solid fuel oxygen generator in Mirror's Cavant one module.
Speaker 1: The canister ignited, shooting a three foot flame across the module,
Speaker 1: with sparks and bits of molten metal metal flo in
Speaker 1: every direction. Dense smoke filled the station almost instantly. The
Speaker 1: flame blocked an evacuation route, so one of the two
Speaker 1: Suya's escape vehicles. Doc can I hye, please start over.
Speaker 3: From the top. Welcome to the show. I rewind so
Speaker 3: so surprisingly paranorm.
Speaker 1: My notes a page five of twenty eight. But I
Speaker 1: know that's not right, so all right. Shortly after dinner,
Speaker 1: on February twenty fourth, nineteen ninety seven, cosmonaut Alexander Lezutkin
Speaker 1: activated a solid fuel oxygen generator in Mirror's Cavant one module.
Speaker 1: The canister ignited, shooting a three foot flame across the module,
Speaker 1: with sparks and bits of molten metal flying in every direction.
Speaker 1: This is a I mean, that's this is huge in
Speaker 1: space fire. Bad right, this is this is a serious situation.
Speaker 1: DNSE smoke filled the station almost instantly. The flame blocked
Speaker 1: the evacuation route to one of the two Souya's escape
Speaker 1: vehicles docked at the station. The six crew members, four Russians,
Speaker 1: one American, and one German, put on oxygen masks and
Speaker 1: fought the fire for nearly fourteen minutes. The smoke was
Speaker 1: so thick they could barely see. After the flames were extinguished,
Speaker 1: the crew spent hours clearing the toxic smoke from the
Speaker 1: station's atmosphere. Four months later, on June twenty fifth, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven, Mirror faced its most dramatic crisis yet. Commander
Speaker 1: facilis we'll just call him Commander Facili Russian, was remotely
Speaker 1: piloting an unmanned Progress cargo ship towards the station for
Speaker 1: a docking test. Watching a monitor and operating a pair
Speaker 1: of joysticks. He tried to coax the robot ship in
Speaker 1: for a gentle approach, but then on exis lickably, the
Speaker 1: Progress stopped responding to his commands. The cargo ship ram
Speaker 1: the station at speed. The impact punctured the whole of
Speaker 1: the Spectra module which contained science experiments and the sleeping
Speaker 1: quarters of the American astronaut Michael Full. Air began hissing
Speaker 1: out of the station. The crew scrambled to seal the
Speaker 1: hatch to Specter, but they only had seconds. In the chaos,
Speaker 1: they had to sever cables carrying power from Spector solar
Speaker 1: panels to the rest of the station. The loss of
Speaker 1: power was immediate and severe. Mirror lost forty percent of
Speaker 1: its electricity supply, forcing a shutdown of oxygen generation, water production, lightning,
Speaker 1: and research work. The collision also knocked Mirror into a slow,
Speaker 1: sickening spin. The station's solar panels couldn't track the sun,
Speaker 1: so the batteries drained rapidly For a few terrifying hours.
Speaker 1: The crew was facing the real possibility of abandoning Mirror entirely.
Speaker 1: This is a quote. The first thought was are we
Speaker 1: going to die instantly because of air rushing out so fast?
Speaker 1: We can't control it. Full later told the BBC the
Speaker 1: crew sealed off Specter, but Full lost all his personal gear,
Speaker 1: his clothes, his music tapes, his family photos trapped in
Speaker 1: the depressurized module.
Speaker 3: His mood.
Speaker 1: Then, yeah, it's portnt The station limped along at half
Speaker 1: power with failing systems, causing heat and humidity to soar
Speaker 1: and Mirror itself to list and drift. Dude, I can't
Speaker 1: even imagine how terrifying that is.
Speaker 3: No, I can't imagine the gravity much yes, much less.
Speaker 1: Yet a disaster in zero gravity right like, oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: As if the fire and collision weren't enough, Mirror was
Speaker 1: also being devoured from within. In nineteen eighty eight, astronauts
Speaker 1: noticed that something had blanketed one of the station's windows
Speaker 1: from the outside. The outside. Several species of earth derived
Speaker 1: fungi had been brought up by visitors and had adapted
Speaker 1: to the space environment so well that they thrived on windows,
Speaker 1: control panels, air conditioners, and cable insulators. The fungus was
Speaker 1: corroding the station's integrity, putting both the spacecraft and its
Speaker 1: occupants at risk. It was yet another reminder that Mirror
Speaker 1: was no longer a pristine laboratory. It was a biohazard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this fucking movie.
