History in My Lifetime, episode 5: SPACE!

0:00Thank you, everyone. I might have fever dream this, but was there a muppets where Kermit goes pig's him splay? I might have fever dream that anyway every time I see space that's what I want in my mind I have Kermit going nooo in my head weird things that had to be on what? that's what pigs in space yeah that's what he was saying all right space that's what we're talking about today space stuff all right let's go back like when did we start going into the air well by the way if you're

1:02interested I did a deep dive on this in the 60s class so if you want to go look at a more detailed version of this there's a class about the space program in the 60s and in my 60s class you can go look at the archives so we've been trying to achieve flight for as long as humans have been able to look at birds trying to achieve heavier than air flight was the goal of many inventors in the 1800s in the late late 1700s the French discovered how to accomplish lighter than air flight and so if you fill a balloon with helium or hydrogen or some gas that makes it lighter than the air around it well then the reason you fly is because even with you in the basket you're actually lighter than the air around you but lighter than air flight is really just controlled floating there's very little control and very little speed so inventors were aiming for quote heavier than air flight they wanted to use physics to create

2:05lift on wings so that a pilot could go fast and have control similar to how an automobile works this is Octave Chinute he was one such engineer who was trying to achieve flight earlier in his career he encouraged four small southeast Kansas towns New Chicago Chicago Junction Alliance and Tyoga he encouraged those towns to officially combine and merge their bid to become the new LLNG railroad land office you see these towns apparently according to tradition like there was actually like bullets fired I don't think that a lot of people died or anything but there was apparently people were shooting like from the Tyoga Hotel out of the other little town I mean it got heated well they took Chinutes he was a railroad engineer they took his advice they combined and in 1873 they took his name and became the town of Chinute what does

3:06that have to do with balloon nothing well he is an engineer nothing to with balloons he was an air okay after retiring from the railroad because he was a railroad civil engineer after retiring from that he turned his attention to aviation is kind of like a retirement gig he published his initial findings in a book called Progress in Flying Machines 1894 he had younger partners with him who were able to test his flying machines because he was way too old to test the flying machines so here's a photograph of one of his tests in Gary Indiana his book influenced Wilbur Wright of the Wright Brothers Chinute actually visited the Wright Brothers in Kitty Hawk North Carolina and provided them encouragement for years before their successful flight which occurred in December on December 17 1903 when the Wright Brothers accomplished heavier than air flight or

4:06volt right achieves the first control flight of heavier than air and goes a whopping 120 feet on the fourth recorded attempt Wilbur Wright achieves 852 feet and a flight that lasts 59 seconds so that's quite a lot of accomplishment in just one day of you know trying to accomplish flight all right that led into a couple decades of rapidly increasing air power in World War one just a little over a decade since heavier than air flight actually existed air power became a big part of the war now originally the generals on both sides of the war did not believe in the ability of air power to actually be anything important at first it was just like like they saw us like toys but it became clear pretty quickly that pilots in a plane could gather much better intelligence on troop

5:07movements than any spy or ground based observer could and so they learned to trust their pilots to go up and see where the Germans were what trench they were in where they were moving etc next pilots proved their ability to fight while in a plane now originally that was literally like pilots with grenades throwing them out of the side of the out of the plane or pilots with a gun so you be flying around with like a pistol and that kind of stuff eventually they learned how to mount automatic weapons and it was actually quite ingenious they would mount it in front of the pilot and they would have a timing mechanism that would allow the bullets to go between the propellers so the propeller would go and then the bullet will take right between the propellers as we're flying eventually if it got off you could check your own stuff very much in fact I think it happened I think it happened at least once where a pilot shared off his propellers and went down no I'm just being I'm being conservative about it

