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