Speaker 3: This movie that.
Speaker 1: The problems never stopped. A month after the fire, a
Speaker 1: second main oxygen generator malfunctioned. A month after that, the
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide removal system failed On July first, nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: a crew member inadvertently pulled the plug on Mirror's main computer,
Speaker 1: causing the loss of systems and forcing a power shut
Speaker 1: down with loss of most light, heating, and life support systems.
Speaker 1: And the list went on and on.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Now, by two thousand and one, Mirror was so old,
Speaker 1: worn and expensive to maintain the Russian government decided to
Speaker 1: end it on its own terms. On March twenty third,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, a Progress cargo ship fired its
Speaker 1: engines to push mir into a controlled descent the final deorbit.
Speaker 1: The burn lasted twenty two minutes and twenty seven seconds.
Speaker 1: The station broke apart over the South Pacific Ocean and
Speaker 1: debris fell into a remote area near Nadi, Fiji. It
Speaker 1: was the largest controlled re entry ever attempted, and it
Speaker 1: went exactly as planned.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say it sounds like it did, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's controllers had calculated the trajectory down to the second.
Speaker 1: The station's breakup was modeled in advance, and when the
Speaker 1: debris splashed down, it did so in the South Pacific
Speaker 1: Ocean uninhabited area. That same spacecraft cemetery used by the ATV,
Speaker 1: the HTV and other controlled re entries. Mir proved that
Speaker 1: with enough preparation, even the biggest objects can be disposed
Speaker 1: of safely, A fiery goodbye to the station that had
Speaker 1: been home in space for a generation. Today, Mirror's legacy
Speaker 1: lives on in the International Space Station, which was assembled
Speaker 1: partly from module design for Mer.
Speaker 3: And the same mold was carried over.
Speaker 1: Now and when the ISS itself is diorbited, which is
Speaker 1: planned for twenty thirty, it will follow Mer's path, a
Speaker 1: controlled fall into the South Pacific where no one lives.
Speaker 1: But the story of Mirror is not one of triumph.
Speaker 1: It's a story of survival against impossible odds. A rusted,
Speaker 1: fungus eaten, fire damaged, collision scarred relic that just refused
Speaker 1: to die, and the men and women who lived on
Speaker 1: it somehow who also refused to die along with it.
Speaker 3: It's like my first car right.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, Yeah, I'm sorry, I need to drink. I've
Speaker 1: been talking so much.
Speaker 3: That first car mine was. It lasted way longer than
Speaker 3: it should have.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, as you've heard throughout this episode, not everything
Speaker 1: that falls from space lands on a roof in Florida,
Speaker 1: or in a town in Argentina, or on a woman's shoulder.
Speaker 1: Most of it, the vast majority, in fact, ends up
Speaker 1: in the one place on Earth where no one lives,
Speaker 1: a place so remote, so utterly empty, that its official
Speaker 1: name is the South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area. At its
Speaker 1: heart lies a coordinate called Point Nemo, the oceanic pole
Speaker 1: of Inaccessibility, the farthest point from any land mass on
Speaker 1: the planet. It's truly the loneliest place on Earth, and
Speaker 1: it's also the world's largest spacecraft cemetery. The South Pacific
Speaker 1: Ocean Uninhabited Area is not marked by buoys or painted
Speaker 1: on nautical charts with a special symbol. It's defined by
Speaker 1: what it lacks land, shipping lanes, and for the most
Speaker 1: part life. If you doggy paddled or floated on your
Speaker 1: back at Point Nemo, you would experience a form of
Speaker 1: isolation almost incomprehensible. The nearest land is more than one thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred and sixteen miles away in every direction. Deucey Island,
Speaker 1: part of the Piccarin Islands to the north, Motu Nui
Speaker 1: near Easter Island to the northeast, and Mayhere Island off
Speaker 1: the coast of Antarctica to the south. All three uninhabited
Speaker 1: by the way. That means there is no permanent human
Speaker 1: presence within an area of roughly eight point five million
Speaker 1: square miles of open ocean. The nearest humans are often
Speaker 1: the astronauts aboard the International Space Station, orbiting two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty eight miles above the Earth, significantly closer than
Speaker 1: anyone at sea level. Mine just explit's so crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the way I heard when I start about Point Nemo,
Speaker 3: I forget where it was many many years ago. I
Speaker 3: was also fascinated by it, But the way it was
Speaker 3: described to me, either told to me or I read it,
Speaker 3: is that it is such a lonely right thing, distance
Speaker 3: from everything else in the world, that you might as
Speaker 3: well be in space, because that's how it feels, the
Speaker 3: only place you can feel like space and the loneliness
Speaker 3: as a as an unearthed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't even imagine what it is out there
Speaker 1: at night, what it looks like, what's look great? Terrifying? Now.
