In the news: Soyuz TMA-12 Expedition 17 launched and docked with the ISS, Robotic lunar base that can move (um, cool) and we have found a new planet!

Topics of discussion are public or private space travel and how do we get out of our solar system?

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Welcome to SpaceVidcast Episode 003 for April 11th 2008. 

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I almost said 10th, are you going to do … really the whole show?

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(laughter)  .. oh man that does not bode well for us at all.

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My name is Benjamin Higginbotham and with me is the beautiful and wonderful Cariann Higginbotham.

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And, we are the hosts of SpaceVidcast.com

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We’re here to educate YOU about space travel and why it is the future of humanity.

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I’m also here to educate…her as to why it’s so critically important …

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to the future of humanity.  That was a little redundant.

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I could just have kids.  (laughter)  Yes, but if they were destroyed by a giant asteriod – what’s the point.

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But, I won’t be here.  Well, yeah because you’ll be destroyed be the asteroid.

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I know!  That’s awesome.

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Let’s get started with Space News.

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Alright.  No open yet.  Ok, we’ll pretend like there was an open there.

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This last week the Soyuz TMA-12 Expedition 17.  How many more names do they need for that thing?

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I don’t know.  Launched and docked with the International Space Station.

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Oh yeah check it out – here we go.  Are you ready for this.  Yeah.

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Now if I could  hit the buttons.  Awesome.  Alright, there it is.

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Some launch coverage – it’s blasting off.  Slowly.  (laughter)

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There it goes and it hit zero, they take off.

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Slowly.  Slowly.  And, who’s on that?

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Ah..I can’t pronounce her name – do you remember her name?

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Well, I know we do have Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko.

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It’s her right there.  She’s the first South Korean in space.

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She’s really cute – I don’t remember her name.

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Her name is So-yeon Yi.  So-yeon Yi, that’s it.

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There’s actually some incredible video of her on YouTube.

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This is an American saying that so I’m sorry.  Yeah, exactly.

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There’s some great video of her on YouTube during the interview process.

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Ok.  There are three versions of the video, they’ve got translation at the bottom

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so you can actually read it.  Check out the SpaceVidcast.com site

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and I think there is some information there.  And, if I might just reiterate -

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she’s the first South Korean in space.  Not just the first woman.  Right.

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The first ANY South Korean in space.  Any?  Yes, and I think that’s a big deal.

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Oh no, absolutely.  And, she went through this rigorous trial to -

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there was like 35,000 people initially sign up, they whittled that down to

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500, then 100, then so forth and so on.  And, she talks about this in her interviews

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and it’s kind of fun to watch these interviews on YouTube – she goes from this

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skittish little creature in the first interview to “Eh, I’ve done this one hundred times before”.

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And, unfortunately we have not been able to get the third interview to play.

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Ok.  So, if we get that to work we’ll let you know on SpaceVidcast.

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We’ll add it to the RSS feeds so everyone can watch it.

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But, definitely I think it’s a lot of fun.  So, they launched on Monday, I believe it was.

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This last Thusday they docked with the International Space Station.

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Seamless docking and they already had the hatch opening and they’re already in the ISS.

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They’re swapping out our favorite ISS Commander, Peggy.  I’m sorry SpaceVidcasters.

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Peggy will be coming home.  I know, everyone’s sad.  Because we love Peggy.

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‘Cause mission control will do something not quite perfect and she’ll just kinda be like;

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“Yeah, no, you just have me loop the circuit in a circle.  I’m gonna go ahead and not do that.”

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(laughter)  It’s hilarious, we love Peggy; she’s a lot of fun.  Peggy’s very cool.

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So, that will be .. we’ll have .. we’ll continue our launch coverage of the

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Soyuz Rocket TMA-12 Expedition 17 and whatever all there name they want to throw on there

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throughout the week.  I believe they land, actually check SpaceVidcast.com/calendar for thier landing date.

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Ok.  Because that could shift and change, but as soon as they undock I believe it’s a few hours later they will land.

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Unlike the Shuttle, where they spend hours tweaking.  Right, right.  They can come straight back in.

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Leave it to those Russians man, they get it done.  Check this out, this is kind of cool -

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this is a robotic lunar base.  This is scary looking.  …that can move.  Scary.

