Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. He there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? You know, if you spend enough time with
Speaker 1: a young kid, like you know, four or five, then
Speaker 1: you're likely to get pulled into a conversation at which
Speaker 1: the kid starts asking about how the world works and
Speaker 1: then just keeps ongoing and every answer you provide leads
Speaker 1: to more questions. This can actually be funny, It can
Speaker 1: end up being confusing, It could be frustrating. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: can get intimidating once you start to reach the limits
Speaker 1: of your own knowledge and understanding. You've got this inquisitive
Speaker 1: child trying to make sense of the world around that
Speaker 1: they're looking to you as the authority on all things everywhere,
Speaker 1: and you are perilously close to admitting that you don't
Speaker 1: actually know how it all works. And we're all just
Speaker 1: really doing the best we can, and we're making up
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff as we go along the way.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm projecting here, but my point is that kids
Speaker 1: have this deep desire to know how stuff works and
Speaker 1: why things are the way they are, and this same
Speaker 1: spirit underlies the core of science. You know, we use
Speaker 1: this process and we use documentation, and we use hypotheses
Speaker 1: and tests to get a better handle on what's going
Speaker 1: on and why. But at the heart of it all
Speaker 1: are these questions. And sometimes the answers we find open
Speaker 1: up a whole new array of questions, and that gets
Speaker 1: exciting and sometimes a little exhausting and sometimes scary. Now
Speaker 1: that is a why old preamble to this very very
Speaker 1: goofy episode, because we're going to talk about some of
Speaker 1: the strangest stuff we've sent. Keep in mind, sending stuff
Speaker 1: into space is wicked expensive. Every pound of payload you
Speaker 1: add requires a certain amount of fuel, and that fuel
Speaker 1: is costly, Like it is a non trivial thing to
Speaker 1: add to a payload that's going to be sent into
Speaker 1: outer space. Privatized space industry has changed this a little bit,
Speaker 1: but it's still wicked expensive, which makes it even more
Speaker 1: interesting when you have some very weird stuff having been
Speaker 1: sent up there. Now, some of this stuff could sound arbitrary,
Speaker 1: or it's you know, a goof or it was some
Speaker 1: form of promotion or maybe a symbolic gesture, and those
Speaker 1: are often fair assessments. There will be cases, as we
Speaker 1: talk about in this episode, where undeniably it was not
Speaker 1: for some noble cause. However, we also have had some
Speaker 1: weird stuff we've sent up that you know, once you
Speaker 1: get it out into space, you realize it behaves differently.
Speaker 1: And that was the point that we sent the stuff
Speaker 1: up in order to see how it's affected, to understand
Speaker 1: why it's different, how this could be useful in the future. Now,
Speaker 1: as I said, not everything we're going to cover today
Speaker 1: is useful. A lot of it's not. But as Little
Speaker 1: Red Riding Hood once said, I know things now, many
Speaker 1: valuable things that I hadn't known before. And some of
Speaker 1: these things include the links to which companies or rich
Speaker 1: people will go in order to promote stuff or get
Speaker 1: a big pr splash sometimes to the moon is being literal, y'all.
Speaker 1: So in no particular order, I'm not going chronologically or
Speaker 1: in order of craziness. I guess here are some of
Speaker 1: the weird things that have made the journey up to
Speaker 1: space for one reason or another. Some of these things
Speaker 1: returned to Earth, some of them were left up there.
Speaker 1: And we're going to start off with one of the
Speaker 1: strangest critters on the planet the tartar grade. Now tartar
Speaker 1: grades are tiny. They measure less than a millimeter in length.
Speaker 1: Typically you're going to be using a microscope to really
Speaker 1: observe these little critters. Now magnified. They kind of look
Speaker 1: like puffy, eight legged creatures that you would expect to
Speaker 1: see on an episode of Doctor Who. They have a
Speaker 1: mouth that looks kind of like a vacuum cleaner attachment.
Speaker 1: They're sort of cute. I think it just depends upon
Speaker 1: what you think of as cute. I think they look
Speaker 1: kind of cute, but other people might think they look horrifying.
Speaker 1: And they are resilient creatures, that is putting it lightly.
Speaker 1: They can survive an in readibly harsh conditions from extreme temperatures,
Speaker 1: either extreme cold, like colder than any normal organism could survive,
Speaker 1: or extreme heat. They can survive beyond the temperature of boiling.
