Speaker 1: Stas always look to the sky.
Speaker 2: The Doctor Sky Experience is on the air seventy seven WABC.
Speaker 3: Now here's Doctor Sky.
Speaker 4: And welcome once again, ladies and gentlemen to your weekend
Speaker 4: as we bring you from the powerhouse blow towards signal
Speaker 4: Talk Radio seventy seven WABC and broadcasting proudly from the
Speaker 4: center of the universe, New York City to the nation
Speaker 4: the world. Welcome once again to the Doctor Sky Experience,
Speaker 4: a show that talks about the great mysteries from the
Speaker 4: realms of astronomy, space, aviation, weather, celebrity guests, and stories
Speaker 4: of American exceptionalism. As may you may have heard in
Speaker 4: the past. We love to call our show sort of
Speaker 4: a theater of the mind, bringing you the best guest
Speaker 4: that we just mention in this entire two hour experience
Speaker 4: from the theater. And we'd like to thank our helms,
Speaker 4: both Bill and Jackson, for navigating through the airwaves all
Speaker 4: the great guests there we get and all the great
Speaker 4: callers that we get to this radio show. The contact
Speaker 4: number is always is one eight hundred eight four eight
Speaker 4: nine two two two, or simply one eight hundred eight
Speaker 4: four to eight WABC. And while you're at it. We
Speaker 4: always encourage you to do this. Why not download the
Speaker 4: WABC app because not only here in our so called
Speaker 4: theater of the mind, we have opportunities to have you
Speaker 4: experience the many other rooms in this great broadcast mansion
Speaker 4: that you can learn about. And what would you do.
Speaker 4: You'd be learning so much more about all the great
Speaker 4: hosts that are on this radio station, and so much
Speaker 4: more the podcasts and ways to get in touch with
Speaker 4: the things that go on at WABC. In tonight's adventure,
Speaker 4: we're going to be doing something a little different. We
Speaker 4: go back to the I know the basic tenets of
Speaker 4: the Doctor Sky experience when we talk about astronomy, space, aviation,
Speaker 4: and weather, but it's one that's interesting, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 4: Is I'd like to throw the question out because so
Speaker 4: much in the way of space news has happened in
Speaker 4: the past week. We'll talk in detail in just a
Speaker 4: few moments about the remnants of the SpaceX booster rocket
Speaker 4: that impacted the Moon earlier this week. Many of you
Speaker 4: were told, and I don't know in legacy media that
Speaker 4: there might be an opportunity to see such an event.
Speaker 4: You'res truly who's watching it? But we have more important
Speaker 4: things to share with you about that particular incident. And
Speaker 4: if we go back into our time tunnel, the question
Speaker 4: that I want to throw out there to the audience
Speaker 4: is this, what does the US space program mean to
Speaker 4: you regarding American exceptionalism. We've been doing this quite a
Speaker 4: long time and it's interesting, nonetheless to many. But if
Speaker 4: we go back in our time tonal, let's think about
Speaker 4: something that happened back in nineteen ninety one, on the
Speaker 4: date of August the ninth, the first email was actually
Speaker 4: sent from space. It seems almost hard to believe that
Speaker 4: in our busy day we go about sending emails like
Speaker 4: we don't even give it a second thought. But about
Speaker 4: the Space Shuttle Atlantis STS forty three, NASA astronauts Sean
Speaker 4: and Lucid and James Adamson used a Macintosh portable to
Speaker 4: transmit the first ever email from orbit feeding an applee.
Speaker 4: And also, if you go deeper into the space subject,
Speaker 4: on this particular date, that is August ninth, nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 4: Luna twenty four was launched. What was that? The Soviet
Speaker 4: Union launched Luna twenty four, the final robotic lunar probe
Speaker 4: on the lunar program which successory returned one hundred and
Speaker 4: seventy grams of moon soil containing traces of water. And
Speaker 4: to begin our conversation about the great legacy of space
Speaker 4: and your questions and comments at one eight hundred eight
Speaker 4: four eight nine two two two, our very special guest,
Speaker 4: the guy we go to on space subjects like this,
Speaker 4: is Rod Pyle. He's the editor in chief of ad
Speaker 4: Astro Magazine, a print in digital quarterly published by the
Speaker 4: National Space Society. He's authored many books nonfiction and has
Speaker 4: co authored four public reports for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Speaker 4: Pile has hosted two podcast series, including This Week in Space,
Speaker 4: and as a frequent guest not only on this show,
Speaker 4: other national shows, radio shows, and he appears on various
Speaker 4: television shows as a space expert. With that, we welcome
Speaker 4: Rod Bile. Rod, thank you, always a pleasure to have
Speaker 4: you and sharing the information that you do about the
Speaker 4: space program.
Speaker 5: How are you.
Speaker 6: I'm very good, Thanks for having me on, and I
Speaker 6: want to compliment you for something.
Speaker 5: I think we've.
Speaker 6: Talked about this before, but in one of my podcasts,
Speaker 6: which I was in a setup to do live over
Speaker 6: at KFI in La our big am blowtorch. They sat
Speaker 6: me down and I thought we were recording that day
Speaker 6: and we weren't, and they said, okay, bok, and I
Speaker 6: was like, I was completely tongue tied. And I'm never
Speaker 6: tongue tied. I do public speaking all the time, but
Speaker 6: for some reason, sitting in a hot little room with
Speaker 6: a microphone, I was absolutely paralyzed.
Speaker 5: So hats off to you for doing what you.
Speaker 6: Do, because it's a lot harder than people think it is.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you, Rod, And he's not being paid to
Speaker 4: say that. But again, there are many people out there
Speaker 4: that do a great job in this. But it's interesting
Speaker 4: going back to you and you're you know, entire legacy
Speaker 4: of books that you write. I mean, I'm not a writer.
Speaker 4: I don't have a book out yet. Many people say
Speaker 4: I should, but that's another story for another time. And that,
Speaker 4: of course is not a subject that I talk about
Speaker 4: on air. But about you, I got to ask you
Speaker 4: this route. You know you're fascination for space. Well when
Speaker 4: did this begin? Because, by the way, I'm two hundred
Speaker 4: and thirty days older than you and your birthday's coming
Speaker 4: up on September seventeenth, right.
Speaker 5: Yes, it is the Big seven zero.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, back when you and I were in
Speaker 6: elementary school, I was in pasting to California doing drop
Speaker 6: drills and all that kind of stuff, and at least
Speaker 6: here when I went to the school library looking for
Speaker 6: books on space, all they had was stuff like the
Speaker 6: big Golden Book of Rockets and the newest Thing, and
Speaker 6: it looked like something von Braun Von Braun and fever Dream.
Speaker 6: You know, it looked like a big silver banana. So
Speaker 6: there's very little available there. But I was interested, probably
Speaker 6: from second grade on, because, as you remember, amazing things
Speaker 6: were happening in the real space program.
Speaker 5: This is the Space Race.
Speaker 6: The throwing down the gauntlet by President Kennedy, We're going
Speaker 6: to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. Then not
Speaker 6: too much later, quietly saying hey, Russians, would you like
Speaker 6: to cooperate.
Speaker 5: And going to the moon, But they said no.
Speaker 6: So we had this as you and I were growing up,
Speaker 6: this sensational series of flights to the Gemini program and
Speaker 6: then finally the Power Program, culminating with six amazing trips
Speaker 6: to the lunar surface, and we got to sit and
Speaker 6: watch that live on television. It was just one of
Speaker 6: the greatest times to be alive. Ever, of course we
Speaker 6: didn't know how much danger those guys were in every
Speaker 6: second they were up there, because that wasn't really pushed
Speaker 6: out to the public very much. As I look back
Speaker 6: on it now, and I think I told you.
Speaker 5: Last was on the show.
Speaker 6: I'm finishing a book right now, a biography of Jerry Griffin,
Speaker 6: who's the last of the pall of flight directors that
Speaker 6: hasn't put out a biography as far.
Speaker 5: As I know. And we marvel at the fact.
Speaker 6: That it worked because that was basically nineteen fifty technology
Speaker 6: that had been spruced up into the mid sixties, and.
Speaker 5: They got all those guys back safely. It's just blows
Speaker 5: my mind.
Speaker 6: So that's really what kindled my interest, and it just
Speaker 6: never went away.
Speaker 4: Well, I question to the audience, what does the US
Speaker 4: Space program mean to you, ladies? I'm regarding American exceptionalism,
Speaker 4: so many stories and Rod Pile. We have a very
Speaker 4: special guest here we're going to introduce to this audience,
Speaker 4: and I'm really privilege and honored to be able to
Speaker 4: give this gentleman and read a little bit of his
Speaker 4: bio and share with him in the audience. His time
Speaker 4: as an astronaut. Who we're talking about. We're talking about
Speaker 4: Ed Dwight. Who's Ed Dwight. He enlisted. Captain Ed Dwight
Speaker 4: enlisted in the US Air Force in nineteen fifty three
Speaker 4: and was commissioned a lieutenant in nineteen fifty five. In
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty one, at the direction of President John F. Kennedy,
Speaker 4: he became the first African American to enter the Air
Speaker 4: Force training program, from which NASA selected astronauts. Although we
Speaker 4: completed training at the Aerospace Research Pilot School in nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty three and advanced to the second round of the program, end,
Speaker 4: he was not selected for the Astronaut Corps. Dwight finally
Speaker 4: traveled into space on Blue Origins NS twenty five mission
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty four, becoming the oldest person to ever
Speaker 4: participate in the spaceflight, a record previously held by William Shatner,
Speaker 4: and in twenty twenty rightfully, he became an honorary member
Speaker 4: of the US Space Force. During a ceremony at the
Speaker 4: Pentagon with that Captain Ed Dwight, it's a privitly noted
Speaker 4: to have you on this radio show, which we call
Speaker 4: The Doctor's Guy Experience. Hope you're with us, and thank you,
Speaker 4: my friend, for your passion, for the service that you
Speaker 4: gave the American people and your spaceflight. How are you, ed, Dwight.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm faring I'm having a few healthy issues right now.
Speaker 7: But thank you for all the kind words. Uh and
Speaker 7: and even reaching back to even you know, consider talking
Speaker 7: to uh, you know, talking to me, and and and
Speaker 7: all of the all the things that it seems so
Speaker 7: long ago that you know that all that all this
Speaker 7: stuff took place. But uh, obviously I keep up with
Speaker 7: the States program, and I keep up with all the
Speaker 7: all the all the current astronauts and then they come
Speaker 7: to the flat of Denver to visit me in my
Speaker 7: studio and uh and so I keep my hand in
Speaker 7: uh uh and uh Victor Glover uh, as you know,
Speaker 7: just went to the Moon and he's one of my
Speaker 7: he's one of my proteges by the way, uh and
Speaker 7: and and and uh yeah, doing his mission. We we
Speaker 7: managed to to talk over the phone on the last
Speaker 7: mission that he went up and did all that magic
Speaker 7: stuff that they do up there now. So I'm glad
Speaker 7: to be on your program. And like I said, I
Speaker 7: am having a few healthy issues right now.
Speaker 4: You want to honor your service and not to keep
Speaker 4: you too long here. I know this is great for you,
Speaker 4: but also I want to mention this and I think
Speaker 4: the audience needs to know, is you're an accomplished sculptor.
Speaker 4: This is interesting. Your passion has always been art, obviously
Speaker 4: the love of space. In the United States Air Force,
Speaker 4: your services very much honored. HESKEW have completed that as
Speaker 4: a number of public monuments, including the Texas African American
Speaker 4: History Memorial on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol
Speaker 4: and among others, the African American History Monument on the
Speaker 4: grounds of the South Carolina State House. That's an interesting thing.
Speaker 4: Your passion has always been obviously looking skyward. But tell
Speaker 4: us about the passion for being an artist and a sculptor.
Speaker 4: That's an incredible skill, something that I'm not even familiar with.
Speaker 4: Share with us a little bit about that. It's amazing.
Speaker 7: Well, I this is, you know, a very very change.
Speaker 7: I had two options to make a life's work. I
Speaker 7: grew up on a farm in Kansas City, and I
Speaker 7: came out of the shoot making art from the time
Speaker 7: when I started school when I was two years old,
Speaker 7: and I started doing art at that time, I was
Speaker 7: doing full bodies and when I was two and three
Speaker 7: and four years old, where the other kids was doing
Speaker 7: stick figures. And I was an artist all the way
Speaker 7: through school.
Speaker 5: As a matter of.
Speaker 7: Fact, when I graduated from high school, I got an
Speaker 7: art scholarship to the Kansasity Art Institute. But the other
Speaker 7: alternative option I had was I grew up on a
Speaker 7: farm that was right next to the Sabine Airport Fairfax
Speaker 7: Airport in Kansas City, and from the from the time
Speaker 7: I was two and three, Mom used to take us
Speaker 7: to the me and my oldest sisters at the airport
Speaker 7: to tell stories about how big the world was. And
Speaker 7: this airport was a great vehicle because these planes took
Speaker 7: off and went some magic place, and they come back
Speaker 7: and they land and it'd been to some magic place.
Speaker 7: And so I started going to the airport every day
Speaker 7: and I got my first flight and the Steerman.
Speaker 8: When I was eight.
