Speaker 1: Welcome to Text Stuff production from I Heart Radio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio. And how
Speaker 1: the tech are you. Well, We're finally ready to wrap
Speaker 1: up our episodes. Looking back on the big text stories
Speaker 1: that unfolded during twenty two, there was so much stuff,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it was really dramatic. Too much
Speaker 1: of it was just upsetting. So today we're going to
Speaker 1: mostly focus on cool science and tech stuff and that's
Speaker 1: a big old yea. We do what we must because
Speaker 1: we can. So let's start with the James Web Space Telescope.
Speaker 1: After many many delays, in fact years of delay days
Speaker 1: because the telescope was originally intended to launch into space
Speaker 1: way back in two thousand seven, it finally shuffled off
Speaker 1: its earthly coil last Christmas, it lets slip the bonds
Speaker 1: of Earth, and last Christmas, I gave you James Webb.
Speaker 1: The very next day, you said, change that darn name.
Speaker 1: Just a quick word on that. James Webb is the
Speaker 1: name of a former NASA administrator. In fact, he was
Speaker 1: the second ever administrator of NASA, but he had previously
Speaker 1: served as an under Secretary of State at the you know,
Speaker 1: State Department, and he served in that capacity from nineteen
Speaker 1: to nineteen fifty two. Now, this was during a time
Speaker 1: in the US known as the Lavender Scare that refers
Speaker 1: to an erab an ugly era in US history when
Speaker 1: the federal government discriminated against anyone who falls under the
Speaker 1: scope of lgbt Q plus. Essentially, the government would exclude
Speaker 1: or expel people that were known or suspected to not
Speaker 1: be heterosexual, claiming that it was like a national security issue,
Speaker 1: and the State Department in particular was a real target
Speaker 1: of this kind of witch hunt. Congress launched an investigation
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty into the State Department, and President Eisenhower
Speaker 1: would later sign an executive order essentially putting an exclamation
Speaker 1: mark at the end of this pernicious practice. And yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one of the many periods of American history
Speaker 1: that are ugly and hateful, and ultimately they are self
Speaker 1: defeating because you can only imagine how many qualified, dedicated
Speaker 1: folks were denied employment simply because they didn't fit the
Speaker 1: extremely narrow set of beliefs of a bunch of old people. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that policy was in place when Webb took the position
Speaker 1: of now administrator in nineteen sixty one, and in fact,
Speaker 1: one NASA budget analyst named Clifford J. Norton was fired
Speaker 1: because of his sexual orientation that happened in nineteen sixty three. Well,
Speaker 1: because of these events and because of concerns about James
Speaker 1: Webb and his potential role in perpetuating this practice, NASA
Speaker 1: was pressured to conduct a research study into the matter
Speaker 1: to find out what, if any involvement James Webb had
Speaker 1: in carrying out Congress's desires at the State Department, or
Speaker 1: if in fact, he was part of Norton getting fired
Speaker 1: at NASA later on, and the investigation said that there
Speaker 1: was no evidence to show Webb did either of those things.
Speaker 1: In fact, according to their investigation, Webb purposefully limited the
Speaker 1: amount of information that Congress could access relating to State
Speaker 1: Department employees. And as for Norton at NASA, he was
Speaker 1: fired and he was fired because he was gay, But
Speaker 1: there was no evidence that Webb was even aware of
Speaker 1: Norton being fired at all. Because keep in mind, Webb
Speaker 1: was the leader of NASA, Norton was a budget analyst,
Speaker 1: so it's not like nor like Webb had direct oversight
Speaker 1: over every single employee at NASA. So the report found
Speaker 1: that there was no evidence that was clearly showing Web
Speaker 1: participating in the persecution of lgbt Q plus personnel. There
Speaker 1: was a tiny bit of evidence suggesting that he did
Speaker 1: limit Congress's reach into the State Department, potentially protecting people.
Speaker 1: So NASA decides that it's gonna stick with the James
Speaker 1: Webb name. Now, y'all, I personally don't know if James
Speaker 1: Webb was a decent guy, or maybe maybe he wasn't.
Speaker 1: Maybe he just had so much on his plate he
Speaker 1: didn't worry about a policy that perhaps he didn't even
Speaker 1: believe in. I have no clue. I just don't know.
Speaker 1: The NASA report came from the agency's chief historian, so
Speaker 1: it came from NASA's chief His story in You could
Speaker 1: argue that, you know, the fact that it was NASA's
Speaker 1: own chief historian might mean that it could be a
Speaker 1: biased report. But anyway, that's the story behind the name
Speaker 1: and the controversy around it, which flares up every now
Speaker 1: and again. It's not like this is the first time
Speaker 1: we've heard about it, but in two uh that story
Speaker 1: did start making the rounds again. But let's get to
Speaker 1: the telescope itself. Now, NASA launched the James Webb Telescope
Speaker 1: in on Christmas Day, as it turns out, but it
Speaker 1: would take the telescope a month to get to its
Speaker 1: orbital point and to fully deploy, and it took more
Speaker 1: months beyond that for it to actually start doing science.
Speaker 1: And so all of that is really the domain of
Speaker 1: twenty two baby. So one month after launch, in January two,
Speaker 1: the telescope arrived at a point in space we call
Speaker 1: L two. The L stands for lagrange, more specifically lagrange point.
Speaker 1: Some people may say lagrange, which is probably the more
Speaker 1: correct pronunciation, but you know, I've also heard NASA folks
Speaker 1: called Gemini geminy, so I guess it's all up for
Speaker 1: grabs anyway. A L Grange point is a position in
Speaker 1: space where an object will stay put relative to the
Speaker 1: rest of its surroundings, like you know, a two body system.
Speaker 1: And so it's a point in space where the gravitational
Speaker 1: forces from nearby bodies like say the Sun and the
Speaker 1: Earth are effectively holding the object in that part of space.