Speaker 1: The name Point Nemo was given in nineteen ninety two
Speaker 1: by He's a Croatian by ravage Luka Tella. We're just
Speaker 1: gonna call him Lukatella.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know he read Jules Varron. I'll tell
Speaker 3: you that.
Speaker 1: Hervogi hr voj E. I don't even know how you
Speaker 1: say that. Lukatella a Croatian Canadian survey engineer. Using a
Speaker 1: geospatial program he developed to calculate the point furthest from
Speaker 1: any clothesline coastline, he named it after Captain Nemo, the
Speaker 1: fictional submarine commander from Jewels Verns twenty thousand leagues under
Speaker 1: the Sea. Yeah, a fitting tribute, as Nemo is Latin
Speaker 1: for no One. The region's formal designation the South Pacific
Speaker 1: Ocean uninhabited Area. It's less poetic. It's less poetic, but
Speaker 1: it's accurate. It's accurate now. The sea here is cold,
Speaker 1: averaging about forty five degrees fahrenheit, and the depth at
Speaker 1: Point Nemo is nearly two and a half miles down.
Speaker 1: Sunlight never reaches the ocean floor. The waters are part
Speaker 1: of the South Pacific Geyer, a vast rotating current system
Speaker 1: that is largely cut off from nutrient rich upwellings, so
Speaker 1: as a result, the region is one of one of
Speaker 1: the most biologically desolate in the ocean. Marine life is minimal,
Speaker 1: mostly microbes and the occasional deep sea scavenger otherwise nothing cool.
Speaker 1: In fact, Point Nemo is so remote that it has
Speaker 1: spawned its own legends, And we did an episode on
Speaker 1: this member the Bloop. So in nineteen ninety seven, deep
Speaker 1: water hydrophones detected this ultra low frequency underwater sound near
Speaker 1: the region of Point Nemo, which was called the Bloop.
Speaker 1: The scientists dubbed it the Bloop. The sound was powerful
Speaker 1: enough to be heard five thousand kilometers away, and for
Speaker 1: years speculation ran wild with a giant squid, some unknown
Speaker 1: sea monster, a secret military test, wasn't me. The answer
Speaker 1: eventually is, supposedly, it's a lot more maintain the blue mundane.
Speaker 1: The bloop is actually a sound of an ice quake,
Speaker 1: a large iceberg cracking and caving and breaking apart in Antarctica.
Speaker 1: But the mystery, the mystery just added to Point Nemo's aura.
Speaker 1: And again go check out the Blop episode. We covered
Speaker 1: this extensively.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the aura, that kind of aura is compounded
Speaker 3: by the fact that, much like space, we don't know
Speaker 3: what's going on under the ocean for the majority of
Speaker 3: bar still to this day. So like, you know, all
Speaker 3: that as tood like for me to triangle shit things
Speaker 3: like that just further away.
Speaker 1: Yeah now. Point Nemo's extreme isolation makes it ironically one
Speaker 1: of the most valuable pieces of real estate on Earth,
Speaker 1: at least for space agencies. In nineteen seventy one, the
Speaker 1: United States, Russia, Japan, and the European Space Agency have
Speaker 1: deliberately crashed more than two hundred and sixty spacecraft into
Speaker 1: this remote patch of ocean. It's the only place on
Speaker 1: the planet routinely used as a controlled re entry zone,
Speaker 1: a spacecraft cemetery where the largest human made objects are
Speaker 1: sent to die, and the logic is simple. As we've
Speaker 1: seen throughout this episode, large spacecraft do not always burn
Speaker 1: up completely during re entry. Fragments can survive the three
Speaker 1: thousand degree heat and reach the ground. If those fragments
Speaker 1: fall on the city, people die. If they fall in
Speaker 1: the ocean, no one dies. By targeting Point Nemo, space
Speaker 1: agencies reduced the risk of a catastrophic ground impact to
Speaker 1: near zero. According to NASA, the likelihood of spacecraft degree
Speaker 1: hitting someone in this part of the ocean is about
Speaker 1: one in ten thousand.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The first spacecraft sent to this watery grave was a
Speaker 1: Soviet rocket stage in nineteen seventy one. Since then, the
Speaker 1: list of notable burials reads like a history of the
Speaker 1: space age. Six Soviet Salute space stations, one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty five autonomous Russian supply ships, five European Space Agency
Speaker 1: Agency automated transfer vehicles, four Japanese HTV cargo graft, and
Speaker 1: the Russian space station Mirror. Even spaceikes ex rocket capsule
Speaker 1: has reportedly ended its mission in these waters. And in
Speaker 1: case any people are thinking about savage or doing some
Speaker 1: sight seeing, don't. None of these spacecraft are intact on
Speaker 1: the ocean floor. Re Entry is a violent, destructive process.