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Yeah, check out the tiny url at the bottom.  (http://tinyurl.com/5kgfgo)

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And that comes to us from our friends at Space.com and SpaceNews.com.

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The idea is that this can roll anywhere on the lunar surface, so we build a lunar base on top of this thing.

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And, then you can roll it around the moon anywhere you want to go and it can go

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up and down hills and a bunch of neat little things.  I just hope it doesn’t become self-aware.

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It only has legs – it doesn’t have arms and eyes and a heart.  Hahaha.  The really nice thing about this,

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which I didn’t understand until I read the article because I saw the headline and said – “Yeah great – that’s neat-o.” -

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that this .. it’s an autonomous robot habitat.  Which is slated for testing or that’s part of it anyway.

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It’s ah, but – what is my point?  It was right here, right in front of me just a second ago.

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Well, and Colton just said the legs turn into arms.  Actually, I don’t think they turn into arms.

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That would be kind of cool though.  (robot noises)  Start fighting .. robot wars.  Oh yeah.

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On the lunar surface.  Like what is that Transformers?  Yeah, exactly.

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It’s the ATHLETE, which is the All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer.

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Basically, they came up with ATHLETE first and then decided we have to make each letter mean something now.

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(laughter)  Pretty much – oh that’s horrible.  Ok, this is what I thought was very interesting -

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it lets astronauts have a nomadic experience, covering much more of the lunar surface in general.

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Now, Colten just said he’s seen the videos – and if Colten you don’t mind .. private message me the url.

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Apparently, it does actually act as arms and it can pick up tools.  Unfortunately,  I didn’t see any

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videos or I would have included it in our little video … thing we do here.

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I prefer videos over pictures, but here we’ll take another look at this thing.

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I mean, I don’t understand where the arms come from?  Those look like their pretty much attached wheels, Colten.

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I don’t see where – or how it could pick anything up?  I suppose the wheels could come out and smash things.

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Ohhh.  (laughter)  So – Colten will private message me that url, it will actually pop up at the bottom of your screen -

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shortly here.  Ah, what else do we have in the news?  One news item I had, I’m just going to admit -

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ended up being almost a year old.  So, we’re going to go ahead and not cover that.  Sorry.

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The last news item came from fox814 and that is there was a new planet found.

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Check this out – well this is an artist’s rendition of the planet.  But, there it is right there.

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There’s a new planet.  No – that is exactly what it looks like.  Haha.  I’ve seen it.  Have you been there?

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Well yeah, it’s just down the block.  Haha, so read off a little bit about that new planet you see there.

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It says Spanish and UCL scientists have dicovered a possible terrestrial-type planet

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orbiting the star in the constellation of Leo; the new planet, which lies at a distance of 30 light years from Earth has

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a mass five times that of our planet, but is the smallest found to date.

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One full day on the new planet would be the equivalent to three weeks on Earth.

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Which I just think is incredible.  That is pretty cool.  Yeah, absolutely.  Awesome.

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Did you want me to keep reading, or?  Nope, nope that’s great.

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So, that’s the new planet and we’ve got – Colten has added the .. You can see links scrolling past

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the bottom of your screen.  Yeah, sorry about that.  Check out the YouTube links at the bottom right down there.

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That’s for the space vehicle that can pick up stuff and maybe on one of the next shows -

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we’ll actually show video of that.  I suppose I should have checked YouTube for that.

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Didn’t even think of doing that.  Legs, arms, and soon looking like a Caprica-Six near you.

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Oh, it is Friday so you got all your Battlestar Galactica references in there.

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Yes, I’m sorry my BSG’s.  Yes, absolutely.  You are all on the front of my mind right now.

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When we come back we will be talking about public or private space transit -

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another words – Virgin Galactic vs. say NASA or the European Space Union.

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And, which route we should go and where we think the future of space should be.

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So, all of that on SpaceVidcast – when I hit the button.

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This segment is sponsored by Brain TonIQ – get rid of the head fog with zero caffiene

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or processed sugar.  For more information go to SpaceVidcast.com/braintoniq.

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That – is a good chunk of money.  Yeah.  Ah, it’s nothing – no big deal. (laughter)

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I sneeze that out every other day … that’s not a problem at all.

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So, the topic for this part of the show is going to be be how – I’m sorry – private or public space transit.

