Speaker 1: I'm TT and I'm Zukiah and this is Dope Labs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore
Speaker 1: science with pop culture and a healthy dose of friendship.
Speaker 1: The last time we were together in person was in Boston.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Boston is always a good time.
Speaker 1: Yes, But my friend always wants to get to the
Speaker 1: airport two minutes before the boarding door closes, and I
Speaker 1: cannot do that.
Speaker 2: I am a two hours before the fly.
Speaker 1: No. No is your sense of adventure if we're going by plane,
Speaker 1: training automobile, I like a side shot of adrenaline. Please,
Speaker 1: you know I don't need that. I'm trying to relax
Speaker 1: on my travel. She want to run through the airport.
Speaker 1: I cannot do it. I can't. But what blew me
Speaker 1: that day was that my flight, even though we got
Speaker 1: there at a reasonable time, was delayed to you got
Speaker 1: there too early, and now you thought you had a
Speaker 1: two hour delay, now you have four.
Speaker 2: I thought I was going to cry.
Speaker 1: I hate when that happens, you know, a delay. I
Speaker 1: feel like you're so close to your destination, and every
Speaker 1: time it make you feel like Tom Hanks and castaway,
Speaker 1: like you just abandoned at the airport right right. Being
Speaker 1: stuck anywhere that is not my house, my home, my abode,
Speaker 1: Mikasa will have me.
Speaker 2: Losing my mind.
Speaker 1: You be spiraling at four k. Absolutely, You're not the
Speaker 1: only person that feels that way though, because you talked
Speaker 1: about being abandoned in the airport. But a lot of
Speaker 1: people are upset about astronauts that have been in space
Speaker 1: that are supposed to have been back a very long
Speaker 1: time ago.
Speaker 2: Oh girl, hold that thought. Let's get into the recitation.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what do we know? Tt We know that
Speaker 1: there are two astronauts up in space and they were
Speaker 1: supposed to be back already. They've been up there for like,
Speaker 1: I think it's more than six months at this point.
Speaker 1: We also know that being in space for any amount
Speaker 1: of time is hard on the body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and from.
Speaker 1: Our last episode on space, we know that commercial spaceflight
Speaker 1: is becoming a bigger and bigger industry. Yes, President Elon
Speaker 1: Musk has its own space business.
Speaker 2: This varies, yes, Okay, So what do we want to know?
Speaker 1: I would know why those astronauts were up there in
Speaker 1: the first place. So how did they get up there,
Speaker 1: why are they up there? How did they get stuck?
Speaker 1: And what are we doing to get them back. These
Speaker 1: are very important questions and I want to know what
Speaker 1: happens to your body after being in space for that
Speaker 1: much time. And a lot has happened in the world
Speaker 1: since our last episode on commercial space flight, but a
Speaker 1: lot has happened in that industry specifically. So have there
Speaker 1: been any new regulations because it was the wild Wild
Speaker 1: West or the wild wild Space the last time we
Speaker 1: talked about it, And where's that's in the equation? And
Speaker 1: are they even gonna still be around to be in
Speaker 1: the equation? You know, Oh, the jury's still out. There's
Speaker 1: also a lot of talk about Mars, and I just
Speaker 1: want to know, like what's good, what's good with Mars?
Speaker 1: Like why are we even targeting Mars? I think these
Speaker 1: are a good starting one thousand questions. So for this episode,
Speaker 1: we're bringing back our friend, space historian doctor Jordan Beim.
Speaker 1: Some things have changed with Jordan since the last time
Speaker 1: we spoke.
Speaker 3: I'm still here at the University of Chicago. Since the
Speaker 3: last time that we chatted, I've become a professor here now,
Speaker 3: which is Gratus Creations.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you still miss my home country Canada? But
Speaker 3: I'm you know, still making a go of it down here.
Speaker 1: We all miss Canada right now. We all want to go.
Speaker 1: We want to go. So first we need a little
Speaker 1: background on these astronauts. Their names are Sunita Sunny Williams
Speaker 1: and Barry Butch Wilmore. They are both former US Navy captains.
Speaker 1: Sunni was selected as a NASA astronaut in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight and has flown on two other missions to space.
Speaker 1: She even held the female record for most spacewalk time
Speaker 1: until twenty seventeen. Butch was selected as a NASA astronaut
Speaker 1: in two thousand and served as commander of Expedition forty two.
