WEBVTT - Space Mirrors: Weapons, Energy & Propulsion 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.880 Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. From how Stop 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:26.960 Works by Carlo ground Control to Major Tom Ground Control 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:31.240 to Major Tom, take your protein pills and put your 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:37.040 helmet on ground control to Major Tom five commencing count 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:41.400 of engines on three three check ignitions, Who to make 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:57.240 God's Love people one lift off. Hey, welcome to stuff 0:00:57.280 --> 0:00:58.880 to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and 0:00:58.960 --> 0:01:01.280 I am Christians. Say so you may have gotten the 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:03.800 idea from our little intro there that that was our 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.160 homage to David Bowie. We're recording this two days after 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:08.840 he passed away, so we thought it would be fun 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:11.959 to do a little space oddity routine since we're gonna 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:17.160 be talking about space mirrors. So how how do these work? 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:19.920 Why are we putting mirrors in outer space? It's not 0:01:19.959 --> 0:01:22.720 to look at ourselves, is not to look at planet Earth? Right, 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.160 There's many reasons behind this. Yeah, though I will say 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:28.760 that I did run across at least one scenario in 0:01:28.800 --> 0:01:31.160 which they were talking about using mirrors and space as 0:01:31.200 --> 0:01:35.759 a means to to to better analyze conditions on the Earth. 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:37.600 Is that right? Yeah? But for the most part, yeah, 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:39.280 we're not putting them up there, but they're not putting 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:42.240 haunted mirrors up in space, right, not like the mirror 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:45.640 from Oculus. Not yet. That's the sequel. I just came 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:48.640 up with it, right there, Oculus to space mirror. The 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:52.080 Oculus mirror, as you is used in a telescope. It 0:01:52.080 --> 0:01:55.200 gets put in the Hubble Yeah, Hubble space telescope or 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:58.880 the James Webb Yeah, exactly. And it's worth mentioning the 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:02.560 haunted mirrors because haunted mirrors, I feel, capture a lot 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:06.320 of the mystique of the mirror itself. Even if you 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:09.080 sort of know how a mirror works, uh, there's still 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:12.640 something kind of magical and uncanny about it. And therefore 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.440 the idea of putting them in space, putting them out there, 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:20.560 uh in orbit, uh, is inherently kind of weird and 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:25.840 mystical feeling. Yeah, potential event horizons scenario. Ye. So before 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:27.679 we dive into the mirror stuff, I just want to 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:29.959 remind everybody you know, Stuff to Blow your Mind is 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:32.720 a podcast, and most of you know us from listening 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:34.880 to the show, and thank you for doing so. But 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:36.880 we do a bunch of other stuff too, and we 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:39.840 love if you check that out. So we've got videos 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:42.880 that we produce uh and star in. We've got articles 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:45.160 that we write, and the best way that you can 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:47.520 find most of that stuff is by visiting us at 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:49.880 stuff to blow your Mind dot com. That is the 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:54.160 landing site for everything that Joe, Robert and I are producing. Indeed, 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:56.520 and hey, we don't we don't care how you listen 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:58.919 to us. There are various different ways to listen to 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:01.160 a podcast these days. But if you want to help 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:06.519 us out, whatever system you use, be it iTunes or Google, Spotify, 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:09.320 you name it, uh, give us a little love there. 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:11.640 If they have a way to review us, give us 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:14.280 some stars. Do that. It helps us out, helps out 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:17.760 the algorithm, help support the show, and we loved here. 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:20.000 Not just if you've done those, but we love to 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:23.200 hear your reactions to the episodes or maybe some ideas 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:25.760 that you've had, or or facts that we maybe didn't 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:28.160 find in our research. So you can always reach out 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:29.960 to us on social media and let us know about 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:32.639 those things. We're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Tumblr. 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:35.440 We are blow the Mind on those platforms. We also 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:39.720 do periscopes every Friday at noon Eastern Standard time, So 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:41.280 if you want to hang out with us for twenty 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:43.320 minutes or so and talk about what's going on with 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:45.480 the show this week, what we're working on for articles 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:48.120 or whatever. Uh, that's that's the best way to do that, 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:51.440 to talk to us directly, throw us those hearts on periscope, 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:55.600 all right, you know. But as we get going here, Uh, 0:03:55.680 --> 0:04:00.720 this is not an episode that deals exclusively with telescope. Uh. 