Speaker 1: It can't move away from that because it's being held
Speaker 1: gravitationally by these other bodies. There are five such points
Speaker 1: around the Earth or between the Earth and Sun where
Speaker 1: an object can do this, and the one that the
Speaker 1: James Webb Telescope is in is called L two. That's
Speaker 1: in an orbit that's on the opposite side of the
Speaker 1: Earth from the Sun. So, in other words, this orbit
Speaker 1: is shaded from much of the Sun's light, which is
Speaker 1: important for the telescope's extremely sensitive detectors when it's making observations. Uh,
Speaker 1: it does still get some light. Otherwise it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to collect light through its solar panels, and the
Speaker 1: solar panels would be for decorative use only, and that
Speaker 1: would be ridiculous. It is a very sensitive telescope. That
Speaker 1: James Webb Space Telescope is about seven times more powerful
Speaker 1: than the venerable Hubble Space Telescope, and it has already
Speaker 1: returned some truly spectacular data, including images such as a
Speaker 1: shot of the Pillars of Creation. This is a dust cloud.
Speaker 1: There's really compelling shape to it. I'm sure you've seen
Speaker 1: pictures of it. If not, you should look up Pillars
Speaker 1: of Creation on an image search because they it really
Speaker 1: is a spectacular site. We've seen some pictures of early
Speaker 1: star formation, which is great. It's having astronomers more information
Speaker 1: about how stars form. We've looked at galactic black holes
Speaker 1: that are far across the universe from our own galaxy.
Speaker 1: We've looked at exo planets orbiting a star, and these
Speaker 1: exo plants potentially could have viable atmospheres and so could
Speaker 1: possibly support life. And we're just getting started and considering
Speaker 1: how complicated the telescope is. This was never a guarantee.
Speaker 1: I mean, the massive eighteen solar panels had to unfold
Speaker 1: as the telescope made its way to L two over
Speaker 1: the course of a month, and just one failure would
Speaker 1: have brought the entire mission into jeopardy or at least
Speaker 1: severely limited its use. And since NASA had spent decades
Speaker 1: and like ten billion dollars on this thing, it would
Speaker 1: be really bad if things hadn't worked out. But it did,
Speaker 1: so good news there. It did have a little bit
Speaker 1: of hiccup recently, so on December seven two, just a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago, several of its instruments aboard the telescope
Speaker 1: went into safe mode, so that means they temporarily shut
Speaker 1: down in order to protect delicate hardware. The source of
Speaker 1: the problem turned out to be a software fault, So
Speaker 1: this software was essentially generating errors that related to the
Speaker 1: telescope's attitude control. Now, in this sense, attitude control isn't
Speaker 1: about making sure the telescope doesn't act out like a
Speaker 1: hormonal teenager. I wish we had that kind of attitude
Speaker 1: control here on Earth. No, we're talking about the telescope's
Speaker 1: physical orientation in space, like where it is pointed that
Speaker 1: kind of attitude. So the software was generating an error
Speaker 1: that suggested something was wrong with this system when nothing
Speaker 1: actually was. The shutdowns affected some, but not all, of
Speaker 1: the experiments that the telescope was involved in. Work had
Speaker 1: to pause on certain projects while engineers back on Earth
Speaker 1: sused what was going on. But by December twenty those
Speaker 1: engineers had figured out a solution. They were able to
Speaker 1: essentially patch the software, and now the telescope is back
Speaker 1: doing science in space full time. NASA reports the telescope
Speaker 1: is in great condition and the agency is working to
Speaker 1: reschedule the affected projects that had to delay as the
Speaker 1: software was glitching out. The telescope is bound to tell
Speaker 1: us about the early stages of the universe already. It
Speaker 1: has captured images of systems that are like only four
Speaker 1: hundred million years younger than the universe itself, Like, in
Speaker 1: other words, the universe comes into existence, and then these
Speaker 1: systems started within four hundred million years of that. And yes,
Speaker 1: four hundred million years as an astoundingly long time on
Speaker 1: our scale, right, Yes, that's that's unfathomable. However, when we
Speaker 1: consider the universe is somewhere in the neighborhood of thirteen
Speaker 1: point seven billion years old, it's really just a fraction
Speaker 1: a moment after the big bang, uh banged. The telescope
Speaker 1: is creating new possibilities in the fields of astronomy and cosmology,
Speaker 1: and my guess is we're going to learn a ton
Speaker 1: of fascinating stuff about our universe and by extension, our
Speaker 1: own solar system in history. And that's just plain cool. Now,
Speaker 1: sticking with NASA, we have a related topic that's been
Speaker 1: somewhat controversial in multiple spheres, and I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: Artemists program. This is NASA's plan to return to the Moon.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, it's not just NASA. NASA's working
Speaker 1: in conjunction with other space agencies out there, and by return,
Speaker 1: I am including the goal of actually landing people on
Speaker 1: the Moon's surface. This would be the first time we
Speaker 1: have done that since nineteen seventy two in the Apollo
Speaker 1: seventeen mission. So the Artemist program has a pretty complicated history.
Speaker 1: Back in the mid two thousand's, during the George W.
Speaker 1: Bush and sistration in the United States, NASA initiated a
Speaker 1: program called Constellation. This had the goal of returning to
Speaker 1: the Moon, among other things. This program was linked with
Speaker 1: a couple of related but distinct projects that were really
Speaker 1: focused on building the next generation of spacecraft that would
Speaker 1: turn out into the Orion and the Space Launch System.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, this was all going on while the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle was still in service, but it's retirement date
Speaker 1: was coming up, So this was work that was being
Speaker 1: done with the knowledge that the Space Shuttle program was
Speaker 1: going to be sunset. Now when Barack Obama won the
Speaker 1: election to president, things changed, and this frequently happens with NASA.