Speaker 1: It seems like this is definitely not their first radio right,
Speaker 1: So what was the mission this time?
Speaker 3: So they were test flying a new type of spacecraft
Speaker 3: called the Boeing Starliner, which had a lot of problems
Speaker 3: in development, and they were the first humans to try
Speaker 3: and give it a flight, and they made it to
Speaker 3: the ISS, but there were problems getting there that gave
Speaker 3: NASA pause about whether they wanted to risk them coming
Speaker 3: back on that craft. So what they opted to do
Speaker 3: was to just have them join the crew that is
Speaker 3: on the ISS, called Crew nine, and to come back
Speaker 3: basically on their regular scheduled return vehicle, which is a
Speaker 3: SpaceX Dragon capsule.
Speaker 1: That was the plan, but it didn't turn out that right.
Speaker 1: I am really scared for my friends Sunni and but
Speaker 1: but should I.
Speaker 3: Be so for this? I have been putting a riff
Speaker 3: on the famous line from Apollo thirteen and saying, Houston,
Speaker 3: we have a fake problem. So those astronauts are not stranded.
Speaker 3: They are not stuck in space.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, wait, wait, say that again.
Speaker 3: Those astronauts are not stranded. They are not stuck in space.
Speaker 3: Since September there has been a SpaceX capsule doted the
Speaker 3: ISS with two seats on it for them. Now, it
Speaker 3: was a little weird that they were not able to
Speaker 3: return on the test vehicle that they were test flying,
Speaker 3: and that their trip has been extended from eight days
Speaker 3: to you know, eight months plus, But the situation up
Speaker 3: there pretty much normal for them.
Speaker 2: That's not what we've been hearing.
Speaker 3: What you're hearing from the political leadership right now about
Speaker 3: them being abandoned, about them being needing rescue. You know,
Speaker 3: all of that is giving a false sense of danger,
Speaker 3: a false sense of risk, and it's putting a false
Speaker 3: smear of failure upon NASA, which is not actually the case.
Speaker 3: So the way I've been thinking about it is, imagine
Speaker 3: you're at a train station and you've got a ticket
Speaker 3: for the train. The train is there waiting for you,
Speaker 3: but it's not leaving just yet. It's leaving in an hour.
Speaker 3: Are you stranded at that station? Are you in need
Speaker 3: of rescue? No, You're just waiting for the next scheduled departure.
Speaker 1: Jordan. Now I have some follow up questions because there's
Speaker 1: a delay and then there's eight months, you know, so
Speaker 1: I'm curious about how often this happens, and is this
Speaker 1: par for the course. Are people having these kind of
Speaker 1: delays up there in space or is it typically a
Speaker 1: couple days or a couple of weeks.
Speaker 3: So it's not that their train has been delayed, it's
Speaker 3: that they're taking a different train that leaves later, and
Speaker 3: that is totally normal. That's regular scheduled crew transfers from
Speaker 3: the ISS. So crews go and come to the ISS
Speaker 3: in regular increments that last for about six or seven months,
Speaker 3: and Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams are just waiting for
Speaker 3: that next increment to conclude so that they can come
Speaker 3: back to Earth with those two other astronauts on that
Speaker 3: normal scheduled return.
Speaker 1: Are there risk to be in there for ameleass because
Speaker 1: if I only pack my bags and I brought snacks
Speaker 1: for like two days.
Speaker 2: I don't have enough underwear for that.
Speaker 3: Okay, same there are crude resupply missions that are constantly
Speaker 3: going to the ISS, so they have tons of supplies
Speaker 3: up there. They are not running out of food or
Speaker 3: clothes or anything like that. I listened to an interview
Speaker 3: with them on the ISS just five days ago, and
Speaker 3: they sounded totally fine, totally normal, just like any other
Speaker 3: crew on the ISS. The thing to remember is that
Speaker 3: Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams are veteran NASA astronauts. This
Speaker 3: is not a new or unfamiliar place for them. They
Speaker 3: are just an integrated, regular part of the crew. They're
Speaker 3: doing science experiments, they're performing spacewalks to do maintenance up there.
Speaker 3: They're in good spirits, they're professionals. Part of astronaut training
Speaker 3: is how to deal with contingencies, how to deal with
Speaker 3: the unexpected.