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You can’t twist like that.  I’m not.  And NASA verses say a Virgin Galactic and we’re going to

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make this interactive – invite members of the chat room to chime in as to what they think the future should be.

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Because there are pros and cons to each.  Yes.  You know NASA has a, like you just said,

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there’s 1.7 billion dollars to build Space Shuttle Endeavor.  Amazing.

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I don’t know how many private companies are willing to spend that much money on a single vehicle

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that has a 1 in 50 chance of failing.  Right, may or may not work.  That’s pretty high odds.

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But, at the same time there’s no incentive for NASA to really streamline their workflow

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or do much of anything.  They’re not .. they’re not held accountable like a traditional business is -

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like Virgin Galactic.  Right, right.  So, Virgin Galactic – they can’t have a 1 in 50 failure rate,

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that would be bad.  Would you buy a ticket – good question for the chat room -

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would you guys buy a ticket on Virgin Galactic if it had a 1 in 50 chance of blowing up while you’re on it?

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For $200,000!  Well, that’s kind of like buying a plane ticket on American Airlines right now.  (laughter)

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So, the room is basically saying – no,no.  November wouldn’t, THX wouldn’t.

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So, you know – what is the future of space travel?  Because I don’t really see these guys commingling all that much.

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I don’t see there being a NASA and a Virgin Galactic.  I see one of them – maybe for a little while there will be both.

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But, I see one of them going away.  Why would we keep NASA around if we can privatize

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the whole space channel?  Especially, when you said – I forgot which show it was.  I think it was two of them ago -

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how it, NASA is eventually within the next couple of years laying off what was it -

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8,000 some-odd jobs?  Well, no – there’s the potential for 8,000 jobs to be lost at NASA.  Ok.

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But, that may or may not happen – that’s when the Space Shuttle program ends.  But keep in mind the Contellation program

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will begin.  So, some of those jobs may translate.  Yeah, but some of them will – some of them won’t.

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And, those people are going to need jobs, they’re going to want jobs.

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And, I can pretty much guarantee they’re not going to be wanting to be pushing fries

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and hamburgers to the local teenagers.  You know, they are going to go out there and they are going to hook up

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with the Virgin Atlantic’s.  Galactic.  …Galactic – I’m sorry.  The other Virgin people, you know what I’m saying.

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(laughter)  It’s the same people.  The space virgins – how’s that?  (laughter)

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They will be hooking with those people.  They will be hooking up with the – are you just laughing too hard?

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I’m so sorry.  We hadn’t talked that one through before.  Just look at us as…

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Just keep going – I’ll be over here.  Ok, good.  They are going to be hooking up with some of those people.

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They are going to be hooking up with the people who are trying to get…

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Is it Google that sponsors the… The X-PRIZE – the Google X-PRIZE. To get a rover on the moon.

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Yeah, yeah – exactly.  And, their going to be joining those kinds of programs.

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Even if they are still pushing fries and burgers to the local teenagers like I said.

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And, I think for – to a certain extent they will be commingled just simply because

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some of the people came out of NASA and they are going to go into the private sector.

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Yup.  Right?  But, no I don’t ever see them completely cohabiting.  You know -

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where’s the money in the private sector?  Here’s what I don’t understand.

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So, there’s a little bit of money in what Virgin Galactic is doing because people will

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probably pay.  I know I would pay $200,000 for a ticket into space.  But, the number of people that

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are crazy like me – are few and far between.  Yeah, there’s like what – 20 people in our…

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watching this right now.  (laughter)  Yeah, so you know I’m not sure how big a business model

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that is.  First, we’ll have to drive the price down of course.  But, even so that business

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is in the lower part of our — I’m sorry the upper part of our atmoshpere, not very

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far out into space.  Where is the money for building a lunar base, for building a Mars colony,

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for everything else?  You know how are you going to make that happen?

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Where are the business plans behind that?  Well, as soon as they start a nuclear war.

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Everyone is going to be highly, highly motivated to get the hell out of here.

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Yeah.  So.  I don’t think that is going to happen though, because even if you become motivated

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it’s still going to 20, 30 years of research to actually get to where you need to go.

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Unless you just want to get out.  No, even then…  Now!  But we can’t.  Just leave.