Speaker 1: It's actually one of the really big challenges that the
Speaker 1: agency faces because there's no guarantee that an incoming administration
Speaker 1: will continue to support the efforts that were begun under
Speaker 1: a previous administration. So not only do you have the
Speaker 1: technical challenges of creating the spacecraft that will complete a mission,
Speaker 1: or the engineering challenges of planning out the mission itself
Speaker 1: and the various processes that the mission is gonna have
Speaker 1: to follow. You also have the political reality that you're
Speaker 1: funding can change dramatically year to year, depending upon the
Speaker 1: makeup of Congress, and it can change even more so
Speaker 1: from presidential administration to administration. Obama effectively canceled Constellation. He
Speaker 1: said the program was behind schedule and it was over budget.
Speaker 1: It was both of those things. Further, he said the
Speaker 1: program was leaning too hard on the Apollo program of
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies, that the Orion spacecraft it does,
Speaker 1: I mean, essentially look like a larger version of the
Speaker 1: Apollo capsule. The launch vehicle looks like an update to
Speaker 1: the launch vehicles that we used fifty years ago, and
Speaker 1: Obama criticized the program for lacking in innovation. A committee
Speaker 1: found that Constellation, despite being over budget, was also underfunded,
Speaker 1: and that there was no chance the program would be
Speaker 1: able to achieve a moon land by twenty which was
Speaker 1: one of its goals, and so rather than pouring more
Speaker 1: money into this program that the administration saw as sort
Speaker 1: of bleeding cash, Obama chose to essentially freeze it out.
Speaker 1: The focus began to shift toward commercial space companies, primarily
Speaker 1: SpaceX as carrying the load for the near term, although
Speaker 1: work would continue on developing the next generation of spacecraft
Speaker 1: for NASA itself, so Oriyan and the Space Launch System
Speaker 1: We're not scrapped. They continued on. And the benefit I
Speaker 1: guess of that was that or the reason they were
Speaker 1: able to do this, I guess was because they were not, uh,
Speaker 1: intrinsically part of Constellation. Okay, this will bring us up
Speaker 1: to two thousand seventeen, and the Artemis program it got
Speaker 1: its start under the administration of Donald Trump, and it
Speaker 1: picked up some of the threads that were dropped when
Speaker 1: Constellation got the AX. We'll talk more about that in
Speaker 1: just a moment after we come back from this quick break. So,
Speaker 1: the Artist program is a joint effort between NASA and
Speaker 1: other space agencies like the e s A, the European
Speaker 1: Space Agency, and its main goals to establish a permanent
Speaker 1: presence on the Moon and a lunar orbital station meant
Speaker 1: to help stage further human exploration of space. So the
Speaker 1: primary spacecraft for this mission is the Orion and the
Speaker 1: launch vehicle is the Space Launch System or s l S. Now,
Speaker 1: the SLS alone has been the subject of a lot
Speaker 1: of controversy, mostly stemming from the contractors that NASA has
Speaker 1: relied upon during the very long development process for this
Speaker 1: launch system. So yeah. Another big challenge with NASA is
Speaker 1: that the agency does a lot of contracting with massive
Speaker 1: aerospace companies to produce various components for stuff like spacecraft, spacesuits,
Speaker 1: launch vehicles, that kind of thing. So it's not like
Speaker 1: NASA has some sort of foundry where it just um
Speaker 1: use as a massive blacksmiths who create rockets and stuff.
Speaker 1: They contract with these very big companies that specialize in
Speaker 1: aerospace uh technologies. So these contracts can get really expensive.
Speaker 1: Sometimes individual projects will take more time than was estimated
Speaker 1: and cost more than was estimated during the proposal phase,
Speaker 1: and frequently NASA becomes the subject of scrutiny when various
Speaker 1: analysts and journalists and politicians and others ask, hey, did
Speaker 1: you really pick the best contractor to do this because
Speaker 1: it's running over budget and behind deadline. The problem is,
Speaker 1: we usually don't know the answer to the question is
Speaker 1: this the best contractor for the job until it's too late.
Speaker 1: But yeah, NASA often gets put in the spotlight for
Speaker 1: budget issue and contractor choices. There's always the question of
Speaker 1: was the choice of contractor a political choice or was
Speaker 1: it the best choice for the mission? Like there are
Speaker 1: a lot of these issues that NASA has to contend
Speaker 1: with as well. Anyway, all of this plagued the SLS
Speaker 1: and it took years and years and years for it
Speaker 1: to finally get to the point where they could launch
Speaker 1: the darned thing. Uh So, it was first proposed to
Speaker 1: launch way back in sixteen, but it took six years
Speaker 1: to get to where NASA could actually do a a
Speaker 1: full launch of the SLS, And within those six years
Speaker 1: there were multiple launch dates that had been proposed and postponed.
Speaker 1: It led some to question if the whole thing was
Speaker 1: just going to be a bust, if it's just gonna
Speaker 1: be a massive failure. But this year we finally got
Speaker 1: a launch. Now it was meant to launch in August,
Speaker 1: but then one of the sensors of the launch vehicle
Speaker 1: indicated that part of the engine was warmer than it
Speaker 1: should be and it put it outside the parameters of
Speaker 1: safe operation, so the launch was scrubbed. NASA would try
Speaker 1: again the following month in September, but then we got
Speaker 1: word that there was some sort of hydrogen leak in
Speaker 1: part of the system and that necessitated canceling that launch.
Speaker 1: Then it got pushed October, but this time it wasn't
Speaker 1: NASA's fault. We had a hurricane, actually had a couple
Speaker 1: of them, but Hurricane Ian was the big one. I
Speaker 1: was actually on a ship that was at sea when
Speaker 1: Ian hit. We were supposed to return to Cape Canaveral
Speaker 1: Port Canaveral, and we couldn't because of Ian, and I
Speaker 1: was stuck at sea for a few days more than
Speaker 1: was my original plan. That was exciting. But finally on
Speaker 1: November sixteenth, NASA was able to launch the Space Launch
Speaker 1: System the SLS, and attached to it was an oryon spacecraft.