6:12because I don't have this in my notes so I I want to double check on if I put it on my podcast usually if I say something wrong here and if it's just a little oopsie I'll just delete it off the podcast if it's a big oopsie I'll actually record me saying well I messed that one up and then I'll come to you the next class and correct it so I just why I didn't want to oopsie I didn't want to make up a number and say that happened to seven pilots you know I got it but I have heard of that where at least once that it exactly eventually they learned how to use mounted automatic weapons like I said they also would put little small bombs like on the side of the plane and a pilot could like pull a rope and it would fall because these planes really weren't big enough well they weren't big enough to yeah they're well they weren't the planes weren't big enough they didn't have enough power to be like bombers and then before the war was over the pilots actually learned how to start fighting each other so the planes in the air would fight each other and dog fights fast forward a

7:14couple of decades the Spanish Civil War the Nazis who were not in Spain they were from Germany they helped the Franco regime in Spain and in the process they learned how to do blitzkrieg in Spain coordinating air power with troop movements and they proved to the world really including the Japanese that you could win wars with air power which led straight into World War II let's see if I have a slide for that I don't so in World War II air power became so important that there were entire battles fought just in the air like the battle of Britain or Pearl Harbor or several other battles later in the war especially in the Pacific where it would just be planes from one aircraft carrier versus planes from another air power changed the way that navies were used before this battleships were the big deal once it became clear that air power was the future of the Navy Japan and America stopped making battleships by

8:18the end of the war they transitioned several battleships that were halfway built into aircraft carriers because they were just so much more valuable World War II also gave us the foundations of the space program this is Vernon Von Braun he was a Nazi SS officer but much more importantly he was a brilliant scientist and engineer he created the B2 rocket on June 22nd 1944 his B2 rocket actually before I get to that let's see if I have yeah I have the B2 rocket here the B1 rocket was like a guided bomb and the people in London would talk about how you could hear it coming because it would make it like a whirlie sound as it came to the air the B2 rocket was very different it would actually go up into the high of the atmosphere and then basically come down on London there was no warning whatsoever unless you happen to be staring straight up and in that case you know you're still probably not gonna see it the B2 was a very deadly weapon one of these B2 rockets achieves space flight for the first time it passed

9:25the quote Carmen line which is a point where the atmosphere ends and space begins and of course it's a theoretical line because the atmosphere to space is a continuum but anyway on June 22nd that is considered the first time that the Carmen line was breached in humans sent something into space like I said the B2 was the work of Vernon Von Braun who was brought into the vermouth to build the quote vengeance weapons I think that's what the V and V1 and V2 stands for the V2 was such an advance that it traveled at supersonic speeds so even though it did make sound I mean everything makes sound and all the weapons but it moves so fast that's why the Londoners couldn't hear it Londoners had no audible or visual warning after a one such successful attack on London Von Braun is quoted as saying that the rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet because he did not want to build weapons he wanted

10:28to build spaceships following the war America spirited this guy and quite a few German scientists out of the country and something called Operation Paperclip where Vernon Von Braun among others were fast tracked out of occupied Germany basically war crimes were swept under the rug just to be clear just to be fair to the allies in the Americans here there's a little evidence that Operation Paperclip recipients were involved in the most heinous war or Holocaust crimes it's not like they were taking the worst of the worst and bringing them over but for instance Vernon Von Braun was in the SS and he did use technically slave labor in the V2 manufacturing process I'm not sure he ever had much of a way of protesting those things so he might have been excited about using slave labor he might have been disgusted by it there's really no way of

11:28knowing many V2 industrial and launch sites places where Von Braun and his associates built and launched the weapons were captured by the Soviets and so the Soviets were able to take a lot of the technology to the Soviet Union and so in a way Von Braun began both the American and the Soviet program the Soviets by taking his tech Americans by taking Von Braun also we have to mention the nuclear arms race. World War II changed the role of science in culture society and government. Gargantuan amounts of money went into the Manhattan project billions with a B went to create what essentially ended up being three bombs. Now later more would be made obviously but the goal was to make bombs before Hitler make bombs for the Nazis could and by the time the war was over we had made