Speaker 7: Years old, I got a job cleaning out airplanes for
Speaker 7: pilots that are from Kansas and Missouri that went to
Speaker 7: Colorado for hunting trips. There was no war at the time,
Speaker 7: and so as a result, I was around airplanes all
Speaker 7: of my early life and I started studying about flying
Speaker 7: as and I didn't have any hopes of being a
Speaker 7: flying root for real, because all these people were around
Speaker 7: row white guys, uh, you know. And it was this
Speaker 7: little little little brown kid going to the airport every day,
Speaker 7: and they kind of adopted me. But I got this
Speaker 7: fascinated with fascination with flying U and I I had
Speaker 7: a paper run and I was throwing papers all the
Speaker 7: way through college. Uh. And I was, you know, I
Speaker 7: had this art scholarship, so I had to make a
Speaker 7: decision as to whether I was going to be an
Speaker 7: artist or or a pilot guy. But I was throwing
Speaker 7: my papers. I had a black paper run and a
Speaker 7: white paper rout. And I was, like I said, I
Speaker 7: was in college storm newspapers, and on the front pages
Speaker 7: of the black paper was a black pilot, was a tuskegeearman.
Speaker 7: They got shot down in Korea, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 7: I got this, Oh my god, they're letting black folks
Speaker 7: fly airplanes. What And I immediately apply for pilot training.
Speaker 7: And they sent me to Denver. Thirty three of us
Speaker 7: from this cottage to Denver, and I was the only
Speaker 7: I was the thirty three. I was the only one
Speaker 7: that passed a pilot training. Two other guys pass from
Speaker 7: a navigator, and so the Air Force just sucked me
Speaker 7: right up and said, you know we want you now.
Speaker 4: You bet, my friend, you're right. I mean, in those days,
Speaker 4: African Americans were not probably won in the pilot seat much.
Speaker 4: Your story is amazing. Ed DWYIGHTE, as we've mentioned before,
Speaker 4: a gentleman who was selected by President John F. Kennedy
Speaker 4: to be the first African American astronaut in space. The
Speaker 4: story continues that he finally got his wish and rightfully so,
Speaker 4: for his service to America by flying in Blue Origins
Speaker 4: US twenty five mission and twenty twenty five as thou build.
Speaker 4: Not to put you in a different light here, but
Speaker 4: this is interesting. The oldest person to ever participate in
Speaker 4: a spaceplight previously held by William Shatner. As long as
Speaker 4: you're willing to do this, mister Dwight, Captain Dwight, the
Speaker 4: phone number here one eight hundred eight four eight nine
Speaker 4: two two two. If you do have a question for
Speaker 4: mister Dwight, Captain Dwight, we would welcome that. Now let
Speaker 4: me do something here, Rod Pile, I'd like you to
Speaker 4: say hello to Captain Dwight. And you have a question,
Speaker 4: I'm sure, or even a comment, Please continue.
Speaker 6: Sir, Well, it was an honor to meet you, Captain Dwight,
Speaker 6: and actually we met at the International Space Development Conference
Speaker 6: a couple of years ago. You were there having a
Speaker 6: delightful discussion with Carlton Johnson, and I'm one of the
Speaker 6: co organizers of that, and I think we also both
Speaker 6: have a friend in common with Dylan Taylor.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yes, who's a wonderful guy.
Speaker 4: And describe those people to us, Rod's in case the
Speaker 4: audience doesn't know who both of.
Speaker 7: You are talking about.
Speaker 6: So Carlton Johnson is the CEO of the National Space
Speaker 6: Society who signs my paychecks, and he's also a retired
Speaker 6: colonel from the USA Force. And I mean, the entire
Speaker 6: audience was riveted by Captain Dwight's hawk, but I think
Speaker 6: of all those people, the one that was glowing the
Speaker 6: most was Carlton because he was meeting a hero of his.
Speaker 6: Dylan Taylor owns Voyager Space. They're building a space station,
Speaker 6: and Dylan is a well situated individual financially. He started
Speaker 6: a nonprofit called Space for Humanity a few years ago.
Speaker 6: The main purpose of that group is to help people
Speaker 6: get space lights. And they do a lot of other stuff,
Speaker 6: but this is one of their big things. So, Captain Dwight,
Speaker 6: I believe they were instrumental getting you onto the the
Speaker 6: Blue Orchard flight.
Speaker 5: Correct.
Speaker 7: Well, yes, among others. The Black ash and group really
Speaker 7: all got together. And they're the ones that you know,
Speaker 7: you know, the lit the fire because they're they're also
Speaker 7: they would look, this guy was the first one. So
Speaker 7: and we're up here getting all this glory and stuff
Speaker 7: and and and he and he just doesn't seem to
Speaker 7: be getting any glory about space because by the end,
Speaker 7: I'm this this artist, this running around doing all these
Speaker 7: all these memorials and stuff. And so I kind of
Speaker 7: attribute the the political push to the to the group
Speaker 7: of black astronauts that all got together because uh and
Speaker 7: after their missions, they would uh land in Houston getting
Speaker 7: T thirty eight and come out to my studio and
Speaker 7: and and uh as a matter of fact, I uh
Speaker 7: uh a Glover got me when he was at the
Speaker 7: space station. Uh he actually uh the Kimasudia took pictures
Speaker 7: and and and and and send my pictures up there
Speaker 7: the space safe. So people around the world to see
Speaker 7: me modeling sculptures and stuff.
Speaker 4: That's amazing, you know, that's an incredible story, Rod Pyle,
Speaker 4: amazing as we have you for our two hour journey
Speaker 4: into the night sky. The question we posed to our
Speaker 4: audience out there and again far and wide around the world, Captain,
Speaker 4: and of course Rod knows as well, what does the
Speaker 4: US space program mean to you folks regarding American exceptionalism.
Speaker 4: Let's go to the phone lines and see how many
Speaker 4: people can get in in the short opportunity. With Captain
Speaker 4: Ed Dwight on line one, we welcome Frank in the Bronx. Frank,
Speaker 4: you're on with Rod Bile and Captain Dwight. How are
Speaker 4: you this morning?
Speaker 9: Hey guys? I high capital love like.
Speaker 4: And I can hear you a little bit better Frank,
Speaker 4: And if you go just a little bit slower, I
Speaker 4: think every but he would be able to hear this clearly.
Speaker 4: Please start again.
Speaker 9: Thank you. So a couple of things. I am in
Speaker 9: awe with NASA and have space folding. I I am
Speaker 9: fascinated with the Saturn five rocket, how violent and how
Speaker 9: how it how it works, you know, and the Space
Speaker 9: Shuttle to forget about it, you know where it takes
Speaker 9: the land that space shuttle it comes down with no
Speaker 9: no engines, and it has to goide and and a
Speaker 9: bunch of different it has to circle, make a bunch
Speaker 9: of different circles and then land. I am fascionated that,
Speaker 9: and I'm a fascinated with how a space program calculates
Speaker 9: everything supercisely. Or it's just I'm an you know it
Speaker 9: is crazy.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Frank, you bring up some good points either, gentlemen,
Speaker 4: if you want to jump in on this. Frank brings
Speaker 4: up the power of American exceptionalism in the space program.
Speaker 4: Whoever would like to take that, please continue.
Speaker 6: Well, I guess I'll jump in. I I too him
Speaker 6: in all of this program, and I had a chance
Speaker 6: to work elbow to elbow with some of those very
Speaker 6: smart people, mostly at Jeff Propulsional Laboratory.
Speaker 5: I was not one of them.
Speaker 6: I was a writer, so I just followed them around
Speaker 6: and watched what they did, tried to make an understandable
Speaker 6: for other people. But seeing a team of people spend
Speaker 6: a half day figuring out what instructions to send a
Speaker 6: rover on Mars to get within a couple of millimeters
Speaker 6: of a rock they want to drill, or even more impressively,
Speaker 6: figuring out the math it takes to shoot something that
Speaker 6: it's going to go into orbit around Saturn and it's
Speaker 6: got a hit within this very narrow range of good
Speaker 6: degrees almost a billion miles away. I mean, I took
Speaker 6: some higher maths, but that stuff just blows my mind.
Speaker 6: Doctor Sky, you've gone much further than this than I have.
Speaker 6: You have a doctorate, you had to do a lot
Speaker 6: of math to do that, but listening to these folks
Speaker 6: go what they go through just blows my mind. And then,
Speaker 6: of course is your guest mentor your caller mentioned the
Speaker 6: Saturn five. It was a pretty conservative design, but for
Speaker 6: the time when they started designing that, when rockets were
Speaker 6: still had about a fifty percent failure rate. It's just
Speaker 6: remarkable that just a handful of years later that thing
Speaker 6: delivered humans out to the Moon over and over and
Speaker 6: over again without a single fatality or accident.
Speaker 5: So it's amazing.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Frank and the Bronx thank you for participating in
Speaker 4: the Doctor Sky experience. I'm going to ask this kindly,
Speaker 4: Captain Dwight, if you'd be willing to stay with us,
Speaker 4: if you obviously can do this and certainly I know
Speaker 4: your passion is there. We'd love to at least have
Speaker 4: you on air with many people that may want to call.
Speaker 4: I'm filled with questions, and so is Rod Vile. So
Speaker 4: as loan as that's fine, we appreciate you greatly, my friend.
Speaker 7: Sure sure, sure, sure.
Speaker 4: No problem. You know something. We're going to go just
Speaker 4: to the hard bake here just a couple of minutes,
Speaker 4: so I probably won't jump in with that particular question
Speaker 4: just yet. But being the oldest person to go to space, remember,
Speaker 4: and I remember this vividly. I'm sure Rod does. When
Speaker 4: John Glenn, the then Senator, went in on the American
Speaker 4: Space Shuttle, I think his age was seventy seven. But
Speaker 4: in about a minute or so. And this is a
Speaker 4: really bad question, or it's a good question for a
Speaker 4: short answer. What's it like to go up there? I mean,
Speaker 4: even though you were up there for nine minutes, tell
Speaker 4: us in a more spiritual way, what's it like to
Speaker 4: go leave the Earth's gravity?
Speaker 7: Well, it was nothing less than fantastic. You know, I
Speaker 7: had nine thousand dollars of flying time, and I achieved
Speaker 7: death as a test father. People don't think about the
Speaker 7: work that I was really doing as a graduate airstace
Speaker 7: research pilot, and they had twenty three projects with NASA
Speaker 7: as well as the Air Force, with all the with
Speaker 7: all the excuse me, engineering projects and stuff. When I
Speaker 7: got this opportunity, I wasn't nervous about it, but I
Speaker 7: had all that background in the experience. I guess I'd
Speaker 7: been up to about seventy five or eighty thousand feet
Speaker 7: in some of my test projects, So I was kind
Speaker 7: of I was kind of smug about this whole process.
Speaker 4: You know, you make it sound so simple, my friend.
Speaker 7: Yeah. And we went through training, and I'm obviously this
Speaker 7: old guy. It was interesting all the little miniature tests
Speaker 7: that we had to go through. I out did all
Speaker 7: these other six younger folks with really well.
Speaker 5: Captain.
Speaker 4: We got to take that break. And I hate to
Speaker 4: cut anybody with any level of experience here short, but
Speaker 4: we try to treat everybody the same here. And that
Speaker 4: is what the heartbreak is if you're just joining us
Speaker 4: the Doctor Skuy experience, privileging on it. To have Captain
Speaker 4: ed Dwight, a test pilot selected by President John F. Ken,
Speaker 4: I need to be the first African American to enter
Speaker 4: the astronaut program. And space historian and author Rod Pyle,
Speaker 4: with your questions and comments. We see the phone calls coming.
Speaker 4: In one, eight hundred, eight four, eight nine, two, two two.
Speaker 4: We'll talk more about the new space capitalism and the
Speaker 4: entrepreneurial path to the stars with you and our great guests.
Speaker 2: The Doctor Sky Experience entertaining and informative on the Red
Speaker 2: Apple Podcast Network. This is the Doctor Sky Experience. Always
Speaker 2: look to the sky seventy seven WABC.
Speaker 3: Now Here's Doctor Sky.
Speaker 10: Blake travels billions of years just so we can watch
Speaker 10: a star say goodbye. But in this darkness, every end
Speaker 10: is just the beginning of something beautiful.
Speaker 4: Thirty two minutes after the hour, privilegent honored to have
Speaker 4: on the line two very special guests, author and space
Speaker 4: historian Rod Pyle, and also very much honored to have
Speaker 4: retired United States Air Force camptin Ed Dwight. His story
Speaker 4: is most amazing. In nineteen sixty one, at the direction
Speaker 4: of President John F. Kennedy, he became the first African
Speaker 4: American to enter the Air Force training program from which
Speaker 4: NASA selected its astronauts, and often and not to be
Speaker 4: overly repeated, becoming the oldest person to ever participate in
Speaker 4: a spaceflight a record previously held by William Shatner in
Speaker 4: a launch and Blue Origins ENNS twenty five mission in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four. Gentlemen, thank you for being with us.
Speaker 4: Let's continue with the phone calls they rule here in
Speaker 4: the Theater of the Mind. Line number three, we go
Speaker 4: to Joan in New York City. Good morning, John, how
Speaker 4: are you well?
Speaker 11: Good morning, doctor Sky. I have a couple of questions
Speaker 11: for you. I heard on NPR that there's going to
Speaker 11: be a partial solar eclipse on August twelfth, and much bigger,
Speaker 11: not quite total, but a lunary eclipse on August twenty
Speaker 11: seventh or twenty eight. So what can you tell us?
Speaker 11: Where are the best places on Earth to view these
Speaker 11: where you would get the largest eclipse? And they said
Speaker 11: something intriguing which I didn't quite understand. Maybe you understand
Speaker 11: what they meant. They said that a lunary eclipse always
Speaker 11: follows a solar eclipse, and I don't know what that means. Eventually.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, thank vice versa. But let me start off briefly.