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:03.760 That is a topic that deserves its own episode or 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:06.920 a couple of episodes to explore some of this amazing 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:12.080 terrestrial and orbital observatories that we've rolled out over the years. 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:15.280 But in discussing the role of mirrors in space, we 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:19.039 have to talk at least briefly about their role in 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:24.400 the telescope. Yeah. So, the basic gist of reflector telescopes, 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:28.039 which is the kind of telescope that uses mirrors instead 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:32.520 of lenses, is that the mirrors collect light within them 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:35.559 from a distant object, bring that light to a point 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:37.520 or to a focus, and then through an I P 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:40.720 S lens, take that focus and magnify it for our 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:44.720 human retina, right, so we can see through. Its ability 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:48.000 to collect light is directly related to the diameter of 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:51.479 the mirror being used to gather the light. Okay, and 0:04:51.600 --> 0:04:55.040 Isaac Newton was the first one to develop this idea 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:58.720 for the reflector telescope back in sixteen eighty. He used 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:01.920 a curved metal mirror to collect the light and reflect 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:05.880 it into focus. Then in seventy two, John Hadley developed 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:09.880 a design using parabolic mirrors, and these are relatively still 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:15.160 in popular use today. The disadvantage of reflector telescopes, though, 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:18.239 is that you have to clean and realign these mirrors, 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:20.760 and that actually comes into play with the Hubble telescope. 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:24.800 Oh yeah, because there's some some flaw to it. But 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:28.159 reflectors are also subject to some light loss as well. 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:31.200 So Hubble we mentioned it before. We thought we joked 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:34.600 about putting the oculus mirror inside of it. Uh, it's 0:05:34.680 --> 0:05:38.320 a cassa grain, that's the title of it. Reflector telescope 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.440 where the light enters through a small opening and bounces 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:45.080 off primary and secondary mirrors inside of it. It's sort 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:47.159 of in like a w formation, is how the light 0:05:47.240 --> 0:05:50.680 is bouncing around in there, and there's other smaller mirrors 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.840 inside to distribute the light to the eventual instruments that 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:57.239 then broadcast them back to us. The mirrors are made, 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.120 you know, different from how Newton made his with just 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:03.640 a sheet of metal. Uh. They are glass coated with 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:08.640 layers of pure aluminum and magnesium fluoride. But the hubble 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:11.679 has a couple of flaws. It had a flaw in 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:14.039 in its mirrors UM, and so what they used to 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.680 do is they had several small mirrors inside of it 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:20.840 that were called co star UH. And the idea was 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:24.000 that they would intercept the beam from the primary mirror 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:26.520 that had a flaw, refocus it, and then make it 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:29.520 so that you know, is able to be uh parsed out. 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:32.880 But today the instruments that are built into it have 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:36.880 corrective optics that compensate for that flaw, so they don't 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:39.719 need the co Star mirrors anymore. And then the big 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:41.240 one that I'm sure a lot of you have heard 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:45.159 about is James Webb Telescope, which is coming up. It 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:48.480 is an even bigger mirror that is twenty ft in diameter. 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:51.840 In fact, we just sent a team here uh from 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:55.120 How Stuff Works up to the NASA Observatory there where 0:06:55.120 --> 0:06:57.440 they're working on the James Web telescope, and a couple 0:06:57.480 --> 0:06:59.800 of videos were produced by our team, primarily led by 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:03.680 all Fry from the History podcast. But I'm looking forward 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:06.080 to seeing that stuff because they've they apparently got real 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:08.720 up close and personal with the James Webb telescope and 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:11.360 the production and maybe even the Haunted mirror. That's you 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:14.000 gotta ask Hollie if that Oculus mirror made its way 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:17.200 in there. Um. There's also some considerations for something that's 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:20.440 called a liquid mirror telescope that could potentially be mounted 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.640 on the Moon. It would be between sixties six and 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:26.760 three hundred and twenty eight feet long, which would collect 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:29.920 a thousand and seven hundred and thirty six times