12:29exactly three and like I said billions of dollars the US worked with the United Kingdom and Canada in the Manhattan Project but not the Soviet Union so a union was our ally at the time but we did not trust the Soviet Union to be part of the Manhattan Project so the Soviets spent the late 40s trying to catch up they developed their first nuclear bomb in 1949 and thus began the nuclear arms race the nuclear arms race would drive other fields as well like I said World War II changed the role of scientists and society and culture and government and that included space so the Soviets got the first blow in the quote space race on October 4th 1957 the Soviet Union launches the first man-made earth satellite Sputnik one Sputnik or Sputnik 1957 October 4th 1957

13:37yep the Sputnik go ahead what were you saying this is a discussion class I was in about first grade I think this happened so you'd remember this I do remember this budget junior this effectively launches the space race for the next decade the US will be almost exactly one step behind in context the US had a much higher standard of safety than the Soviet Union did in their Soviet program so for instance this is Yuri Gugarin the Soviet space program put him into orbit let's see he was yeah he was the first man in space he completed one orbit on April 12th 1961 it is probably the United States could have put a man in orbit using the same methodology and technology but we weren't willing to

14:39put a person at that much risk the Soviets knew how risky their program was their methodology and technology so much so that what ends up happening is Gugarin makes this orbit and he comes back to earth and he has an international celebrity even in the west even in America I mean we were jealous but we honored this the first cosmonaut the first man in the space for all intense purposes because of his celebrity status the Soviet Union would never allow him into space again because that's how risky the program was they did not want their hero to die in space for on the launch pad unfortunately he did die not that long later he died in 1968 in a routine airplane accident okay let's talk about the birth of NASA before it was called a NASA the United States space and aeronautics agency was called the National Advisory Committee for

15:40aeronautics or NACA NACA I don't know if it was called a NACA but that you know that's what it looks like on the page here's some facts about the NACA it was founded in 1915 by the U.S. Congress its original purpose was to direct supervise and conduct scientific study and research into the problems of flight so 1915 this is only just a few years after about a decade after the Wright brothers and the flight industry is becoming a thing for over 43 years NACA built world-class research laboratories laboratories and advanced American commercial and military aviation after Sputnik though in October 1957 there was a change in order for the United States to catch up in the space race the United States dissolved the NACA and on October 1st 1958 much of the personnel and research centers from the NACA and all of its assets were

16:42absorbed into the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NACA let's talk about the Apollo program it was conceived in 1960 the goal was to go to the moon Kennedy was very clear about it on May 25th 1961 President Kennedy gave this address to Congress indicating to the nation the goal was quote landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth before the decade was out he reiterated this in 1962 on September 12 1962 at Rice University he said this we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills because that challenges the one we are willing to accept one we are unwilling to postpone and one we intend to win and others too okay I thought he mentioned the

17:45moon in there but it's oh he does we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things very eloquent but I always found that part of the speech to be weird like we chose to go to the moon and you know other stuff all right NASA while the Apollo program is getting off the ground they continue to do their other programs they would often make achievements or they would invent new technology that within healthy Apollo program so for instance this is where John Glenn comes in in 1962 John Glenn is the first American to orbit the earth aboard the fellowship seven like I said before that in 1961 Alan Shepard as an American he reaches space but fails to orbit so this is several weeks after Yuri Gugarin makes his one orbit around the earth and so it feels like a failure that Alan Shepard he gets into space but he doesn't quite achieve orbit like I mentioned earlier though evidence suggests that the

18:46Soviets rushed Gugarin's launch and put him in serious danger furthermore in one way Shepard's flight was actually more significant Gugarin here is not in control of his craft he is basically just a passenger he is strapped in whereas Shepard wasn't control of his craft he was a pilot on January 27th 1967 the Apollo one had a massive disaster we found out that these capsules cannot be just oxygen or you know you can't too much there's a limit to how much oxygen you could put in these capsules one single spark ignited the capsule and tilled Gus Grissom Ed White and Roger B. Chafey in 1967 that same year the U.S. surveyor six is able to launch from the moon and so we were able to put