Speaker 1: They can also survive insane amounts of pressure. They also
Speaker 1: can survive exposure to nuclear radiation. They can survive for
Speaker 1: long periods without any water, and they do this by
Speaker 1: entering what's called a ton state. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: suspended animation. They curl up, they tuck their legs in
Speaker 1: their head and curl up into a ball, and essentially
Speaker 1: biological processes halt. In fact, their cells end up creating
Speaker 1: these matrices that keep all of their DNA intact, because otherwise,
Speaker 1: if they dried out enough, things like that would deteriorate.
Speaker 1: But effectively they put scaffolding in place. I mean they
Speaker 1: don't put it. It happens by natural process, but this
Speaker 1: sort of scaffolding forms inside their cells that holds everything
Speaker 1: in place. While this creature goes into suspended animation and
Speaker 1: it can stay like that for ages. Then when it
Speaker 1: encounters water again, the water dissolved, these matrix seas from
Speaker 1: inside the cells and the cells return to their normal state.
Speaker 1: They come out of the ton state. They go back
Speaker 1: to being a happy little water bear. Oh that's by
Speaker 1: the way. Another name for tartar grades is water bears. Now,
Speaker 1: these critters can be found on every continent here on Earth,
Speaker 1: including Antarctica. Also, they can be found in oceans, they
Speaker 1: can be found in fresh water. They could probably be
Speaker 1: found in your yard. And there are thousands of species
Speaker 1: of Tartar grades and they're super cool. But then there
Speaker 1: was a question if these suckers are that resilient, and
Speaker 1: they have shown an incredible ability to survive even the
Speaker 1: harshest of conditions. Would they survive if they were exposed
Speaker 1: to the vacuum of space, Well, that was a question
Speaker 1: that scientists wanted answers too, and so in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, the European Space Agency sent up a packet
Speaker 1: of Tarta grades as one of many experiments conducted during
Speaker 1: a mission. And the Tartar grades were exposed to the
Speaker 1: vacuum of space, even to cosmic radiation. This is stuff
Speaker 1: that could really mess up a human. I mean, the
Speaker 1: vacuum of space. If you're exposed to at for any
Speaker 1: length of time, you're going to be messed up, to
Speaker 1: be certain, and probably dead. Cosmic radiation could cause really
Speaker 1: big problems down the road, which is one of the
Speaker 1: main concerns we have about designing long term space missions
Speaker 1: in a way that's safe for the people who are
Speaker 1: aboard them. But sure enough, upon retrieval, these Tartar grades
Speaker 1: were found to survive the process with no real ill effects.
Speaker 1: Some folks even speculated that maybe tartar grades actually are
Speaker 1: not terrestrial creatures, that they had arrived on Earth by
Speaker 1: hitching rides on material that ultimately crashed into the planet.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of theories that perhaps the seeds
Speaker 1: of life on Earth actually came from outer space. However,
Speaker 1: scientists have ruled that out for tarte grades. They found
Speaker 1: that tartar grades did in fact originate here on Earth.
Speaker 1: So while you might hypothesize that they could have survived
Speaker 1: a trip through space until landing on a plant that
Speaker 1: has water, that's not what actually happened. That being said,
Speaker 1: tartar grades might play a part in experimenting with organisms
Speaker 1: to see if they could survive on other planets in
Speaker 1: the future. You know, a planet that might be harsh
Speaker 1: for most organisms might actually be a suitable place for
Speaker 1: tartar grades. That's really far off in the future, if
Speaker 1: it ever happens at all, but it is a possibility now.
Speaker 1: When it comes to unlikely astronauts, dinosaurs, I would say
Speaker 1: would be way up there. I mean, for one thing,
Speaker 1: they've been extinct for millions of years, so it's really
Speaker 1: hard to get one to commit to the strict training
Speaker 1: regiment of becoming an astronaut. Now, this has not stopped
Speaker 1: dinosaurs from getting into space. They've actually done it a
Speaker 1: couple of times, not on their own as it turns out,
Speaker 1: had a lot of help from US. So the first
Speaker 1: time was in nineteen eighty five, a physicist named Lauren
Speaker 1: Acton had applied for and secured the role of payload
Speaker 1: specialist for a Space Shuttle mission designated STS fifty one.