Speaker 4: This is what's happening August twelfth, coming up right around
Speaker 4: the corner, there'll be a total solar eclipse for lucky
Speaker 4: people in Europe, particularly Spain, and we here in the
Speaker 4: New York area or the East Coast virtually have no
Speaker 4: ability to see any partiality of this. But the big one.
Speaker 4: Not to take time from our great guests here, but
Speaker 4: the subject is in accordance with what we're talking about
Speaker 4: space science astronomy. August two, twenty twenty seven. If you're
Speaker 4: in an area called luxor Egypt, you'll get to see
Speaker 4: the longest total solar eclipse of all. But what happens
Speaker 4: there is a symbiosis or a connection. When there is
Speaker 4: a total eclipse of the Sun or partial, you usually
Speaker 4: get one that happens some fourteen days later due to
Speaker 4: the alignment of the planetary system. So we appreciate Joan.
Speaker 4: Do you have a question though, regarding what we're talking about.
Speaker 11: With Ed and also with oh, just congratulations to that man,
Speaker 11: the oldest man in space. I can't imagine having the freedom,
Speaker 11: the courage, your duty to go up in space. And
Speaker 11: I'm a little younger than you are, not a lot
Speaker 11: situation to you. And also being sost African American in
Speaker 11: the program, I can catch fabulous. So I thank you
Speaker 11: for that, Thank you.
Speaker 4: So much, and I hope. I answered you. Let's continue
Speaker 4: on line. The time is limited. Line one, Greg and
Speaker 4: Michigan calls in again. Good morning, Greg, you're on with
Speaker 4: two very interesting guests. I'm sure.
Speaker 12: Good morning everybody, mister positive boom shacka laca. I've got
Speaker 12: to ask you guys the question of the universe is
Speaker 12: it infinite? And if it is made by God? Can
Speaker 12: it be infinite?
Speaker 4: Very interesting? I don't know Rod, you want to jump
Speaker 4: on that one because I'm going to try to get
Speaker 4: it into more of the space conversation. But go ahead,
Speaker 4: this is interesting your thoughts on this that?
Speaker 6: Greg, I wouldn't touch that with a ten light year
Speaker 6: long call.
Speaker 5: How about religious persons? So I'm probably not the right guy.
Speaker 4: Well, captain please jump in. I mean it's your time
Speaker 4: on stage on the in the theater of the mine.
Speaker 4: Go ahead.
Speaker 7: No, No, I couldn't answer that question, but you know
Speaker 7: I could answer the question you asked. What it was
Speaker 7: my experience on the on the recent on my recent flight. Yeah,
Speaker 7: you know at launch when when?
Speaker 5: When? When?
Speaker 7: When the booster lit? I were're seventy feet in here
Speaker 7: in this in this capsule and boost when the booster lit?
Speaker 7: I thought the damn thing blew. I thought, the whole
Speaker 7: ship blew up. And I said to myself, well, I'm
Speaker 7: going to become a crashing to the ground any minute now.
Speaker 7: And I've lived a good life. I'm paying this to myself.
Speaker 7: And next thing, you all this thing so lifting up
Speaker 7: into the sky, and I said, oh, I said, oh,
Speaker 7: this is how it works.
Speaker 4: That's amazing. So when you get to the top, when
Speaker 4: you get to the Apoge, I mean you go up
Speaker 4: about what about fifty some miles or that line in
Speaker 4: space is probably fifty sixty miles right.
Speaker 7: Right, uh. And so I am sitting on top of
Speaker 7: the explosive bolt is right below my butt, uh, And
Speaker 7: the exposive bolt to separate booster from the capsule exploded.
Speaker 7: And so I said, well, they didn't get me the
Speaker 7: first time, they got me this time. And the next thing,
Speaker 7: you know this, this booster starts moving away from the capsule.
Speaker 7: And I was sitting there absolutely amazed, and I got
Speaker 7: a chance to look down at the Earth, and I
Speaker 7: looked at this wonderful little I've seen the curvature of
Speaker 7: the Earth, obviously as I test about it, but seeing
Speaker 7: the Earth from from that distance, so you got this
Speaker 7: wonderful neat little well ordered ball down there, there's spectacular
Speaker 7: in view. Everything is organized and beautiful, and it's just incredible.
Speaker 7: And there's no boundaries between countries and states and and
Speaker 7: all this sort of thing, you know, And and I
Speaker 7: gotta I gotta an incredibly spiritual moment at that point
Speaker 7: in time. And I just could not imagine. Why, why
Speaker 7: these people on that little ball down there, I can't
Speaker 7: get along with each other?
Speaker 4: And I wow, that's an amazing statement, my friend, You're
Speaker 4: so correct. I mean, eight eight point seven billion people, Roden,
Speaker 4: that's amazing. Why do I have to have wars? Why
Speaker 4: can't we just be? Like you said? Why can't we
Speaker 4: all just And.
Speaker 7: I came to the conclusion that every elected official needs
Speaker 7: at least three orbits around this earth, and all the bs, well,
Speaker 7: it won't stop, but it will certainly slow down, uh,
Speaker 7: you know, trying to kill each other and do all
Speaker 7: these incredibly bad things for each other. Just it was
Speaker 7: my it was worth all all that whole life that
Speaker 7: I've lived just that few seconds of looking at the
Speaker 7: Earth and from that distance, and it just it was
Speaker 7: ever a movie. And you're already changed a lot of
Speaker 7: my values and things about what deserves and everything is
Speaker 7: all about.
Speaker 4: Actually absolutely right, Captain again, thanking you for your service
Speaker 4: and to all the people in all the branches, men
Speaker 4: and women of course, right dedication to America. I'm going
Speaker 4: to ask you this quick question. We'll go back to
Speaker 4: the callers and we'll get a Rod involved, and sure
Speaker 4: he has a number of questions too. Nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 4: Schack Yeger and General Curtis LeMay or what instrumental in
Speaker 4: moving forward your ability to become the first African American
Speaker 4: American astronaut in the training program? Talk about that, because
Speaker 4: I've had Chuck Yeager here before he passed, and he
Speaker 4: was a tough cookie to interview. Boy, I'll tell you
Speaker 4: I didn't get a lot of words out of him.
Speaker 4: All he ever said to me was yep, nope, I
Speaker 4: wanted to get more. But is that true? These guys
Speaker 4: were involved in you were moving up the line.
Speaker 7: No, these guys were the guys that stopped. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 7: Yeah. If Yeager was livid that that president didn't make
Speaker 7: him the first astronaut or put him on that astronaut team,
Speaker 7: he was very bitter about that.
Speaker 4: Wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and and the fact that that he was that
Speaker 7: the president would choose the black uh candidate. The steam
Speaker 7: came out of this guy's ears. And practically coming down
Speaker 7: to test by the school, he had a meeting with
Speaker 7: with the new students and the instructor staff. Uh and
Speaker 7: and he told these guys that uh uh, the President
Speaker 7: is trying to use him the end where he's trying
Speaker 7: to cram an inward down our throats. Uh And if
Speaker 7: we allow this guy to do this, that the president
Speaker 7: is going to take the whole uh make the whole
Speaker 7: space program black.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but truth is the
Speaker 4: best thing of all, Captain, because let me say this now,
Speaker 4: I now I have to consider myself an apology to
Speaker 4: the audience. You can't always believe everything you read here.
Speaker 4: So that's what I was reading. And again I'm dead
Speaker 4: wrong on that. Sorry to hear that.
Speaker 7: Well, all through test bout the school, he called me
Speaker 7: into his office every week and told me to my
Speaker 7: faith that I was not worthy, I shouldn't have been there,
Speaker 7: and the President's going to kill me. And it just
Speaker 7: went on through my whole training. And he was running
Speaker 7: around talking about how inadequate. I was out of my
Speaker 7: test bout of class. There was seventeen in the class,
Speaker 7: and I graduated seventh out of that seventeen, and I
Speaker 7: erupted in these states at the end, at the end
Speaker 7: of the thing, as it was, there were ten there
Speaker 7: were ten white guys that were below me, and it
Speaker 7: was your rating system that did this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sorry to hear that, and God bless because nowadays everybody,
Speaker 4: not because of the race, color, or creed, they should
Speaker 4: be given what obviously equal opportunity, men and women to
Speaker 4: aspire based on their credibility, their scores, and their ability
Speaker 4: to do the job, which is a tough one. I'm sure, Ron,
Speaker 4: I'm sure you have a quick comment or too, because
Speaker 4: the quick comment it almost sets us up to the
Speaker 4: next break here in about a minute and a half.
Speaker 6: Please continue, I do so, Captain Dwight.
Speaker 5: I have a question.
Speaker 6: I mean, you were a pioneering flight test, you were
Speaker 6: a potential astronaut candidate.
Speaker 5: No thanks to those.
Speaker 6: Guys, but why do you think it took another twenty
Speaker 6: two years to get a person of color in space
Speaker 6: in the American space program?
Speaker 4: Great question?
Speaker 7: Well, okay, okay, that is a great question because all
Speaker 7: through my training. I the President brought me to Washington
Speaker 7: every weekend to meet with the senator. This was a
Speaker 7: big political move. I met with almost all the Senators,
Speaker 7: trying to get political with the President, trying to get
Speaker 7: political support. I only met with the House of Leadership
Speaker 7: because of Fourida and thirty five remember members of that.
Speaker 7: So I couldn't meet with all those guys as a
Speaker 7: political move to move this whole black astronaut or blacks
Speaker 7: in space idea along. And from the time I got
Speaker 7: every one of the senators that I spoke to and
Speaker 7: how this twenty year think. Every single one of them
Speaker 7: wished me well, good luck, but you know you're twenty
Speaker 7: years too soon. Every single seven I talked to and
Speaker 7: it was this twenty year thing. And then Lewis and
Speaker 7: Clark were the last great pioneers. So this whole thing.
Speaker 7: America was one hundred percent against this whole thing, and
Speaker 7: it was just too soon, and there was no way
Speaker 7: that they were going to allow black to be involved
Speaker 7: in these already astronauts selections. So they had to move
Speaker 7: the thing back so that space was well explored and
Speaker 7: then you bring the blacks and the women in. And
Speaker 7: I faced that the whole time I was in the program.
Speaker 4: Well, gentlemen, we have to take that break again. Apologies
Speaker 4: for cutting anybody short, but we do have a ton
Speaker 4: of callers that would like to get in on the conversation.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back here on the Doctor Sky Experience.
Speaker 4: If you've called in, we'll do our very best to
Speaker 4: get you on with your questions and comments in the
Speaker 4: theater of the mind on the Doctor Sky Experience.
Speaker 2: The Doctor Sky Experience entertaining and informative on the Red
Speaker 2: Apple Podcast Network. This is the Doctor Sky Experience. Always
Speaker 2: look to the Sky. Seventy seven WABC Now here's Doctor Sky.
Speaker 13: Listen.
Speaker 14: Captain Jim Lovell, an old astronaut, has made four very
Speaker 14: significant flights. Hopefully that the people listen in, especially the
Speaker 14: young people, will get a good education kind of follow
Speaker 14: me in space, and it was a pleasure to be
Speaker 14: on the Doctor Sky's show and lots of let call
Speaker 14: of you.
Speaker 4: Forty seven minutes after the hour, we continue with the
Speaker 4: callers our two very special guests, author and space historian
Speaker 4: Rod Pyle and Ed Dwight, retired United States Air Force
Speaker 4: Captain Ed Dwight, one of the original astronauts the African
Speaker 4: American astronauts to be put into the space program and
Speaker 4: also the oldest person to participate in the spaceflight, beating
Speaker 4: out the age of William Shanner. Let's continue online number three.
Speaker 4: Welcome Dominic in New Jersey. You're on with our great guests.
Speaker 15: How are you, hello, Doctor Scott and all your guests
Speaker 15: are amazing as always of you keep me up late
Speaker 15: at night being that you do have all those great,
Speaker 15: great guests so well.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 15: I do want to ask Captain Dwight again, this is
Speaker 15: Dominic and it's really an honor to speak to you.
Speaker 15: I was reading a bit about you and I see
Speaker 15: how long you trained for space flight back in the sixties,
Speaker 15: but you know you finally flew at ninety was was
Speaker 15: the new Shepherd spacecraft? Spacecraft like a more forgiving ride
Speaker 15: than what you trained for back then, like with the
Speaker 15: g forces and like the vibration and physical stress of
Speaker 15: the launch. And at any point did you think, Wow,
Speaker 15: I'm like ninety years old and I'm actually doing this,
Speaker 15: or like thought twice about growing up. Thank you for
Speaker 15: for answering my questions.
Speaker 4: Woh, captain, do the human side of this? This is cool?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I never flew you know, in the newspaper. So
Speaker 7: I can't I can't answer, you know, I can't answer
Speaker 7: that question on the Can you give me the second
Speaker 7: question again?
Speaker 4: I guess Domina, go ahead.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: We had too many things that we can try to
Speaker 4: get to in a short time. What was the second yes?
Speaker 5: Go ahead?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 15: My question is when you flew up with the UH
Speaker 15: with the flu origin, right, was that spacecraft a little
Speaker 15: bit more forgiving Bride than what you trained for back
Speaker 15: when you were a young man, like especially the g's
Speaker 15: forces or the vibration and things like that, being that
Speaker 15: it was newer technology, right, So I was just wondering
Speaker 15: what your thoughts were with like the advancement of what
Speaker 15: we have now versus den. I mean, I know it
Speaker 15: didn't any easier, but.
Speaker 4: He never flew the first time, right, he never flew
Speaker 4: the first time. But yeah, your experiences. How was the
Speaker 4: G force on what you flew on?