19:48something on the moon and then I mean obviously there's nobody there to run it but it was able to you know it automated it was able to launch from the moon on Christmas Eve 1968 Apollo 8 the first manned mission to reach Moon orbit takes this picture the Earth rise photo May 23rd 1969 Apollo 10 successfully docks with a man to lunar lander Thomas Stafford and Jean Sernin flew that lander within eight miles of the moon's surface they orbited the moon docked with the command module because Apollo 10 was just a dress rehearsal everything went great so it was time for Apollo 11 on Sunday July 20th 1969 U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins got into moon orbit

20:50Armstrong and Aldrin were the first men to walk on the moon while Michael Collins stayed in lunar orbit in the command module okay let's deal with for just a second some conspiracy theories there's been lots of conspiracy theories that this was all done in a TV studio that kind of stuff to just to say we beat the Soviets first of all the smoking gun really is not even in my notes it's just from recently India and China have flown their crafts in moon orbit and both of them have captured on video this stuff which is left there the moons of gravity is low enough that you can actually launch from the moon with much less thrust than on Earth it takes a lot of thrust to get off Earth and by the way of Earth which is a little bit bigger we wouldn't be able to get off it at all the moon it doesn't take as much thrust so this you can barely see it in the picture here but

21:55this kind of you know this is kind of the launch pad that the eagle will take off from all this stuff and the flag all that's still there and so the Indians and the Chinese and the Chinese have no reason to make us look good have shown that yeah all that stuff's still there furthermore not Apollo 11 but some of the later moon landings they left strategically placed mirrors on the surface of the moon the purpose is so that you could fire a laser at it get a return beam and by doing that scientists can study how quickly the moon is going away from us it's like leaving Earth orbit at like one centimeter a year or maybe not even a full centimeter so after a couple million years it's gonna be gone maybe a couple billion years but it's eventually it'll leave Earth orbit if those mirrors were not on the moon then those lasers wouldn't be getting anything if you ever watch a big bank theory they do that experiment

22:55on the big bank theory were the scientists on top of their the nerds on top of their apartment building do that they fire the laser and they get the return beam furthermore furthermore you can study this there are parallel shadows here where if it was artificially lit like you can look around the shadows here and you can actually measure and because of it none of these shadows are at are perfectly aligned you can measure them to go back use some trigonometry and figure out where the life source is all of these shadows are parallel meaning the life source is so far away that you can't do that trigonometry it's the sun furthermore people are like well there should be stars in the background except this is day the sun's out the reason the sky isn't blue is because there's no atmosphere but if it's daytime you're not gonna see any stars because it's day the flag furthermore if you watch the video the flag doesn't wave there's the air the flag doesn't wave it just kind of sits there as they

23:57pulled it out and put it there just kind of kind of sit there stiffly and when they jostle if that's the only time it moves and then it doesn't move anymore furthermore the only way to achieve this with technology with video technology is using green screen which was invented for Star Wars in 1978 the technology to be able to fake any of this did not exist all right shortly after and I don't have a picture for it so I'll just I do not believe the conspiracy theory shortly after Apollo 11 was the Apollo 13 brush with disaster the Apollo 13 mission had to be aborted mid-flight after an oxygen tank exploded on April 13th 1970 they were about 200,000 miles from earth Apollo 13 was meant to be the third lunar landing but instead it was a desperate rescue mission for the astronauts Jim Lovell Jack Swagger and Fred Hayes the crew then

