WEBVTT - Space Junk, Ahoy! 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:14.480 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:22.320 astro Clark, and there's Charles after Burn, Bryant okay, and 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:26.239 Jerry Goose Roland is out there. Way do you call 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:31.400 me after burning because I'm gassy? Yep, although we've been 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:33.720 we've been tooting for a year straight and no one 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:37.240 even no, I don't care except us. Have you ever 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.239 set one of your ducks on fire? Have I ever 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:43.760 lit a fart? I was hoping to not use that word, 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.680 but yes, uh yeah, I used to. There was a 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:50.360 period in my youth where I thought that was just 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:52.960 about the funniest thing ever. And I still think it's 0:00:52.960 --> 0:00:55.200 pretty hysterical. I just don't do it. I never thought 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:57.640 it was funny. I've always just been more wowed by it. 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:01.040 You know. It's I'm mean, the notion of it, now 0:01:01.080 --> 0:01:03.360 as I've gotten older, is more funny than the act itself. 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.520 The notion that we can expel flammable cats from our 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:09.399 But it's pretty great. And then do you remember that 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:13.039 cautionary tale that um that if you lit it, it it 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:17.000 could travel up into your rectum and cook your inside 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:20.640 some sort of a reverse thing. There must have just 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:24.720 been like some I don't know, some department somewhere, some 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:28.039 obscure federal agency that was tasked with coming up with 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:32.040 fake cautionary tales to scare kids out of doing things 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:36.080 that where they weren't behaving, you know. Yeah, And I 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:39.839 think what my most cherished memories were the times where 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:44.840 people swore that it wasn't possible, that oh that you 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:48.360 couldn't light it, they wouldn't work. Yeah, So proving proving 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:50.640 that was always sort of the most fun because it 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:54.600 was just like hilarity ensued, and also you just got 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:58.720 to be like in your face, like literally come down here, 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:01.320 because I'm gonna light this in your face if you're 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:04.200 just so sure it's not going to catch fire. And 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:05.760 I always had a theory that it would get rid 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:07.920 of the smell kind of instantaneously too. I think it 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:09.760 just burned it out. I think it did. So it's 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:12.880 really an efficient way of clearing the air. What are 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:16.320 we doing? Well, we're talking chuck about space junk and 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:19.720 actually not the band, the whole thing. What there's a 0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:22.000 immediately had to look it up because I was going 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:24.160 to say a great band name, but there's a band 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.160 out of Buffalo named space Junk. Yeah, out of Buffalo. 0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:33.200 I guess that. I guess that um that affords being mentioned. Sure, 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:37.280 sure um, Okay, So space Junk, not the band, the 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:41.960 actual stuff stuff floating around in space. It turns out 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:43.440 there's a lot of it. And I actually have a 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:45.639 little bit of an intro here. I'm gonna do a little, 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:50.440 um a little. It wasn't the lighting, No, that was 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:55.880 a pre showed tangent. Okay, I think it's that classification. 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:58.600 No UM. Back in the seventies, there is a guy 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:01.400 who worked for NASA called Donald Kessler, and he was 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:04.560 an interesting cat in and of himself, but one of 0:03:04.600 --> 0:03:08.080 the claims to fame that he has is that his 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:15.560 name became synonymous with a um an unstoppable chain reaction 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:21.480 of collisions of space junk called the Kessler syndrome. And 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:24.600 the Kessler syndrome that Kessler came up with is based 0:03:24.600 --> 0:03:27.919 on this idea that if you get enough stuff floating 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:31.880 around in orbit around Earth, eventually this stuff is going 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:35.320 to smash into other stuff up there because these things 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:37.920 are traveling at very high speeds, and when they smash 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:41.160 in another they're going to potentially break into more and 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:43.400 more pieces, and then those pieces are going to go 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:45.360 on and they're going to smash into other things, and 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:48.040 so this chain reaction will begin to where there's just 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:51.560 pieces constantly smashing into one another, and all of a 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:54.840 sudden were trapped on Earth because we can't make it 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:58.839 through the debris field we accidentally created. Hence the ks 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:02.640 the Kessler sin drome has