Speaker 15: I guess it was training the training that he had.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, now the G forces in in the in
Speaker 7: the space shifts, it is really negligible. I mean, you know,
Speaker 7: I pulled up up to ten twelve z's when I
Speaker 7: was flight testing, So that's a totally different matters that
Speaker 7: the g forces in these space in these spacecraft, uh,
Speaker 7: doesn't come anywhere near you know, those kind of forces
Speaker 7: that we experienced as as hard nosed fighter pilots where
Speaker 7: we're doing flight testing and stuff. So there's really no comparison.
Speaker 7: The it's just not a factor. I'll just put it
Speaker 7: to you that way.
Speaker 4: I'm just so thank you Dominic and New Jersey appreciate
Speaker 4: you and your commentary. I got to ask you this, captain,
Speaker 4: the type of airplace you say, test pilot, What are
Speaker 4: some of the aircraft that you flew, because I'm sure
Speaker 4: many people out there may or may not have a
Speaker 4: vast experience in aviation, describe some of them that you flew.
Speaker 4: I'm amazed to hear this.
Speaker 7: I ended up flying twenty five different airplanes, from from
Speaker 7: the small planes up to a FLUB fifty two's and
Speaker 7: then flight testing you know one thirty five, which was
Speaker 7: the largest planes. I mean, you know, flying a B
Speaker 7: fifty two is like driving around in an apartment building.
Speaker 4: The pictures I've seen them, and they're called as you know, sir,
Speaker 4: there's an acronym. We won't use the real description, but
Speaker 4: it's the b U f F the buff and I
Speaker 4: won't describe it because it uses some letters together bad
Speaker 4: words that we don't say on the radio.
Speaker 7: But yeah, yeah, I ended up playing all the fighters,
Speaker 7: all one hundred series fighters, and they've been in earlier
Speaker 7: and some of the World War Two fighters I flew,
Speaker 7: and so it's just hard to, you know, to evaluate
Speaker 7: that whole range. Most parties going in the military and
Speaker 7: they fly one airplane their whole career, you know, variations
Speaker 7: of the same airplane their entire twenty thirty year career.
Speaker 7: And I was really lucky, and it was really really unusual,
Speaker 7: and I was in these various and sundry situations where
Speaker 7: I was on the base and I was some of
Speaker 7: them was out of sheer curiosity because I wanted to
Speaker 7: build up my flying time, so I went volunteered to
Speaker 7: fly other airplanes other than you know, you know, my
Speaker 7: main airplanes. So that's how I ended up flying twenty
Speaker 7: five different airplanes from light airplanes up to up to
Speaker 7: be fifty two's and which was really fascinating, fascinating flying career.
Speaker 7: And I was I was able to see how the
Speaker 7: different airplanes interacted and like the Airpore four, everybody talks
Speaker 7: about that there's the worst airplane in the world.
Speaker 5: It flies straight, Yes, sir.
Speaker 4: The manned missile, Lockheed's man missile.
Speaker 7: You're right right, twice the speed of some but don't
Speaker 7: try to turn it.
Speaker 5: Captain.
Speaker 4: I got one more thing and I want to get
Speaker 4: right in before the hour ends. And again my thank you,
Speaker 4: honoring your service in the military and what you've done
Speaker 4: and what you continue to do here. It's just an
Speaker 4: amazing story. You know, I was close with many of
Speaker 4: the Tuskegee airmen here in Arizona. I don't know if
Speaker 4: you ever knew the gentleman Bob Ashby. Oh my god, Hey,
Speaker 4: my friend Bob and I. Hey what we did. Look
Speaker 4: the audience, we're going to go. I wish we had
Speaker 4: fifty hours with you, but here it is real quick.
Speaker 4: What we did, we hooked at with the company and
Speaker 4: the Philippines that made these incredible models. So as an
Speaker 4: honor to the Tuskegee Airman, the redtail pilots, as you know,
Speaker 4: we did one for Bob Ashby. But sadly, Bob, like yourself,
Speaker 4: tells us the story of horrible discrimination because he was
Speaker 4: a command pilot on a major airline. I won't mention it.
Speaker 4: He barely got into that seat in the command seat
Speaker 4: because of the horrible discrimination. So that's a grising story,
Speaker 4: you bet. Rod Pile, Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 7: Bob and I were really really close by the way. Okay,
Speaker 7: we got something go ahead.
Speaker 6: I guess it just may not be the most probe.
Speaker 6: It's not a space question. But you know they called
Speaker 6: the F one.
Speaker 5: O for the Widow Maker. Was there a good reason
Speaker 5: for that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 7: Uh yeah, because if you didn't know, if you weren't
Speaker 7: on it every minute with that airplane, I mean it could,
Speaker 7: it could and would kill you.
Speaker 15: Uh.
Speaker 7: And and they were using it for for loyal over
Speaker 7: d landings and preparation for the Space Shuttle and test
Speaker 7: bout of school. They were using the F one O four.
Speaker 7: We'd go to thirty feet and shift the engine off
Speaker 7: and landing.
Speaker 12: Uh.
Speaker 7: They air plenty three hundred miles an hour, and everybody,
Speaker 7: everybody in the in the test arena there that got killed.
Speaker 7: Several guys got killed. Out of my classmates, seventeen of
Speaker 7: us graduated, and within three years only eight of us
Speaker 7: were left.
Speaker 4: You know, I got one closing thing to mention here,
Speaker 4: that F one O four. I don't know, Captain, if
Speaker 4: you were familiar with General Steve Ritchie, the Air Force
Speaker 4: ACE in Vietnam. He and I were friends and he
Speaker 4: sent me down. We went to visit in Florida. They
Speaker 4: had a detachment of fe O four's called Starfighters, And
Speaker 4: at one time he said to me, how about a
Speaker 4: ride in the back seat? And I said to him,
Speaker 4: in my very simple way, hell no, getting me in
Speaker 4: the back seat, But what a beautiful looking airplane? But yeah, go.
Speaker 7: Ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, no, I'm sorry. But what I want to
Speaker 4: mention this is most important your website. I want to
Speaker 4: mention ed Dwight dwighd dot com. You can learn so
Speaker 4: much more, ladies and gentlemen about his artistic side, the
Speaker 4: artistic side of this American hero, as I like to
Speaker 4: call you. And again, sir, thank you for your service
Speaker 4: to the United States. And again, a discrimination never be
Speaker 4: the path in this country ever. Again, it should be
Speaker 4: based on our character abilities, and that simply should be
Speaker 4: why it should be. And we could add in another thing,
Speaker 4: talking about truth and justice. That's the thing we need.
Speaker 4: Rod Byle. You're going to continue with me in hour
Speaker 4: number two, but Edward. I just want to say one thing,
Speaker 4: thank you so much. If you have a closing comment,
Speaker 4: you have the floor, and folks, if we haven't gotten
Speaker 4: to you, we'll definitely continue in hour number two one,
Speaker 4: eight four, eight, nine to two too, Captain Dwight, your fustom.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, I really really really appreciate this. You know,
Speaker 7: you you know you go through life and you you
Speaker 7: you know I don't. I don't consider myself. The people
Speaker 7: give me credit for a whole bunch of self and
Speaker 7: I and all I'm doing is what I consider to
Speaker 7: be the right thing. I had a lot of training
Speaker 7: to do things right, and I spend a lot of time.
Speaker 7: Everything I've ever done, I've spent an incredible amount of
Speaker 7: time doing the homework associated with it so I can succeed.
Speaker 7: And there were four that have been forces that have
Speaker 7: have allowed me not to succeed, as well as a
Speaker 7: plan to. But I ended up getting over the hump
Speaker 7: when I became a sculptor. I've done one hundred and
Speaker 7: thirty three Lords memorials in thirty seven states.
Speaker 4: Beautiful.
Speaker 7: I'm in busy, staying busy, and I didn't tell you this,
Speaker 7: but right now I'm legally blind oh God.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I'm still working and continue. You'll never give up.
Speaker 4: And that's the way to have it, folks. No matter
Speaker 4: what affliction we have, we have to overcome it. You
Speaker 4: better believe.
Speaker 7: Okay, Well, I'm writing three books and that's why I
Speaker 7: got to stay living to get these three books finished.
Speaker 4: Well, God bless you, and I hope you have a
Speaker 4: good morning.
Speaker 5: Sir.
Speaker 4: Let's talk again at your convenience. And I also want
Speaker 4: to tell the audience that's something very special that you
Speaker 4: have in your honor. You have an asteroid known as
Speaker 4: asteroid nine two five seventy nine, asteroid Dwight. You got
Speaker 4: a piece of rock out there out in the universe,
Speaker 4: rightfully deserved, Captain. God bless you, and thank you for
Speaker 4: your service to America.
Speaker 5: Thank you, sir.
Speaker 7: Okay, thank all of you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Okay, bye, blessing Well, ladies and gentlemen. We continue on
Speaker 4: the other side with Rod Pile. We have so much
Speaker 4: to cover in the area of space updates. What about
Speaker 4: the asteroidal bodies that are out there we know, what
Speaker 4: about the missions to the asteroidal bodies and so many
Speaker 4: other things. What happened to the SpaceX booster? But most
Speaker 4: important right Rod in the theater of the mind. People
Speaker 4: can join in the conversation. If you have been on hold,
Speaker 4: we apologize with the popularity of the guests. Stay on
Speaker 4: the line and we'll continue to do this. A quick
Speaker 4: space and astronomy update from my side. Don't forget. We
Speaker 4: find the big Percied meteor shower once again reining forth.
Speaker 4: If you have clear skies, this is the week to look.
Speaker 4: No moon is in the sky as of August the twelfth,
Speaker 4: when a total solar eclipse occurs on the other side
Speaker 4: of the world, giving good conditions to look in the
Speaker 4: northeast on the evenings of August the twelfth into the
Speaker 4: thirteenth to the thirteenth into the fourteenth early morning look
Speaker 4: in the midnight sky. Right after midnight in the northeast.
Speaker 4: You begin to see some of the amazing sights in nature.
Speaker 4: More on the Doctor Sky Experience when we return with
Speaker 4: our number two and thanks to our helmsman Bill and
Speaker 4: Jackson making sure you're heard five by five.
Speaker 2: Drop the Doctor Sky Experience entertaining and informative on the
Speaker 2: Red Apple podcast network. Always look to the sky. The
Speaker 2: Doctor Sky Experience is on the air seventy seven WABC
Speaker 2: now Here's Doctor Sky.
Speaker 4: Appreciate you sharing parts of your weekend with us here
Speaker 4: from the powerhouse blow towards Signal commonly called WABC Talk
Speaker 4: Radio seventy seven, broadcasting proudly from the center of the universe,
Speaker 4: where New York City to the nation the world. We
Speaker 4: welcome you to the Doctor Sky experience. If you're a
Speaker 4: first time listener, welcome also, and if you're a regular listener,
Speaker 4: we thank you for the great comments. My email is
Speaker 4: simply Drsky at WABC radio dot com, and you can
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Speaker 4: the guest suggestions that we've had from people who've sent
Speaker 4: us emails, we've made them into a reality situation, not
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Speaker 4: part of what we call the theater of the mind,
Speaker 4: where we'd love to talk in critical thinking in a
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Speaker 4: You can learn so much more about the many other
Speaker 4: rooms in this radio mansion, this broadcast mansion, an epic
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Speaker 4: great legacy. I want to thank our helmsman, both Bill
Speaker 4: and Jackson for navigating these phone calls, because you, ladies
Speaker 4: and gentlemen are important to the theater of the mind.
Speaker 4: I want to thank our very special guest an hour
Speaker 4: one retired to the United States Air Force, Captain Ed
Speaker 4: Dwighte his mission of course the oldest human right now
Speaker 4: to go into space, and also his service to the
Speaker 4: United States of America. Is one of the very first
Speaker 4: African American to get into the astronaut training program a
Speaker 4: long time ago when discrimination ran rampant. Something that's horrible.
Speaker 4: Who knows he might have been the first man on
Speaker 4: the moon. Rod Pyle continues to join us. He's the
Speaker 4: editor in chief of ad Astro Magazine, a print in
Speaker 4: digital quarterly published by the National Space Society. He has
Speaker 4: authored many books and his website pile p y l
Speaker 4: e Books dot com. Rod thanks for being with us
Speaker 4: and extending this experience on the doctor's experience.
Speaker 5: Well he what a tough act to follow.
Speaker 4: Hey, I tell you that's an amazing guy. Because let
Speaker 4: me say something, it's amazing. We knew a lot of
Speaker 4: people that you know, both Bob Ashby, one of the
Speaker 4: Tuskegee airman and our good friend. I don't know if
Speaker 4: he's still active, but the retired United Says Air Force
Speaker 4: general that was the ACE General Steve Ritchie. He was
Speaker 4: the one who developed these F one o fours down
Speaker 4: at the Kennedy Space Center. They were called Starfighters. And
Speaker 4: I don't want to be repetitive, but I wasn't going
Speaker 4: to get in the back seat.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 4: People say I'm a big baby, but you know what, Rod,
Speaker 4: Before we begin, let's in due respect to the callers
Speaker 4: out there, let's go to line number two. Alexi, you've
Speaker 4: been very patient. If you're with us, how are you
Speaker 4: this morning your.
Speaker 5: Commentary, Yes, good morning, gentlemen. It's a pleasure to speak
Speaker 5: to both of you.