Speaker 1: Now there was no human crew aboard that capsule, but
Speaker 1: there were some mannequins and a plush toy or two,
Speaker 1: and it also carried a biology experiment designated Biology Experiment
Speaker 1: One that aimed to study space radiations effects on fungi
Speaker 1: and yeast and seeds and such, because obviously any kind
Speaker 1: of prolonged human activity in space means that humans are
Speaker 1: potentially going to be uh exposed to various types of
Speaker 1: radiation that otherwise they'd be protected from here on Earth.
Speaker 1: So that was the goal of that particular experiment was
Speaker 1: to learn a little bit more about that. The s
Speaker 1: l s successfully attained orbit. The Orion spacecraft successfully separated
Speaker 1: from the launch vehicle, and it went on a twenty
Speaker 1: six ish like twenty five and a half day long
Speaker 1: trip that took it all the way around the back
Speaker 1: side of the Moon and returned to Earth. So on Sunday,
Speaker 1: December eleven two, the Orion capsule from Artemis one returned
Speaker 1: to Earth. Its splashed down in the Pacific Ocean and
Speaker 1: a Navy crew retrieved the capsule and it will be
Speaker 1: transported back to UH to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Speaker 1: So that concluded the Artemis one mission. And it was
Speaker 1: an enormous achievement. And yes it was an achievement that
Speaker 1: had been long delayed, but it's still demonstrated this capability
Speaker 1: that humanity can return to the Moon, and it's a
Speaker 1: type of space exploration the humans just haven't engaged in
Speaker 1: in fifty years, so it was a really big deal.
Speaker 1: Analysts are going to look over the data from the
Speaker 1: Artemis one mission and use that data to help prepare
Speaker 1: for Artemis two. This will be the first mission in
Speaker 1: the Artemis program to include a human crew aboard and
Speaker 1: Orion spacecraft, but this mission will not include a lunar landing.
Speaker 1: The mission will go into outer space and the crew
Speaker 1: will pilot the Orion capsule and put it through its paces,
Speaker 1: but it will not land on the Moon. That won't
Speaker 1: happen until Artemis three. The Artemis two mission will happen
Speaker 1: no earlier than and then Artemis three will happen at
Speaker 1: some point after that, maybe as early as but I
Speaker 1: would be a little cautious to put that as the
Speaker 1: actual date when it will happen. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: there's actually disagreement regarding whether the Artemis program is a
Speaker 1: worthy use of time, money, and resources. Some would prefer
Speaker 1: more of a focus on Mars rather than the Moon.
Speaker 1: Some question the value of sending humans at all, and
Speaker 1: we can rely more on robots and unscrewed missions. Then
Speaker 1: there are critics who think going back to the Moon
Speaker 1: is a good idea, but they don't agree with the
Speaker 1: way Artemis programs process has that laid out. They don't
Speaker 1: agree with that plan. As for myself, I'm actually conflicted.
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure how to feel about it. I
Speaker 1: do think these missions can be inspiring. I think there's
Speaker 1: always benefits that emerge as a result of the work
Speaker 1: that is necessary to make these mission as possible. You know,
Speaker 1: engineers have to figure out how to make this work,
Speaker 1: and in the process they create things that can have
Speaker 1: other uses here on Earth. So we can have real
Speaker 1: benefits to the advancements that people make just in order
Speaker 1: to accomplish the goals of these missions. So that's good.
Speaker 1: I just I don't know. I don't know how I
Speaker 1: feel about Artemis, but it's I certainly want to see
Speaker 1: more people inspired to pursue science and engineering and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And there is no doubt that stories
Speaker 1: about astronauts going back to the Moon is a really
Speaker 1: inspiring story. Another great NASA story for two was the
Speaker 1: success of the DART mission. You might recall that DART
Speaker 1: stands for double Asteroid Redirection Test, and that this mission
Speaker 1: was to test whether or not smashing a spacecraft into
Speaker 1: something like an asteroid could divert its path sufficiently sufficiently
Speaker 1: so that you can move it out of the way of, say,
Speaker 1: a trajectory that would take it towards Earth. Uh. The
Speaker 1: reason that this is important is that on occasion, fairly
Speaker 1: sizeable stuff does smash into our planet and have catastrophic consequences. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can ask the dinosaurs about that. Oh wait, you can't,
Speaker 1: because they're all dead because of a celestial object that
Speaker 1: smashed into the Earth and made it uninhabitable for Donna Sawas.
Speaker 1: So for years there have been folks wondering about how
Speaker 1: we might be able to alter the trajectory of something
Speaker 1: that otherwise could be on a collision course with the Earth,
Speaker 1: and there's been a lot of proposals. Of course, you've
Speaker 1: got the Hollywood version in which we send Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: up there to blow up an incoming asteroid. This, by
Speaker 1: the way, would be a very bad idea because instead
Speaker 1: of one huge rock hurdling at us, you would create
Speaker 1: a bunch of slightly smaller rocks hurtling at us d
Speaker 1: like turning a bullet into a cloud of shotgun pellets.
Speaker 1: And some of those might incenterate upon entering the Earth's atmosphere,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them would make it down to Earth,
Speaker 1: and essentially all you would be doing is increasing the
Speaker 1: surface area of impact. It would not be a good
Speaker 1: idea anyway, One of the possible solutions that is considered
Speaker 1: to be a good idea is to send up a
Speaker 1: spacecraft to act as a sort of battering ram and
Speaker 1: to nudge and object like a meteor or an asteroid
Speaker 1: enough so that it doesn't hit our planet. But how
Speaker 1: do you test that. You don't wait for the day
Speaker 1: when you definitely have to do something because something's heading
Speaker 1: our way, because if it doesn't work, well that's bad.