struck again like a like 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:04.720 a far being lit in your face, but in the 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:07.600 face of humanity as a whole. Yeah, and I think 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:11.640 some some scientists these days say that parts of our 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:14.080 orbit are already like that, right, Yeah, there, Yes, So 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:16.359 Kessler was basically saying he made these predictions in the 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:21.680 seventies um and he he said, based at the rate 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:25.200 that we're going, will probably will reach a critical mass 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:27.159 or in about thirty to forty years. And a lot 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:29.960 of people said, well, we've reached that point, and I 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:34.120 think Kessler is actually right. The thing is, we can't 0:04:34.160 --> 0:04:37.040 really see everything that's up there, so we have to 0:04:37.080 --> 0:04:40.279 make guesses and assumptions. We actually track a very respectable 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:43.640 amount of space chunk considering that we're just down here 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:46.120 on Earth, that we actually can track things going really 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:49.760 fast that are really small, traveling really far above the Earth. 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:52.120 But there's a lot of it that's just too small 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:54.440 for our current technology to track. So we have to 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:57.040 make guesses about what all is up there. And it 0:04:57.120 --> 0:04:59.640 looks like there's a lot of stuff up there, and 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.840 it's possible we have reached critical mass and this this 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:08.120 cascading collision, the chain reaction, it just hasn't started yet. Yeah, 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:09.880 I mean, I was just about to correct myself when 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:12.080 I said some people say it's already there, that I 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:15.640 didn't mean. It's all just so people understand it's already 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:19.400 like we can't travel through these places, but that process 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:22.279 has started such that it can't be reversed, Like even 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:25.800 if we stop launching anything, they're like, it's too late. Yeah, 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:28.320 once that chain reaction starts, I mean, there's nothing we 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:30.600 can do about it. I mean, we can't even get 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:33.080 a lot of the space chunk that's up there out now. 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:36.360 I can't imagine when they've started on a chain reaction. 0:05:36.400 --> 0:05:39.280 That's got to make catching it even even more difficult. 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:42.400 So a lot of people say, well, let's do everything 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:46.839 we can to avoid that cascade inclusion that Kessler syndrome 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:49.760 from ever starting and a lot of people sitting out 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:51.520 there chuck, I'm guessing are like, wait, what are you 0:05:51.560 --> 0:05:54.640 guys talking about with space Chunk? What is the space Chunk? Yes, 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:58.240 I'm well versed with the band from Buffalo. I have 0:05:58.360 --> 0:06:00.760 all of their CDs. I got them all for free 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:03.440 just walking past this one street corner many times over 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:08.880 multiple years. But I don't know about the actual space junk. 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:10.760 And it never occurred to me that the band space 0:06:10.839 --> 0:06:14.960 Junk is based on a real thing, right, so space 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:17.279 junk I kind of always assume people knew what this was. 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:20.520 But we've made that assumption before about things like I 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:24.360 don't know trees, and people said, why don't you just 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:28.479 grub what a tree is? Parrots? So, oh, by the way, 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:30.520 thanks for all the parrot pictures from all over the world. 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:35.720 Has been delightful. But space junk is you know, it 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.479 can be a lot of things. NASA actually has a 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:41.360 sort of a list that describes it better than we could. UM. 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:44.840 A lot of it is abandoned spacecraft or spacecraft that 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:48.320 doesn't work anymore, so we abandon it. Um. This can 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:52.360 be big, full spaceships, or it can be parts of spaceships. 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:55.440 Because as we'll learn and as you know, if you follow, 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:58.240 you know, if you're a rocket enthusiast, like those things 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:00.440 break apart, and we'll get to that, but there are 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:03.600 many pieces that are quite large that are just sort 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:07.479 of left up there until they come back down or 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.760 they hit something else. Um. Some of this stuff is, 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:15.239 like I said, parts of rockets that have broken apart, 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:19.080 usually upper stage, because that lower stage stuff breaks off 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.360 early enough to where it generally, you know, after a 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:26.120 few years, may tumble back towards Earth, burn up hopefully 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:29.360 so where nothing actually hits Earth, but that upper stage 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:32.600 stuff is kind of stuck up there. Yeah. Yeah, that's 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:35.240 that's one thing that you'll you'll find out about things 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:38.880 that we place into orbit. The further away from Earth 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:43.480 that this thing is circling the Earth, um, the the 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:46.119 longer it's going to take to come back down to Earth. 