Speaker 1: What impacts are there on your body when you go
Speaker 1: to space and being there for an extended amount of time,
Speaker 1: Do the effects compound. Does it get worse the longer
Speaker 1: you're out there? So what can we expect for these
Speaker 1: two astronauts when they get back physically?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a question a lot of people have,
Speaker 3: like is it safe to actually extend their stay for
Speaker 3: that long from eight days to perhaps eight months or longer.
Speaker 3: And the answer is it's actually well within the known
Speaker 3: lengths of stays on the ISS. Humans have stayed on
Speaker 3: the ISS for over a year. There are known changes
Speaker 3: to the body that are caused by the microgravity environment,
Speaker 3: the zero G weightless environment on the ISS, and that
Speaker 3: includes things like muscle atrophy and bone loss and sometimes
Speaker 3: changes to the eyeball that can involve vision problems when
Speaker 3: returning to Earth. But these are well understood and they
Speaker 3: are mitigated through things like working out every day on
Speaker 3: board the ISS. They have a treadmill up there, they
Speaker 3: have resistance equipment that they all use regularly to mitigate this. So,
Speaker 3: while yes, some astronauts do have some trouble coming back
Speaker 3: when they get back to Earth, they are in the
Speaker 3: very capable hands of NASA's medical team.
Speaker 1: So you're basically saying this is a walk in the park,
Speaker 1: But why does this still feel so spooky ky.
Speaker 3: We are sort of fixated on this story because of
Speaker 3: the word stranded or stuck in space, and there is
Speaker 3: this sort of cultural imaginary of the stranded astronaut. Right
Speaker 3: we all know the movie The Martian Matt Damon Stuck
Speaker 3: on Mars. There are other movies too that deal with
Speaker 3: stranded astronauts. In nineteen sixty eight, right before the Apollo
Speaker 3: eleven moon landing, there was a big blockbuster movie called
Speaker 3: Marooned about a crew of astronauts stuck in Earth orbit.
Speaker 3: And even before that, there was a movie called Robinson
Speaker 3: Crusoe on Mars, which you can imagine what that's like.
Speaker 3: And there's even urban legends too, like from the early
Speaker 3: days of the space program in the early nineteen sixties,
Speaker 3: there was this myth about the lost cosmonauts, and this
Speaker 3: was the idea that Yuri Gagarin wasn't actually the first
Speaker 3: human in space, but the Soviet Union had tried to
Speaker 3: launch humans before, but they had died in orbit and
Speaker 3: their missions had been covered up and kept secret. These,
Speaker 3: of course were total fabrications, urban legends as part of
Speaker 3: the Cold War, but they endure in our minds, and
Speaker 3: together with those pop culture imaginaries, they sort of frame
Speaker 3: what's happening on the ISS right now in a particular way.
Speaker 1: So basically you're saying, we all have way too much imagination.
Speaker 1: We're watching these sci fi movies, and you know what,
Speaker 1: as you were saying, especially when you brought up The Martian,
Speaker 1: I just finished listening to Project Hill Mary, which was
Speaker 1: written by Andy Were who also did wrote The Martian,
Speaker 1: and so I was thinking all of these things the
Speaker 1: entire time. I'm listening to the audiobook, and I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this's got to be what's happening to my two astronauts
Speaker 1: that are stranded, not what's happening at all.
Speaker 2: No space propaganda, yes, but there is.
Speaker 3: There are historical, like real life examples of times where
Speaker 3: astronauts have had their stays extended due to remarkable circumstances.
Speaker 3: The most famous of these occurred in nineteen ninety one
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two, and this was a Soviet cosmonaut called
Speaker 3: Sergei Kerkhlev, who was on the Mirror Space station when
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union dissolved, and because of the political instability
Speaker 3: and the lack of funding, he actually had to stay
Speaker 3: up there for a couple extra one hundred days, so
Speaker 3: I think he stayed for three hundred days in total,
Speaker 3: almost a whole year, and he left a citizen of
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union and returned a citizen of a new country,
Speaker 3: the Russian Federation. Now, the other example that comes to
Speaker 3: mind is in the aftermath of the tragic loss of
Speaker 3: the Space Shuttle Columbia in two thousand and three, there
Speaker 3: were astronauts on board the International Space Station whose plan
Speaker 3: was to come home on the next Space Shuttle. Of course,
Speaker 3: NASA grounded the entire Shuttle fleet while they tried to
Speaker 3: figure out what went wrong to cause the loss of Columbia,
Speaker 3: and those astronauts had to have their stay on the
Speaker 3: IS extended about fifty or sixty days. They ended up
Speaker 3: coming back on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft which was attached
Speaker 3: to the ISS as part of normal operations. Now, the
Speaker 3: funny thing is one of those astronauts, Don Pettitt, is
Speaker 3: actually on board the ISS right now, so this is
Speaker 3: sort of the second time he has dealt with a
Speaker 3: sort of unexpected extension of some crew members on the ISS.