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You can’t – I mean we.  It’s like Katrina – just go.  But they couldn’t.  A lot of them got..

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Yeah, so that’s my point – you can’t.  You’re a big party pooper.  I’m sorry, you just can’t do it.

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So, that’s part of what the argument is.  Right.  We give money to NASA because

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it’s a government based organization and they can do what’s best for the people.

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Right.  They don’t have to worry about making numbers.  Whereas, a corporation – their big thing is they have to actually

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have to make profit.  Fox says we could go to the new planet – that’s only 30 light years away!

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Well, and that brings up another interesting point and actually we will talk about this in the

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next segment.  And that is – how do we get to these new planets?  We discovered

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this new planet, it takes seven years to get to Pluto.  So, how are we going to actually?

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And Pluto is in our system.  Exactly.  So, how are we going to expand our space travel

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beyond what we have today?  Right, right.  I say light rail.  Just a giant light rail?  Yeah, yeah.

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I like that – light rail.  Alright.  We don’t have any … lying around?   No.

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That brought this conversation to a screeching halt, that was amazing.  Wow, sorry.

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Just (stopping sound, laughing).  A space bullet – thank you 86046.  Fox actually asks

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if we can live on Pluto.  We don’t know yet because it takes so long to get to Pluto.

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We haven’t been able to send a lot of vehicles out to Pluto.  Coming up we’ve got the

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New Horizons satellite, I believe, that will be going to Pluto and examining it.

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But, they only have like a 24 hour window to look at Pluto.  We do know that Pluto

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has a light atmoshpere.  We think it might have water underneath the surface.

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We don’t know.  So, if it does we could possibly live on Pluto.  Ok.  Although, it comes

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back down to – we need to learn how to live on inhospitable planets.

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Pluto is not a real planet.  It’a a dwarf planet.  It’s not a real planet.  It’s a dwarf planet.

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It’s not a real planet.  Someone came in here and called it a moon.  It’s a moon -

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Pluto is the moon.  (laughter)  I’m not livin’ on no moon except my own.

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Well, 649, 69, geez guys log in.  Wow, 64696, 64696.  Well, yeah we have to learn how to live on

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inhospitable planets.  Which will involve creating either domes of environment or basically

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building our own atmosphere on the planet and creating a hospitable planet.

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I think domes on the planet are more likely at first, at least.  Or, actually building cities on those inhospitable areas

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and you can just never step outside.  But, you know the areas will be just so large you’d never actually need to.

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Right.  That’s kind of the concept behind it.  So, you know can we do it?

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Yeah, absolutely, we just need a lot more people to get interested in doing it.

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Which comes back to my fundamental argument of..  Yes.  We’ve got one disaster – and I

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could name off… just ask me to start naming disasters and I could just start going through them.

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It’s actually kind of fun when we’re doing it in pre- and or post-show.  And, you know these are things that

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could absolutely happen at any moment in time and there’s nothing we can do to stop them.

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The only thing we can do is get off of this planet.  This planet is very hostile towards species.

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We’ve seen many extinctions before and it’s all from the planet, so.  We can’t rely on this

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planet as our sole source of sustenance.  So sad.  Oh, I said that without stumbling.

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(together) Sole source of sustenance.  Pretty good.  Maybe we should just stop there.  (laughter)

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Yeah, actually we should.  It’s all downhill from here.  So, we’re going to go ahead and do that.

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When we come back we’re going to be taking a look at how we get out of our solar system.

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We can get to Mars in three months, we can get to Pluto in seven years.  So, what do we do beyond that?

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New transportection technology, what are we planning to do with that and fun things like that.

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So stay tuned.  SpaceVidcast will be right back.

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We are using plastics in space very often.  Mainly to reduce weight of our

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satellites and our space capsules and other space machines in general.

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This is due to the fact that every kilogram launched into orbit costs us about 30,000 euros per kilogram

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and therefore we have to come up with lightweight solutions …

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This segment is sponsored by LogMeIn.  Fast and secure remote desktop solutions

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for Mac and PC.  For more information go to SpaceVidcast.com/LogMeIn.

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$450 million dollars to launch each shuttle mission.  Again, I don’t know why you’re freaking out about these numbers.

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It’s not a big deal.  (laughter)  It’s a lot of money.  That’s a lot of money.