Speaker 16: My impression is with his space program, especially here in
Speaker 16: the United States, it is predominated by government influence. The government,
Speaker 16: no doubt has military ambitions which they want to perfect
Speaker 16: and create. So that is part of the driving impetus
Speaker 16: to supply money to NASA and the space program. But seteresting,
Speaker 16: you have about what twelve different countries that have the
Speaker 16: capability to put a man and perhaps some colony some
Speaker 16: structures on the Moon, and I think that would be
Speaker 16: the wisest thing to pursue over the next decade or so,
Speaker 16: because because you know why, because if you have all
Speaker 16: these colonies, you're rush at China, India, England, the United States.
Speaker 16: So it's on all on the moon. Number one, it
Speaker 16: builds an international rapport between the occupants of the stations.
Speaker 16: They're all in the same place at the same time,
Speaker 16: so to speak, and they are free from the petty
Speaker 16: influences and demands of the dictators such as Putin and
Speaker 16: g so they can act more independently, and it might
Speaker 16: be a good basis for developing a high degree of
Speaker 16: international friendship and working together. Scaring note before.
Speaker 4: Sounds positive A look, sing, I appreciate that. But Rod,
Speaker 4: you're more the space expert on the subject of the
Speaker 4: international space cooperation And yeah, well maybe we don't hear
Speaker 4: enough about the international efforts of what people are doing
Speaker 4: around the world.
Speaker 6: Well, gosh, how many more hours do we have? So
Speaker 6: I generally agree, although the US in terms of military
Speaker 6: spending on space actually fell far behind in relative terms
Speaker 6: relative their economies both Russia and China for a number
Speaker 6: of years, and we only recently started spending more or
Speaker 6: what some people think we should be spending because primarily
Speaker 6: of the Chinese was perceived as a Chinese threat. But
Speaker 6: in terms of humans on the Moon and elsewhere in space,
Speaker 6: you know, the International Space Station has really been a
Speaker 6: beacon of cooperation, as I think you were alluding to, Lexi,
Speaker 6: especially with the United States and Russia. So regardless of
Speaker 6: our problems on the ground, whether it be crimea, Ukraine, whatever,
Speaker 6: the crews up there continue to get along. Now they
Speaker 6: can always, you know, if they get a little grumpy,
Speaker 6: they can always retreat to the Russian side of the
Speaker 6: American side and close a hatch. You know, they two
Speaker 6: have two different habitats, but they have been getting along
Speaker 6: remarkably well, and the mission controls on the ground, which
Speaker 6: we often don't think too much about, have been continuing
Speaker 6: to work together very well. There are still visits back
Speaker 6: and forth the Americans to Star City and Russia and
Speaker 6: vice versa for training and cooperation. So it's just the
Speaker 6: governments that are having the trouble getting along, but I
Speaker 6: think there is hope. And the other thing I'd add
Speaker 6: is a lot of people who study this stuff feel
Speaker 6: that the Antarctic model is a very good one. Where
Speaker 6: you have a number of international settlements around the perimeter
Speaker 6: of the Antarctic continent with this US base at the
Speaker 6: South Pole, and they collect there to do research and
Speaker 6: work together, and then when their project is done, or
Speaker 6: when they want to take a break, to go back
Speaker 6: to their own group of people and can observe their
Speaker 6: own customs and meet your own food and speak their
Speaker 6: own language and so forth. And a lot of people think,
Speaker 6: what's really forged that besides just the idea of international cooperations,
Speaker 6: the fact that if you're going to survive down there
Speaker 6: or on the moon, you better get along because you're
Speaker 6: going to need each other at some point.
Speaker 4: It's a good test bed. I agree with you entirely, Alexi.
Speaker 4: Thank you. You're always great to bring some insight in
Speaker 4: positive positivity to the Doctor Sky Experience Line number one,
Speaker 4: Charles in New Jersey. You've been patient. You're on with
Speaker 4: Rod Pile. How are you this morning? Do we have
Speaker 4: Charles well going once twice, three times? And if you
Speaker 4: can call back? The contact number here was always one
Speaker 4: eight hundred and four eight nine to two too. I have
Speaker 4: a plethora of topics I'd like to have your opinion
Speaker 4: on the other night as many people were told in
Speaker 4: legacy media. And I got a little bit of a
Speaker 4: problem when I say this, because the way it was reported.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you would agree with this. Rod,
Speaker 4: many people heard about a SpaceX booster rocket hitting the Moon,
Speaker 4: but they never in my opinion, maybe I'm splitting hairs.
Speaker 4: Tell me I should calm down if you want to,
Speaker 4: or maybe not. That it seemed to be in so
Speaker 4: many of these reports. Is if it was something that
Speaker 4: people could look up into the sky and say it
Speaker 4: is a gigantic beacon or big blue, big plume of
Speaker 4: material around the moon. Tell us what really happened? If
Speaker 4: you have any updates on this. I was out with
Speaker 4: the telescope three hundred power in a monsoonish partly cloudy sky.
Speaker 4: The left limb of the moon was visible. I waited.
Speaker 4: I watched other YouTube feeds with other telescopes. I saw nothing.
Speaker 4: Rod Pinell tell.
Speaker 5: Us more well, and you knew where to look right exactly.
Speaker 5: So the media.
Speaker 6: Portrayed this as depending which venue you were looking at. Oh,
Speaker 6: the sky is falling at the end of human civilizations,
Speaker 6: we know it, or at least the other one that
Speaker 6: of course gets me is oh my god, we're trash
Speaker 6: the moon now. Look, humans have been throwing crap at
Speaker 6: the Moon since nineteen fifty nine. The first, the first
Speaker 6: human thing to hit the Moon was Luna to which
Speaker 6: is basically a metal sphere filled with little medallions with
Speaker 6: the flag of the Soviet Union on it. It could
Speaker 6: claim lunar property before we had a treaty, so that
Speaker 6: spread all over the place, probably vape.
Speaker 5: Rize, but some of them have survived. Since then.
Speaker 6: We've had four upper stages some Saturn, five rockets impact
Speaker 6: for seismic studies, four lunar module ascent stages.
Speaker 5: The decent stages were left.
Speaker 6: There as a launch platform, but the ascent stages were
Speaker 6: crashed back in the surface. Russia's crashed a total of
Speaker 6: thirteen probes of one kind or another, and America seventeen,
Speaker 6: largely the Rangers, if you recall which were sent. They
Speaker 6: were suicide missions.
Speaker 5: You know, they just.
Speaker 6: Took pictures as they got closer and closer and closer
Speaker 6: and then impacted the lunar surface and that's how they
Speaker 6: got the extreme close ups.
Speaker 5: So that's nothing new.
Speaker 6: But you know, most of this stuff stace crafted very light.
Speaker 6: They have to be to be launched and flown in
Speaker 6: space to get theirs is critical, so when they hit
Speaker 6: the surface, they either vaporize or at least fragment into
Speaker 6: tiny metal bits.
Speaker 5: And the Moon's a big place.
Speaker 6: So what really had done a number on the Moon
Speaker 6: was the Great bombardment way back billions of years ago,
Speaker 6: which is why when you look at the backside, don't
Speaker 6: need to tell you this. You know, you look at
Speaker 6: the backside of the Moon and it looks completely devastated
Speaker 6: compared to the near side because it was catching all
Speaker 6: the incoming flak and protecting the Earth to some extent.
Speaker 6: That really made the Moon into a lousy neighborhood. So,
Speaker 6: you know, compared to that, we've done very little as
Speaker 6: far as seeing it goes as you pointed out as
Speaker 6: the upper west limb, and I guess one telescope in
Speaker 6: Spain did upload a video that I saw that showed
Speaker 6: a tiny bit of ejecta materials.
Speaker 5: A few frames were.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, And you know, a rocket is an eighty
Speaker 6: eight hundred stage eighty eight hundred pounds upper stage of
Speaker 6: a SpaceX rocket which gradually got there because it had
Speaker 6: dropped off a couple of probes that tried to land
Speaker 6: on the moon. But compared to the kind of impacts
Speaker 6: you can see flashes from which are you know, tens
Speaker 6: or hundreds of tons of these rocks smacked into the moon. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I'm not surprised we didn't see much.
Speaker 4: No, it's incredible because if you go back in the
Speaker 4: annals of history and not to you know, continue on
Speaker 4: this theme, because there's many other topics. According Canterbury monks
Speaker 4: around the year I think it was eleven seventy eight
Speaker 4: a d. They wrote in their rather prosaic way back then,
Speaker 4: not like you're saying and I are speaking here. They
Speaker 4: wrote it in a different way, even though it was English.
Speaker 4: We think they noticed something on the left edge of
Speaker 4: the moon that looked like it was a big plume
Speaker 4: of fire coming out. They describe it as if the
Speaker 4: head of the large dragon. Now, that may very well
Speaker 4: have happened, now, if the media got it right. Not
Speaker 4: everybody in the media, okay, But the exaggeration that I
Speaker 4: hear because a lot of people don't do the homework
Speaker 4: about this and they're just talking about it because they
Speaker 4: don't have the experience that you would have as a writer.
Speaker 4: So it's very interesting. Whatever might have happened in the past.
Speaker 4: Could you imagine one of the giant lunar craters at
Speaker 4: the south, the crater Tycho, sixty miles in diameter. As
Speaker 4: people may not know, but if you do look at
Speaker 4: the Moon through a telescope or just go out and
Speaker 4: google a picture, you'll see what looks like these big
Speaker 4: long lines coming out of that. Now, I'm pretty confident
Speaker 4: that that would have been seen from the Earth way
Speaker 4: back when. But that was millions of years ago. Well
Speaker 4: there you go.
Speaker 6: Or if as we had been planning in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 6: both the US and the Soviet Union were planning to
Speaker 6: detonate nuclear warheads up there as a show of power. Unfortunately,
Speaker 6: we finally decided not to because aar rockets kept blowing
Speaker 6: up and b As it turned out, the Russians would
Speaker 6: have actually delivered a much larger warhead with a larger
Speaker 6: flash and a larger ejective plume. So we decided it
Speaker 6: wasn't worth.
Speaker 5: Going to with them.
Speaker 6: But that would have been a show.
Speaker 4: I would have nuke the moon is not a great thing.
Speaker 4: But let's continue. We have so many people that want
Speaker 4: to join in the conversation here. Let's say good morning too,
Speaker 4: Carl on line number one. Carl, good morning, you're on
Speaker 4: with Rod Pile.
Speaker 13: Hello, gentlemen, I had the opportunity to be able to
Speaker 13: interview Chuck Yeger before he broke the sound barrier, and
Speaker 13: although he did go into space, of course, that was
Speaker 13: a major achievement at that time. And in an interview,
Speaker 13: he said that he had broken his arm before he
Speaker 13: made the flight in the Belex one to break the
Speaker 13: sound barrier. And what he did, he said is he
Speaker 13: said the day before he went to the rocket plane
Speaker 13: and he had to rig the cockpit so he could
Speaker 13: gain entry into the cockpit the next day to fly
Speaker 13: it with one arm, because ordinarily to require two arms
Speaker 13: to open up the cockpit.
Speaker 4: You're right, you know another factoid, Carl, about that flight.
Speaker 4: And I actually had a chance to interview this gentleman.
Speaker 4: Maybe you knew them, and maybe, of course Rod knew him,
Speaker 4: and maybe listeners. General Cardenas, who's he? He was the
Speaker 4: pilot on the B twenty nine when Chuck Yaker flew
Speaker 4: the you know, the experimental rocket plane, the X one.
Speaker 4: But it's interesting another side story. Very quickly, because we've
Speaker 4: got a lot of callers. General Cardenas was asked he
Speaker 4: was one of the first pilots in the Flying Wing,
Speaker 4: the predecessor to what we call the B two stealth bomber.
Speaker 4: He was asked by President Truman, and he said it
Speaker 4: in a rather way that I can't express it here
Speaker 4: with the language that the President used. He said, get
Speaker 4: that flying Wing to do a flight over of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Speaker 4: So he did, and General Cardenas, God rest his soul.
Speaker 4: He flew it over the Capitol and down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Speaker 4: But on the way home, here's the end story. He
Speaker 4: had some engine trouble and he had a land somewhere
Speaker 4: in New Mexico. Imagine this rod on a dirt road
Speaker 4: or something. Of the farmers came out with shotguns because
Speaker 4: they never saw an airplane that looked like a wing.
Speaker 4: Where's the rest of the plane. And he was in
Speaker 4: a silver suit. So there was a story of an
Speaker 4: alleged UFO, But it was General Cardenas, how about that?
Speaker 13: Hey, by the way, is there a time for me?
Speaker 13: It just meant your one little other.
Speaker 4: Please go ahead. That's why we love you. In the
Speaker 4: theater of the mine.
Speaker 5: Go ahead, sir, okay.
Speaker 13: He was talking about being shot down during the Second
Speaker 13: World war over France, and he landed in the woods
Speaker 13: in France, and so I asked him how did he escape?
Speaker 13: He said, well, he said, there ain't no way that
Speaker 13: any Nazis can catch a West Virginian boy in the woods.
Speaker 13: That's how he got out of that situation by going
Speaker 13: over the mountains into Spain and then escaping in that fashion.
Speaker 13: But find interesting character, yes.
Speaker 4: And thank you Coin for bringing it to our attention.
Speaker 4: Great stories, ladies and gentlemen from the great listeners that
Speaker 4: we have far and wide. Garland, New Jersey. I wish
Speaker 4: you and your family a great morning. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: You know, Rod, this is interesting. I want to jump
Speaker 4: into a topic that I'm sure you have great expertise in,
Speaker 4: and i'd like your opinion on this. The Wall Street
Speaker 4: Journal recently had an article entitled from Lunar Landing to
Speaker 4: Lunar Rights Law, and the article in the op ed
Speaker 4: is entitled property rights in space. So that seems like
Speaker 4: a strange subject to many many people. But if you
Speaker 4: would comment on this, because apparently when we go to
Speaker 4: the moon, nobody can own it, I guess, so how
Speaker 4: would we have property rights for things that we set up?