Speaker 1: If I saw Don on the ISS, I would say,
Speaker 1: I'm not going up there. Bad luck. It seems like
Speaker 1: something's going on whenever Europe there. It seems like things
Speaker 1: are always changing. You know, you've basically diffused this panic
Speaker 1: in our minds at least, and I'm excited for you
Speaker 1: to relieve some of the stress for some of our
Speaker 1: listeners too. I'm wondering if you have more good news
Speaker 1: for us. So, the last time you were on the show,
Speaker 1: we talked about commercial spaceflight and implications surrounding the colonization
Speaker 1: of space. Can you tell us about any advances or
Speaker 1: anything that's changed or happened since we last chatted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there have been some significant changes, and some might
Speaker 3: call them advancements, and they've been both on the technological
Speaker 3: side and also clearly on the political side as well.
Speaker 3: So on the technological side, what we've seen is the
Speaker 3: continued development of reusable heavy lift rockets by companies like
Speaker 3: SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Speaker 1: SpaceX is Elon Musk's commercial space flight company, and Blue
Speaker 1: Origin is Jeff Bezos's. A reusable heavy lift rocket is
Speaker 1: a big, powerful rocket that can carry heavy payloads like
Speaker 1: satellites and crude spacecrafts into space. What's special about them
Speaker 1: is that they can be recovered and reused to be
Speaker 1: more cost efficient and so they recover parts like the
Speaker 1: boosters instead of throwing them away, making space travel cheaper
Speaker 1: and more frequent.
Speaker 3: The biggest one that's been in the spot like the
Speaker 3: most has been SpaceX's Starship. They've been launching it a lot,
Speaker 3: but they still have not completed a single successful orbital
Speaker 3: journey with that system. We've watched as they have caught
Speaker 3: the lower booster stage with those chopstick like arms, and
Speaker 3: we've also watched how the actual spacecraft part of it
Speaker 3: disintegrated over the Caribbean. If they are able to get
Speaker 3: there in the next year or so, that would change
Speaker 3: the game significantly, both in terms of how frequently we
Speaker 3: can send stuff to space and how much. And on
Speaker 3: the political side, of course, Elon Musk's ascension into the
Speaker 3: upper echelons of American political power, which puts him in
Speaker 3: charge of many different government leavers, including NASA. No, that's
Speaker 3: a big question right now.
Speaker 1: Who knew you could run a space flight company, an
Speaker 1: EV company, a social media company, and potentially be managing
Speaker 1: a presidency all at the same time. I saw with
Speaker 1: Blue Origin that their rocket, New glen It launched January sixteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, and they were successful. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that mission and what we learned
Speaker 1: from it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a remarkable day where both Blue Origin
Speaker 3: launched New Glen, which is their sort of equivalent of
Speaker 3: SpaceX's Falcon heavy rockets, and on the same day there
Speaker 3: was a Starship test launch, so it was like the
Speaker 3: two dueling space companies on the same day. And what
Speaker 3: we saw was Blue Origin's New Glen successfully deliver a
Speaker 3: payload to orbit on its very first attempt, which is
Speaker 3: good news. On the other side of the leisure, they
Speaker 3: were trying to land the sort of lower stage of
Speaker 3: their rocket the same way that SpaceX does and they
Speaker 3: missed the target there, so this was a partial success. Now,
Speaker 3: if Blue Origin is successful and gets New Glen up
Speaker 3: and running, you know, that would provide an alternative to
Speaker 3: folks like NASA that are just sort of stuck using
Speaker 3: SpaceX as their only contractor. Blue Origin could offer this
Speaker 3: opportunity to have a second, redundant option always on the table.
Speaker 1: Okay, now is getting sticky because we're talking about contracts,
Speaker 1: which is money for work with these private companies.
Speaker 2: Elon Musk owned.