more 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:33.600 light than the Hubble telescope does. Now, so that's just 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.760 my brief primer here on telescopes and their role. And yes, 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:41.240 we have space we have mirrors in space four telescopes, 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:44.239 but we're going to talk a little bit beyond using 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:47.320 them to see far and look into other ways that 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:50.000 you could use them potentially as weapons or just to 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:54.320 make people happier. Apparently. Yeah, and you know it's also 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:58.280 worth noting that, um, you know, especially with terrestrial observatories, 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:02.040 you have mirrors that are solid one piece, and then 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.120 you also have mirrors that are composed of of of 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:10.200 of various segments that all come together. Um, you mentioned 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:12.880 the liquid mirror, and I have to to throw in 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:17.080 about a new proposition. This just came out. This made 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:21.440 a made the rounds from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, good 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:26.840 old JPL. Yeah, two thousand fifteen orbiting rainbows. So and 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:28.480 you already know it's gonna be good at the title 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:31.520 like that. But this would be a reflective cloud. This 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:35.199 is theoretical. This would be a reflective cloud of glitter 0:08:35.360 --> 0:08:38.600 light grains that are just floating there in space, and 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:42.520 they're trapped and manipulated by multiple laser beans. So you 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.480 don't have to worry about structure or backing material. You 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:49.080 have to worry about, you know, unfurling the sails, et cetera. 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:52.040 The pressure of the laser light coming in from different 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:55.840 directions ship would shape the cloud and push the small 0:08:55.880 --> 0:09:00.160 grains to a line in the same direction. So kind 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:04.600 of a nano mirror cloud. Yeah, that sounds interesting, curious. 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:06.559 I mean, it sounds like it would be a long 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:09.280 way off, given given how long the work on James 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:11.560 Webb has been going on. Yeah, but it's there's certainly 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:15.560 an innovation that is worth thinking about in terms of 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:19.280 these various applications that we're going to discuss here, some 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:22.560 of which you know, are a little more feasible than others. Um, 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:27.000 we should also mention solar sales because that that's an 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:30.959 important aspect of the use of mirrors in space as well, 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:34.560 or at least mirrord surfaces. So the concept itself goes 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:38.640 back to the sixteenth century UH astronomer mathematician Johannes Kepler 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:42.360 UH noticed that comet tails always point away from the sun, 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:46.640 implying that sunlight itself was pushing them around like they 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:50.560 were little wind solar breeze. Yeah, and there is there 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:53.680 is a solar win We know that now. Um. We 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:55.440 we know now that sunlight is a little more than 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:58.360 a stream of photons, tiny particles of light, and they 0:09:58.400 --> 0:10:02.280 don't possess mass, but they do boast a linear momentum, 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:05.240 and when they bounce off a reflective surface, they push 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:08.559 against that surface. And UH, and then this has been 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:12.240 demonstrated because of the solar sales. UH. The Mariner Tin 0:10:12.320 --> 0:10:15.800 probe successfully demonstrated the technology in seventy four when Nassy 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:20.959 used the probe solar arrays UH as an impromptu solar sale. UH. 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:25.200 Subsequent American, Russian, Indian, and Japanese missions have also uh 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:29.920 further proven the technology's feasibility. But we really haven't taken 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.880 the solar sale concept and uh and and fleshed it 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:37.240 out in a more uh you know, remarkable way. We 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:41.080 haven't created like full full on solar sale vessels. Yeah. 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:44.240 The idea is that like, eventually, the continuous force of 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:48.720 all those sunlight particles would propel a spacecraft potentially five 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:52.560 times faster than traditional rockets. Yeah, and then if you 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:56.520 could also throw in varying uh theoretical means of boosting 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:59.760 them with lasers, so you point the laser beams at 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:02.559 the sale and add a little bit of artificial win 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:06.240 to those solar sales. So this sounds good, right. We're 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:09.040 using mirrors in space as a as a as a 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:11.720 real means and as a and as a near future 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:17.160 means to gaze at the cosmos, and propulsion as a 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:20.200 means to move through it. But what else can we do? Well, 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:23.200 apparently we can hurt each other, which is one of 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:25.760 our favorite ways to examine space. Right. We love talking 0:11:25.760 --> 0:11:28.319 about space weapons here and stuff to blow your mind. Yeah, 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:30.280 and we've seen time and time again that if you want, 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:34.760 you want any kind of a science program funded. If 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:38.240 it has a weapon aspect to it, then all the better. 