25:03abandoned the crippled command module so remember I said that Michael Collins doesn't get on the moon he stays in the command module where the lunar lander goes down to the moon and then comes back for Apollo 13 they just abandoned the command module and they all got in the lunar module in the lunar lander and so these guys are crammed in this tiny little place for the rest of their trip as they go they complete their journey to the moon because they need the orbit to slink shot them back to earth they don't have the kind of power necessary to turn around and go so they go all the way to the moon and back in fact up until this year maybe it might have been last year up until sometime in the last year or so the Apollo 13 guys worth the humans who were farthest from earth because on the other side of the moon they were as far away as any human has ever been to earth until the most recent Artemis missions because I knew as a Apollo an Artemis or brother and sister in Greek mythology the current Artemis missions they broke that record now the

26:07Canadian and the Americans who went on that mission are now the farthest humans have ever been they were able to survive even though the module was only designed for two days they strictly rationed power water and oxygen and they made it back despite freezing temperatures sleep deprivation and a complete lack of navigation telemetry they were dependent entirely on Houston if they had lost communication they would have died but they got Odyssey back to earth orbit back to earth and on April 17th so it's just four days not as long as I thought the four days is a long time to be in a little lunar module April 17th 1970 they all splashed down in the Pacific Ocean the last time any human has been on the moon was December 14th 1972 the American astronaut Jean Surnin commander of Apollo 17 holds the distinction of being the last human to have his foot on the moon that will probably change soon we're

27:10sending more people up as we're preparing to learn how to go to Mars which will be so much more tricky because the moon is always pretty much the same distance from us Mars and Earth are widely different and even when Mars is as close to earth as possible it's still wide away because it's there JFK said we want to go to the moon and do the other things Mars is the other thing all right as space becomes more of a thing in geo politics there were a series of treaties to demilitarize space there was the partial test band treaty of 1963 the United States the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom agreed to stop testing nuclear arms and space after one or two there wasn't much more to learn anyway and the more nuclear bombs you explode in space the more fallout you might have it was it was a good idea so everybody agreed yeah let's knock it off there was the outer space treaty of 1967 this prohibited weapons of mass destruction in space it also made all

28:16celestial bodies off limits for anything but peaceful purposes so if every country abides by the outer space treaty we should never fight over or on the moon Mars or any of the other planets there was the moon agreement of 1979 this stated nations cannot claim the moon they cannot take it by force they can't threaten to take it by force which unfortunately we have done in recent weeks by we I mean the government of the United States of America we did what threaten to take the moon by force it's very recently who guys who's in control of the United States now here's the thing the United States China and Russia did not ratify this treaty so technically our president is not breaking the treaty it's just uncouth to say we're gonna take the moon by force fact check Donald Trump did not threaten to take the moon by force rather on his

29:19social media platform truth social on September 6th 2026 he stated the moon is ours amidst a series of intentionally provocative social media status updates the US Space Forces now are sixth military branch space force tests the boundaries of these treaties without explicitly violating so space force has not violated these treaties I want to be clear about that the space force only plans to use conventional weapons in space and they have so far have not tried to capture any celestial bodies and assuming space force remains a thing and it has the same integrity as our other five branches of the military there will be other presidents I think normally will return I don't think space force is going to become the empire from Star Wars all right shuttle program I forgot

30:24to get a picture of show when I was growing up the shuttle was all the rage I mean the idea that we could reuse the modules to go to space we could reuse the rockets but we could reuse the they basically put what I thought as a kid was an airplane on a rocket send it up into space why do we do that well they followed program was awesome but it was prohibitively expensive reusable shuttles therefore were greenlit for any future space mission the shuttle program made it possible for us to send a lot more rockets up in the space and therefore it helped our transition to space stations over deep space exploration from very beginning it was the tiles that was a big deal way before we had the so deep space missions declined honestly until you're ready to go to Mars or other you know solar systems there's not a whole lot more to see I mean the moon is awesome there's always going to be more to learn but I think we could

31:24learn more by going to Antarctica or you know deep into the Amazon so anyway deep space kind of declined and instead low earth orbit became the new space goal okay here is every space station that is existed I'm not going to talk much about them all because some of them only lasted for like a couple of weeks anyway the Soviet Union got started as we pass the Soviets in the space race by putting men on the moon Soviets never achieved that they are the first ones to transition into the space station gang in 1971 it both went up in April and then came down in October in 1971 they had something called the Salute 1 we followed shortly after in 1973 we put up Skylab we kept it up a little longer it stayed up until 1979 the Soviets no kept trying solute 3 so apparently solute 2 was a complete failure solute 3 went up in 1974 and came down the following year solute 4 went up in

32:3074 and stayed for three years solute 5 went up in 76 and stayed for a little over a year solute 6 went up in 77 and stayed until 82 and solute 7 stayed up for almost a decade 82 to 91 I think solute 2 must be the one that I was thinking up because I know that one they put up an orbit and then it instantly started coming down so that must have been solute 2 Russia's real successful space station that was mere for a long time mere was the main space station it was what the international space station was trying to be mere Soviet and then Russian space station stayed in orbit from 86 to 2001 mere was surpassed by the ISS the international space station and it truly is international the United States Russia even now with Russia and Europe and longer heads over so many things still as part of the ISS the US Russia

33:34Europe Japan and Canada all work together it went up on November 20th 1998 and it is still active its retirement is planned for 2030 plans could still change but eventually it's got to come down I mean these things aren't going to last forever they're floating ten cans over the earth I mean eventually they're just gonna wear out China got into the game in 2011 they sent up the Tian Gang one and it stayed for a good long while for their first space station it was there for 2011 to 2018 Tian Gang 2 went up in 2016 and stayed for three years and Tian Gang the current one I mean it doesn't have a number on it it's just called Tian Gang space station it went up in 2021 and it is active with no planned deep orbit date let's talk about now if the moon walk is the

34:34obviously the most Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon that's the most newsworthy thing that's ever happened in space after that it's the disasters on June 11th 1971 three cosmonauts died in the Soyuz 11 from decompression these are still the only humans to die in actual space they probably won't be the last that was 1971 January 28 1986 the challenger disaster this was caused by structural failure in the rubber O ring seal in the right hand rocket booster solid rocket booster so the challengers flight lasted exactly 73 seconds seven crew members died on live TV this was on CNN and it was also broadcast on live TV like in South Florida and whatnot but CNN made a big deal about them

35:34because CNN still this is 80s they're still trying to be a thing and cable news is growing so they had this on live TV in for its explosion much worse than this there was a closed circuit broadcast for elementary school children around the country because one of the people on the crew was teacher Christa McCullough she officially was payload specialist but they made a big deal about putting a non astronaut into space she went through the training so she wasn't astronaut but primarily she was a school teacher and yes she was one of the seven to die you read the table and Mickey was in a high chair she would have not he would have been less than one yeah yeah I don't know I was but food in his face when they did you watch it did you have CNN on we didn't have cable I don't know what I watched it will I don't know why or did they show footage on the news because chances are chances are CNN's feed

36:34chances are CNN would you probably wouldn't I'm just guessing here I'm not saying you're wrong but I'm my guess is you probably didn't watch it live but you probably watched it within minutes because chances are the CNN feed was then used by local news on updates I wouldn't have known if I was watching them we were sitting there watching it but yeah but yeah the chance our news would come on you just sit there go I said I remember you know spoon in my hand like I remember as a kid you'd be watching your favorite sitcom and then I dented that that that this is a CBS news update Dan rather come on and say they found more evidence of Bill Clinton having sex with another person in the White House that kind of thing so you'd have those updates and you'd be like come on I wanted to watch friends this would have been pretty early in the morning yeah it would have been pretty early in the morning it was also a pretty cold day it was January that was part of the problem engineers had Morton the alcohol the contractor that built the boosters they actually said

37:39the O rings were sensitive to cold weather they told them the night before the launch don't do it because if the temperatures below 53 you shouldn't do it and in Florida you think it'd be fine you know usually is about 53 in January but it wasn't on this day and so the temperature was too low I don't have a picture but the next big disaster was Columbia on February 1st 2003 so I was in college for this the spacecraft disintegrated upon atmospheric reentry so challenger was during the launch this was during reentry once again seven members on board and they all died during the launch 16 days earlier a piece of foam insulation broke off the foam struck the leading edge of the Columbia's left wing so it punched a hole in the reinforced carbon thermal protection panels so when Columbia reentered Earth's atmosphere the air of our atmosphere became super heated plasma and melted the wing from the inside so the

38:42shuttle just disintegrated all right finally we'll talk about privatization for decades space was the exclusive domain of government investment because there was no economic opportunity in space space exploration was expensive and there was no profit but all that changed with satellites the future will bring economic opportunities we can't even imagine far beyond satellites already there are five corporations valued between 40 billion and two trillion dollars SpaceX which includes Starlink blue origin Lockheed Martin space division rocket lab and North rip grumman space systems and I think it's rocket lab that's 40 billion the others are SpaceX is like a two trillion dollar company I suspect though that the profits will be more limited than Elon Musk and Jeff

39:43Bezos think there'll be I think there's going to be a lot more challenges I think gaining profit from these companies is going to be harder than they think for instance putting bases on the moon is probably inevitable that's gonna happen if for no other reason so that we can have traveled back and forth and probably some scientists now here's the thing you can't stay on the moon forever because the radiation on the moon is like receiving cast scans constantly like at all times so you can only be on there a few weeks at a time before you got to come back humans until we figure out a way of blocking it we can't stay in space long-term even the ISS is a bit jodgy and it still has some of the atmospheric protection being on the moon or Mars is gonna be tricky and so I anticipate there'll be a day when there are bases on the moon or scientists can go for like a few months at a time and then come back and they can continue studying the moon I mean there's always going to be stuff to study it'll be very interesting so bases on the moon I think is gonna happen but for a variety of reasons Mars is unlikely to ever be used extensively we're probably gonna put

40:48some people on Mars just to say we did but I see no reason to build there Mars isn't anywhere near Earth we think it is because we're comparing it to stars but Mars only ever comes close to Earth every once in a while and even then it's still hundreds maybe of times farther away than the moon is furthermore as far as we know there's nothing to use on Mars I mean eventually we might find something through mining or whatnot but at least for a while 100% of resources that are needed on Mars will have to be brought with you we're not spending anywhere near enough chances are when it's all said down the Mars missions are going to cost a trillion dollars I mean to say we've been to say we've been on Mars but do you remember the Matt Damon movie The Martian it was very optimistic the Matt Damon movie The Martian is optimistic it basically anticipates us having

41:52a small base not like military bases but like a little half unit with the canvas and whatnot but having people on Mars doing scientific research in like 15 years maybe more like 70 I'm pretty sure Elon Musk wants to step on the moon I don't think he'll be able to excuse me not the moon I'm Mars I'm in Mars Elon Musk wants to step on Mars I don't think we're going to achieve that in his lifetime I doubt we're gonna do it in mind we might do it in Brooks and Gracie's lifetime but all the problems we have you know with radiations another one you know I anticipate eventually we'll have a base on the moon but I think there'll be rules about how long you can be there by definition you'll have to be in route to Mars longer than that not to mention however long you stay on Mars and then coming back Mars trips are going to take more than a year and that's only during the close you know if we go there and stay for like a day

42:54and then come back during close orbit chances are eventually the way it's gonna work is you go there during one orbit and then you got a wake for the planets to get close again and then you can come back and then you can come back and I off the top of my head I'm guessing every three years maybe it would be a while okay finally and this is depressing I suppose but interstellar space travel is unlikely as much as I want Star Trek future to be a thing interstellar travel is unlikely the speed of light seems like a strict speed limit every science fiction franchise has an answer usually work bubbles or field stuff like that in theory yes maybe but most scientists who study this stuff still insist that nothing can actually go faster than the speed of light which means even if you achieve speed of light or if you get up to like 99% of the speed of light it would still take long enough to go to the nearest stars that it would