Speaker 1: F Acton's area of interest was in solar activity. He
Speaker 1: was keenly interested in studying the Sun, particularly to learn
Speaker 1: if there were ways to predict events like coronal mass
Speaker 1: ejections that could potentially impact communication systems back here on Earth.
Speaker 1: He was also from Montana, a state that happens to
Speaker 1: be rich dinosaur fossils, and that might be why he
Speaker 1: brought some fossilized bone and eggshell fragments from a Miasaura peeblesaurum.
Speaker 1: And I have no idea if I'm saying that correctly,
Speaker 1: but it's a dinosaur that fed their nesting young. So
Speaker 1: they would build a nest, they would lay eggs, the
Speaker 1: eggs would hatch, and the dinosaurs would continue to care
Speaker 1: for their young. This kind of flew in the face
Speaker 1: of preconceived ideas about dinosaurs, and a lot of folks
Speaker 1: had just assumed they would lay their eggs, wait until
Speaker 1: they hatched, and then you know you're out of the home. Kids,
Speaker 1: go have some good luck and get out of the house.
Speaker 1: That's not how these dinosaurs operated. It's also, by the way,
Speaker 1: the official state fossil for Montana, so it kind of
Speaker 1: was a representation of home and of science. So it
Speaker 1: was a very symbolic sort of thing. I would love
Speaker 1: to say that the astronauts did some crazy experiments with
Speaker 1: those dinosaur fossils, but again it was more symbolic than scientific,
Speaker 1: but really cool a neat gesture. It's also not the
Speaker 1: only time that dinosaur fossils have made the journey into orbit.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety eight, the Endeavor space shuttle carried a
Speaker 1: seal a physicist skull to the Mere Space Station. Again,
Speaker 1: I could be completely mispronouncing this. At the Carnegie Museum
Speaker 1: loaned the skull to the to NASA and the astronauts
Speaker 1: promise they would take very, very good care of it,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, they returned the skull safe and sound
Speaker 1: at the conclusion of the mission. As for why they
Speaker 1: wanted to take the skull up there, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing it was to promote science. In twenty fourteen, NASA
Speaker 1: included a fossil belonging to a t Rex on a
Speaker 1: test flight for the Orion spacecraft. Now as a test flight,
Speaker 1: there were no human crew aboard this spacecraft, but it
Speaker 1: was the first time that the Orion spacecraft would enter orbit.
Speaker 1: The mission lasted four hours. The spacecraft made two orbits
Speaker 1: of the Earth before re entering the atmosphere. The fossil
Speaker 1: was on loan from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science,
Speaker 1: and the Orion capsule is now on display at the
Speaker 1: Kennedy Space Center of Visitor Complex. By the way, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend visiting the Kennedy Space Center. My partner and
Speaker 1: I went there on a whim one year. We ended
Speaker 1: up becoming annual pass holders, even though we knew there
Speaker 1: was very little chance we would be able to get
Speaker 1: back within that year. We just were so thrilled with it.
Speaker 1: It was so inspirational. If you are at all interested
Speaker 1: in rocketry or space, you have got to go. I
Speaker 1: got very emotional just looking at the various spacecraft and
Speaker 1: launch vehicles, because sometimes you have to remind yourself that
Speaker 1: humans are capable of really incredible things when we dedicate
Speaker 1: ourselves to it. That's also not the end of dinosaurs
Speaker 1: in space. More recently, Blue Origin, which is Jeff Bezos's
Speaker 1: private space company, sent fossilized dinosaur bones to space as
Speaker 1: part of the Huntsville Science Festival and an initiative called
Speaker 1: Dream Big Alabama. These fossils were on a suborbital flight,
Speaker 1: so they didn't get to circle the planet like the
Speaker 1: previous cases. They were from a family of raptors, and
Speaker 1: this was all part of an effort to promote science
Speaker 1: and get people excited about stems subjects, and you know,
Speaker 1: inspiration is a really important goal. Okay, we got more
Speaker 1: crazy stuff that we've sent into space to talk about.
Speaker 1: Before we get to that, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: We're back and we are going to transition away from
Speaker 1: dinosaurs to bacteria. So let's talk about salmonella. This family
Speaker 1: of bacteria are perhaps best known as pathogens. You know,
Speaker 1: you've probably heard about needing to be careful around food,
Speaker 1: make sure making sure that you don't end up contracting salmonella.