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:49.280 So that, yeah, because it's the force of gravity that 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:53.280 pulls these things in orbit back down to Earth eventually. Right. Yeah. 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:56.880 What else? Uh? What else do we have? Motor affluent? Yeah, 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:00.520 so a lot of unspent fuel, a lot of cocket fuel, 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:03.200 a solid fuel and then kids, I was looking it up, 0:08:03.240 --> 0:08:07.480 that includes ammonium nitrate appropriately enough, but it all yeah, 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:12.800 um and enemy um. But it also includes gunpowder, black gunpowder. 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:16.400 That's what they use as solid rocket fuel sometimes, which 0:08:16.440 --> 0:08:19.120 is like we've come really far, but also not far 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:22.680 at all, you know. Um. So there's canisters of of 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:26.480 gunpowder floating around up in space, which are particularly problematic 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:29.200 because not only can they break things apart, they can 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:32.080 really break things apart because they may explode when they 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:35.880 impact things going as fast as they travel. Uh. And 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:38.280 then the last thing, and we'll get to all the 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:40.360 detail about all this stuff and why it's dangerous. But 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:43.439 little bitty, little tiny things, little tiny flex of paint, 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:47.840 even millions of them, can cause a lot of damage. 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:51.680 I think there was, you know, reports from astronauts that say, 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:53.480 you know that work on the Hubble that are like, 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:55.880 this thing looks like it a car that's been through 0:08:55.920 --> 0:09:01.080 a hailstorm. You know, it's just like getting constantly pelted, 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:03.920 and you think a speck of paint, who cares. But 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:06.480 when these things are going twenty something miles an hour, 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:09.840 it can cause some damage. Yeah. I think his famous 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:12.920 quote back to ground Control was this thing looks like 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:20.760 a seventy two nova. So when we when we The 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:22.960 thing about space junk is that you have to remember 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:25.000 is every single bit of it used to be here 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:27.640 on Earth, and every single bit of it was launched 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:30.199 by humans. That's just space junk. There's plenty of other 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:33.880 stuff out in space, like asteroids and comets and pieces 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:37.839 of rocks flying around. That's not space. Yeah, et s 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:41.280 flying around, Um, that's not space junk. Space junk is 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.600 specifically things that humans have launched into Earth. So there's 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:49.280 this whole kind of air of um oh, I don't 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:51.560 know the actual word for it, but that we've we've 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:54.840 done this to ourselves, like we've created our own problem 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:57.280 and now we we've made this bed that we have 0:09:57.400 --> 0:09:59.440 to lie in or figure out how to get out 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:02.679 of because it's so human. Yeah, isn't it that, like 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:08.400 let's destroy the Earth, let's start destroying space because we 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:10.040 may want to live up there, so we might as 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:12.160 well pre destroy it before we get up there to 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:17.120 really destroy it. And it makes sense though early on 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:22.360 in the space programs, you know, starting in the with 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:24.560 the launch of Sputnik, that's when the whole thing started. 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:27.560 But you know, it makes sense that we had the 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:29.920 technology get things up there, but not to get them 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.559 back down, and we knew that eventually their their orbit 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:35.880 was going to decay, they would be pulled down into 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:39.440 the atmosphere where it would probably burn up. So that 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:42.360 made sense at the beginning of the space race. But 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:45.480 as we got better and better at technology, the idea 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:50.600 that we could just litter space became less and less acceptable. 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:54.040 The problem is it didn't really go away, Like, there's 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:58.679 still basically stuff that's being launched up there today that 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:02.079 has no way of being brought back down. It's just 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:04.520 like we'll just leave it up there until it runs 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:06.800 out of its useful life and then hope for the best. 