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That’s half a billion dollars to launch a shuttle mission.  That’s, I believe, the original goal was to actually have

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it be $100,000.  Really?  Per shuttle launch, I believe it was sopposed to be $100,000.

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Well, when you use monkeys and paper mache.  No, I mean the whole vision of the space shuttle

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was that it would be a reusable vehicle that you could…  Right.  just launch

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up and come back down.  But, the trying to get into space is actually a little more difficult – we ended up

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with the boosters and everything else and it ends up costing a lot of money.

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That’s $100,000 in like 19… what would that be?  In 1960 money.  So you know.

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Yeah, well yeah I suppose – inflation, but it’s.  Absoutely, you inflate that – maybe a million.

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Maybe instead of 100,000 it was a million.  Ok.  I’m pretty sure it was like 100,000 though.

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Something like that.  Yup.  Incredible.  NovemberKat said that’s 450 missilies in the war.

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Wow.  Yeah, we spend a fantastic amount of money on the war as well.

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So, part of the reason we are building a new space vehicle is because it never actually did live up to it’s expectations.

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And – it’s freaking old.  The Space Shuttle is like 30 years old now.  Yeah, I wouldn’t want to..

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It was envisioned, it was envisioned before we landed on the Moon.  Wow.

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Yup, so.  It wasn’t build then, but that’s when the process started.  No, I understand.

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Yup, and actually for more information during the Challenger disaster – there is a document

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that outlines that whole thing.  It was the ah… unfortunately I forget it’s name.  But, there’s a…

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it’s a really long document.  You can search the Internet for it and they actually talk about where the Space Shuttle program

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came from.  How it was founded.  Why it is here.  What was expected out of it.  What we ended up doing and things like that.

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It’s a fascinating document – if you’re interesting at all in space travel or how we got to where we are at -

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definitely read that.  And, of course it does cover the Challenger disaster, but the first

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three or four chapters are just… don’t even cover that… they are just about how we got to where we are at.

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Wow.  Yup, so awesome stuff.  Well, you know just the content.  Right.

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So you know earlier we were talking about space travel and someone had a comment in

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the chat room.  I want to go back up.  I think it was – let’s see here.  Give me one second guys.

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Ah, ok, talk for me for a moment.  I’m talking – what should I talk about?

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Oh, I’m sorry it was fox – he said we haven’t survived here very… I’m sorry – we have survived here for so long.  Right.

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Well, yeah but the dinosaurs were here for hundreds of millions of years or a hundred million years

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before they were wiped off the face of the planet in one fell swoop.  Just… and they’re gone.

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Right, so they established thier dominance here.  Mother Earth had thier thing going.  Sustained themselves and just

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one event – one simple event wiped them off the face of the planet.  And, there’s absolutely nothing

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that will prevent that exact same event, or a similar event from happening here to us, again.

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Right, right and there’s nothing to prevent it and there’s no way of getting around it or out of it.

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Oh, no there absolutely is we’re just not taking the proper steps to do that.

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We need to get off of this planet.  But should it happen and we’re all here.

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Yeah, there’s not a whole lot we can do.  You know Yellowstone National Park goes up.  Say goodnight.

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There’s a super volcano underneath Yellowstone, it is scheduled to go off within the next

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hundred thousand years.  Scheduled?  Well, yeah.  It’s going to let us know?

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Well, actually yes it will.  Absolutely.  It’s going to call you?  Similar, yeah.

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There’s actually yeah some action happen from the ground.  And, then within a few months

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it will actually explode and that is a super volcano.  It will devastate most of North America.

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But, within one week most of North America will just be covered in ash and totaled.

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Within several months most of the Earth will have some ash and a lot of the plant life will die off.

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And, we’re going to have substantially large numbers of humans die because of the super volcano

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underneath Yellowstone.  Nice.  And, that’s just one event.  An asteroid plows into us – you get the idea.

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Exactly, NovemberKat says that’s because the Sun’s rays will be blocked.

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That’s one of the things that will happen.  The Sun will be blocked, we’ll be coated in this, there are many things that can happen.

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Just a solar flare that ignites in our direction could light our atmoshere on fire.

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Cool to look at – not very good to breath in.  Right.  I’m just saying.  Bad, bad things can happen.

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So, we need to get to other planets.  So whether that is NASA or privitized space travel -

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I guess I really don’t care.  I just want someone to start getting us to other planets.

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Though, NASA has the mission.  Do it!  Do it now!  NASA has the mission of going to – back to the

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Moon and back to Mars and ‘beyond’.  A little bit cheesy, but hey we’ll go with it.

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And, that’s great.  Mars is only a three month travel away.  Right.  Six months in each direction.

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But, what happens to these other planets?  Like fox just said – the one that we just found.  How do we

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get to those planets?  What kind of propulsion are we developing and should we be developing that on Earth.

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Ok.  Think about this we are working with super colliders, right?  Right.

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These things take two particles, ream them around these giant super collider tunnel type things.

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They slam back together and you create fusion as opposed to fission.  Nuclear fission, so nuclear fusion.

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Right, right, right.  And, I believe – it’s my understanding that when you do this you’re generating

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micro black holes.  Right.  So we’re starting to mess with antimatter and black holes.

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We could really mess things up here on the planet.  Yeah, just a little bit.  Right.

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So, we need to advance science in the human race.  But, to what end?

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I mean do we really want to test that stuff here?  What happens?  What happens if they could just

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rip half of the planet apart?  I hope I’m on the other half.  No, that’s not the right answer?  No, that’s not going to help you.

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Yeah, I mean I don’t know.  I guess I hadn’t thought about it in that particular way really.

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I guess I look at movies and I don’t think that our planet is going to blow up.

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I think that our moon is going to blow up or think… you know what I’m saying?

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Yeah, I suppose.  I think our sun is going to expode, but I don’t ever think that our particular

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planet is going to.  Maybe the core will stop and we’ll have to drill down there.

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Oh, what a horrible movie.  (laughter)  It’s a good movie.  It’s a horrible movie.

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But, I guess I just don’t think of us – breaking apart like that.  You stumped me – I’m sorry.

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Yeah, well, but it would be self-induced.  We would be doing it to ourselves.  Yeah.

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But, the point of this is traveling to other planets.  We’re going to need this technology and this power to get to other planets.

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Because we need to be able to propel these vehicles very quickly through space and that’s going

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to take a lot of power.  And, we don’t have a power source today that will allow us to do that.

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And it’s my understanding that… I was talking with someone from NASA on facebook.

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Apparentely nuclear powered satellites and things in space are forbidden right now.  Ok why?

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You probably don’t want that nuclear object falling back to the planet.  Oh, ok.

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That would not be a good thing.  Right.  It’s my understanding, again I haven’t actually verified

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a lot of this data.  So, we’re going to make some assumptions.  But, they are recently opening

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that back up.  If anyone in the chat can confirm that that’s true – that would be great.

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A little Wikipedia or Google action would be awesome.  But, they are opening

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that back up and allowing us to do that again, but that’s still not enough power.

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So, how do we get from here to Pluto, in say three months?  Well, you already said it takes three

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months to get to Mars.  Exactly.  Now you want it to only take three months to get to Pluto?

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Exactly.  This isn’t Star Trek.  Well, maybe we need Star Trek.  We need some sort of drives.

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We need to start working on…  Where’s my Jean-Luc Picard?  Jean-Luc!  Jean-Luc!  (laughter)

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How are we going to explore past our own solar system if we can’t even get out of it?

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I mean come on.. think about it this way, imagine it like this.  A few hundred years ago

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Christopher Columbus is sailing across the known world, it must have seemed like an insurmountable task.

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Well he didn’t know what he was doing.  Alright, well we don’t know what we are doing either.

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So, it’s not so insurmountable is it?  You just go out there and do it and hopefully you hit India.

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(laughter)  Oh look planet!  (laughter)  We’re going to call you Planetians.  Plantains.

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Plantains.  (laughter)  Oh, I love that idea.  Can I go – can I be first?  You wanna…

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I give you Plantains.  (laughter)  I think we just derailed again.  I’m sorry, I know.

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It’s really my fault.  That is just funny.  Yeah, you know I think these are – I don’t necessarily

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have the answer to these.  But, these are things that I definitely think that people should be…

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These are questions I think people should be asking.  How do we make this go?

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How do we push humanity forward?  Otherwise we are just sitting here – we’re all going.. oh there’s a war

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and oh there’s so many problems here and dadada.  I mean how miserable of a life is that.

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They could be meeting Plantains.  We could be meeting Plantains – right here, right now.

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Dude.  I’ve said this for awhile – space travel has the potential to do one of two things.  Yes.

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One – it will unite the planet.  Yes.  In my idealistic world everyone will sing Kumbaya and hold hands.

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(singing)  If I could get the world to sing.  Ah, yeah basically.

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Or the second thing it will do…  Create another war?  Yeah, pretty much.  Sweet!

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We’re going to start factioning off into…  50/50 shot.  Yeah, whoosh.  (laughter)

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Ohh..snake eyes!!  You know what, as long as – even if we are in a war – as long as I get off of the planet, I’m happy.

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Well, Virgin Galactic will let you do that.  Heck yeah!  So we’ll close out this episode…

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things that you should think about and actually, absolutely come back in.

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Post comments in the SpaceVidcast thread for this particular show at

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SpaceVidcast.com.  Search for episode 003, leave comments in there.

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Let us know what you think.  Let us know how you think that we can get off of this planet.

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How we can get to other planets – way, way out there.  I’m not just talking Mars.

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Right, Mars is three months – we can do that.  I don’t know why it’s taking us so freaking long.

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But, you know whatever.  We can do Mars.  We can do other planets.

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We just need to dedicate ourselves to it.  But, how do we get to the things that

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are just a little bit outside of our reach?  How do we get to something that is one light year away?

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The Delta Quadrant.  In the Delta Quadrant, exactly.  How do we visit Star Trek: Voyager?  (laughter)  Janeway!

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Chakotay!  Chakotay.  (laughter)  So, seriously think about that.

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Leave comments in the SpaceVidcast website.  Try to avoid leaving them on the YouTube site

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and the other sites.  Of course YouTube only gets ten minutes of this video.

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So, they don’t get to see this anyhow.  They don’t care.  Nah, they don’t care.  They’re just click, click, click.

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But, leave your comments – let us know what you think.  Please do.

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And stop on back next week.  We do this live every Thursday?  Thusday.

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Take us out – give them the normal stats.

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We are normally on..well our regular show is a Thursday.  Every Thursday we are live.

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At 7pm Central – is it daylight time?  Yeah we’re in daylight time.

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Central Daylight Time.  Because that’s where we live and we really identify with Houston.

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And so that’s why we do that then.  And really what else are you going to do?

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I mean there’s nothing on tv.  And even if there is, you should have a TiVo by now.

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What are you – science geeks?  C’mon chop-chop.  Yeah bring your friends in.

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Get people excited about this.  We live and thrive off the chat room at the bottom.

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Yeah, absolutely.  So the more people we have commenting and…

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I noticed we had a couple trolls in there.  So, thank you admins and operators for taking care of that

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during the show.  Yes.  Well, you know stopping, leave your comments.

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Let’s get a good conversation going and figuring what the best thing to do is.

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Because there are a lot of really cool things we can do for humanity.

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And you know, if your one of those people who really likes profit and wants to make money.

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There is that there in this too.  Absolutely.  Look at Virgin Galactic.  So you know there are chances

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to advance in many different areas here.  It’s not just a idealistic view of the world.

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But, it is easier together.  Oh really!  I’m taking us out on that one.  What?


  1. Cariann and Ben,

    Its great to see yet another episode of Spacevidcast. Cariann – your presence is amazing! You and Ben work amazing together.

    Personally, I think there should be public space travel, since everybody should have the experience of seeing other planets. Not just the rich folks, but every day geeks like us!

    Ben stresses this a lot, and I agree with him 450% ( I don’t know why I put the extra 50 :-) ) but we can’t depend on Earth. It doesn’t bring everything we need, and we can’t depend on it. The moon is the next best place to go.

    Keep on with the great show,

    Daniel Brusilovsky
    http://www.danielbru.com

  2. V. Hounsell says:

    Einstein’s equation states that if you want a spacecraft or any object to reach speeds close to that of light it will require enormous energy. The only power source capable of providing that much energy is the sun or stars, in general. Beaming light to far distances in space as always been a problem due to diffraction but this will be over come with super lens technology which uses meta materials. Super lasers, in particular, will beam energy to distance spacecraft as they orbit the sun.

    V.