Speaker 1: Salmonella can invade your cells and make you really, really sick. Typically,
Speaker 1: humans can become infected with salmonella through food poisoning. It
Speaker 1: gets more specific than that, but it also gets really icky.
Speaker 1: Let's just say that if the facility that is processing
Speaker 1: your food or preparing your food isn't following good cleanliness procedures.
Speaker 1: You have yourself some potential salmonella outbreaks on your hands,
Speaker 1: and these can be really serious. They can even be
Speaker 1: life threatening in severe cases. So salmonella is no joke, right,
Speaker 1: So why did we send it into space? Well, scientists
Speaker 1: want to see what affects salmonella might experience in a
Speaker 1: microgravity environment, because if we are serious about human space exploration,
Speaker 1: particularly long term human space exploration, including colonization, it would
Speaker 1: be really beneficial to understand what might happen with infectious diseases,
Speaker 1: including stuff like salmonella. It's a pretty long way to
Speaker 1: the nearest minute clinic once you're out in space, after all,
Speaker 1: So getting an understanding of this is critical to ensuring
Speaker 1: success for future missions. So in twenty twenty one, scientists
Speaker 1: did a pair of experiments. One of them took place
Speaker 1: here on Earth, the other took place aboard the International
Speaker 1: Space Station. Now the Earth one was essentially the control
Speaker 1: and in both experiments, scientists took some human cells and
Speaker 1: they infected these cells with pathogens salmonella. Scientists already knew
Speaker 1: that organic cells undergo changes when in microgravity. We had
Speaker 1: already made this observation. We know, you know, when people
Speaker 1: go up into space and they spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time there, they biologically change. Those changes can be on
Speaker 1: the macro level and noticeable things like you know, muscle
Speaker 1: loss because you're no longer supporting your weight because you're
Speaker 1: in a microgravity environment, but they could be all the
Speaker 1: way down to a cellular level. So what would happen
Speaker 1: with human cells infected with salmonella in microgravity? Well, the
Speaker 1: conclusions aren't quite as definitive as we would like. This
Speaker 1: is because the experiment itself had a couple of problems
Speaker 1: along the way. So not all the samples that were
Speaker 1: sent to space came back in good enough condition to
Speaker 1: do a full analysis on them. So that's part of
Speaker 1: the problem is that we don't have the full collection
Speaker 1: of cells to look at. There's another issue because the
Speaker 1: International Space Station version of the experiment had a slightly
Speaker 1: different but potentially significant different amount of pathogen introduced to
Speaker 1: the control sample so or to the human cells, as
Speaker 1: opposed to the Earth one. So in other words, if
Speaker 1: you haven't used exactly the same amount of pathogen in
Speaker 1: the cells that an alone could affect the outcome of
Speaker 1: the experiment, So there's you know, you can't have firm
Speaker 1: conclusion because you didn't have truly equal experiments on Earth
Speaker 1: and in the space station. However, with those qualifiers in mind,
Speaker 1: the scientists found that salmonella appeared to be more virulent
Speaker 1: in a microgravity environment. That's pretty concerning, right, for bacteria
Speaker 1: to become more virulent. But in addition, the human cells
Speaker 1: appeared to upregulate, So in other words, the cells were
Speaker 1: ramping up their response to infection, primarily by upregulating genes
Speaker 1: related to inflammation, which is a response to infection. The
Speaker 1: findings have helped expand our understanding of how the humans
Speaker 1: would respond to infectious diseases in space. That this could
Speaker 1: be very, very different. Therefore, we need to learn more
Speaker 1: about it to be prepared for those eventualities that would
Speaker 1: be awfully handy once we start sending people on longer
Speaker 1: missions to distant places in the future. Another question that
Speaker 1: I think everyone has rattling around in the back of
Speaker 1: their mind, perhaps not even consciously, but I know that
Speaker 1: it has to be gnawing at everyone is how does
Speaker 1: the environment of space affect lego minifigs. Okay, again, probably
Speaker 1: I'm projecting here, but we have sent lego minifigs to space,
Speaker 1: specifically three minifigs, two representing the mythological figures of Jupiter
Speaker 1: and Juno, Roman deities who, if you prefer the Greek versions,
Speaker 1: are similar to Zeus and Hera. The other minifig represents
Speaker 1: the not at all mythological figure and actual real world
Speaker 1: historical figure of Galileo Galilei. So why were these lego
Speaker 1: figures sent into space? Well, these were actually loaded onto
Speaker 1: the spacecraft Juno. Juno was sent from Earth to travel
Speaker 1: to the orbit of Jupiter. So thematically there is a
Speaker 1: connection because you have the figure of Jupiter and his
Speaker 1: wife Juno. These are obviously associated with the planet Jupiter,
Speaker 1: and then Galileo historically made some really important observations about
Speaker 1: the planet Jupiter. So these minifigs are really symbolic and
Speaker 1: kind of a fun touch to include with this spacecraft.
Speaker 1: The spacecraft has been in orbit around Jubiter since July fourth,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. That's not when it launched, that's when it
Speaker 1: arrived at Jupiter. It actually took oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: almost five years to get from Earth to Jupiter. It
Speaker 1: actually launched on August fifth, twenty eleven. So that is
Speaker 1: a very long space journey, right, I mean, you think
Speaker 1: most most human endeavors in space can be measured in
Speaker 1: weeks or months, A couple in a year or more,
Speaker 1: but only a few examples of that. But this was
Speaker 1: five years of traveling through space to get to the destination.
Speaker 1: The Juno spacecraft continues to make observations around Jupiter to
Speaker 1: this day. It's in a polar orbit around the planet.
Speaker 1: It has continued its mission beyond the planned seven years scope.
Speaker 1: So it's another great example of a NASA mission that
Speaker 1: manages to continue to provide US scientific data beyond the
Speaker 1: planned mission. Currently, the long term plan here is to
Speaker 1: keep Juno in orbit around Jupiter until late twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: and at that point the spacecraft will be de orbited
Speaker 1: on purpose to enter Jupiter's atmosphere. The minifigs will truly
Speaker 1: enter the realm of myth at that point. I do
Speaker 1: not expect them to survive that travel. Godspeed you tiny
Speaker 1: plastic heroes. In fact, a lot of different toys have
Speaker 1: been sent up to space. Santa probably goes there every Christmas, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's probably how he's able to get to
Speaker 1: all the different people Christmas. He it's orbit. But other
Speaker 1: space missions have also brought toys along for the ride.
Speaker 1: One such toy was a Buzz Lightyear action figure, you
Speaker 1: know Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story series. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, the action figure hitched a ride aboard
Speaker 1: the Space Shuttle Discovery as part of an initiative to
Speaker 1: get kids excited about space in particular, but science in general,
Speaker 1: and Disney and NASA actually partnered together to create some
Speaker 1: interactive experiences like games and work assignment type of stuff
Speaker 1: that involved Buzz Lightyear in an effort to trick kids
Speaker 1: into learning stuff. Buzz's journey brought him to the International
Speaker 1: Space Station. He stayed on the ISS for fifteen months
Speaker 1: before returning to Earth, and again he hitched a ride
Speaker 1: on Space Shuttle Discovery. It's just obviously a very different
Speaker 1: mission because it was a year and a half, well
Speaker 1: not quite a year and a half later, but a
Speaker 1: year and some change later. The toy even got his
Speaker 1: own parade Walt Disney World. Upon being once more shackled
Speaker 1: with the surly bonds of Earth. I love that I
Speaker 1: wish I had been at Disney world when that had happened,
Speaker 1: Just to watch a parade with an action figure of
Speaker 1: buzz Lightyear, I'm guessing on some sort of vehicle being
Speaker 1: celebrated as a returning hero. I wonder if the person
Speaker 1: who was wearing the buzz Lightyear costume that day felt
Speaker 1: like they were being overshadowed by a figure a fraction
Speaker 1: of their height. I guess I should also mention that
Speaker 1: the child aka Grogu aka his real name Baby Yoda,
Speaker 1: has also made the trip to space for reels. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, a SpaceX Dragon capsule completed the first operational
Speaker 1: flight of a Dragon capsule carrying a crew to the
Speaker 1: International Space Station and a cute plush toy, a Baby Yoda,
Speaker 1: was tagging along for the ride. It was both a
Speaker 1: morale booster and a quote unquote microgravity indicator, at least
Speaker 1: according to the reports I read. I guess that means
Speaker 1: that when you see Baby Yoda's floating around the capsule,
Speaker 1: you're in microgravity, and when he plummets to whatever surface
Speaker 1: is down, then you're out of microgravity again. At least
Speaker 1: I guess it's what a microgravity indicator is. Okay, I've
Speaker 1: got a few more weird things that we've sent up
Speaker 1: into space that we should talk about before we jump
Speaker 1: onto these final little entries in our Goofy episode today,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Okay, so you probably know
Speaker 1: that astronaut food is famous for not being terribly appetizing.
Speaker 1: I want to say that, for the longest time, the
Speaker 1: astronaut meal that was considered the best was the spicy
Speaker 1: shrimp cocktail because it had enough flavor to kind of
Speaker 1: punch through the perpetual head cold that astronauts develop when
Speaker 1: they're out in space. Because you know, all of your
Speaker 1: tissues kind of swell a bit when you're out in space,
Speaker 1: and this in an intern affects your sense of smell
Speaker 1: and your sense of taste, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: food just ends up not tasting like much of anything.
Speaker 1: So you have to have stuff that has really strong
Speaker 1: flavors to kind of punch through it. All. Well, a
Speaker 1: lot of astronauts are not super crazy about the foods necessarily,
Speaker 1: and you know, you also have to be really careful
Speaker 1: with it because obviously anything that would escape a container
Speaker 1: could potentially create problems for the electronics aboard spacecraft and
Speaker 1: space stations and the like. Well, astronaut John Young got
Speaker 1: a real talking to you about his own choice of
Speaker 1: contrabrand food that he smuggled aboard the Gemini three spacecraft
Speaker 1: way back in nineteen because he got settled into the
Speaker 1: Gemini three with his commander, Virgil Gus Grissom, while having
Speaker 1: a secret corned beef sandwich hidden away in one of
Speaker 1: the pockets of his space suit, and a couple of
Speaker 1: hours into their mission, he pulled it out and offered
Speaker 1: some to his commander, and together they took a couple
Speaker 1: of bites of the sandwich while ignoring the food that
Speaker 1: NASA had actually included for their space flight. However, very
Speaker 1: early on they realized that, oh, this does mean that
Speaker 1: we're creating crumbs, and these crumbs are just free floating
Speaker 1: around the capsule and in a worst case scenario, they
Speaker 1: could potentially interfere with the electronic systems we have and
Speaker 1: then it's crisis by corned beef sandwich. So they tucked
Speaker 1: the sandwiches away and they continue the rest of their mission. However,
Speaker 1: ASSA was now aware of the contraband sandwich, so when
Speaker 1: they did return to Earth safely, they later were required
Speaker 1: to attend a very serious debriefing with a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of people who were very very cross with them for
Speaker 1: introducing corned beef to the capsule of the Gemini three spacecraft.
Speaker 1: They said that at the time it was very intense,
Speaker 1: but in retrospect, with enough time having passed since it happened,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of absurdly funny and I could appreciate
Speaker 1: that now. Other food that has been outside the norm
Speaker 1: that has made the trip up to space include a
Speaker 1: pizza sent to the International Space Station back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one. Now, this really was just a big
Speaker 1: old publicity stunt from Pizza Hunt delivering a pizza to
Speaker 1: the space station. Reportedly, Pizza Huh paid a million dollars
Speaker 1: to the Russian Space program in order to have one
Speaker 1: of their pizzas specially wrapped sent up to Yuri Usachov
Speaker 1: on the International Space Station. They had to go with
Speaker 1: Russia because NASA has a strict rule about not engaging
Speaker 1: with commercial brands. NASA does not allow endorsements. They don't
Speaker 1: want to do product placement, Like the toy stuff is
Speaker 1: a little borderline if you're being honest, but like they
Speaker 1: definitely don't want branded foods up there. NASA wants to
Speaker 1: maintain objectivity and not be crass in the eyes of
Speaker 1: the scientific community, not to lower itself to becoming a
Speaker 1: brand placement for various companies out there. But the Russians
Speaker 1: were happy to take on the gig once the price
Speaker 1: was right. Now, of course, we do have to mention
Speaker 1: that one of the strange things that we sent up
Speaker 1: to space was a Tesla Roadster, specifically Elon Musk's personal
Speaker 1: Tesla Roadster. Musk used his car as a payload for
Speaker 1: a test flight of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launch vehicle. Now
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, we're gonna put this in
Speaker 1: place of what a normal payload would be to show
Speaker 1: you the capability of this heavy launch vehicle. And the
Speaker 1: car had a mannequin in a spacesuit strapped down behind
Speaker 1: the wheel named Starman and the Roadster and Starman and
Speaker 1: the Falcon Heavy took off in February twenty eighteen, and
Speaker 1: the car was launched into a heliocentric orbit means an
Speaker 1: orbit around the Sun. It's larger than the Earth's orbit
Speaker 1: and a little smaller than Mars' orbit. And also the
Speaker 1: orbital path crosses Mars's orbital path. A couple of times,
Speaker 1: although you know, obviously not having the Roadster and Mars
Speaker 1: at the same place at the same time, just that
Speaker 1: their paths cross. The mannequin has two songs playing on repeat,
Speaker 1: one in each year. One is Space Oddity and the
Speaker 1: other there is life on Mars and David Bowie is
Speaker 1: far out man. I guess, of course, in space, no
Speaker 1: one can hear David Bowie. You know, you don't have
Speaker 1: any molecules to bounce around to carry the vibrations. If
Speaker 1: it's within an oxygenated helmet, then yes, you've got a
Speaker 1: medium through which the music can move. If there's anything
Speaker 1: inside the helmet that allows for that, you could do that.
Speaker 1: But obviously if you just had it on the car speakers,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't hear anything. Anyway. We don't even know if
Speaker 1: that music is still playing. It only plays if the
Speaker 1: battery is still got some juice left in it. As
Speaker 1: I record this, the roadster is nearly two hundred million
Speaker 1: miles away from Earth, but it is getting closer to
Speaker 1: us at the moment. It's currently moving away from Mars
Speaker 1: at this point in its orbit, though depending on when
Speaker 1: you're listening to this episode, those conditions could be very different.
Speaker 1: There are websites that track the roadster's location, so you
Speaker 1: can actually check up on it and see where it is. Reportedly,
Speaker 1: the car has a copy of Douglas Adams's science fiction
Speaker 1: comedy novel The Hitchicker's Guide to the Galaxy inside the
Speaker 1: glove box, and there's also a towel there, which is important.
Speaker 1: You always need to know where your towel is. That's
Speaker 1: one of the jokes from Hitchecker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Speaker 1: There's a sign with don't panic written on it on
Speaker 1: the dashboard, another Hitchicker's Guide reference. Really cute, honestly, and
Speaker 1: again kind of a publicity stunt, but also just kind
Speaker 1: of neat, Like I can't be mad about it. For
Speaker 1: one thing. I mean, it's the car from a billionaire,
Speaker 1: a guy who, at certain points in history has been
Speaker 1: the richest man in the world. If he wants to
Speaker 1: shoot his cars off into space whatever, I guess that's fine.
Speaker 1: It's not like I expect him to use that money
Speaker 1: to really directly benefit humans in meaningful ways. So if
Speaker 1: he wants to shoot his fleet of cards into space,
Speaker 1: go on. Now we get into the grim part of
Speaker 1: the episode, So let's talk about human remains in space.
Speaker 1: One of the fringe theories that has made the round
Speaker 1: since the early days of the space race is that
Speaker 1: there could be corpses in orbit around Earth, specifically lost
Speaker 1: cosmonauts Soviet era astronauts who died in midmission. Now, it
Speaker 1: is true that the Soviet Union spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time and effort concealing various accidents and disasters during their
Speaker 1: space program, and some of those disasters included the death
Speaker 1: of cosmonauts, but there's no evidence that any of them
Speaker 1: were stuck in orbit. There was one case where there
Speaker 1: was a depressurization catastrophe aboard a Soyo's capsule as it
Speaker 1: decoupled from an orbiting platform, but that Saya's capsule did
Speaker 1: return to Earth the terrible, terrible tragedy that happened. And
Speaker 1: there was another case where a parachute failed to deploy
Speaker 1: and the cosmonaut aboard that capsule passed away as well.
Speaker 1: But there's only ever been one recorded accident that occurred
Speaker 1: above the Carmen line. This is a boundary that's recognized
Speaker 1: by some but not all, scientific organizations, as the boundary
Speaker 1: between space and the Earth's atmosphere. Only one accident has
Speaker 1: ever happened above that. All the other space related accidents
Speaker 1: have happened below that line. However, this doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: there have not been human remains sent to space. We
Speaker 1: have put some there on purpose as a sort of
Speaker 1: space burial. The first recorded example of a space burial
Speaker 1: kind of really or remains being brought to space, would
Speaker 1: have happened in nineteen ninety two. This was part of
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle mission STS fifty two, and it was aboard
Speaker 1: the Space Shuttle Columbia. The crew brought along with them
Speaker 1: a small sample of the remains of Gene Roddenberry. Ron
Speaker 1: Berry is the guy who created star Trek, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people who have pursued careers in the space
Speaker 1: industry credit star Trek as being one of the reasons
Speaker 1: they got interested in the subject of space in the
Speaker 1: first place. Interestingly, ron Berry would be buried in space
Speaker 1: a second time, as another sample of his remains was
Speaker 1: aboard a privately funded space burial in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: Now the ninety two example, the remains went up into
Speaker 1: space and returned to Earth at the conclusion of the
Speaker 1: Space Little mission. The ninety seven example, the remains were
Speaker 1: sent up to space to board a rocket and eventually
Speaker 1: returned to Earth when the spacecraft carrying them ultimately re
Speaker 1: entered the air's atmosphere in two thousand and two. There
Speaker 1: are a few companies that offer space burials that will
Speaker 1: transport remains into space. Some of them will go for
Speaker 1: suborbital flights, so it doesn't go all the way up
Speaker 1: into orbit and it does come back down. But depending
Speaker 1: upon your view of where space begins, you can say
Speaker 1: the remains went to space, and very few people have
Speaker 1: been to space in the grand scheme of things, so
Speaker 1: you can kind of see where the appeal is there.
Speaker 1: But others offer services that would put remains on the
Speaker 1: Moon or into deep space. Some of the people who
Speaker 1: have had their remains sent to space include people like
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary, James Dewan who played Scottie from Star Trek,
Speaker 1: Clyde Tombaugh, who's an astronomer who discovered Pluto way back
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty. His remains, or sample a small sample
Speaker 1: of his remains are aboard the New Horizon spacecraft that
Speaker 1: ultimately will leave our Solar system, so he would become
Speaker 1: the first person to have part of their remains go
Speaker 1: outside of our Solar system and there are others as well.
Speaker 1: This is just a tiny group of them. And of
Speaker 1: course this is not a definitive list of all the
Speaker 1: weird stuff we've sent into space. There is so much.
Speaker 1: You know, We've sent a lightsaber prop that Mark Hambell
Speaker 1: used when he was playing Luke Skywalker in the Star
Speaker 1: Wars films. The Voyager has a golden record that, among
Speaker 1: other things, as a recording of Johnny be Good on it,
Speaker 1: which is pretty awesome. A piece of the Right Brothers
Speaker 1: original airplane has gone up into space. Amelia Earhart's wristwatch
Speaker 1: has gone into space. There's so much more, including pictures
Speaker 1: from Playboy magazine which were sent to the Moon. I
Speaker 1: didn't learn about that when I was taught about the
Speaker 1: lunar landing. But apparently this was kind of a kind
Speaker 1: of a prank pulled on the astronauts, like they weren't
Speaker 1: aware that it was in specific mission books that they
Speaker 1: were using once they were on the surface of the Moon.
Speaker 1: So can you just imagine you're on the Moon. You
Speaker 1: can see the planet Earth in the sky above you.
Speaker 1: You are further away than anyone else has ever been really,
Speaker 1: apart from the astronauts who had actually circled behind the
Speaker 1: Moon and come back, and you're trying to complete an
Speaker 1: historic mission on the lunar surface, and you turn your
Speaker 1: mission book page and there's the centerfold from like nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight or something. I would have imagined that I
Speaker 1: had gone crazy. If that had happened to me, I
Speaker 1: would have sat there and thought, this is what losing
Speaker 1: your mind feels like. But no, it's a prank, ah,
Speaker 1: those wacky NASA folks. All right, Well, that's just again
Speaker 1: a small sample of some of the weird stuff we've
Speaker 1: sent into space, and obviously there's a lot more. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'll do a follow up at some point and talk
Speaker 1: about some other examples. But I hope you enjoyed this.
Speaker 1: I hope you are well. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: topics I should cover and tech stuff, reach out to me.
Speaker 1: You can let me know on Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: the show is tech Stuff HSW or you can download
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