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:09.319 That's kind of how a lot of stuff is being 0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:13.200 launched into space right now, and it's particularly galling because 0:11:13.200 --> 0:11:15.840 we have the technology to bring it back down. It 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:18.000 just makes the whole thing more expensive, and I think 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:21.920 that that's why a lot of um companies and countries 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:28.080 don't include that. Yeah, there's a saying among contractors, a joke, 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:32.160 if you will, among contractors who build houses and fix 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:35.200 up houses. If there's something wrong and that that they're 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:38.560 working on and there's the homeowners and around, they just say, 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:42.000 I can't see it from my house. I've not heard. 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:45.440 That's kind of what's been going on here for years 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:48.559 with I mean not only space agencies, but private companies 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:53.280 as we'll see, uh, Amazon and Tesla and all kinds 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:55.880 of companies have plans to put a lot of a 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:59.120 lot more things into space. And it made me wonder, like, 0:11:59.160 --> 0:12:01.480 who's regulating this stuff. We'll get to all that, But 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:06.520 what's kind of cool is since seven when sput Nick 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:10.920 was launched into space, nor AD started cat cataloging this 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:14.200 stuff and numbering them and naming them, and sput Nick 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:18.040 is object number one. And you know they did, they 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:19.800 do a really good job of keeping track of a 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:22.400 lot of this stuff. Like you said, considering we're down 0:12:22.440 --> 0:12:26.920 here and it's up there, it's not too bad. Things 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:29.959 started breaking apart though, and getting smaller and colliding with 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:33.280 one another, creating hundreds and thousands of more smaller bits. 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:36.960 But we kind of, you know, our technology progress where 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:40.360 we could go smaller in our tracking abilities. And so 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:44.120 now the US Department of Defense started cattle logging anything 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:49.960 basically larger than I think a softball. I've seen grapefruit too, 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:53.160 so yeah, basically that size. If you're not familiar with softballs, 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:56.920 but you're crazy for citrus. It's grape fruit size too. 0:12:57.000 --> 0:12:58.560 If you don't know either one of those, I'm sorry. 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:01.160 That's the best we can do. Maybe two of your 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:03.120 fists bawled up like good and I don't know how 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:08.440 big your fists are A good size snowball. Okay, somebody's like, 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:11.000 I'm from the Tropics, I don't know any of this stuff. 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:14.920 I'm from Buffalo. I know about snowballs and space jumps 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:18.640 and that catalog Chuck. By the way, it is pretty awesome. 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:21.640 It contains not just sput nick and all every satellite 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:25.800 ever created in every grapefruit size UM piece of debris. 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:29.520 But there's some other really interesting stuff in there too. UM. 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:34.640 The cremated remains or the canister containing the cremated remains 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:37.600 of Gene Roddenberry is one of them. The created star 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:43.080 trek UM, the Tesla roadster that UM SpaceX launched up. 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:46.199 That one. Yeah, especially when you start learning about the 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.560 space junk, you're like, this is not a good idea. Yeah, 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:51.520 what we don't need to do is just do like 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:55.760 pr stuff in space and then you know, like like 0:13:55.920 --> 0:14:01.160 UM astronauts have lost entire boxes of tools on spacewalks 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:04.280 before UM and they're just out there floating around wrenches 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:07.800 and stuff like that. They're all in the catalog. They 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:10.120 cut that stuff tethered. You gotta tether it. Yeah, sometimes 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:13.360 that gets loose or they forget to tether it. Astro nuts. 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.480 They have hard days too, that's right. They have their 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:21.080 their B game on some days. But yeah, anything as 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:24.840 small as a softball. They're about twenty thou pieces orbiting 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:27.960 the Earth right now. And then there are about half 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:31.840 a million pieces the size of a marble or larger 0:14:31.880 --> 0:14:35.120 that NASA is tracking. And then the paint flex just 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:37.640 good luck with that. There's millions of that and no one, 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:40.280 no one keeps track of it. Yeah, paint flexes, well, 0:14:40.320 --> 0:14:42.560 just because we can't. We definitely would if we could, 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.600 but we just don't have the technology right now because 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:48.000 there's so so there's three orbits. I don't want to 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:50.800 do an episode on satellites one day, but just briefly, 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:54.200 but there's three orbits lowerth orbit, Middle Earth orbit UM, 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:58.760 not to be confused with the shire and um uh 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:01.560 g O sink in this orbit which is way up 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:06.240 there UM, and that's