0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:41.720 That's that's how human civilization gets excited about science. And 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:45.839 that's exactly the case with something called the sun gun. Uh. 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:50.560 And this comes from a Life magazine article. Basically, there 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:54.160 were U. S. Army technical experts that were in Germany 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:57.280 and they came across notes for the sun gun. And 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:02.160 the concept was by a German rocket scientists named Herman 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:06.520 O Berth, and he pitched this idea in ninete. Now, 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:10.079 his idea for this was totally peaceful, right. He wanted 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:13.720 to use it to do things like illuminate ports or 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:17.240 thaw out frozen rivers. Uh. He also thought that you 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:19.480 could potentially use this as a I mean he was 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:23.000 thinking way ahead as a refueling station for spaceships. So 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:26.520 there were some sort of sci fi ash ideas here. Yeah. Oh, 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:28.520 Berth is one of those names you see thrown around 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:31.320 at times with Verna von Braun. He was very much 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:34.320 involved with the German rocket program in the creation of 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:39.760 the V two. Yeah exactly. But you know, in this situation, 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:41.880 ober comes up with this idea and the nazis going, 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:45.000 you know, what, what if we could use that to 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:48.120 take the rays and burn our enemy cities and boil 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:52.120 the ocean. Yeah. I mean it comes down again to 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:55.960 this case where you have you have scientists who who 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:58.160 have this in their areas of expertise, they have their 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:03.560 research they cared dearly about, but you're ultimately you're you're 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:07.719 you're ultimately having to deal with a warlike and dogmatic 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:10.320 force at the top of the chain, and you have 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:13.240 to appeal to those masters. And it's like that nowadays. 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:15.040 Like you know, a lot of the scientists that I 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:16.760 know who get funding for their work get it from 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:18.720 the d O D. I mean, one of my closest 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:21.679 friends used to do work out of M I T. 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:25.240 And he always reminds me that the GPS was first 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:27.360 developed with do O D money. And I'm talking about 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:32.040 the Department of Defense in the United States for international listeners. Yeah, 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:34.439 So the scenario more or less remains the same. It's 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:39.200 easier to uh to cast a nefarious I obviously on 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:43.319 on a scientific experiments going on in scientific endeavors going 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:46.679 on during the Third Reich and under the Third Reich. 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:48.880 But it has always been the case. And if you 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:52.280 have a big project, war is the way it gets green. Well, 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:55.360 there don't seem to be any surviving schematics to actually 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:57.880 show how they're going to build this mirror sun gun. 0:13:58.240 --> 0:14:01.680 But the Life magazine article has like drawings and illustrations 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:05.400 in it, which I'm assuming that they came with the 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:08.400 notes that were uncovered by these technical experts unless they 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:12.000 were drawn for the article. And those illustrations are are available, 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:14.240 you can find them, i think, on on Google and 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:18.720 and they're wonderful. They're just fabulous retro futurist visions of 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:21.960 what life space could consist of. Um, they didn't really 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:24.360 have a plan either on how they were going to 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:27.880 have a rocket actually get the get the sun gun 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:31.040 up into space, but the idea here was that it 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:34.240 would be pre assembled before it even got up there. Uh. 