Speaker 1: SpaceX and now he kind of controls NASA. This feels
Speaker 1: illegal mmm, because yeah, he could potentially just funnel all
Speaker 1: the contracts directly to his company, SpaceX and completely shut
Speaker 1: out the others. Another part of this that's crazy to
Speaker 1: me is that NASA needs help from these folks Big.
Speaker 2: NASA, NASA in all caps, right, the NASA that we know.
Speaker 1: They've existed long before SpaceX and Blue Origin, so you
Speaker 1: would think they had this whole space thing on lot.
Speaker 3: So we all remember those massive lunar landings in the
Speaker 3: late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies. That was when
Speaker 3: NASA was the best funded it will ever be in
Speaker 3: its entire existence. That's when going to space was not
Speaker 3: only something interesting, but it was geopolitically urgent. It was
Speaker 3: part of the Cold War anxiety over competition with the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union. You know, we are no longer in that
Speaker 3: age where space is sort of front and center geopolitical
Speaker 3: urgent issue. And as a result, after those Apollo Moon
Speaker 3: landings in the early nineteen seventies, NASA's budget was scaled
Speaker 3: back significantly. They have never been funded to the level
Speaker 3: that they could really do, you know, what people in
Speaker 3: their minds thought a national space agent should be doing.
Speaker 3: So the idea was to split things between the public
Speaker 3: and private sector to get into doing these public private
Speaker 3: partnerships between NASA and companies like SpaceX.
Speaker 1: I wish NASA could just fundraise then mets for space.
Speaker 3: I'd buy a couple boxes for sure.
Speaker 1: What kind of regulations are in place or do you
Speaker 1: think would be great to have in place? As we
Speaker 1: think about some of these advancements, particularly with partnerships between
Speaker 1: government and private sector and space travel.
Speaker 3: Well, given the results of the presidential election and Elon
Speaker 3: Musk's new status within the government, I think the story
Speaker 3: will not be one of regulation but de regulation. As
Speaker 3: part of the starship development process, he has made his
Speaker 3: displeasure with regulations well known. And these are regulations that
Speaker 3: come from government agencies like the FAA, the Federal Ava Administration.
Speaker 3: The FAA protects workers and passengers, and the EPA the
Speaker 3: Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA protects, you know, our environment
Speaker 3: that we all need to survive. So what I expect,
Speaker 3: given the way things have gone, is to see those
Speaker 3: agencies defanged when it comes to oversight in terms of
Speaker 3: space launch and space developments, and whether or not the
Speaker 3: trade off is worth it in the end to get
Speaker 3: these sort of technological capabilities at the expense of our environment,
Speaker 3: at the expense perhaps of workers' lives or the lives
Speaker 3: of passengers who may be on early flights of these
Speaker 3: That's a very real concern that I think, this trend
Speaker 3: of deregulation, this trend of weakening government institutions, I think
Speaker 3: that we proceed at our own peril. Here.
Speaker 1: You talked about the expense of our environment in a
Speaker 1: time where we're seeing across the globe effects of climate change,
Speaker 1: We're maybe more aware of the effects of globalization and
Speaker 1: dustrialization and other technological advances. I'm thinking about what it
Speaker 1: looks like to be launching these programs and in different areas.
Speaker 1: One thing that comes to mind is a documentary on
Speaker 1: PBS called Bocachica and what's happening in that community. And
Speaker 1: also you mentioned the dissolution of the rocket over the
Speaker 1: Caribbean and that kind of debris. Are we seeing any
Speaker 1: pushback or is the sentiment that, like these are some
Speaker 1: of the costs of advancements.
Speaker 3: We're not seeing significant pushback, which is alarming. Some of
Speaker 3: the things that we're seeing, like the damage from the
Speaker 3: recent test launches that might seem superficial, but it shows
Speaker 3: a regard or a disregard I think for just a
Speaker 3: respect for the environment, the respect for other people, and
Speaker 3: a narrow focus on technological success at any expense. And
Speaker 3: what I see there is, you know, looking into the future,
Speaker 3: if we continue with this regard, if we allow this
Speaker 3: to stand and expand in the way that Elon Musk
Speaker 3: says that he plans to expand Starship launches significantly, so
Speaker 3: that it's like not just something that happens every few months,
Speaker 3: but something that possibly happens every day. The multiplying factor
Speaker 3: there is where I start to get worried. So the
Speaker 3: trends that we set in the development phase when it
Speaker 3: comes to respect for workers' rights, human safety, and the environment,
Speaker 3: you know, we can see a microcosm of where that
Speaker 3: will be in the future right now, and that that
Speaker 3: does worry me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Earth, You and Danger Girl, Earth and space. Right
Speaker 1: when NASA wants to launch into space, we know it's
Speaker 1: for us to learn more about the universe. But when
Speaker 1: Elon is going is kind of just a money grab
Speaker 1: and he set his I on Mars for a long time.
Speaker 1: But I think the question for me is like, why,
Speaker 1: what's the goal? What is the goal?
Speaker 3: Is absolutely the right question, because the goal when it
Speaker 3: comes to Mars has always been changing. It's always been
Speaker 3: evolved over time. You can think back to who was
Speaker 3: the very first celebrity promoting sending humans to Mars, and
Speaker 3: that was in the nineteen fifties, Verner von Brown, the
Speaker 3: German rocket scientist who was a member of the Nazi Party,
Speaker 3: an SS officer in that brutal organization, who got brought
Speaker 3: to the United States as part of Operation paper Clip,
Speaker 3: ended up working for the US Army and later for NASA,
Speaker 3: building the massive Saturn five rocket that took ashnauts to
Speaker 3: the Moon. His biggest vision for humanity was to send
Speaker 3: humans to explore the surface of Mars, and the expedition
Speaker 3: that he imagined going there was a military led expedition.
Speaker 3: This began to change once NASA was created in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty eight as a civilian scientific organization, still with lots
Speaker 3: of military aspects to it, but the goal of Mars,
Speaker 3: you know, really changed. Mars became not a place for
Speaker 3: military conquest and strategic presence, but a place for scientific
Speaker 3: exploration and discovery. Now this is changing again, so Elon
Speaker 3: Musk is not played to send people to Mars for
Speaker 3: scientific research. He's planning to send a million people to
Speaker 3: Mars to establish a commercial human settlement there, and this
Speaker 3: directly conflicts with scientific goals. You know, you send a
Speaker 3: million people to Mars, you bring all kinds of contaminants,
Speaker 3: all kinds of microbes with us, all kinds of garbage
Speaker 3: and trash, and that ruins Mars as a pristine's scientific
Speaker 3: object that can tell us things about the origin of life,
Speaker 3: the development and structure of our solar system and our planet.
Speaker 1: It's giving. I'm not interested in the scientific method, You're right,
Speaker 1: it's giving.
Speaker 2: I'm interested in making more.
Speaker 1: Mine, Okay, Jordan. So we thought it would be fun
Speaker 1: to play a game with you, because you are our
Speaker 1: really really smart space friend. And this game is called
Speaker 1: real or sci Fi, where you're gonna give us a
Speaker 1: space clue and we have to guess if it's real
Speaker 1: or it's made up sci fi?
Speaker 3: All right, Real or sci Fi. NASA is planning to
Speaker 3: send a quad copter drone to Saturn's moon Titan Real quad.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna say, Sifi, this is real.
Speaker 3: This is a planned mission called Dragonfly. We have had
Speaker 3: a helicopter drone on Mars ingenuity, which operated very well
Speaker 3: in Mars's ultra thin atmosphere. Titan, though, the moon of
Speaker 3: Saturn has a very thick atmosphere, which actually makes it
Speaker 3: easier to fly around him. So they have this quad
Speaker 3: copter drone concept called Dragonfly, which is planned to launch
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty eight and would arrive on Titan sometime
Speaker 3: in the twenty thirties.
Speaker 2: You know, it sounded so wild.
Speaker 1: Zeki was just like, real, well, the helicopter drone is
Speaker 1: the possible part that gave me the reaction. The only
Speaker 1: thing I was like, is that dune? What are those
Speaker 1: things called on doom? Those? Yeah, that was my only hesitation.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, Next one real or sci fi. NASA
Speaker 3: is planning to send a robotic eel to Saturn's moon, Enceladus.
Speaker 1: Now a robotic eel, I'm gonna say. I'm going to say,
Speaker 1: oh man, now I'm nervous. Robotic eel, don't be nervous
Speaker 1: for us. All about learning real, I'm gonna say sci fi.
Speaker 3: This one is also real. So this is a concept
Speaker 3: from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory JPL. EEL here stands for
Speaker 3: Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor, but it is also shaped like
Speaker 3: an eel, So imagine a thirteen foot long snakelike robot
Speaker 3: that weighs two hundred pounds. And the idea here is
Speaker 3: to get around the limitations of rovers, which have been
Speaker 3: doing a great job on Mars. But they can't go everywhere,
Speaker 3: you know, they can't go up really steep slopes, they
Speaker 3: can't traverse some really rocky terrain. And the idea is
Speaker 3: that this robotic snakelike eel would be able to slither
Speaker 3: all over the place. And with Enceladus, especially, robotic spacecraft
Speaker 3: like Cassini have actually imaged geysers shooting out from underneath
Speaker 3: the icy crust of the planet, and the idea is
Speaker 3: if water can come out, then maybe that eel can
Speaker 3: slither in that sand crevice and meet some aliens down
Speaker 3: in that subsurface ocean there. So, you know, this is
Speaker 3: one of those things that for me, it's like it's
Speaker 3: such a cool idea, But to watch video of this
Speaker 3: thing moving around in the lab, it just is very
Speaker 3: unsettling and gives me the hebgbs.
Speaker 1: Are you gonna send an eel down into an icy
Speaker 1: old faithful exactly old no moon?
Speaker 2: That is wild?
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine you're at home and a ale just slither
Speaker 1: through your door.
Speaker 2: No, it's like, hell, look just looking around.
Speaker 3: See this goes back to first impressions. Do we really
Speaker 3: want the underwater aliens to this to be their first
Speaker 3: impression of us? We got to take that into consideration too.
Speaker 2: I know they should think of something else. That's a
Speaker 2: little bit creepy. Okay.
Speaker 3: Last one, real or sci fi. NASA is planning an
Speaker 3: experiment to see if ants can sort tiny objects in
Speaker 3: the microgravity environment of space.
Speaker 2: That sounds real to me, real, I want to believe.
Speaker 3: Nah. This one's from an episode of The Simpsons called
Speaker 3: Deep Space. Homer, Well, the Simpsons does have predictive power.
Speaker 3: We have seen that in other places. You're actually right
Speaker 3: about that. I should have I should have factored that
Speaker 3: in the Simpsons quotient.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that is so funny. Man. Well, I
Speaker 2: hope home. Was Homer successful in that episode?
Speaker 3: No, he wrecked that experiment and they regretted that they
Speaker 3: will never know if ants truly can sort small objects
Speaker 3: in microgravity. I'm Jordan beIN, a space historian and professor
Speaker 3: of science communication at the University of Chicago, and I'm
Speaker 3: really excited to be on Dope Labs this week.
Speaker 1: You know, Jordan always comes with the facts and the
Speaker 1: history and the pop culture, and this is just a
Speaker 1: reminder that nobody is immune to the news bubble and
Speaker 1: their cycle. Because what I was seeing kept making me
Speaker 1: think that those astronauts were stranded, but there were other
Speaker 1: outlets that were accurately reporting that they weren't stranded. So
Speaker 1: c net has something, Space dot Com had something. I
Speaker 1: was just looking in the wrong places and really looking
Speaker 1: at what my favorite social media commentators were saying about it,
Speaker 1: and that was wrong. Yes, because they're showing pictures of
Speaker 1: Sunni and making it seems like she is aging at
Speaker 1: hyper speed when really it's just she's chilling. Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Imagine somebody taking your You already know what I'm call
Speaker 1: with that. When I get my feet back on Earth,
Speaker 1: cease and desist to all of you. Oh, don't make
Speaker 1: me have to knock your block off of send you
Speaker 1: straight to space and there you have it. A big
Speaker 1: thank you to Jordan for all of his expertise today.
Speaker 1: You can find Jordans on Instagram at Jordan b I
Speaker 1: M M. You can find us on x and Instagram
Speaker 1: at Dope Lab podcast TT is on x and Instagram,
Speaker 1: at dr Underscore, t.
Speaker 2: S h O, and you can find Zakiya at Ze
Speaker 2: said So.
Speaker 1: Dope Labs is a production of Lemonada Media. Our senior
Speaker 1: supervising producer is Kristin Lapour and our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Issara s A. Dope Labs is sound design, edited and
Speaker 1: mixed by James Farber. Leimonada Media's Vice President of Partnerships
Speaker 1: and Production is Jackie Danziger. Executive producer from iHeart Podcast
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Speaker 1: composed and produced by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex sugi Ura,
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Speaker 1: produced by us T T Show Dia and Zakiah Wattley.