Speaker 4: What would you enlighten the audience on.
Speaker 6: A really good, good conversation, And you're right, you can't.
Speaker 6: You can't own any part of the Moon or anything
Speaker 6: in space, honestly because of the Outer Space treatated sixty seven,
Speaker 6: which says you can't deploy weapons of mass destruction and
Speaker 6: you can't own property in space or on the lunar surface.
Speaker 6: So what can we do? Well, what's trying to be negotiated?
Speaker 6: And there was a second treaty that was attempted called
Speaker 6: the Moon Tree that failed, which was going to be
Speaker 6: more of a preserve the whole body is the province
Speaker 6: of mankind sort of thing that did not pass. So
Speaker 6: we're still kind of stuck with the Outer Space Treaty
Speaker 6: of nineteen sixty seven. What people are trying to do,
Speaker 6: especially in the West, because a lot of the money
Speaker 6: and effort going into these new lunar ventures is commercial
Speaker 6: money and investor money along with NASA, is to basically say, look,
Speaker 6: we don't want to own the ocean. We just want
Speaker 6: to be able to own the fish when we haul
Speaker 6: them out of the sea. So in this case, if
Speaker 6: we get to the Lunarstoft Pole, if there are substantialized
Speaker 6: deposits there, water ice deposits, and we can use those
Speaker 6: to make fuel and the other things that you can
Speaker 6: use water once you've broken it down to constituent parts
Speaker 6: for which makes it much easier to get to the
Speaker 6: rest of the solar system. We just want to be
Speaker 6: able to use those elements. Now, that said, there is
Speaker 6: a lot of conversation in both our side, the Chinese
Speaker 6: and the Russians about well, but if we strategically land
Speaker 6: robots in various spots in the south Lunar region, that
Speaker 6: kind of makes a de facto identified zone of interest. Now,
Speaker 6: what I don't hear them talking about much that I've
Speaker 6: been writing about and asking people about, is that's all
Speaker 6: find it good. But both we and the Chinese are
Speaker 6: planning to somewhere in the early twenty thirties land nuclear
Speaker 6: reactors there as a precursor to power in our base.
Speaker 6: Once you've got a reactor on the ground, you have
Speaker 6: a safety exclusion zone, And once you have an exclusion zone,
Speaker 6: you kind of almost have a de fact a land claim.
Speaker 6: You're not claiming the land, but you're telling people that
Speaker 6: you've got this stay out area because you don't want
Speaker 6: anybody getting hurt.
Speaker 4: So that analogous or something like if you have a
Speaker 4: mobile home and you own the mobile home, but you
Speaker 4: don't own the land underneath it, something of that order, right,
Speaker 4: I mean to make it really kind.
Speaker 6: Of like that had taken a step further. I have
Speaker 6: a leaky pro paint tank and if you smoke too
Speaker 6: close to my mobile home, it's kind to blow up.
Speaker 5: So stay over there, you know, you know.
Speaker 4: This is very interesting. David Online two comes to us
Speaker 4: in the Theater of the Mine. He's in Staten Island. David,
Speaker 4: You're on the air with Rod Pyle. How you doing?
Speaker 8: Rod?
Speaker 17: And Doctor Sky previously was the subject of a child
Speaker 17: who made a mud pie and it took time of
Speaker 17: a crib and turned into a ladder, and then in
Speaker 17: an orphanage made a roadside bomb with toys and sand
Speaker 17: and eventually would take red black red checkers that drop
Speaker 17: him on his toys. And many years later Wall Street
Speaker 17: I have an article regarding to Howard ten year old
Speaker 17: and making a domic bomb that was a prior or
Speaker 17: Red black Red Black was led to separate two isotopes.
Speaker 5: Correct.
Speaker 17: What I'm trying to say is the Alligator submarine has
Speaker 17: to be brought back to life minernized in the twenty
Speaker 17: first century. I'd give it to the Navy because we're
Speaker 17: going to need it in the future. As what I
Speaker 17: have learned over from you. A station by the way,
Speaker 17: I love it. It's very informative, it's very educational. But
Speaker 17: there's a saying they said in the Navy many years
Speaker 17: ago during the Second World War, looselets sink ships. But
Speaker 17: I needed help for a long time. I'm going to
Speaker 17: be eighty two.
Speaker 4: Well, blessings to you, my friend, and keep those secrets
Speaker 4: where they need to be. You're absolutely right, and I
Speaker 4: think I'm getting out of that route a bit about
Speaker 4: radiation shielding, but from what he's describing David and Staten Island,
Speaker 4: obviously spacecraft that's a big issue. I mean quick coming
Speaker 4: from you, that is something very serious on long journeys
Speaker 4: out into space. How do you really protect the crew
Speaker 4: because I have no idea. What do you keep building
Speaker 4: heavier and heavier layers of lead as David was talking
Speaker 4: about with submarines the shield reactions from nuclear what do
Speaker 4: you do well?
Speaker 6: And in this case, I think we're not talking about
Speaker 6: shielding the crew for a reactor, although we will at
Speaker 6: that point have nuclear propulson. We're talking about shielding them space.
Speaker 6: So you've got speosmic radiation coming from outright, coming from
Speaker 6: outside the Solar system, and you've got the radiation coming
Speaker 6: from the Sun.
Speaker 5: So I wrote a book about, I guess.
Speaker 6: Exactly ten years ago called Blueprint for a Battlestar, which
Speaker 6: is about great scientific innovations, and one of the things
Speaker 6: in there was about this topic. They NASA particular, but
Speaker 6: through NAYAK, their Advanced Innovation Program and a number of
Speaker 6: other branches have been working hard on this problem, as
Speaker 6: have other international folks. And we're finding lighter and lighter
Speaker 6: elements of sometimes pretty esoteric combinations of either metal alloys
Speaker 6: or other kinds of things, that composits that do block
Speaker 6: radiation pretty effectively. The problem is that they're not heavy.
Speaker 6: They're bulky, yes, And it seems from what i've I mean,
Speaker 6: the holy grail of this is active radiation mediation. So
Speaker 6: if you can have the right kind of electrical field
Speaker 6: or magnetic field around your ship that can deflect an
Speaker 6: awful lot of radiation, just don't let your generators go out,
Speaker 6: or you have a problem if you're.
Speaker 5: There too long.
Speaker 6: But in a more passive sense, there's been a lot
Speaker 6: of conversation about using water jackets. Now, water's really heavy,
Speaker 6: so this is why you want to be able to
Speaker 6: get it from the moon, right, you're not launching it
Speaker 6: off Earth. But once you've got it, you put a
Speaker 6: water jacker into spacecraft. Water's very good at absorbing, blocking
Speaker 6: a lot of different kinds of radiation. You can also
Speaker 6: make it in to breathe the bloxygen. You can make
Speaker 6: it into a rocket fuel. You can use it to
Speaker 6: grow algae for food supplies.
Speaker 5: So there's all.
Speaker 6: Kinds of good things that come if you can handle
Speaker 6: moving the mass of water that surround your shit.
Speaker 4: Right, And when you bring it up, you bring up
Speaker 4: a good point. That's why if people look at nuclear reactors,
Speaker 4: like these big power stations nuclear react they're obviously the
Speaker 4: rods are in case what in big pools and puddles
Speaker 4: of water, big pools, not puddles, And you're right, that
Speaker 4: mitigates what some of that radiation from escaping in a
Speaker 4: way that they know the formulas. We don't. But as
Speaker 4: long as they keep it safe, don't let the thing
Speaker 4: drain and have exposed rods. That's not a good situation.
Speaker 6: Right, Never good dude, to have that situation, that's for sure.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, you've written so many books here and I'm looking
Speaker 4: at this whole list. Wow, it goes along like a
Speaker 4: big print out here. So we're talking about the book
Speaker 4: that you just mentioned before. This is so amazing in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen blueprint for a Battlestar Sterling books. Obviously, these
Speaker 4: books that go back they're still in print that people
Speaker 4: can get them, or they're hard to find if they're
Speaker 4: a book collector. On many of these, you know, tell
Speaker 4: us about that.
Speaker 6: Fortunately for me, although a lot of them are on backlist,
Speaker 6: we sold enough of them that they're all available used.
Speaker 6: And I always unless somebody wants a pristine first edition
Speaker 6: that they want signed or something, I say, look, just
Speaker 6: go to Books a Million or something. You can find
Speaker 6: most of them for anywhere from three to twelve dollars,
Speaker 6: you know, retail price, unless you really want it brand new.
Speaker 6: I think eight or ten of them are still in print,
Speaker 6: and then the rest of the working on my twenty
Speaker 6: seconds now are still available. And then I've got a
Speaker 6: new one coming out later this year, and one that
Speaker 6: just came out actually called a Dream Renewed that takes
Speaker 6: a new look at the work of Gerard O'Neil about
Speaker 6: orbital space colonies.
Speaker 5: I was an editor on that book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, i'd like to get a copy of that one,
Speaker 4: and wherever we purchase one, obviously available by your website,
Speaker 4: which is Pile Books dot com.
Speaker 6: Well, actually it won't be on there because it's a
Speaker 6: National Space Society imprint. So it's going to be on
Speaker 6: the NSS website at NSS dot org and it's going
Speaker 6: to be on Amazon in about six weeks, I think.
Speaker 5: So it's just coming out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, pile that the other books Rodpile Books, it's just
Speaker 4: Pile Books in dot com. Excuse me, py Lpy eater one.
Speaker 6: Actually I grab both domains because you know who wants
Speaker 6: my name right.
Speaker 4: It's fascinating. Well, we're almost up again at the space
Speaker 4: time continuum which rules, which is the hard break at
Speaker 4: the bottom of every hour. So it's what's interesting. We
Speaker 4: have so many things I'd like to discuss with you,
Speaker 4: but I want to jump into this, maybe just in
Speaker 4: a couple of minutes. Maybe we have two all these
Speaker 4: particular spacecraft that are orbiting the Moon. I'm looking at
Speaker 4: about seven that are still in lunar orbit. But we
Speaker 4: can go through after the break, I want to talk
Speaker 4: about one and in particular for this moment, the Lunar
Speaker 4: Reconnaissance Orbiter. I'm so proud of that spacecraft. How can
Speaker 4: you be proud of a spacecraft. Well, it shows us
Speaker 4: all these different images of you know, pass spacecraft like
Speaker 4: our Apollo descent modules, the footprints, and that, I hope
Speaker 4: is one way that people might believe well, if they
Speaker 4: believe the image is real, I do that we did
Speaker 4: go there. But little LRO does a great job, don't
Speaker 4: you think.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. It's a spectacular success. And like most of.
Speaker 6: Of NASA and or JPL spacecraft has greatly outlived its warranty.
Speaker 6: Most of these things have a primary mission of anywhere
Speaker 6: for three months to a year. This one was supposed
Speaker 6: to work for a year with an extension of two years,
Speaker 6: and it's coming up on soon. It'll be eighteen years.
Speaker 6: Amazing mission.
Speaker 4: Our special guest here, he's our go to guy when
Speaker 4: it comes to these space subjects. And again, you can
Speaker 4: go to pilebooks dot com or have a good books
Speaker 4: are sold, and there's a lot of places. We'll be
Speaker 4: right back eight four eight nine two two To get
Speaker 4: into the theater of the mind. I'm Steve Kates, Doctor Sky,
Speaker 4: and the Doctor Sky Experience continues talking with you, not
Speaker 4: at you, about the great mysteries that lie out in
Speaker 4: the universe. We'll be right now.
Speaker 2: The Doctor Sky Experience entertaining and informative on the Red
Speaker 2: Apple podcast Network. The Doctor Sky Experience is on the
Speaker 2: air WABC. Now, here's Doctor Sky.
Speaker 10: Look into the distance where time stands still at the
Speaker 10: edge of the dark, the light learns to bend. We
Speaker 10: cross the boundary, not to disappear, but to discover where
Speaker 10: the infinite begins.
Speaker 4: We're all part of the space time continuum. Here on
Speaker 4: Dog Radio seventy seven WABC, thirty one minutes after the hour,
Speaker 4: Rode Bile, He's our space historian, an author on great
Speaker 4: topics that relnated to the subject that we're talking about
Speaker 4: about space. The question we have for the audience and
Speaker 4: we continue with it, what does the US Space program
Speaker 4: mean to you regarding American exceptionalism? Eight nine two. Let's
Speaker 4: go to line number one. Dave's been patient in New York.
Speaker 4: Good morning, How are you doing?
Speaker 5: How are you doing?
Speaker 7: Steve?
Speaker 18: Yeah, I'm the lesson Dell Ray guy nerves. You know
Speaker 18: you've talked to me before.
Speaker 5: My question.
Speaker 18: Yes, yes, not often, but you know, anyway, my question is,
Speaker 18: is there a way or could they develop a way
Speaker 18: to harvest the radiation the cosmic rays or whatever in
Speaker 18: outer space, or if we have a spaceship or you know,
Speaker 18: a base on the Moon or whatever to harvest the
Speaker 18: cosmic rays and we use reutilize them as power and
Speaker 18: also possibly shield whatever craft.