where your communication satellites are there, 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.080 GEO stationary. They basically if you stand in a spot 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:12.200 and could look up and there was a satellite ahead 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:14.720 of you or above, you would be there twenty four 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:16.840 hours a day, every day of the year. It's it's 0:15:16.880 --> 0:15:20.960 it's it's moving in in line with one spot around 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:23.080 the Earth, and to do that you have to be 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:25.600 really far out. The stuff that's further closer to the 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:29.080 Earth travels the fastest, and it seems that lower Earth 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:32.440 orbit is the most crowded too. So the things that 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:35.280 are in lower Earth orbit are traveling the fastest, and 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:37.680 there's the most of them because it's the easiest to 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:42.120 get to. Right, I feel like that's a pretty good 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:46.920 setup if you include our two lighting stories. So maybe 0:15:46.920 --> 0:15:48.480 we should take a break and talk a little bit 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:51.200 about some of the things they're doing to mitigate this 0:15:51.320 --> 0:16:22.120 right after this. All right, So, there's a lot of 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:26.520 space junk out there, a lot of collisions happening. Um. 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:30.440 When satellites collide, like I said, they can create just 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:33.960 a very much bigger problem by creating lots more smaller pieces. 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.520 And there are a few countries. The USA is one 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:40.760 of them, China's one, India's one that we have used 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:44.680 missiles before. They're called anti satellite weapons a SATs to 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:49.680 physically damage a satellite, and basically what they do it's 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:52.640 very you know, we all kind of laughed when Armageddon 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:56.360 came out about sending people up there to drill holes 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:59.160 and then drop bombs in it. But when you look 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:01.760 at some of these things that we've thought to do, 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:04.560 they're all kind of rudimentry like that, Like let's just 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:07.680 send something in there and ram it into a satellite. Yeah, 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:10.880 shoot a missile at that thing the old fashioned way. Yeah, 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:14.200 that's called a kinetic kill model, which is it's exactly 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:17.240 that you shoot a missile at a satellite or something 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:20.080 up in space and you blow it into smithereens a 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:24.359 is a yosemite. Sam would say, right, so, um, you 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:27.159 don't want to do this, but a lot of countries do, 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:31.240 like you listed, Um, they have not only just the technology, 0:17:31.240 --> 0:17:33.719 but have actually done this, have run these tests. And 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:36.480 I think it's kind of a two show of twofold 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:39.800 Show of Force where you're showing that like I can 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:44.080 launch really technically sophisticated stuff up there that I don't 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:46.160 want anyone else to know about, and then I can 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:49.800 destroy it before you could ever possibly find out about it. 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:52.440 Or I don't like your satellite and what it's doing. 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:54.040 I'm going to shoot that thing out of the sky. 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:56.479 I just showed all of you that I'm capable of 0:17:56.520 --> 0:18:00.400 doing it. So so it makes sense, so I guess 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:02.960 in a geopolitical way, but up in space it makes 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:06.720 zero sense because when you blow up a satellite or something, 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:10.680 you blow it up into thousands of pieces of um 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:16.920 that grapefruit, softball snowball size um uh debris, and then 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:20.119 millions of smaller pieces, and all of a sudden, the 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:23.720 population that catalog of space chunk just increased by ten 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:27.240 or fifteen or twenty um depending on how big the 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:31.080 explosion wasn't how much debris it created. Yeah, and you 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:35.800 might think, because there have been satellites launched basically continuously 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:39.600 for you know, many many decades now, that they're banging 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:42.439 into each other at a decent rate. But that's actually 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:46.040 not the case yet as far as actual satellite collisions. 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:49.520 In February two thousand nine, the very first one happened, 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:53.080 um the cosmos with a K, so you know where 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:58.080 that one's from. The twenty Cosmos out of Russia collided 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:01.919 and it was defunct, collided with I think a private 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:05.000 one from a US company called Irridium, which sounds like 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:08.760 a total sci fi movie, bad guy company. I know, 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:10.960 I don't actually know. It doesn't strike me like that. 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:12.439 I get what you're saying, but I think it's a 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:15.639 very pleasant word. Okay. It makes me think of the 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:21.919 rainbow centrum vitamin logo kind of oh, Ridium find it 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:26.359 very Yeah, Well, one guy's evil corporation, there's another guy's 0:19:26.480 --> 0:19:30.720 rainbow fighting. That's right. Uh. They were traveling at a 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.720 speed relative to each other about twenty two thousand miles 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:38.880 an hour and blew them up into you know, two 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:42.520 thousand pieces at least four inches in diameter, and then 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:45.640 like you said, thousands and thousands and millions of tinier 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:48.280 and tinier pieces. Right. So this is the first time 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:51.720 that was two thousand nine where they where two satellites 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:54.560 rammed into each other as as far as we know, 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:56.800 and I think it hasn't happened again yet right now. 0:19:57.160 --> 0:19:59.760 But the thing is is, because there's so many satellites 0:19:59.840 --> 0:20:03.320 up there and we're launching so many more, that um 0:20:03.359 --> 0:20:06.360 that that it's going to happen again. It's just inevitable 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:08.800 that's going to happen again. Because you'll notice, you know, 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:13.320 while the Iridium satellite was operational, that Cosmos one was 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:16.439 in operational, meaning there's no way to control it or 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:19.240 move it. So the only way to avoid this collision 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.879 is for the Iridium controllers to move their's and I 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:25.959 guess they didn't have the warning or what why they 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:28.240 didn't move it, because there's as we'll see, there's a 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:33.160 there's collision maneuvers where you just basically move your satellite 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:35.200 out of the way if you think it's gonna gonna 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:38.280 hit something. But that didn't happen with this one. And 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.200 so because there's so many satellites that are defunct out 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:44.520 there that are traveling in opposite directions that really high speeds, 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:47.320 of course this is going to happen again. And the 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:51.280 Union of Concerned Scientists says that there's something like thirty 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:55.199 three I know they're great, UM thirty three hundred and 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:59.520 seventy two active satellites in orbit and at least three 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.080 thousand and more inactive satellites in orbit right now, So 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:07.080 it's definitely going to happen again. Yeah, I think the 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:10.320 Union of Concerned Scientists logo is I looked it up. 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:14.960 It's just UM a silhouette of two uh folded arms 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:22.040 with lab coat sleeves, scowling scowling arms. So yeah, it's 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:25.400 gonna happen again. I think there was one ESA official, 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:29.160 the European Space Agency, and this is paraphrasing, but said, 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:32.320 it's basically what we're doing. It's like every time a 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:34.840 ship goes out to see just leaving it out there, 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:37.280 like eventually this is going to be a real problem. 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:40.080 And I know that it's hard to imagine because it's 0:21:40.119 --> 0:21:42.480 in space, but let me liken it to the ocean 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:46.760 and boats and it might get the your thick skulls. Yeah, um, 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:49.880 so yeah, it's it's basically a tragedy of the commons 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:53.200 that we're seeing right now. Um, but the commons are 0:21:53.200 --> 0:21:56.040 becoming more and more crowded as the days go by. 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:59.280 That thirty three and seventy two active satellites in orbit, 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:02.359 I think that as of the beginning of the end 0:22:02.400 --> 0:22:06.320 of that was a thousand more active satellites than there 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:11.520 were in two thousand nineteen, like exponentially. And one of 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:15.080 the reasons why it's picking up exponentially is that, um, 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:17.440 a lot of companies. I think there's at least eight 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:21.000 companies right now that have proposals to release um what 0:22:21.040 --> 0:22:25.240 you're called mega constellations or swarms of satellites, and you 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:28.280 would you would need a swarm of satellites because these 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:31.680 things in lower Earth orbit travel so fast that if say, 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:34.200 like you're connected to one for your cell phone, it's 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:36.960 suddenly gone. So they handed off to the satellite behind 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:38.960 them and behind them and behind them, so that you'd 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:42.200 be continuous service. So the more of swarm of satellites 0:22:42.280 --> 0:22:45.600 you have, the more connected you could be. And so 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:51.240 some of these proposals like um SpaceX is starlink swarm UM. 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:55.520 It aims to to create like global coverage of satellite 0:22:55.560 --> 0:22:59.080 internet service, so everyone everywhere in the world will be 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:02.359 able to connect to really high speed WiFi because of 0:23:02.359 --> 0:23:04.760 this swarm. So there's a benefit to it. But at 0:23:04.800 --> 0:23:10.280