Speaker 1: So you need to test it in advance. So what
Speaker 1: NASA did was it identified a couple of asteroids or
Speaker 1: if you prefer an asteroid, and it's quote unquote moonlit,
Speaker 1: and the Dart spacecraft crashed into the moonlight, which has
Speaker 1: a name, thank you very much, it's dimorphous. So the
Speaker 1: goal was to alter dimorphoses orbit around its asteroid and
Speaker 1: reduce the orbit by at least seventy three seconds. So
Speaker 1: on September twenty two, Dart makes contact with Dimorphous and
Speaker 1: then astronomers are surprised to see that the orbit did shorten,
Speaker 1: but it shortened way more than seventy three seconds. It
Speaker 1: became thirty two minutes shorter. So this was a huge success.
Speaker 1: Dart showed that using a bit of percussive maintenance, we
Speaker 1: can change the flight path of a small body in space,
Speaker 1: and that kind of knowledge can end up being really
Speaker 1: important should we detect such a small object that is
Speaker 1: on a collision course with our planet, And the earlier
Speaker 1: we detected, the better our chances are, and also the
Speaker 1: less we need to actually move the object to put
Speaker 1: it on a different path. Right like if if it's
Speaker 1: far enough out, you just have to alter its course
Speaker 1: by a couple of degrees and it will completely miss
Speaker 1: the Earth. So that shows that it's really important one
Speaker 1: to have the solution of how you move it, and
Speaker 1: too that you're able to identify these objects as early
Speaker 1: as possible, because not only do you have to you know,
Speaker 1: find it, but you also have to prepare the mission
Speaker 1: and launch it in time for it to make a difference.
Speaker 1: So very important work. Here one more space thing I
Speaker 1: want to talk about before I go to break, So
Speaker 1: I covered in yesterday's episode the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Well clearly that has had a big effect on space
Speaker 1: efforts as well as terrestrial technology matters. Russia has facilities,
Speaker 1: it has launch vehicles, it is a space capable nation
Speaker 1: one of the few on Earth. There's only like half
Speaker 1: a dozen of them on Earth, and a lot of
Speaker 1: space agencies in in Europe and elsewhere depend upon Russia
Speaker 1: as the staging grounds for their own space missions. But
Speaker 1: with the world placing sanctions on Russia, this became untenable politically,
Speaker 1: and so several missions had to be postponed or outrights
Speaker 1: canceled scrapped. So, for example, the European Space Agency, the
Speaker 1: e s A, had a Mars mission planned, but it
Speaker 1: was going to use Russian hardware and a Russian launch facility,
Speaker 1: and the e s A subsequently chose to postpone the
Speaker 1: mission and instead they will end up reconfiguring the entire
Speaker 1: mission so that it will not rely on Russian hardware
Speaker 1: and launch facilities. That will take about three years and
Speaker 1: something like seventeen billion euro an incredible decision like to
Speaker 1: to make that choice sends a pretty powerful message. Or
Speaker 1: take the story of one Web. Now, I'll have to
Speaker 1: do a full episode about One Web in the future,
Speaker 1: because that company has had a dramatic history. Technically you
Speaker 1: could say companies, because really it it was like the phoenix,
Speaker 1: It collapsed and burnt up, and then a new version
Speaker 1: of one Web rose from the ashes. It started off
Speaker 1: in America as a company aiming to bring satellite based
Speaker 1: broadband internet connectivity to the market. And it'll be clear
Speaker 1: there already were satellite based internet companies in place, but
Speaker 1: one Web's goal was to use very small or relatively
Speaker 1: small and relatively inexpensive satellites and then create constellations of
Speaker 1: the satellites that would provide uninterrupted service to customers on
Speaker 1: the ground. And you might be thinking, ha, this sounds
Speaker 1: a bit like starlink, and you would be right. In fact,
Speaker 1: very early on, one Web was working with SpaceX on
Speaker 1: plans for this service to use SpaceX to help launch
Speaker 1: the satellites up into space. And then a year or
Speaker 1: so later, Elon Musk announced SpaceX is competing business Starlink
Speaker 1: that had a very familiar business plan to it. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying anything happened, I'm just saying that's a fact.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the US based one web actually went bankrupt
Speaker 1: in twenty Winny. The pandemic killed that business, and a
Speaker 1: consortium that included the UK government purchased the company's assets
Speaker 1: in auction bankruptcy auction in November. So the one Web
Speaker 1: of today is a different company than the original one Web. Anyway,
Speaker 1: One Web had planned to launch more than thirty satellites
Speaker 1: on a Russian launch vehicle earlier this year in two
Speaker 1: but then Russia invaded Ukraine and there was pressure on
Speaker 1: the UK government to scrap the mission. Russia told one Web, hey,
Speaker 1: this thing is paid for, so if you pinky swear
Speaker 1: that none of these satellites will ever be used by militaries,
Speaker 1: then we're good. Ski. Also, the UK government needs to
Speaker 1: sell off its interest in one Web, but the UK
Speaker 1: government was not ready to do that. It did not
Speaker 1: want to give up ownership of one Web. It did
Speaker 1: not want to guarantee that it would not use the
Speaker 1: satellite communication system for military purposes, so they refused to
Speaker 1: acquiesce to the request, and Russia scrapped the mission and
Speaker 1: kept the satellites woof. Also, Russia announced in the summer
Speaker 1: of this year that it will leave the International Space
Speaker 1: Station in four and will prepare to launch its own
Speaker 1: independent space station. The i s S has already served
Speaker 1: well pasted its initial estimated decommissioned date, but the hope
Speaker 1: in the US was to continue operations until twenty thirty
Speaker 1: or so. This will be a lot harder to do
Speaker 1: without the cooperation of the Russians, who handle a lot
Speaker 1: of the propulsion systems aboard the I S S. So
Speaker 1: unless they hand those over, it's going to be real
Speaker 1: hard to keep the I S S an operation not
Speaker 1: necessarily impossible, but really hard. But this announcement struck some
Speaker 1: as being another attempt by Russia to kind of strike
Speaker 1: a blow to the West, and maybe it was all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take another quick break when we come back.