Speaker 4: We have, very interesting question. I never thought about it
Speaker 4: that way, David. I'm sure Rod will bring us right
Speaker 4: to the center of the conversation. Rod, this is interesting.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, you have a stronger physics background than I do,
Speaker 6: doctor Skot, but I think radiation space radiation is one
Speaker 6: of those things. It's a little bit like the Martian atmosphere.
Speaker 6: You know, the Martian atmosphere is thick enough that you
Speaker 6: have to worry about having heat shields and so forth,
Speaker 6: but so thin that it really doesn't help you slow
Speaker 6: down enough to land on the planet without extraordinary measures.
Speaker 5: And my understanding is face radiation, and please.
Speaker 6: Correct me if you think differently, is that it's strong
Speaker 6: enough to do serious damage to our genetic structure over
Speaker 6: extended periods of time, but otherwise so very very weak
Speaker 6: that I don't think there's a way to collect enough
Speaker 6: of it for it to make a difference, at least
Speaker 6: not the current techno.
Speaker 4: Well, you're so right, And Dave, just to add to this,
Speaker 4: I'm not the expert on this either. I'm just giving
Speaker 4: a little bit of opinion here from what I do
Speaker 4: and read. But you have the different particles in space,
Speaker 4: Cosmic rays would be just ridiculously I think. I hate
Speaker 4: the word impossible to harvest because of the incredible power
Speaker 4: that they have. That's one part of the radiation that's
Speaker 4: pretty dominant in space. But if you look at the energy,
Speaker 4: like we know from the Sun, all this proton energy
Speaker 4: in the form of light and heat, that's something obviously
Speaker 4: that's another discussion, is solar power. But Dave, if you
Speaker 4: bring up something interesting, I never thought of it that
Speaker 4: way because we're trying to talk in this little context
Speaker 4: how to shield in the spacecraft so that humans don't
Speaker 4: become you know, cancer victims obviously on long duration space missions.
Speaker 4: But you want to add something else to the conversation,
Speaker 4: you bring up some amazing topics for great research.
Speaker 18: That's exactly what I was thinking. But you know, if
Speaker 18: there's a way to channel it and use it for
Speaker 18: a shield. And also, you know, let me bring up
Speaker 18: the power of solar wind and you know sci fi
Speaker 18: stuff with the sails powering ships going out and all that.
Speaker 18: But yeah, I just thought there might be a way
Speaker 18: to channel it back into a shield.
Speaker 4: That's a very interesting concept because as you go deeper
Speaker 4: into space, right Rod, the solar wind that Dave is
Speaker 4: talking about, it's strong. It's like a garden hose. The
Speaker 4: best analogy we can give everybody listening if they don't
Speaker 4: know about solar wind, the stream of particles coming out
Speaker 4: from the Sun. It varies in soder cycle low and high.
Speaker 4: We know that, but it's like the analogy would be,
Speaker 4: you take a garden hose, Dave, and fire it, you know,
Speaker 4: at its tiniest, little focused beam of water. Eventually at
Speaker 4: the source it's very powerful. But what happens way out
Speaker 4: So if you're doing missions, both Dave and Rod, that
Speaker 4: go deeper out into the universe, the dissipation of the
Speaker 4: solar wind is not going to be as strong as
Speaker 4: when you left let's say the Earth, so you'd have
Speaker 4: to go to distant stars and that just confuses the
Speaker 4: audience more.
Speaker 6: Right, Well, then you're tacking like a sloop at sea.
Speaker 6: There's an interesting I just read about a study that
Speaker 6: Nayak is doing, which is the NASA Advanced Innovation Concept Study.
Speaker 6: A university I think it's Texas, A and M just
Speaker 6: got granted a bunch of money.
Speaker 5: To study a stack solar sales.
Speaker 6: So rather than one big, huge monolithic thing, you know,
Speaker 6: kilometers wide, it's a stack of twenty or thirty smaller sales,
Speaker 6: kind of like some of the Chinese kites you see
Speaker 6: where they have surface after surface after surface strung together
Speaker 6: so that the effective area is huge, but that it's
Speaker 6: much easier to fly up and deploy. But you're right,
Speaker 6: I mean you get you know, you start heading outside
Speaker 6: of the heliosphere, and I mean there's actually that point
Speaker 6: that the voyagers across where you leave the effect of
Speaker 6: the solar wind, and now you're outside of that and
Speaker 6: whatever you're getting is from the great Beyond, I guess.
Speaker 5: And I don't know what you do at that point.
Speaker 6: I mean there's been tons of studies about you know,
Speaker 6: if we have a huge, powerful laser orbiting Earth, can
Speaker 6: we point that at a reflector or some kind of
Speaker 6: a dish on the spacecraft? Can we push it with
Speaker 6: that but when you start looking at the kind of
Speaker 6: power reserves acquired, you.
Speaker 5: Know, this visionary stuff. But for a guy like me,
Speaker 5: stuck stuck.
Speaker 6: In old age in the first half of the twenty
Speaker 6: per century, it seems.
Speaker 4: Oh, you're not that.
Speaker 7: It's going to be hard.
Speaker 4: Anyway, we're both in the same group. But here we go.
Speaker 4: This is interesting. So Dave, thank you for your call
Speaker 4: in New York, because here's an interesting thing. Maybe it
Speaker 4: gives Rod inspiration to write a book, but I think, no,
Speaker 4: not better than you.
Speaker 5: Rod.
Speaker 4: If Arthur C. Clark was still around the great sci fiers,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, I'm sure he could take great liberty at
Speaker 4: turning a book out about what you talked about, Dave,
Speaker 4: about harnessing the power of the energy coming out from
Speaker 4: the universe. So anyway, that's amazing. Before the break, I
Speaker 4: wanted to get into the conversation of the spacecraft that
Speaker 4: are orbiting the Moon. I called it the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter,
Speaker 4: which is there. The Indian nation has Chendrayan two supposedly
Speaker 4: still in orbit. The Koreans have the dan Uru or
Speaker 4: dan Uri spacecraft. And then here's an interesting part about this.
Speaker 4: These are things I don't know, and that's what we
Speaker 4: ask you. Artemis too apparently put tiny little cube sets
Speaker 4: in orbit around the moon P one and P two.
Speaker 4: I have no idea if they're still running. They were
Speaker 4: these tiny little things that maybe look like a suitcase.
Speaker 4: And the Chinese have two very important relay satellites. So
Speaker 4: the people are wondering, right right, how do we get
Speaker 4: signals from the far side of the moon when we've
Speaker 4: never done that ourselves. They have the little relay satellites,
Speaker 4: So not to split hairs, the moon still has a
Speaker 4: whole lot of these little orbiting objects going around it,
Speaker 4: and probably many more.
Speaker 5: To come right it does.
Speaker 6: And you mentioned the Chinese satellites, which I found especially compelling.
Speaker 6: I mean, the thing on Artemis two was, I think
Speaker 6: just a small experiment basic a CubeSat sizes are recalled
Speaker 6: that the Chinese ones, I think are called Magpie one
Speaker 6: a Magpie two.
Speaker 5: And you know, we had looked.
Speaker 6: At doing a pole landing on the far side of
Speaker 6: the Moon with some seriousness.
Speaker 5: It was never taken forward.
Speaker 6: For one reason, they canceled a bunch of the missions,
Speaker 6: and for another it just deemed pretty dangerous.
Speaker 5: But we knew we'd need relay.
Speaker 6: Satellites to do that because obviously radio's line of sight
Speaker 6: and you can't bend it around the backside of the
Speaker 6: moon because it got this big rock blocking your signal.
Speaker 6: So the Chinese put these relay stations up so they
Speaker 6: could land their rover and their spacecraft on the far
Speaker 6: side of the moon. As far as I know, they're
Speaker 6: still active, and you know they they proved that they
Speaker 6: are are technological equal at this point by doing that.
Speaker 6: That was a really big step.
Speaker 4: That is amazing, right, That shocked a lot of people,
Speaker 4: because you're right, many people who want to see a
Speaker 4: radio telescope on the far side of the moon. Why
Speaker 4: simple terms, you would have no spurious radiation, so, in
Speaker 4: other words, you wouldn't be hearing this radio station. Shame
Speaker 4: on that because we'd want to hear it on the
Speaker 4: far side of the moon, but all radio signals would
Speaker 4: be what mitigated, so you would not be able to
Speaker 4: hear anything so quiet. Would be the purpose of setting
Speaker 4: up a giant radio telescope without radio interference. I heard
Speaker 4: a crazy story one time. I don't know if you
Speaker 4: could corroborate it people working in the giant radio telescope.
Speaker 4: I think it was in Puerto Rico when they were
Speaker 4: working on that big dish telescope that was in the ground.
Speaker 4: You've seen it in movies, Garcibo and when the whole
Speaker 4: thing collapsed, you know, the antenna. Somebody had said to
Speaker 4: me and I thought it was serious, that they were
Speaker 4: actually detecting a signal from something, and it was very,
Speaker 4: very powerful and it could have been what the first
Speaker 4: alien signature from outer space. Later they deduced guess what
Speaker 4: it was. It was somebody downstairs in the cafe near
Speaker 4: the you know where they were getting the snack bar microwave.
Speaker 4: It was the microwave oven that that's ridiculous, but probably, yeah.
Speaker 6: I know that that is true, and there's been a
Speaker 6: number of those where they got this what looked like
Speaker 6: it could have been at some kind of a signal
Speaker 6: from d space and said, oh my god, it's so exciting.
Speaker 6: And in fact, I think that was one of the
Speaker 6: explanations that might even put forth for the Wow signal way.
Speaker 5: Back in the sixties. Yeah, the sixties and seventies, remember
Speaker 5: that was.
Speaker 6: But yeah, there's so many, you know, as you point out,
Speaker 6: spurious causes that you can have for these things, and
Speaker 6: God bless the scientists to spend all the time tracking
Speaker 6: down every possible reason that it's not alien so that
Speaker 6: we can know whether it's we've found something or not,
Speaker 6: because how exciting is that going to be when it happens?
Speaker 4: Four eight nine two two two brings you into the
Speaker 4: theater of the mind with special guests and ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 4: If you have an email, mine is Dr risk A.
Speaker 4: Why not just going at WABC radio dot com answer
Speaker 4: all the emails that I do get and some people
Speaker 4: do rod they send us some guest suggestions. We've had
Speaker 4: a few in the past doing some research from my side.
Speaker 4: We appreciate that greatly. Not all of those, of course, happen,
Speaker 4: but again due to time and circumstance, many many amazing
Speaker 4: guests coming throughout the month of August. We'll stay tuned
Speaker 4: with you and hopefully you'll stay toun with us. What's interesting?
Speaker 4: Before we go to the next break, the last break
Speaker 4: of the two hour show, I wanted to give you
Speaker 4: just kind of wet our appetites on the Artemis three mission,
Speaker 4: because again people were thinking, hey, Autemist three, they're supposed
Speaker 4: to be landing on the south pole of the moon.
Speaker 5: Not yet.
Speaker 4: What's Artemist three and a quick summation.
Speaker 6: So Artist three, this is the rejiggering of the program
Speaker 6: that the new administrator jered to Isaacman did a few
Speaker 6: months back, and I think with good reason. Artemis three
Speaker 6: is specifically an Earth orbit mission, primarily to test the
Speaker 6: docking and maneuvery capability of the Orion capsule with hopefully
Speaker 6: both lunar landers. Now we have a contract with SpaceX
Speaker 6: to convert their Starship into a lunar lander, which they're
Speaker 6: moving very slowly on to be frank, And we have
Speaker 6: another contract with Blue Origin Bezos's company to their lunar
Speaker 6: lander called Blue Moon, which is moving as far as
Speaker 6: we can tell, more rapidly. And it's and it's just
Speaker 6: it's purpose designed to land on the Moon, whereas Starship
Speaker 6: is kind of a one size fits all kind of
Speaker 6: spacecraft that they.
Speaker 5: Have to adapt.
Speaker 6: So the idea with Artemis three is that they'll go
Speaker 6: into orbit and they will rendezvous and dock with and
Speaker 6: undock and dock with and undock and maneuver while attached
Speaker 6: to these two different lander probably mock ups at that point.
Speaker 6: I don't think either of them will be actually ready
Speaker 6: as landers, but at least they'll be working engineering models
Speaker 6: and make sure that they're going to work, and then
Speaker 6: hopefully a year year and a half later, Artemis foreheads
Speaker 6: off to make a landing with whichever one.
Speaker 4: Of those landers is ready. That's as cross. So it's
Speaker 4: still a top competition. We can discuss much more when
Speaker 4: we come back from the very last brank of a
Speaker 4: two hour radio show. But I'd like to take the
Speaker 4: opportunity to think owner and I've heard of John Katzima,
Speaker 4: Tits and from the executive staff, Chad Lopez, for giving
Speaker 4: me the honor of an opportunity of a lifetime to
Speaker 4: be behind this microphone sharing with you, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 4: great information as you tell us, and obviously talking more
Speaker 4: about the great mysteries of the universe, and in case
Speaker 4: you're a first time listener, the realms of astronomy, space aviation,
Speaker 4: whether American exceptionalism as we like to call it, a
Speaker 4: theater of the mind, and that of course seems to
Speaker 4: you know, kind of really pound it out, because people
Speaker 4: tell me that they enjoy this kind of conversation where
Speaker 4: we let you have an opportunity to express your opinions,
Speaker 4: and we certainly don't get into the political realm much,
Speaker 4: and that's on purpose because we have so many things
Speaker 4: to share. And as the good well as our good
Speaker 4: first guest had talked about the oldest gentleman to fly
Speaker 4: into space, simply, why can't we all just simply get
Speaker 4: along more on the Doctor Sky Experience as we move
Speaker 4: toward the conclusion of our number two, with many great
Speaker 4: guests to come in future iterations. Thank you for your interest.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: The Doctor Sky Experience entertaining and informative.
Speaker 3: On the Red Apple Podcast Network.
Speaker 2: Doctor Sky Experience is on the air seventy seven WABC.
Speaker 3: Now Here's Doctor Sky.
Speaker 8: One, Doctor edgar Mitchell, Apollo fourteen astronaut after the Moon
Speaker 8: in nineteen seventy one to the Farmer area on Apollo
Speaker 8: fourteen with Commander Alan Shepperd who was their commander, Stuart
Speaker 8: Russa who was their command module pilot, and I was
Speaker 8: a lunar module pollot in February the fifth, nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 8: And you're listening to the Doctor Sky Show.
Speaker 4: Forty nine minutes after the hour, we continue with our
Speaker 4: special guest Rod Pile. Still time if you'd like to
Speaker 4: join in the conversation. One eight hundred and eighty four
Speaker 4: eight nine two two two in the time limited that
Speaker 4: we do have, I wanted you Rod to take the
Speaker 4: floor and talk to us about these space missions that
Speaker 4: are heading out into space, the Psyche Mission, the Europa Clipper,
Speaker 4: the Juice Mission, and of course this little mission that
Speaker 4: we're talking about in detail, the Juice Mission, which is
Speaker 4: called the jew But are icy moons explore There's a
Speaker 4: lot of excitement in space problems.
Speaker 5: There is.
Speaker 6: And I just wanted to touch on one other topic
Speaker 6: real quick before we go into that. You were mentioning
Speaker 6: the solar eclipse earlier, and I know we're not going
Speaker 6: to be able to see it from the US, but
Speaker 6: as a person who did some moderately substantial damage to
Speaker 6: my eyes when I was a young boy using inexpensive
Speaker 6: solar filters on a telescope, I would just encourage anybody
Speaker 6: overseas who's planning to look at it to buy your
Speaker 6: eclips glasses, not from Amazon, but from a reputable source,
Speaker 6: either directly from Celestron or lunt Optics, both of whom
Speaker 6: are reputable. Yeah, because there's just so much junk out there,
Speaker 6: and uh, you know, the eyesight's something you can't get back.
Speaker 6: And if you forget it, damna, as you know better
Speaker 6: than I do. If you damage it during an eclipse,
Speaker 6: that's pretty much it.
Speaker 5: So we don't want to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, talking about these missions, we have a few
Speaker 4: minute it's left here. I mean, there's a Psyche mission
Speaker 4: that's heading out there to what may be what a
Speaker 4: nic alyon core of a planet, who knows. Yeah, someday
Speaker 4: we'll hear about a quadrillion trillionaire and they'll have to
Speaker 4: tow these objects back to. That could be a bigger
Speaker 4: future than anything SpaceX is even thinking about. Now.
Speaker 6: Well, it's funny, you know, and you I'm sure you've
Speaker 6: read the safe stuff I have. There's been a lot
Speaker 6: of people talking years about the millions and billions are
Speaker 6: going to make an asteroid mining companies have started risen
Speaker 6: and fallen trying to do that. Notably above them, these
Speaker 6: space industries raised a lot of money and failed. You know,
Speaker 6: asteroids are far away, most of them. They're moving in
Speaker 6: specific trajectories, so you have to know where they are.
Speaker 6: You have to know where they're going to be. You
Speaker 6: have to rhyno with them, you have to prospect them,
Speaker 6: make sure they actually have something you want other than
Speaker 6: just various kinds of carbon and rock, and then you've got.
Speaker 5: To go after it.
Speaker 6: So Psyche is interesting because it's they call it a
Speaker 6: metal ass it's certainly very rich in metal. It's located
Speaker 6: out in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. So
Speaker 6: we've got a mission headed out there. That's the PI
Speaker 6: of that is a woman named Lindy Elkins Tanton, who
Speaker 6: have met a few times. She's really wonderful, the great
Speaker 6: guest if you ever get her on the show, by
Speaker 6: the way. And it's supposed to arrive at the asteroid
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty nine. And that's the thing about all
Speaker 6: these missions, you know, you just wish they could go
Speaker 6: a little faster because they're so exciting.
Speaker 4: New propulsion methods. But rod not to cut you short.
Speaker 4: It's just a stream of consciousness that brings me to
Speaker 4: this point. Hopefully media will get it right and we'll
Speaker 4: do our part, of course, not only here on this
Speaker 4: pro powerhouse station, but I'm sure with others, you know,
Speaker 4: discussing the subject Apophus, the asteroid that's skimming very close
Speaker 4: to the Earth April thirteenth or so of twenty twenty nine,
Speaker 4: let's help me. I don't go into this whole thing
Speaker 4: that it's going to strike us. We're all doomed. Let's
Speaker 4: see what the science says about it, don't you think?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: And I mean, what's exciting about that? Again, I know
Speaker 6: you're probably ahead of me on this is that we'll
Speaker 6: be able to observe it as it goes by, which
Speaker 6: is not something happens very often for an asteroid. It
Speaker 6: is exciting unless somebody goes over and gives it a
Speaker 6: kick in our direction. It should miss us and it
Speaker 6: doesn't come around I think till the late twenty thirties.
Speaker 5: Again, Right, you're exactly right.
Speaker 4: It has another opportunity to pass, but way off subject
Speaker 4: for the limited time. But Psyche, you're talking about that mission.
Speaker 4: Talk about the Europa Clipper. Educate us on this because
Speaker 4: that's another fascinating concept.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I forget the year that arise, but that's
Speaker 6: enroot and that will be an orbiter. It's just got
Speaker 6: this kind of complex orbital plot around Europa and I
Speaker 6: think a couple of the moons during the course of
Speaker 6: the mission.
Speaker 5: I haven't read about it lately, but you know what.
Speaker 6: They want to do. The thing that's so cool about
Speaker 6: Europa and moons. I can sell this out at Saturn
Speaker 6: is we think that because we think they have a
Speaker 6: warm brandy sea below the surface. There's evidence apparently on
Speaker 6: the surface, as far as we could tell, that these
Speaker 6: oceans bent out occasionally and then fall back to the
Speaker 6: surface's ice. And if that ocean is down there, and
Speaker 6: if it's warm, we think there's a reason to good
Speaker 6: chance that there could be life in it. And so
Speaker 6: if you can scoop up some of this mist as
Speaker 6: it's coming out and analyze it, you might be able
Speaker 6: to get some idea of what's going on down there.
Speaker 6: And that's a very exciting prospect. I didn't want to
Speaker 6: dip back just on the asteroid thing for a second.
Speaker 5: You know, what I was alluding to was this talk.
Speaker 6: About, you know, asteroids made out of solid platinum and
Speaker 6: all that. And I was talking, as I may mentioned
Speaker 6: the show before, to this billionaire named Steve Jerbertsen, who
Speaker 6: invested heavily in SpaceX and elsewhere. Brilliant guy finished Stanford
Speaker 6: Engineering in two years instead of the usual four. And
Speaker 6: we're talking about this and he said, you know, there's
Speaker 6: just one big problem with this. The second you get
Speaker 6: a whole bunch of this stuff, the bottom falls out
Speaker 6: of the market. So if you do find a way
Speaker 6: to grapple this asteroid and bring it back to Earth
Speaker 6: and set it down in the outpack of Australia or somewhere.
Speaker 5: Like that, which I guess has actually been.
Speaker 6: Explored as an idea, no kidding, you know, because who cares? Right,
Speaker 6: then suddenly platinum is worth a whole lot less and
Speaker 6: you're kind of back where you started. So I think
Speaker 6: that's a grossover simplification.
Speaker 5: But that was his.
Speaker 6: Point, and I thought it's a really good point, you know, it's.
Speaker 4: A very good point. Supply and demand with rare earth
Speaker 4: type elements, that's interesting. In other words, the rush could
Speaker 4: be good in the beginning. It makes a lot of people,
Speaker 4: what quadrillionaires, but then again, look at this tiny planet.
Speaker 4: Who is going to actually use this? And then the
Speaker 4: price changes. It's going to be like on the markets,
Speaker 4: just like gold and silver, or unless they come up
Speaker 4: with a whole different market strategy, right, who knows.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think rare earth elements might be of interest though,
Speaker 6: because those we are going to start running out of
Speaker 6: those at some point, and there's a lot of that
Speaker 6: in the Solar system, so that may be the big.
Speaker 5: Holy grain out there.
Speaker 4: Interesting. So the missions that we're talking about here, ladies
Speaker 4: and gentlemen, we talk Psyche Europa Clipper. Here's one that
Speaker 4: doesn't get a lot of attention in the short time.
Speaker 4: We have the Parker Solar Probe, the fastest man made
Speaker 4: object ever as it scoots near the Sun. This is incredible.
Speaker 4: I'm surprised the thing hasn't fried. Isn't that a most
Speaker 4: amazing piece of equipment, the Parker Solar Probe. Talk about it.
Speaker 6: It is, and it's in an orbit that it takes
Speaker 6: it either through the corona and right down towards the photosphere,
Speaker 6: which is you know, these are some of the hottest
Speaker 6: places in the Solar system. And you know it's a
Speaker 6: can spacecraft are very fair fairly lightly built. So it's
Speaker 6: this kind of tubular affair with this this solar shield
Speaker 6: that holds out in front of it, so you've got
Speaker 6: to keep it oriented properly because it's not surrounded by shielding.
Speaker 6: It's just it's like a night holding up a shield
Speaker 6: in a joustick tournament. And every time it does this
Speaker 6: pass near the Sun, it manages to serve I even
Speaker 6: come out the other side and the results have been
Speaker 6: really amazing. But when you think of you know, you
Speaker 6: see these temperatures and you think, how did they engineer that?
Speaker 5: It just it blows my mind.
Speaker 4: On technology, imagination is what it is. But you're talking
Speaker 4: about an object, folks. This is pretty accurate. Over four
Speaker 4: hundred thousand miles an hour, I'll repeat it, four hundred
Speaker 4: thousand miles an hour makes the voyager probe as it's
Speaker 4: moving out of the deep space thirty five thirty eight
Speaker 4: thousand miles an hours. You know, that's incredible, and it
Speaker 4: doesn't burn up into like a big cinder. That is
Speaker 4: totally incredible. As we talk about it, rod time is
Speaker 4: of course run out, always a sad moment as we
Speaker 4: talk about with you, Pyoyl Ebooks dot com is one
Speaker 4: of the locations. I appreciate you, my friend, and the
Speaker 4: best of success in all the new endeavors. Let's stay
Speaker 4: in touch, and of course the listeners out there, we
Speaker 4: want to thank you for being part of the Doctor
Speaker 4: Sky experience in what we call a theater of the mind,
Speaker 4: a place where hopefully our goal is to learn something
Speaker 4: new each time you listen and we talk about these
Speaker 4: great mysteries from astronomy, space, aviation, weather, celebrity guests many
Speaker 4: to come, and great stories of American exceptionalism. Thank you
Speaker 4: Rod Pyle. Always a privilegent honor to have you here.
Speaker 4: And I want to thank our very first guest, retired
Speaker 4: the United States Air Force, Captain Ed Dwight, on his
Speaker 4: success of reaching the goal of being an astronaut. Thank you, Rod,
Speaker 4: appreciate your time.
Speaker 5: Thanks Steve.
Speaker 4: We'll talk more about these subjects, but remind yourself, well
Speaker 4: will We will remind you that if you look into
Speaker 4: the northeast sky, maybe now where it's dark and you
Speaker 4: can go out of doors, take a look the beginnings
Speaker 4: and peak soon to come of the Percied meteor shower,
Speaker 4: one of the better meteor showers of the year. Why
Speaker 4: because this time the moon will be at its new phase,
Speaker 4: giving friends on August twelfth, a total solar eclipse, albeit
Speaker 4: a brief one. People do get excited about that. The
Speaker 4: proceeds again peaking. If you want to be out there
Speaker 4: for the peak night the night of August the twelfth
Speaker 4: into the morning of the thirteenth, the night of the
Speaker 4: thirteenth midnight to sunrise on the fourteenth, I've watched it
Speaker 4: for over forty years. Sometimes it's a dribble, but sometimes
Speaker 4: it's leader literally a meteor storm. You never can tell
Speaker 4: with what's going on in the heavens, so meteors rain
Speaker 4: out of the northeast sky so much more. The email
Speaker 4: that you can send to me is just d rs
Speaker 4: k Y at WABC radio dot com and folks, what
Speaker 4: we do now. Stay tuned to Talk Radio seventy seven
Speaker 4: w ABC for another sign of midnight as line'll take
Speaker 4: you to the early morning as we move toward these
Speaker 4: dog days of summer, the most amazing time of the year.
Speaker 4: We do like the temperatures sometimes but here in Arizona
Speaker 4: are high to day one hundred and sixteen degrees, but
Speaker 4: unfortunately the humidity was rather high. Thanks to our helmsman
Speaker 4: Bill and Jackson for making sure that everybody out there
Speaker 4: has an opportunity to be heard and heard clearly. Thank you,
Speaker 4: clear skies, good health, exceptional health. Will see you next
Speaker 4: week with more interesting subject matter on the Doctor Sky Experience.
Speaker 4: Where on this powerhouse blowtorch signal, as we like to
Speaker 4: say proudly, Talk Radio seventy seven w ABC say two.
Speaker 2: The Doctor Sky Experience entertaining and informative
Speaker 3: On the Red Apple podcast network.