Speaker 1: What reaches the bottom is a field of twisted metal,
Speaker 1: shattered composites and metal alloys scattered across a massive area,
Speaker 1: rather than piled neatly in one spot. So don't go there.
Speaker 1: It's it's a cemetery, not a museum. It's a crime
Speaker 1: scene where the victims are machines.
Speaker 3: So when the when the machine uprising happens, that'll be
Speaker 3: their first like graveyard they can honor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they'll go salvage like pieces from there. The spacecraft
Speaker 1: cemetery is about to get its largest occupant yet. NASA
Speaker 1: plans to deorbit the International Space Station in twenty thirty
Speaker 1: or twenty thirty one, steering the four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: ton structure straight towards Point Nemo. The station will break
Speaker 1: apart during re entry, but debris will splash down.
Speaker 3: Oh, I do too, I do too.
Speaker 1: It'll break apart and debris will splash down over that
Speaker 1: remote stretch of over. The exact timing depends on solar activity,
Speaker 1: which affects drag, but the target is fixed, the loneliest
Speaker 1: place on Earth, And for a few minutes, the loneliest
Speaker 1: place on Earth will be the brightest lit by a
Speaker 1: fire of a falling space station. Then the water will
Speaker 1: close over and the silence and darkness will return, And
Speaker 1: even after the isis is gone, the cemetery will continue
Speaker 1: to fill more cargo vehicles, more spent rocket stages, and
Speaker 1: eventually the next generation of space stations will all make
Speaker 1: the same final voyage. There's no other option. The only
Speaker 1: alternative to a controlled re entry at Point Nemo is
Speaker 1: an uncontrolled re entry somewhere else. And somewhere else might
Speaker 1: be your backyard. Now here's the thing. Most of the
Speaker 1: objects we talked about tonight fell into the ocean. Most
Speaker 1: of them burned up, and few horrifically, But most isn't all.
Speaker 1: Lottie Williams got tapped on the shoulder by a piece
Speaker 1: of rocket, a house in Florida got a hole in
Speaker 1: the truth, a Canadian forest got sprinkled with nuclear debris,
Speaker 1: and a Chinese rocket flew over every major city in
Speaker 1: the world and no one could say exactly where it
Speaker 1: would land. We're putting more space, more stuff into space
Speaker 1: than ever before, more rockets, more satellites, more space stations,
Speaker 1: and we're leaving more of it up there to fall
Speaker 1: down whenever gravity decides it's time. Controlled re entries are possible,
Speaker 1: the ATVs, the htvs, the mere deorbit, they all prove
Speaker 1: we can aim our trash if we want to. But
Speaker 1: uncontrolled re entries are cheaper, they're easier, and for now
Speaker 1: they're still legal. The question isn't whether something will fall,
Speaker 1: it's it's weather will be ready when it does, And
Speaker 1: that's all I have to say about that what goes
Speaker 1: up must come down.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna ask a question that I know it's stupid,
Speaker 3: know you don't know the answer, and I know the
Speaker 3: answer is very simple and probably obvious that I cannot
Speaker 3: think of. That many will be asking, is that, why
Speaker 3: can't we just send things further into space instead of
Speaker 3: like worrying about it coming back down littering our oceans.
Speaker 1: I'm the only factor I could guess is money. It
Speaker 1: would cost more money to get enough fuel to push
Speaker 1: them into that level of space.
Speaker 3: To go into outer space from our orbit.
Speaker 1: To go into deep space.
Speaker 3: Let's say that's right, really that much worse? Really that much?
Speaker 3: I wonder that's the.