Speaker 1: It's grab bag time. Okay. Like I said before the break,
Speaker 1: we're in a kind of grab bag situation of various
Speaker 1: scientific and technological advancements that we saw in two. And
Speaker 1: let's get our start with nuclear fusion. So to recap,
Speaker 1: fusion is when two atoms fuse together and they form
Speaker 1: a heavier atom. And it's the process that happens in
Speaker 1: the Sun where hydrogen is built into helium at a
Speaker 1: temperature of millions of degrees. See in the Sun, you've
Speaker 1: got incredible forces of gravity and heat that allow for
Speaker 1: this nuclear process to happen. And an output of this process,
Speaker 1: besides helium, is a huge release of energy, and that
Speaker 1: energy is what we here on Earth receive and it
Speaker 1: makes life possible. Now contrast this with nuclear fission. This
Speaker 1: is the process where we take a heavy atom, such
Speaker 1: as your neum, and we use some force to split
Speaker 1: this atom into two or more lighter atoms and possibly
Speaker 1: some other byproducts. This process also releases energy. In fact,
Speaker 1: this is the process that our nuclear power plants use
Speaker 1: here on Earth. There are some drawbacks to this approach, however, Namely,
Speaker 1: you end up with some radioactive byproducts that are dangerous
Speaker 1: to organic critters like us. So you have to figure
Speaker 1: out what are you gonna do with these byproducts. Typically
Speaker 1: it involves putting nuclear waste in dry casks and then
Speaker 1: storing those on site that the nuclear power plants. And
Speaker 1: meanwhile the world debates on where to put the stuff
Speaker 1: long term. And here in the United States there was
Speaker 1: a proposal for a really long time to store it
Speaker 1: under Yucka Mountain in Nevada, But those plans have encountered
Speaker 1: lots of opposition. It turns out folks are not keen
Speaker 1: on the idea of having material that emits invisible dead
Speaker 1: lee levels of radiation anywhere close to them, or even
Speaker 1: not that close to them, like a decent distance from them,
Speaker 1: is still not far enough at least in their minds.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of understandable. I mean, like I said,
Speaker 1: nuclear radiation is invisible, and unless there's a really intense
Speaker 1: amount of it, it's undetectable to your typical person unless
Speaker 1: they have to be carrying a Geiger counter or something
Speaker 1: like that. Anyway, while proponents and opponents of nuclear power
Speaker 1: argue about whether or not there is a truly safe
Speaker 1: way to store nuclear waste long term, there's this tempting
Speaker 1: possibility of nuclear fusion. Fusion doesn't create the same kind
Speaker 1: of radioactive materials that fission does. Uh. It does have
Speaker 1: some byproducts to some waste that we'd have to deal with,
Speaker 1: but nothing on the level of nuclear fission, and that
Speaker 1: gives it a really attractive uh slant. Another is that
Speaker 1: the main fuel source, we would use hydrogen as the
Speaker 1: most plentiful stuff on the planet. There, but there are
Speaker 1: some catches. Uh. One of the big catches is that
Speaker 1: to initiate fusion, you have to use a lot of
Speaker 1: energy to get things started. Remember, the reason this happens
Speaker 1: in the sun is because you have this incredible force
Speaker 1: of gravity and this intense heat that provides the ignition
Speaker 1: energy needed to keep this process going, So we have
Speaker 1: to do sort of the same thing here on Earth
Speaker 1: somehow without you know, turning the Earth into the sun.
Speaker 1: So meanwhile, if you get less energy out than what
Speaker 1: you got putting into it, well that means you're spending
Speaker 1: more energy than you're getting back. This is a bad investment.
Speaker 1: But then we saw some exciting progress in this field
Speaker 1: this year. Not too long ago, scientists at the Lawrence
Speaker 1: Livermore National Laboratory held a fusion experiment in which the
Speaker 1: energy emitted was greater than the laser energy g that
Speaker 1: was used to generate the reaction in the first place. Specifically,
Speaker 1: the lasers delivered two point zero five mega jules of
Speaker 1: energy to the little fusion pellet, and the reaction generated
Speaker 1: three point one five mega jules of energy. So two
Speaker 1: point oh five in three point one five out, So
Speaker 1: we get more out than we put in sort of. Now,
Speaker 1: I say sort of because this only works if we're
Speaker 1: just looking at the amount of energy that the lasers
Speaker 1: delivered versus the amount of energy released by the fusion
Speaker 1: inside the pellet. However, if we then consider how much
Speaker 1: energy we needed to consume to generate that laser power
Speaker 1: in the first place things change because unfortunately, lasers are
Speaker 1: not particularly energy efficient devices. So in order to generate
Speaker 1: that two point oh five mega jules of laser energy,
Speaker 1: the lab actually had to pull three hundred mega jules
Speaker 1: of energy on the electrical grid. So when you think
Speaker 1: about it in that respect, you see they had to
Speaker 1: use a hundred times the amount of energy they got
Speaker 1: out of that reaction, and yeah, taking them into account
Speaker 1: as a bummer, but this experiment is still really encouraging,
Speaker 1: and that's partly because this is not the only way
Speaker 1: we can achieve fusion. It's just one of them. Lasers
Speaker 1: are just involved in in a couple of the different ways.
Speaker 1: There are other ways as well, and if we can
Speaker 1: get the same sort of results that the scientists got
Speaker 1: out of this experiment, then we might be on the
Speaker 1: right track here on Earth. It's pretty hard to replicate
Speaker 1: the conditions of the Sun, but this experiment brought us
Speaker 1: a little step closer to doing it. And if we
Speaker 1: can get nuclear fusion to work out for us in
Speaker 1: the long run, it will really address our energy needs
Speaker 1: for well for our lifetimes and well beyond our lifetimes,
Speaker 1: and that's exciting. It would let us move off of
Speaker 1: fossil fuels entirely, and that would be great for the planet.