43:55take like more than the lifetime it would be a generational ship like you would have one generation launch the ship another generation during the trip and another generation arriving it would just be way too long now there is one way in which I think interstellar exploration might actually happen and that would be AI crews so what we would do is we would program these ships to say we need you to go to explore these stars and then return knowing that that ship's not going to be here for like a thousand years but instructing that crew the AI crew to you know save up as much information as you can and when you get back do your best to interface with the technology that's gonna exist at the time people probably won't be speaking the same languages you're gonna have to do some interpretation and then share everything you've learned with our descendants by definition though that's not economically viable space x can't make a dime doing that because there's no chance that space x is going

44:59to be around in a thousand years and even if it is every single stockholder now in space x isn't going to make a dime off information that comes in a thousand years so all right any oh I forgot to do discussion questions I just didn't write them at all so adventure own discussion questions and let's talk about space these are the journal prompt questions for the week leading up to and the week following this week's lecture September 11th the 25th anniversary of 9-11 where were you on September 11th 2001 when and how did you find out about the terrorist attacks September 12th you have been invited to give a Ted talk or similar speech what topic do you think you have the expertise or at least a unique perspective to do such a speech examples quilting farming something

46:03related to your profession share some of the main points you would include in your talk September 13th Grandparents Day which grandparent were you closest to what are your most enduring memories of this grandparent if time permits you may answer this question for other grandparents to September 14th grandparent's week are you a grandparent what is your favorite part of being a grandparent in what ways are your grandkids similar to or different from your children September 15th grandparent's week what were your parents like as grandparents have you found that you are very much like them as grandparents or are you a very different kind of grandparent September 16th grandparent's week how

47:03old were you when you lost your grandparents what are your memories of them in their final years September 17th grandparent's week are there any things that your parents or grandparents did or did not do that you think were a mistake and you have intentionally tried to be different September 18th grandparent's week did your grandparents and great grandparents ever talk about the history that they lived through did you once have access to people who lived through World War 1 the Great Depression the Old West or even the Civil War what can you remember from their stories September 19th grandparent's week list some lessons or stories that you have not yet shared with your grandchildren that you want to share with them how is the best way to share these things are your

48:08grandchildren the right age for these stories and lessons September 20th grandparent's week have you ever done a deep dive into ancestry dot com or a similar service if you have those records include them or photocopies into this folder if not sit down and list every ancestor and descendant that you have you may include as many cousins as you wish but try to fill out your direct ancestors as far back as you can September 21st yom Kapoor 2026 describe your personal religious conversion or awakening how important is your faith to you how are your religious beliefs different from other people in your family or in your friend group what kind of faith experience do you want your children and grandchildren to have September 22nd what is your favorite verse of

49:13scripture write it out and explain why you like it so much September 23rd what church do you belong to can you remember all the churches you have belong to list them what do you remember about each community are there any reasons why you switched churches do you feel loyal to a particular denomination if you enjoyed this episode of the blue collar scholar please like and subscribe to the blue collar scholar in apple podcasts or your preferred podcast distributor writing a review leaving a five star rating and sharing links to this episode in your social media accounts is much appreciated the blue collar scholar has been written recorded and edited by Will writes the opening and closing music for this episode is royalty free acoustic guitar summer song by

50:19L.P. studio music from picks of it any factual errors made in the preparation or recording of this podcast are unintentional and your feedback is welcome you may contact me at the will writes at gmail dot com that's t h e w i l l r e i t z at gmail dot com this podcast is primarily a theology and history podcast though any topic may be addressed the purpose of this podcast is to educate use and distribution of this podcast can only be done by the express written permission of the content creator of this podcast I hope that you have enjoyed this episode and I hope that you come back for more and thank you

51:23let's talk about the Apollo program it was conceived in 1960 the goal was to go to the moon okay very clever very clever Robin it was conceived in 1960 the goal was to go to the moon