Speaker 1: Only thing I could think of. It's gotta be otherwise, Yeah,
Speaker 1: why not what I'm saying, unless they're afraid we'll piss
Speaker 1: off the aliens, you know, if we because aliens are
Speaker 1: really putting this in our backyard.
Speaker 3: For because you know, if we were let's say, if
Speaker 3: we were living I don't want to keep bring enough
Speaker 3: for all mankind. But if we were living in an
Speaker 3: age where we cared about our space travel a lot
Speaker 3: more and we were more advanced, I expect to predict
Speaker 3: a we would be in a situation where we were
Speaker 3: throwing our own garbage. That we're having a lot of
Speaker 3: problems with putting on islands of landfills into space as
Speaker 3: a solution, because that's the ultimate Garbage's boldo is all
Speaker 3: of space infinity. The only thing I'm okay with littering
Speaker 3: is space because we're all litters in it already. That
Speaker 3: makes sense to me. But you know, like, how are
Speaker 3: we not we just focused off. We could just be
Speaker 3: sending our garbage into space and not to mention all
Speaker 3: these it's got to batellites and ship It's got to
Speaker 3: be cost. It's got to be everything is cost. Everything
Speaker 3: is the problem with costs, which is something we only
Speaker 3: impose on ourselves, by the way, you know that, right,
Speaker 3: We only impose it to ourselves because we.
Speaker 1: Want to you mean, we always want to money.
Speaker 3: I mean, like it's cost, Like it's that's a silly reason.
Speaker 1: I mean, what what other reason could there be?
Speaker 3: You're right, I think I think you're right. You know,
Speaker 3: you're probably right.
Speaker 1: But I also think you're right in that that's got
Speaker 1: to be the only place to put the ship.
Speaker 3: That is the only place that everyone's cool with is infinity.
Speaker 3: It's infinity. Put it in infinity, put it right, is
Speaker 3: an infinite bag of holding cults space.
Speaker 1: Yeah ah man, yeah, God, I found literally as.
Speaker 3: A kid too. But like I used, don't even know how.
Speaker 1: To how fucked up is that littering the cosmos?
Speaker 3: It can't be done. Give us a trillion years, we
Speaker 3: won't even do any You're right.
Speaker 1: You might not ever see it again. There doesn't was
Speaker 1: it space X?
Speaker 3: If any of aliens come back with our garbage, like,
Speaker 3: is this yours came to our backyard?
Speaker 1: You know who launched ah, I should have worked well,
Speaker 1: it didn't re enter, so it wouldn't make sense in
Speaker 1: this episode. I think it was space X who sent
Speaker 1: the convertible out there.
Speaker 3: I heard about this.
Speaker 1: There's a convertible out there flying. Someone's in the cockpit.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a dummy of elon. There's
Speaker 1: someone in the cock in the in the driver's seat,
Speaker 1: not cockpick, so copy like a dummy. And it's out
Speaker 1: there cruising man out there beyond the stars. You know
Speaker 1: it's gone so far.
Speaker 3: Great use of money, but definitely not make anything useful
Speaker 3: with it. Definitely not. Definitely not.
Speaker 1: I mean that that's junk, right, that's junk out there
Speaker 1: in the infangat.
Speaker 3: But that was not That's not to say the plane.
Speaker 3: We're not throwing all in garbage like we should. We
Speaker 3: have real worries here. We have microplastics everywhere. We shouldn't
Speaker 3: be worried.
Speaker 1: Michael prest classics in our brains.
Speaker 3: Yeah, scary and my boobs.
Speaker 1: Pieces. Yeah, scary stuff. And it's only getting worse and
Speaker 1: there's no solution. So there you have it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you, thanks that. Sorry fucking boomers man, Sorry.
Speaker 1: Listeners, I brought you down on that one. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just getting worse and worse. Kessler syndrome terrifying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is one major collision is going to send millions
Speaker 1: of pieces like bullets for generations. It doesn't even compute.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do believe that while the first lunar station
Speaker 3: liverable and commercial of any kind will not be in
Speaker 3: my lifetime, it's possible, but I just don't think it
Speaker 3: will be. I do believe that the first fatality in
Speaker 3: lawsuit as a result to falling space debris will be
Speaker 3: in my lifetime. Will happen in my lifetime, it would
Speaker 3: be I believe that far more likely. It's what I'm saying. Yeah, certainly,
Speaker 3: then that's going to fucking Mars. I have no hope
Speaker 3: of going to space, that's my point.
Speaker 1: You yourself, yeah, yeah, oh, I don't even want to
Speaker 1: fly in a fucking airplane.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: No, I'm saying in a sense that like okay me
Speaker 3: and myself. Yes, but I mean like happening in while
Speaker 3: I'm alive to see it like on TV or whatever
Speaker 3: or reading it at at all. I mean, I just
Speaker 3: don't think.
Speaker 1: So they're saying by so artemists just launched, which they're
Speaker 1: saying people are saying are fake, is fake. So they
Speaker 1: did a reconnaissance of the Moon. They swung around the
Speaker 1: Moon and came back home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's nice to go back to the next year,
Speaker 3: it's lovely.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty seven they're supposed to actually land and
Speaker 1: then come home, and then in twenty twenty eight they're
Speaker 1: supposed to start building the first moon base.
Speaker 3: I believe that is the long as we don't fuck
Speaker 3: up those steps. Yeah, but they're being very nice about
Speaker 3: that time period. Yeah, so, I mean it's almost always
Speaker 3: pushed away a couple of years.
Speaker 1: We could see a moon base. I don't know.
Speaker 3: You have more and more hope than I did that
Speaker 3: we did it.
Speaker 1: We did one of the episodes where there was a
Speaker 1: construction company, let's call it in Texas by NASA's by
Speaker 1: NASA base in Texas where they were doing remote control
Speaker 1: tests of excavating equipment to be able to control a
Speaker 1: bulldozer here on Earth that's sitting up on the Moon.
Speaker 1: And they're already doing the tests years ago that they
Speaker 1: started these tests. So the equipment is in Texas and Houston,
Speaker 1: and the operator is in a completely different state controlling
Speaker 1: this thing remotely. That's to put it on the fucking Moon,
Speaker 1: to control it from all this stuff is in place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not saying it's I'm not saying it's not impossible.
Speaker 3: I think everything's possible. I just don't have any faith
Speaker 3: of it happening while I'm alive.
Speaker 1: Let's hope. Think that would be pretty interesting.
Speaker 3: That's the commercial too. I want people to go up there.
Speaker 3: I don't want just like five scientists up there.
Speaker 1: I just don't. I don't want to see eat at
Speaker 1: Joe's when I look up at the Moon at night.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. I don't want to see
Speaker 1: a burger king fucking sign.
Speaker 3: You don't want to see ads. I don't want to
Speaker 3: see as that's always gonna happen. Jay, the more we
Speaker 3: like capitalism, it's gonna happen. I mean, while there's capitalism
Speaker 3: running rampant.
Speaker 1: Yes, will World's best coffee?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know that future from Black Mirror with the bicycles.
Speaker 3: I don't remember whether where they're like them.
Speaker 1: I just don't.
Speaker 3: It's the future, it's the first season. It's the future
Speaker 3: where like they're all running bikes for energy. Everyone in
Speaker 3: the world provides energy on a daily basis, on on,
Speaker 3: like on the stationary bikes there for exercise.
Speaker 1: What are they're called ellipticals? No, I think it's a
Speaker 1: stationary bike. Okay, whatever, ellipticals.
Speaker 3: And everyone has to unless you pay for every single
Speaker 3: individual add to be ignored. You have to watch every
Speaker 3: ad and they all based it on your blink, like,
Speaker 3: so if you close your eyes, it's it pauses for
Speaker 3: you until you open it so you can finish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do not remember that.
Speaker 3: As so many there's a lot of fucked up things
Speaker 3: in an episode. That's one of them.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I got off track. I was gonna say something else,
Speaker 3: but I love space stuff. I love it. What about
Speaker 3: that guy from we talked about him, that one guy
Speaker 3: from Vegas, Nevada who build all those contraptions involving like
Speaker 3: an accordion, like inflating and deflating space stations for cargo
Speaker 3: and possible living habitats.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was the guy that did the NI see
Speaker 3: or you whatever. He had that. Yeah. He was the
Speaker 3: guy who owned the Uenta basin the ranch. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that guy he did stuff like that. Yes, he had
Speaker 3: a space program thing. He was into space a lot
Speaker 3: bigger aerospace. He had that invention with the habitats, but
Speaker 3: the infloat it inflated and deflating things.
Speaker 1: I remember that. I think when we talked about Skinwalker Ranch,
Speaker 1: we might have talked about that every day.
Speaker 3: We did it on the background of him, because he
Speaker 3: was the owning Skinwalker at that time or in a
Speaker 3: while anymore.
Speaker 1: But that's right. I mean we've done you know, biodome
Speaker 1: experiments here on Earth where you know astronaut people, right,
Speaker 1: but there is there's a massive, huge one. I just
Speaker 1: watched a documentary on it a few months ago where
Speaker 1: you know, eight to ten people who would be astronauts
Speaker 1: were locked in this thing that had an atmosphere, it
Speaker 1: had a desert, it had an ocean, it had everything.
Speaker 1: And the thing was could they survive here simulating on
Speaker 1: another planet surfas you know, and they couldn't. You know,
Speaker 1: they couldn't. They couldn't get along and things fell apart
Speaker 1: and turned to this whole thing. But I mean the
Speaker 1: experiments are in place. We're working on that technology. We've
Speaker 1: been working on that technology. Now it's time we go
Speaker 1: out there do something.
Speaker 3: They won't let us go. Okay, but I don't want
Speaker 3: to go anybody else.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go. No, no, thank you. So
Speaker 1: that's it. What do you think it was fun? I
Speaker 1: like that long? Not too long? No, no, it was
Speaker 1: definitely long, but stop interesting.
Speaker 3: It was definitely long. I'm not gonna say. I'm not
Speaker 3: gonna lie and say it wasn't long. Definitely wasn't long,
Speaker 3: but I'm fine with it.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Oscar take us home on a Suez rocket. Sometimes
Speaker 1: that helps, Dude. You can. When I have sore throats
Speaker 1: and stuff, I gargle with whiskey, no joke. It's the
Speaker 1: old I feel like.
Speaker 3: I feel like it's a wild West. You talk.
Speaker 1: Oh, definitely, that's passed down generations, generations, and I think
Speaker 1: it worked. A couple of weeks ago, my back tooth
Speaker 1: was really bothering me. It really hurt. So I took
Speaker 1: some whiskey and I was swishing and holding it yeah
Speaker 1: in my mouth back there, and man, I swear of
Speaker 1: got it made the acho away.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna show you a clip. Nope, nope, nope, nope,
Speaker 3: nope nope, Stop talking, stop talking, trying to find that
Speaker 3: it's with uh.
Speaker 4: With uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: Some sub continent licoration. The trooths combined with the badsaf
Speaker 1: and a strong sholl whiskey ginger up. Also I'm mixed
Speaker 1: with the.
Speaker 3: Citrus peel and a strong shot of whiskey.
Speaker 1: Of course, in fact, the ginger root and citrus pan
Speaker 1: will still be well on you, just a whiskey, just
Speaker 1: like that. It's exactly that. It's true.
Speaker 3: Lord John Marbury listener, Oh my god, we're there as
Speaker 3: welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: Is that what you're about to say? Four five four
Speaker 1: three tins? Well?
Speaker 3: And it would it be if we only attracted cars
Speaker 3: as our democrat And it was.
Speaker 1: It was a fucked up. It was a so I
Speaker 1: got a car, I did not go with the tesla.
Speaker 1: I did not go with the tesla. I guess some
Speaker 1: of it had to do with like, man, you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm driving somewhere and someone throws a brick at
Speaker 1: my car or keys it, like I don't want to
Speaker 1: deal with this nightmare I.
Speaker 3: Mean, I'm pro shating people into not buying a fslow.
Speaker 3: I'm fine with it.
Speaker 1: There you go. I thought I don't love that.
Speaker 3: Definitely was stopping love it. Do you watch this in too?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Oh yeah, the Nazi World.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's so funny, so funny, funnier still
Speaker 3: that I didn't immediately get it either. What do you
Speaker 3: mean that I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't notice the town? Yeah, no one, I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone did.
Speaker 3: No, I'm sure some people did, but you but but yeah,
Speaker 3: but like it's so I'm not saying I was disappointed
Speaker 3: on myself, but a little bit that I didn't get
Speaker 3: it because I guess I'm just so used to and
Speaker 3: that's why they played on watching American television and getting
Speaker 3: used to seeing all white actors in a place, and
Speaker 3: that's what And it just threw me off because I'm
Speaker 3: so used to it. I should have I should have
Speaker 3: been notified.
Speaker 1: It's okay.
Speaker 3: And when they show him what about that fucking Hitler post,
Speaker 3: You're like, oh, I didn't see that. That was funny.
Speaker 1: That was funny