Speaker 1: But we still have a lot of work to do
Speaker 1: before any of this becomes practical, and my guess is
Speaker 1: it's still going to take some decades to get there.
Speaker 1: I should also mention that in China, scientists were able
Speaker 1: to create a sustained nuclear fusion reaction and it lasted
Speaker 1: for more than seventeen minutes, because another big challenge with
Speaker 1: fusion here on Earth is not just getting the reaction started,
Speaker 1: but it's keeping a reaction going so that you can
Speaker 1: continue to release energy that you can harness and convert
Speaker 1: into electricity. It doesn't do you a whole lot of
Speaker 1: good if you do release a lot more energy than
Speaker 1: you put in, but only lasts for an instant. That's
Speaker 1: not really enough for us to make practical use out
Speaker 1: of it. So this news from China about how they
Speaker 1: created a superheated plasma and they were able to maintain
Speaker 1: it for more than seventeen minutes, that is just as
Speaker 1: exciting as this other announcement of the experiment that generated
Speaker 1: or released more energy than was put in. So these
Speaker 1: are all pieces that are necessary for us to have
Speaker 1: a working nuclear fusion uh process in the future. We
Speaker 1: also saw advancements in quantum computing in two. IBM recently
Speaker 1: announced a four hundred thirty three cubit quantum computer called
Speaker 1: the Osprey, which is the largest of its quantum computers
Speaker 1: to date. So you might think, what does any of
Speaker 1: that mean. Well, my guests, as you probably know, your
Speaker 1: basic computers ultimately rely on bits or binary digits, and
Speaker 1: this is what is used to run computations at the
Speaker 1: machine level. So a bit can have one of two values.
Speaker 1: It can either be a zero or it can be
Speaker 1: a one. You can think of it like a light
Speaker 1: switch which can be off or on. And all computations,
Speaker 1: when you really break them down to their most basic level,
Speaker 1: boiled down to mathematic operations on big old groups of
Speaker 1: zeros and ones of bits. Well, a quantum computer relies
Speaker 1: on quantum bits or cubits, and cubits have some odd behaviors, so,
Speaker 1: for example, they can exist in superposition. This means a
Speaker 1: cubit can effectively behave as though it is both a
Speaker 1: zero and a one, and technically all values in between simultaneously.
Speaker 1: This means that if you design a proper algorithm to
Speaker 1: take advantage of the cubits, and you have enough cubits
Speaker 1: to do it, you can tackle a subset of computational
Speaker 1: problems that are very difficult for classical computers and then
Speaker 1: solve them in a fraction of the time that you
Speaker 1: would need otherwise, because essentially what the quantum computer can
Speaker 1: do is run all the different variations of that problem
Speaker 1: in parallel with one another, and then compare all the
Speaker 1: outputs at the end and give you the one that
Speaker 1: is most likely to be correct. We also talk more
Speaker 1: about probabilities with quantum computers rather than uh like like
Speaker 1: specific confirmed results. It does get way more complicated from there.
Speaker 1: I mean, quantum computers are very delicate systems. It's very
Speaker 1: easy for them to be upset, and then you end
Speaker 1: up with a very pathetic classical computer system instead of
Speaker 1: quantum computer system. It's important to remember that quantum computers
Speaker 1: will not be good for all computational problems. Instead, they'll
Speaker 1: be well suited for a specific group of computational problems.
Speaker 1: One set of computational problems that is quite relevant to
Speaker 1: us today relates to cryptography and encryption. So at a
Speaker 1: very simple level, you can kind of think of encryption
Speaker 1: involving two very very large prime numbers, like hundreds of
Speaker 1: digits long, but their prime numbers. You take these two
Speaker 1: different very big prime numbers and you multiply them together,
Speaker 1: and then you get a product. And everyone can see
Speaker 1: the product essentially, but only the people who hold the keys,
Speaker 1: those being the prime numbers, know what was used to
Speaker 1: make that product. So if you wanted to decrypt something
Speaker 1: that was used using this particular encryption process, you would
Speaker 1: first need to determine what were those two large prime
Speaker 1: numbers that were used to make this product in the
Speaker 1: first place. What were those two And this is the
Speaker 1: type of problem that would make a classical computer take,
Speaker 1: you know, thousands or maybe even tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: years to solve, because it would go through every single
Speaker 1: prime number in order to determine whether or not this
Speaker 1: is the solution, and that would just take thousands of years.
Speaker 1: But the quantum computer, with a suitable program written for
Speaker 1: it and with enough cubits to run it could potentially
Speaker 1: come back with a solution much much more quickly. And
Speaker 1: this tells us that eventually quantum computers will make our
Speaker 1: current encryption methods totally pointless. But the National Institute of
Speaker 1: Standards and Technology has been reviewing proposed post quantum cryptography
Speaker 1: methods in anticipation of tackling this problem before all secrets
Speaker 1: are revealed, which is really exciting. Stuff like you started
Speaker 1: again the kind of like a spy mentality. You're thinking,
Speaker 1: it's a race against the clock. Eventually, we're going to
Speaker 1: have quantum computer systems that are sufficiently powerful enough and
Speaker 1: have a sufficient algorithm designed for it to reverse certain
Speaker 1: types of encryption and make it a trivial task, which
Speaker 1: means the stuff that we count upon as being encrypted,
Speaker 1: like like like really sensitive information things like your your
Speaker 1: your financial information, maybe your credit card numbers, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff could just be revealed totally because you could
Speaker 1: reverse that encryption process using this methodology. So there is
Speaker 1: a necessity to develop the next generation of cryptographic techniques
Speaker 1: that will work both with classical computers and with quantum computers.