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:37.320 And in the same article that hypothesized that at the 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:39.840 distance that the Germans were planning to set up the mirror, 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:43.880 which was five thousand, one hundred miles up, the image 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:46.200 it would cast on Earth once they actually crunched the 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:49.640 math would be forty miles in diameter and it would 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:52.280 not be hot enough to do any damage, so there 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:55.920 would be like a forty mile uh sunburst that I 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:57.360 don't know, maybe it would give you a bit of 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:00.040 a tan. Yeah, that's uh, And that's one of the 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:02.440 um the cool things about that Life article is they 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:05.920 just immediately tear down the idea. Um. Of course, it's 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:09.600 also worth noting that that the German scientists themselves, they 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:12.760 were saying that this thing, this would be like years anyway, 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:16.200 so they weren't saying we can do this next year, guys. Um. 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:19.720 But yeah, it seems like if you try to extrapolate 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.480 over it's work into a weapon, as as some of 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:26.240 the Nazi individuals may have seemed to have done, it's 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:31.920 not gonna work, but as a means to slightly heat areas, right, Yeah, yeah, 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:34.440 And I'm curious, like, especially given what we're going to 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:37.200 talk about Russian applications for this as well. But you know, 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:39.240 maybe they could thaw or ever, but at the very 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:44.240 least they could literally shed some light on the situation. So, Okay, 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:48.320 here's the basic breakdown of ober'st thing. Even if we 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:51.160 don't have access to as sschematics. The idea is that 0:15:51.200 --> 0:15:54.800 the mirror would be a concave disk that's one mile 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:56.880 in diameter. So we keep coming back to this, the 0:15:56.880 --> 0:16:00.200 importance of how big the diameter is mirror. The crew 0:16:00.280 --> 0:16:04.280 would live inside the mirror and they would breathe air 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:08.400 produced by thousands of pumpkin plants. I loved that. And 0:16:08.440 --> 0:16:10.200 even in some of the drawings they sort of show 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:12.920 where these pumpkin plants would be placed that they would 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.600 be generating oxygen for the car. Wonder why, I guess 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:17.440 because of the buyer, if they feel like that would 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:20.640 be a good support structure for us. Yeah, it wasn't clear. 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:26.120 It wasn't clear, and you know, unfortunately, oh Birth's actual 0:16:26.200 --> 0:16:28.680 reasoning for it was kind of lost to time. There 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:32.560 was also some weird stuff because they the design was 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:36.720 pitched to have centrifugial rotation and mimic gravity, kind of 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:39.320 like we're familiar with now from two thousand one of 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:43.560 Space that classic scene. Yeah. Um, but they also would 0:16:43.600 --> 0:16:46.320 wear magnet shoes that would allow them to stick to 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:49.440 the floors and walls at the same time to compensate 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:51.560 for the gravity loss. So maybe it's sort of like 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:53.800 I'm I'm thinking of that scene in Star Trek the 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:56.640 Next Generation where they put on those like magnet boots 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:58.560 and walk along in the hull of the Star Trek 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:02.480 Enterprise to the star Reck enterprise, the spaceship enterprise. Uh. 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:04.320 And so the idea here is that there would be 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:07.440 tiny little rocket motors that are attached to the mirror 0:17:07.600 --> 0:17:09.760 and they would fire those off to control where it 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:12.119 was turned, so they could aim the light at Earth. 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:16.280 But after World War Two, you know, the Nazis were 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.400 done for in terms of the weapon building business, and 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:22.119 oh Berth went to other nations to see if they 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:24.439 would pick up his idea for the peacetime applications. He 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:27.399 originally came up with him for he thought the US 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:31.840 could build a mirror that's three hundred miles in diameter. 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:35.800 That's huge, uh, to terraform the Earth. So he had 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:41.080 some big ideas, o Berth did. He even suggested, well, 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:43.560 you know it would be expensive, Yes, but why don't 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:46.119 we just mind all the materials from the Moon to 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:48.680 keep the costs down. I keep in mind, we hadn't 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:50.480 even been to the moon. He doesn't know what's on 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:54.040 the moon. But sure enough, we're gonna he pitches, Yeah, 0:17:54.080 --> 0:17:55.960 don't worry about it. We'll just we'll make this mirror 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:58.880 from moonbits. See he's very much thinking a few steps 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:03.000 ahead of hurrent science. Yeah, I mean this concept is, 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:06.240 as far as I can tell, more sci fi than science. 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.719 But it was, you know, initially pitched to be developed. 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:13.040 You know. It's it's interesting that he was already at 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:17.240 this point talking about it's use for terraforming, because in 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:21.240 recent decades you've you've see space mirrors occasionally pop up 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:27.200 as a means to terraform Mars. The red planets too cold, 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:29.880 so you know, you just deploy fleets of orbiting reflective 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:32.280 balloons to collect sunlight and reflect it down on the 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:37.119 chili surfaces. Um that that in particular was it was 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:41.360 a scheme that was proposed by University of Arizona's rogol Waida, 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:45.160 who theorizes that such a scheme could raise the Martian 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:49.320 temperature in a one fifty acre patch to Earth like 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:55.479 levels of interesting. And likewise, you you see various theories 0:18:55.480 --> 0:18:57.679 about how you could you could use space mirrors as 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:01.240 a geo engineering or plan at hacking measure here on 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:06.040 Earth to counteract global warming. Yeah, I've heard that as well. 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.199 But Overth already had all that uh teaming around in 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:12.159 that brain age. Yeah, back in the twenties, he had 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:14.119 the whole thing figured out. He just didn't have the 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:16.840 means to achieve it. I'm gonna go back to the 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:20.760 sun gun one more time though. Um that edition of 0:19:20.800 --> 0:19:23.639 Life magazine in busting It, these are some of the 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:26.119 particulars that they laid out. They said that the German 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:30.520 plan for building may be proved physically impossible by a 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:34.720 simple axiom of optics. Uh. This is that light cannot 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:37.840 be brought to a sharp pointed focus with lenses or 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:41.719 mirrors unless it comes from a sharp pointed source. Uh. 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:44.080 It goes on to say that since the Sun appears 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:46.359 in the sky as a disk and not as a point, 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:49.000 the best any optical system could do would be to 0:19:49.040 --> 0:19:52.960 produce an image of that disc. So at very short 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:56.040 focal length, the image is small and hot, but the 0:19:56.280 --> 0:20:00.440 focus length is increased the image becomes progressively bigger and cooler. 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:03.640 So at the distances that the Germans what we're dealing with, 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:06.600 as you mentioned, they wouldn't be able to cast that 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:10.920 laser like beam of heated intensity on anything. They would 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:13.879 just be able to warm things up like ha ha. 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:19.120 Enemies enjoy slightly warmer temperatures in this general vicinity, which 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:21.880 actually would work out pretty well for the next next 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:25.760 space mirror. We're gonna talk about projects, Zin Maya. That's right. 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:28.399 When we come back, we're gonna discuss Soviet attempts to 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:32.119 cast a little light on the on the world using 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:39.520 space mirrors. Hey, everybody having a professional looking website. It's 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:42.560 just an important part of doing business or just representing 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:45.640 yourself in today's world. But it can be a real pain, right, 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:48.600 You're trying to build this professional looking thing and you 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:50.959 feel like you don't. You don't have the right coding 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:52.920 tools at your disposal, you don't have the right skill 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:55.480 set to make it happen. But that's where square space 0:20:55.760 --> 0:20:59.199 comes into play. 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Go try 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:25.640 it out and build that website you've been dreaming off. 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:33.600 All right, we're back and we're talking about Project Znamia. 0:21:33.920 --> 0:21:37.880 Znamia is Russian for banner, because essentially we're talking about 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:40.840 a big reflective banner in space. And this is that 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:45.159 this was the brainchild of the Space Regathera Consortium or 0:21:45.359 --> 0:21:48.600 s r C, a partnership of seven Russian aerospace management 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:53.640 and engineering companies who proposed and ultimately got off the ground. Uh, 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:59.560 two different variations of this space mirror technology. And the 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:02.560 interesting and maybe confusing thing about this too was the 0:22:02.600 --> 0:22:06.200 first one that went up was the Jennaia too, not 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:09.280 Jean Maya one. So I wonder whatever happened to the 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:11.480 first one, or maybe they just jumped right to two 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:13.960 after a prototype. Yeah, And then the second one is 0:22:14.400 --> 0:22:19.080 Namia two point five, right, and the third proposed one 0:22:19.080 --> 0:22:22.080 that never actually happened was going to be Namia three. Yeah. 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:26.560 It's sort of like an iOS operating systems that they 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:29.160 just kind of jumped around with the numbers there. So 0:22:29.240 --> 0:22:32.040 the idea here is that it's a spinning space reflector, 0:22:32.080 --> 0:22:34.320 apparently sort of similar to the sun gun. I guess 0:22:34.840 --> 0:22:38.080 in the idea was that it would reflect a three 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:42.040