Speaker 1: That's really important to say, because there was one proposed
Speaker 1: post quantum cryptographic method that proved to be uh solvable
Speaker 1: using classical computers, and that obviously doesn't solve the problem.
Speaker 1: And in two we also saw some pretty amazing developments
Speaker 1: in AI. I'm specifically thinking about how several different AI
Speaker 1: image generating tools really emerged this year or became famous
Speaker 1: this year, where you would type a prompt into a field,
Speaker 1: and then an AI program generates an image based upon
Speaker 1: your prompt, and you can tweak your prompt and put
Speaker 1: in different adjectives or different guidelines and get new images
Speaker 1: that continue to try and develop this idea you've had.
Speaker 1: Then there's the story of chat GPT, the AI that
Speaker 1: can compose responses to text queries and it can give
Speaker 1: you a text answer. Both of these applications of a
Speaker 1: I got a lot of attention and criticism this year.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the capabilities of AI have improved tremendously
Speaker 1: over recent years, but they still show that there are
Speaker 1: some interesting and sometimes humorous or even disturbing gaps between
Speaker 1: the way AI goes about doing something and the way
Speaker 1: humans do. Some of the AI generated images I have
Speaker 1: seen appear to have spawned from the fever fueled brain
Speaker 1: of a mad genius. If you look at that and think, yeah,
Speaker 1: no human would ever do this. Others seem hopelessly misguided.
Speaker 1: You'll look at an image and say, I can't even
Speaker 1: tell you what words were used to prompt this image.
Speaker 1: As for the text, the text can span between being helpful, concise,
Speaker 1: and accurate to being very much inaccurate but presented in
Speaker 1: such a way as to seem really confident, so it
Speaker 1: might make the reader feel, oh, I can depend upon
Speaker 1: this answer, when in fact you might not be able to,
Speaker 1: and that serves as a potential problem. Now, these instances
Speaker 1: of AI have launched multiple conversations in different contexts. Right,
Speaker 1: you've got the trustworthiness of AI? For example, how do
Speaker 1: we know the answers we get are accurate, are correct,
Speaker 1: are unbiased? And in a lot of cases we don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to that because the AI isn't revealing
Speaker 1: what sources it draws from in order to compose the
Speaker 1: responses that we get, So without being able to check
Speaker 1: the AI's work, we can't be certain that it's reliable.
Speaker 1: And in fact, we have seen stories about how chat
Speaker 1: GPT in particular could sometimes generate unreliable responses. Uh So
Speaker 1: that is one of the concerns. But there are other
Speaker 1: conversations we've heard too. We've heard debates about whether or
Speaker 1: not AI is going to have a negative impact on
Speaker 1: artistic efforts going forward. If you train an AI to
Speaker 1: generate images that can mimic the style of working artists.
Speaker 1: Does that not threaten those artists livelihoods? I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're thinking, gosh, I really would love a sketch by
Speaker 1: this one artist, but I can't afford their rates. But
Speaker 1: I could just use this AI to create a a
Speaker 1: mimic of what this artist would do based upon what
Speaker 1: I want, and I don't have to pay anyone anything.
Speaker 1: That definitely is a concern in the creative world. Then
Speaker 1: there's also the concern that if an AI like chat
Speaker 1: GPT could potentially create an essay on any given subject,
Speaker 1: then what's going to stop students from cheating on their
Speaker 1: homework by giving it to a I Now, I have
Speaker 1: a solution to that, by the way, which is to
Speaker 1: eliminate homework. Just get rid of it. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: I've seen studies that show that homework doesn't do much
Speaker 1: good anyway, and so it ends up being a big
Speaker 1: time killer for both students and teachers who have to
Speaker 1: grade the stuff. So yeah, you know, maybe maybe get
Speaker 1: rid of the homework. Um, I don't really have a
Speaker 1: dog in that fight. I don't have kids, and I
Speaker 1: haven't been in school for a few decades, so I
Speaker 1: don't really have to worry about that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have to generate essays every single week, because that's kind
Speaker 1: of what these podcasts are, right, So hey, maybe I'll
Speaker 1: do an episode that was completely written by AI, which
Speaker 1: I don't think I will do because one, I don't
Speaker 1: think AI will be able to produce an episode that
Speaker 1: is in my style, and two, if it does, I'm
Speaker 1: out of a job. So forget I said that. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it. I am done looking act on the news
Speaker 1: stories of two. There were other ones, obviously, there were
Speaker 1: tons of things that happened in the tech world this
Speaker 1: past year, but I wanted to tackle the really impactful
Speaker 1: ones I had been keeping an eye on throughout the year.
Speaker 1: And while there are others, I feel like six or however,
Speaker 1: many episodes we've done that have been retrospectives on two
Speaker 1: are plenty. So tomorrow's episode will be something else. What
Speaker 1: Who knows. I haven't really decided yet. I think I
Speaker 1: have an idea, but we will see. It will also
Speaker 1: be the last episode of tech Stuff for at least
Speaker 1: the last new one. Friday's episode will be a classic episode.
Speaker 1: Then on Monday. The following Monday, we have a holiday
Speaker 1: here at my heart, so it will be probably a
Speaker 1: rerun of some sort I have not decided on that yet,
Speaker 1: and then starting on Tuesday of next week, we'll be
Speaker 1: back with all new episodes of tech Stuff, looking forward
Speaker 1: to three and the brave new world we will be
Speaker 1: in by then. I guess. I hope you are all well.
Speaker 1: I hope you are enjoying your time with friends and family.
Speaker 1: I wish you the best. We'll be back tomorrow with
Speaker 1: some more. If you have suggestions, you know how to
Speaker 1: reach me. I'm running out of time, so I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go through that whole spiel, but I will
Speaker 1: taught to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows