Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: forward thinking. I'll pay there, and welcome to forward thinking.
Speaker 1: But podcast then looks at the future and says Helton
Speaker 1: Zick for Captain Kirk Doscabin, gross work. I'm Jonathan, I'm Lauren,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. Hi, everybody, Hi Joe. I have
Speaker 1: a question. You always do well. The last time I checked,
Speaker 1: none of us in this room had been to space.
Speaker 1: But that was a while ago. Yeah, that's true. Has
Speaker 1: anybody been to space yet? I have not been to space, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: I have also not been to space. Have you been
Speaker 1: to space? Space? Noel has also not been to space.
Speaker 1: What a bummer, Jonathan. You even kind of looked like
Speaker 1: the star baby. I know, I know, it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's I also built a monolith in my yard. My
Speaker 1: neighbors are crazy mad because we have a shared communal space.
Speaker 1: So are they so crazy mad that they like beat
Speaker 1: you with giant bones? They they have been there, they're
Speaker 1: certainly working up to it. Okay, Yeah, Well, we've talked
Speaker 1: about space tourism before because everybody kind of wants to
Speaker 1: go to space. But there's a problem that it's not
Speaker 1: so easy to get there. It's not so cheap to
Speaker 1: get there. Yeah, right, well, that would be one of
Speaker 1: the subsets. Yeah, I think. I think if you were
Speaker 1: to be truly like nail it down to the number
Speaker 1: of people who have been space tourists, that it's it's
Speaker 1: fewer than ten as I recall something like seven people
Speaker 1: one person, maybe more like twelve. I don't know, it
Speaker 1: depends on who you count. But most of the people
Speaker 1: who have been to space have been professional astronauts, people
Speaker 1: who really know what they're doing. Yeah, But amateurs want
Speaker 1: to go to space too. Yeah. So space tourism is
Speaker 1: clearly on the way. There's a demand for it, and
Speaker 1: so somebody's going to find a way to see apply it.
Speaker 1: But there are still problems because it's going to be
Speaker 1: really expensive. Rocket launches are costly and somewhat dangerous. Are
Speaker 1: we going to have a space elevator soon? We've talked
Speaker 1: about that. It would be pretty cool, but it's probably
Speaker 1: if it will ever exist, it's a long long way
Speaker 1: off right there. They're fundamental difficulties with that technology. One
Speaker 1: the big ones, yeah, find finding fighting material that has
Speaker 1: the tensile strength to be secure as a tether from
Speaker 1: the Earth to some object in orbit upon which an
Speaker 1: elevator could climb. It's it's a non trivial problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's to say the least. So are there any other
Speaker 1: alternative ways we could think about getting people to have
Speaker 1: that space tourism experience without depending on the super expensive,
Speaker 1: dangerous rocket launches or waiting for some kind of crazy
Speaker 1: technology to emerge. How about catapults? Guys, that was the
Speaker 1: first one that was I think, I think there's something
Speaker 1: to this. Well, someone else wrote it down. I just
Speaker 1: I just went with it because, Okay, what's arguably the
Speaker 1: world's largest trebiche, which is a replica from old Danish designs.
Speaker 1: It's housed in Warwick Castle, and you might have guessed Warwickshire,
Speaker 1: England consend stuff flying nearly a thousand feet that's some
Speaker 1: three hundreds and it only takes a team like an
Speaker 1: hour to prepare the equipment for launch. So that's like
Speaker 1: efficiency right there compared to the space perfect you just
Speaker 1: have those like at three intervals in how close is
Speaker 1: that to space? I guess far away. I guess we'll
Speaker 1: find out in a bit y. Yeah, I've got some
Speaker 1: other proposed alternatives to chemical rockets like the Mario super Jump.
Speaker 1: I'll him saying, ok, I look, I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: against it. In fact, I was just talking to the
Speaker 1: director of the George Renaissance Festival about the fact that
Speaker 1: there needs to be a catapult ride. Although clearly one
Speaker 1: of the important questions you would ask the person before
Speaker 1: they are aimed at the net is hey, have you
Speaker 1: had anything to eat today? Because that's that's going to
Speaker 1: affect our calculations. Um but no, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about some of the actual alternative proposals for chemical rockets, because,
Speaker 1: as we have pointed out, they are expensive and dangerous potentially,
Speaker 1: so we have to look and see if there's something
Speaker 1: else that we could use for getting stuff from Earth
Speaker 1: into space. And there's been a lot of hypothetical proposals
Speaker 1: or the proposals are real, but it's all based on hypothesis.
Speaker 1: They're they're essentially in the same level of reality as
Speaker 1: the space elevator. I'm a little loopy, um but no.
Speaker 1: These include the cable space accelerator, which imagine this, You've
Speaker 1: got a ramp. It doesn't have to be a ramp,
Speaker 1: but the most common version I've seen as a ramp,
Speaker 1: and you have a series of drive motors in that ramp.
Speaker 1: The drive motors can attach to a cable and pull
Speaker 1: the cable up the ramp, and after the cable passes
Speaker 1: the drive motor, it essentially gets a handoff to the
Speaker 1: next drive motor. Each drive motor in that series is
Speaker 1: moving at a faster rpm, so it's pulling the cable
Speaker 1: faster each time. The other end of the cable is
Speaker 1: attached to a vehicle, preferably a winged one, and then
Speaker 1: when the winged one gets to the end of the ramp,
Speaker 1: by that point it's moving at a hypersonic speed and
Speaker 1: can direct itself more and a more vertical orientation and
Speaker 1: thus escape the bonds of earth um without having to
Speaker 1: use chemical rockets for the initial launch. Okay, cool, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so sort of the same way that us. Some aircraft
Speaker 1: use a traditional launch pattern to get them to like
Speaker 1: normal feet cruising altitude, and then uh, we'll use a
Speaker 1: secondary booster to go super fast, or even a military
Speaker 1: jet on a on like an aircraft carrier where they
Speaker 1: can have it's it's essentially a catapult system to accelerate
Speaker 1: them at at really high speed so they can take
Speaker 1: off and a shortened runway, same sort of thing, but
Speaker 1: you know, kind of ramped up a notch. So then
Speaker 1: you have also an idea called a circle launcher and
Speaker 1: space keeper, which honestly I have Actually it's actually from
Speaker 1: there is a proposal and you can there's a Google
Speaker 1: books has a PDF of the entire thing, and it's
Speaker 1: incredibly long, and the physics got so complicated that I
Speaker 1: stopped reading. So I know that it's it's got a
Speaker 1: cable that when it spins, it creates a circle, and
Speaker 1: then uh, there's a a launch tube thing in the
Speaker 1: center of this circle, and then stuff gets launched through
Speaker 1: centrifugal force. That does not sound like it would be
Speaker 1: ideal for you know, human occupants, maybe cargo, But I
Speaker 1: can't imagine going on. Like have you guys ever been
Speaker 1: to one of those amusement parks like six Flags that
Speaker 1: has something like the wheelie. It spins horizontally and then
Speaker 1: the arm comes up so that you're spinning upside down vertically. Yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine using that to get into space. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine using that on the ground. Yeah. I rode
Speaker 1: one of those. I rode one of those two times
Speaker 1: in a row once and that was probably one of
Speaker 1: my greatest failures as as a human being, It was
Speaker 1: making that decision, because they ruined the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: Then they're also proposed magnetic lift systems, but a lot
Speaker 1: of them would require incredible engineering, like digging forty kilometers
Speaker 1: down into the ground to create enough runaway. Yeah. For
Speaker 1: the magnetic thrust, you would need to get up into space,
Speaker 1: which already non trivial problem. Yeah, so, as you've pointed out,
Speaker 1: basically all of these are about on the same level
Speaker 1: as the space elevator. Yeah. They think things that may
Speaker 1: one day work if we have some technological breakthroughs, but
Speaker 1: they may even be practical. Like, even if they work
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean it's practical, Right, it may end up
Speaker 1: being where sure it works, but the amount of money
Speaker 1: and energy or anything else that we pour into it
Speaker 1: dwarfs whatever a rocket launch would be, thus negating the
Speaker 1: effectiveness of that technique. Well, I've got another proposal. Proposal, way,
Speaker 1: I want to get a little more Wizard of Oz. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think that we're paying enough due to technology
Speaker 1: that was dreamed about in the late eight I got it,
Speaker 1: I got it. You're gonna say flying monkeys on a
Speaker 1: flying monkey today. You know how about balloons? You're floating
Speaker 1: up into space in a balloon, going, I can't sit up,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how it works. Yeah, that's an
Speaker 1: interesting and interesting idea. And the reason why we're even
Speaker 1: mentioning this, and we'll go into more detail as the
Speaker 1: episode goes on, is because there are a couple of
Speaker 1: different companies that have been looking into using balloons as
Speaker 1: a means of taking people up to high altitudes in
Speaker 1: what they're calling space tourism. So how realistic is that?
Speaker 1: How high can balloons go? Can they get us to space? Well?
Speaker 1: The Federation Aeronautique into Nacional, which overseas Aeronautic records, defines
Speaker 1: space as beginning at one hundred kilometers above sea level,
Speaker 1: which is a little more than sixty two miles, right,
Speaker 1: That's where space begins, according to that organization. The US
Speaker 1: Air Force defines it differently, saying that it's fifty miles
Speaker 1: above sea level, which is a little more than eighty kilometers.
Speaker 1: So there's a twenty kilometer difference there, which actually, interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: has caused some problems because there were some some early
Speaker 1: test pilots who flew above the fifty mile mark or
Speaker 1: the eighty kilometer mark, but below the one kilometer mark,
Speaker 1: So did they earn their astronaut wing or not? And
Speaker 1: that was actually a big problem for a long time.
Speaker 1: Eventually the government said, give him the astronaut wings. Would
Speaker 1: have been funny if the right right, Yes, you went,
Speaker 1: you went incredibly high, try again later, but not high enough.
Speaker 1: So why one kilometers? Well, it's called the Karman line,
Speaker 1: and at that height the air is so thin that
Speaker 1: it does not create sufficient lift for an aerodynamical vehicle
Speaker 1: to maintain flight. Right, So you couldn't take an airplane
Speaker 1: with wings up there exactly, it would It would not
Speaker 1: have any lift. It would start to fall until it
Speaker 1: reached a denser atmosphere. So, in atmospheric terms, this puts
Speaker 1: the beginning of space at Earth's thermosphere. But you know,
Speaker 1: you know your levels of the atmosphere, right, the thermosphere
Speaker 1: is pretty far out there. That starts at around eighty
Speaker 1: five kilometers above sea level and ends around the five
Speaker 1: hundred to one thousand kilometer range, which I know that
Speaker 1: sounds like it's a huge range. It's five kilometers. How
Speaker 1: could it be like so nebulous. Well, it largely depends
Speaker 1: upon external factors like polder activity. Now, the level above
Speaker 1: the thermosphere is the exosphere, which is an area that
Speaker 1: has molecules that are gravitationally bound to the Earth, but
Speaker 1: they are so far apart from one another that they
Speaker 1: don't act like a gas. They're all individual particles essentially,
Speaker 1: so very very thin layer. Here below the thermosphere is
Speaker 1: the miso sphere, which is between fifty and eighty kilometers,
Speaker 1: and then below that is the stratosphere, which is between
Speaker 1: ten and fifty kilometers, and then below that is the troposphere,
Speaker 1: which is the lowest level. That's where weather occurs. So
Speaker 1: those are your basic levels. And when you look at
Speaker 1: those levels, you might ask, well, where where did the
Speaker 1: balloons go? Like how high can the balloons go in
Speaker 1: that that scale. I'm guessing they can't get you all
Speaker 1: the way out to the exosphere. You would guess correctly,
Speaker 1: because balloons, by their nature, are based on the equilibrium
Speaker 1: between the density of the gas inside the balloon versus
Speaker 1: what's outside. It floats up because it is less dents
Speaker 1: than the atmosphere. And then you also have other other
Speaker 1: factors as well that we'll talk about like air pressure,
Speaker 1: which becomes really important. Ter On, and the weight of
Speaker 1: the material that the balloon is made of also very important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and gold balloons just don't go very high. No, but
Speaker 1: you know what, Adam and Jamie on MythBusters had a
Speaker 1: lead balloon and they made it float. They can do anything.
Speaker 1: Did they explode it afterwards? I don't think they did.
Speaker 1: Know they shot it with a cow. Yeah. Anyway, So
Speaker 1: in October two thou fourteen, Alan you Stays, a Google executive,
Speaker 1: ascended to an altitude of about forty one kilometers, which
Speaker 1: is about twenty five point five miles before detaching from
Speaker 1: his balloon. Now that balloon was created by a company, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: called Paragon strat X. And you have to make a
Speaker 1: fist when you say that names which Lauren did both.
Speaker 1: You know, even when she was explaining that you have
Speaker 1: to do that, she did it again. Muscle mass bulk
Speaker 1: up with dreat haagone stratic and yeah, he he his
Speaker 1: was interesting, like his his approach was interesting. You know.
Speaker 1: Felix baum Gartner also had gone very high up. This
Speaker 1: was this was breaking baum Gartner's unofficial record. Baumgartner's record
Speaker 1: has not yet been officially recognized by the international organization
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier. But baum Gartner went up in a capsule, right,
Speaker 1: and then he had a special suit. But he was
Speaker 1: inside a capsule for most of his ascent, well for
Speaker 1: his entire ascent, and then got out and jumped out
Speaker 1: for his descent. You mean he was in a capsule
Speaker 1: lifted by balloon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whereas uh Alan here
Speaker 1: was wearing a special suit and that was kind of
Speaker 1: what was connected to the balloon. It was kind of
Speaker 1: neat as opposed to being, you know, inside a bigger thing.
Speaker 1: His suit was the thing, which is kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: That's either scarier or less scary, and I'm not actually sure.
Speaker 1: And and of course baum Gardeners was very much publicized.
Speaker 1: It was televised, It was It was amazing if you
Speaker 1: watched it. You know what I'm talking about the moment
Speaker 1: when he stepped out on the ledge before jumping out
Speaker 1: was even for me sitting comfortably at home. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was white knuckled. Right whereas our our our friend from
Speaker 1: Google uh did the jump and then talked about it
Speaker 1: barely just he just wanted to do it. Um So
Speaker 1: the suit he wore that you stay swar was designed
Speaker 1: specifically so that he could uh explore the stratosphere, so,
Speaker 1: you know, having the life support systems that would keep
Speaker 1: him safe at that altitude. His parachute deployed at about
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand feet, which is about five point five kilometers,
Speaker 1: and he landed safely. Uh So even the bomb gardners,
Speaker 1: whose whose ascent, by the way, went up to thirty
Speaker 1: nine kilometers or about twenty four miles. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: both of these numbers, both of these these ascents incredible achievements,
Speaker 1: phenomenal record breaking achievements. Yeah, way higher than I've gone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never gone that high either. But if you've been
Speaker 1: paying attention when I mentioned the earlier different levels of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, you'll realize these elevations are not anywhere close
Speaker 1: to space. They're well inside the stratosphere, not quite halfway yeah,
Speaker 1: well below that one kilometers and as you say, less
Speaker 1: than halfway to that. So they are nowhere close to space,
Speaker 1: although we often talk about them being taken to the
Speaker 1: beginning of space. What about weather balloons, how high do
Speaker 1: they go? Well, it depends upon the construction of the
Speaker 1: balloon itself, but generally speaking they reach around the same
Speaker 1: region that bomb Gartner and you stays went to the stratosphere.
Speaker 1: So the average heights range from sixty thou feet to
Speaker 1: a hundred to five thousand feet or eighteen to thirty
Speaker 1: two kilometers, so they normally actually reach elevations below the
Speaker 1: ones that bomb Gartner and you see went to, though
Speaker 1: you can get them higher than that. What about those
Speaker 1: balloons that you can those little kits that you can
Speaker 1: buy to tie a camera to and send your camera
Speaker 1: into space. Essentially we're talking about the same height as
Speaker 1: the weather balloons, maybe sometimes lower because generally speaking, you're
Speaker 1: probably not getting the super thin material balloons because you
Speaker 1: have to be incredibly careful with that stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly delicate. But the reason why they make it
Speaker 1: so thin and light is to is to maximize the
Speaker 1: payload that the balloon can carry, so decrease the amount
Speaker 1: of weight of the balloon itself so it can carry
Speaker 1: more of a payload. Um, those camera ones probably are
Speaker 1: not made the same at the same level as the
Speaker 1: weather balloons. I'm sure you still have to be very
Speaker 1: careful with them, but it probably doesn't get quite to
Speaker 1: that altitude. The highest elevation reached by any balloon according
Speaker 1: to what I could find, was fifty three kilometers, which
Speaker 1: is nearly thirty three miles, which means that balloon actually
Speaker 1: reached the Miso sphere, so it went above of the stratosphere,
Speaker 1: above that halfway mark to space, but still well below
Speaker 1: space itself. And this balloon was released in two thousand
Speaker 1: two in Japan. It was unmanned obviously, and was made
Speaker 1: of material that was about one sixth as thick as
Speaker 1: your average plastic grocery bag. Wow. Yeah, if you ever
Speaker 1: watched the the preparations that ballum Gartner had to go
Speaker 1: through before and ballum Gartner's team really had to go
Speaker 1: through before the ascent, and you see them slowly laying
Speaker 1: out the balloon. They are all being incredibly careful because
Speaker 1: this stuff looks like it's like plastic wrap thin. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly thin. Uh So, one of the reasons they
Speaker 1: don't go any higher than that, apart from the density
Speaker 1: issue that Joe brought up, is the air pressure issue.
Speaker 1: The balloons expand as they go up, there's less and
Speaker 1: less air pressure, and there's more temper there's higher temperatures
Speaker 1: that higher elevations. We'll talk more about that in a
Speaker 1: second too, and the combination of those being the balloon
Speaker 1: gets bigger and bigger. So the balloon might be a
Speaker 1: fairly impressive size at ground level, and then once it
Speaker 1: gets to the altitude you're planning on it getting to,
Speaker 1: it's going to be significantly larger. It's going to have
Speaker 1: expanded quite a bit, probably just about capacity. Yeah, beyond that,
Speaker 1: you have reached the tensile strength the elasticity of the material,
Speaker 1: and balloons go pop. I wonder if that's what happens
Speaker 1: to the balloons that are released at the county fair
Speaker 1: and just float up and disappear. How high did those
Speaker 1: balloons go? I guess it all depends on the size
Speaker 1: of the balloon the howe, because if there's any kind
Speaker 1: of leakage, it's gonna start to it's gonna start to
Speaker 1: descend earlier. Um a lot of them do, I imagine,
Speaker 1: get to an altitude where they just can't, you know,
Speaker 1: they can't sustain themselves anymore, and they pop and then
Speaker 1: they fall. I totally want to do a brain Stuff
Speaker 1: episode about this, by the way, it would be pretty cool,
Speaker 1: all right, that'll be awesome that everyone on YouTube has
Speaker 1: not already done that. But yeah, you know, I think
Speaker 1: I think that will be a great episode because again
Speaker 1: it explains something that a lot of us don't think
Speaker 1: about about what happens to the balloons, you know, the
Speaker 1: ones that aren't tethered. What happens to them when they
Speaker 1: continuously go up and there, if there's no venting mechanism,
Speaker 1: what happens? And so it would be a great way
Speaker 1: of explaining that they go to balloon Heaven. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, well, hold on a second, why do we
Speaker 1: start talking about this in the first place. It was
Speaker 1: because we were investigating the idea of a company using
Speaker 1: balloons for space tourism. Could someone do something that audacious?
Speaker 1: Someone is, well, someone's planning on dining at the very least,
Speaker 1: it hasn't happened quite yet. But there's this company called
Speaker 1: Worldview that has has a plot, a terrific balloon plot. UM.
Speaker 1: So so Worldview purchased paragon strat x Is Balloon technolog
Speaker 1: g back in UM and their their long term plan
Speaker 1: here is to start conducting tourism flights via balloon. UM.
Speaker 1: Passengers would enter a flight capsule attached to a safe
Speaker 1: football stadium sized balloon that's a significant balloon um, after
Speaker 1: about an hour and a half of a cent, they
Speaker 1: would take a two hour tour of near space and
Speaker 1: then glide down um for first using the balloon and
Speaker 1: then with a parafoils help. A parafoil being the same
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that that that Felix and um you
Speaker 1: stay stays both bomb Gardner. I'm not on a name
Speaker 1: basis with bomb Gardner. UM. Uh yeah, yeah, parafoil to
Speaker 1: kind of glide back down parachute down to earth. Um.
Speaker 1: They're marketing it as an alternative to a few things
Speaker 1: to to reduced gravity aircraft flights which are shorter and
Speaker 1: probably more stressful. That's what we colloquially call the vomit
Speaker 1: comet um. And and these days it looks like they're
Speaker 1: running pretty cheap, like like five to ten grands something
Speaker 1: like that. Really, yeah, I can't The last time I
Speaker 1: heard these were still being proposed as many tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars, and I had seen a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, I had seen it as low as twenty
Speaker 1: which it makes sense to me that the price would
Speaker 1: continually come down as as businesses could actually make a
Speaker 1: business of it. Uh. Interesting little tidbit are our head
Speaker 1: of creative here at hell stuff works. Jason Hoak has
Speaker 1: been on the vomit comments. Yes, meanwhile, I'm like, I
Speaker 1: wrote the article on that and I didn't get to go.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, so so there's there's those things, and
Speaker 1: then there's the actual go to space for a couple
Speaker 1: of days at least space tour tourism kind of things, um,
Speaker 1: which run you know somewhere between two and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: and twenty million bucks and and require pretty extensive training. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know that there's anywhere currently that's even allowing
Speaker 1: this to happen. I know the Russian Space program used
Speaker 1: to and that's where the twenty million was going to.
Speaker 1: Like people would pay twenty million bucks to get a
Speaker 1: hitch a ride on the se US right go up
Speaker 1: to the I S S. But I don't know that
Speaker 1: they're still doing that. So uh. And I know that,
Speaker 1: you know, like like virgin is planning on it. The
Speaker 1: ticket price that they're currently advertising is that two kind
Speaker 1: of mark? Um, So it potentially exists. Um, but Worldview
Speaker 1: is allowing reservations for this balloon flight at about seventy
Speaker 1: dollars right now, so pretty steep, still pretty expensive, not
Speaker 1: inexpensive um, but but cheaper than spending a week in space. Okay,
Speaker 1: And if you are curious about how exactly this is working,
Speaker 1: it goes something like this. The giant balloon is made
Speaker 1: of polyethylene that's filled with helium, and helium, as you
Speaker 1: may or may not know, is a total light element
Speaker 1: like no umber two lightest elements ever. Well, why don't
Speaker 1: they just use the number one lightest element ever? Because
Speaker 1: that explodes because it burns with explosive force. Um. But
Speaker 1: at any rate, it is lighter than our our mix
Speaker 1: of air at sea level pressure certainly um. And so
Speaker 1: if you put a bit of helium into an air tight,
Speaker 1: lightweight balloon material, that balloon will float. You have probably
Speaker 1: seen this in action. I'm assuming if you're listening to
Speaker 1: a podcast, you've also seen a balloon. You're right, you've
Speaker 1: probably been to at least one child's birthday party or
Speaker 1: you know, any kind of amusement park something where there
Speaker 1: have been helium balloons present. Because it costs my birthday
Speaker 1: parties had air filled balloons. That sounds like that episode
Speaker 1: of the I'm just kidding. We didn't have balloons at all,
Speaker 1: all right. We just went to a sad place. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep talking about helium, all right, let's do that.
Speaker 1: Um So, So, if if you let if you let
Speaker 1: this healing, if you let this balloon with a little
Speaker 1: bit of helium in it continue going up, the helium
Speaker 1: will expand due to um A, the outside pressure decreasing
Speaker 1: and be the outside temperature increasing, which sounds crazy, right
Speaker 1: because we all know, like if you're climbing a mountain,
Speaker 1: you go up those elevations, temperature gets colder and colder
Speaker 1: until there's just snow everywhere. Yes, accurate, but that is
Speaker 1: in the lowest layer of the troposphere close to the Earth.
Speaker 1: Um the temperature does not always decrease as you ascend
Speaker 1: due to variables like radiation exposure and chemical stuff happening
Speaker 1: like like the ozone forum formation. Um it will get
Speaker 1: hotter the further you go up in both the stratosphere
Speaker 1: and the thermosphere. Crazy party times interesting. Um so. So,
Speaker 1: Worldview's balloon is designed to be fully inflated by this
Speaker 1: expanding helium when it reaches its target height again efficient
Speaker 1: see yeah, um to start descending that, the craft will
Speaker 1: start venting some of that helium until it reaches a
Speaker 1: good paragliding height, then detach the balloon, let it fly free,
Speaker 1: join its balloon brethren, or you know, flip back to
Speaker 1: the ground where they carefully collected again. Um, and then
Speaker 1: you know, you glide down on the paraglide as much
Speaker 1: as three miles away from where you started, because depending
Speaker 1: on how fast the winds are going that day, how
Speaker 1: do you get back to your car private plane? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't worry. They thought of that, I said, They're not, like, well,
Speaker 1: see you later. That's where that's there's a good chuck
Speaker 1: at that for the valet service. So the thing about
Speaker 1: this is that sounds like that could be really cool
Speaker 1: because you would be going up high enough in this
Speaker 1: capsule to see some of the curvature of the Earth
Speaker 1: to be higher than people are normally traveling airplane. Probably
Speaker 1: the star is really clearly, it's probably real pretty, but
Speaker 1: that's not exactly space to it's not space. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: the cruise altitude is just a smidge over a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand feet, which is about thirty kilometers or nineteen miles um.
Speaker 1: That whole feet altitude things still drives me nuts. I
Speaker 1: never understand why anyone says, I'm like I'm like, what
Speaker 1: does a hundred thousand feet even mean that? Okay, anyway,
Speaker 1: anything above sixteen feet and I start having problems. Uh right,
Speaker 1: So so you know, like we said, the literal edge
Speaker 1: of space is like a hundred kilometers or sixty two
Speaker 1: miles or three hundred and twenty seven thousand feet if
Speaker 1: you want to be pedantic about it. Um and so, yes,
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand feet is not anywhere near the edge
Speaker 1: of space. So another question, Okay, do you feel the
Speaker 1: reduced gravity that we get to experience in the I
Speaker 1: s s not not not at all. But there is
Speaker 1: a bar on board, so you can feel a little
Speaker 1: bit floaty, right, that's true. Yeah, different, different approach, but
Speaker 1: you know that we're pragmatist pragmatics. I know I screwed
Speaker 1: it up as I was saying, and I'm like, Jonathan, seriously,
Speaker 1: well that's saying in it is Okay, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to tell you to cut it. Well, then it's suburbian.
Speaker 1: That's going back to an old tech stuff flood I
Speaker 1: made years ago. I'm sure the tech stuff fans out
Speaker 1: there are appreciating, appreciating the call back. We have not
Speaker 1: been drinking in the office today, folks, we're just punchy. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: taking balloons to space, Okay, so you can't do it now,
Speaker 1: the balloon would burst before you would get up that high.
Speaker 1: Is there any way we can use balloons in the
Speaker 1: exploration of space? Well, I've seen proposals for this, and
Speaker 1: I've seen some mentions of actual testing, but I haven't
Speaker 1: seen enough to really give any indication that it's a
Speaker 1: viable alternative. But I have seen some suggestions that we
Speaker 1: use balloons in order to lift a rocket up to
Speaker 1: a significant altitude before igniting the rocket, thus shortening it's
Speaker 1: its journey to escape Earth's gravity. And you would therefore
Speaker 1: reduce the amount of fuel you would need, and that
Speaker 1: would mean that the cost would be lower. Right, A
Speaker 1: couple of major problems with this though, Um And by
Speaker 1: the way, these are these are called raccoon's launched rock. Yeah, raccoons.
Speaker 1: I have no idea if that's actually a real term,
Speaker 1: or if someone out there on the internet is pulling
Speaker 1: my leg, by the way, and if you are pulling
Speaker 1: my leg, good on you. So at any rate, this
Speaker 1: reality making you think of that song Racky raccoon. Yes,
Speaker 1: I remember that one too. By the Beatles. So there's
Speaker 1: also this proposal that I had seen a science writer
Speaker 1: and science fiction writer had had proposed it years ago
Speaker 1: about it was kind of a vision of the few sure,
Speaker 1: not so much a proposal, just one of those things
Speaker 1: where you know, you project out. I think this was
Speaker 1: for one. And the writer had described a floating platform
Speaker 1: held aloft by balloons upon which you could do things
Speaker 1: like rocket launches. So this platform would float in the stratosphere,
Speaker 1: and that would mean that you would actually have a
Speaker 1: floating launch pad. Um so so you have like a
Speaker 1: plane up to the launch and then a yeah or
Speaker 1: yeah you would you would have to I guess use cargo.
Speaker 1: You couldn't get a plane that high. I guess maybe
Speaker 1: you could, but I don't know how you would get
Speaker 1: it unless you were to have the launchpad on the ground. First,
Speaker 1: assemble everything on the launchpad, then use balloons to lift
Speaker 1: it to the right altitude, and then launch, because I
Speaker 1: don't know how you would get the rocket there Otherwise,
Speaker 1: I I'm worried about lighting large amounts of rocket fuel
Speaker 1: around combustible gases. Well, and that would depend upon whether
Speaker 1: you were using hydrogen or helium. Okay, Okay, I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess helium is pretty inert. Yeah, But but if
Speaker 1: you were using a lot of the descriptions I've said,
Speaker 1: suggested using hydrogen because hydrogen has better lift, but like
Speaker 1: you point out, that's a real hazard because it is
Speaker 1: also flammable. So maybe you would incorporate that into the design,
Speaker 1: where upon launch, the balloon essentially self destructs and then
Speaker 1: the rocket just goes on past it. But there are
Speaker 1: other problems that balloons have. For one, they have limited
Speaker 1: payload capacity. They cannot carry an unlimited amount of stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know, obviously the heavier the the object, the
Speaker 1: more gas you're going to need, the bigger the balloon
Speaker 1: you need, and that then you start to factor in
Speaker 1: the weight of the balloon itself. These are issues that
Speaker 1: you have with rockets, to right, The bigger the rocket
Speaker 1: you need, the more fuel you need, and the more
Speaker 1: fuel you have, the more fuel you need to lift
Speaker 1: the fuel. And it becomes one of those things where
Speaker 1: very smart people can work out the math, and I
Speaker 1: just am sitting there scratching my head. At any rate, um,
Speaker 1: I was looking at NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility website,
Speaker 1: which has a chart that plots altitudes and suspended weight
Speaker 1: limits on their various balloons that they have. The heaviest
Speaker 1: payload that they list is eight thousand pounds for a
Speaker 1: balloon with thirty four point forty three million cubic feet
Speaker 1: of volume at about thousand feet, which is about thirty
Speaker 1: six kilometers. Uh, that's the heaviest. Eight thousand pounds for
Speaker 1: a rocket is nothing? Right, That's that's incredibly tiny, um say.
Speaker 1: And there are other issues too, righte. Helium is expensive,
Speaker 1: So if you are using helium to lift the rocket up,
Speaker 1: it is possible that you are counteracting at least some
Speaker 1: of the savings you would have from the solid fuel
Speaker 1: or chemical fuel you'd be using for that rocket. Sure. Also,
Speaker 1: helium is kind of a precious resource. We don't have
Speaker 1: an unlimited amount of it, and it's really scientifically useful
Speaker 1: in the experience experiments, experiences that we're we're a thousand,
Speaker 1: We're saying so many words. Basically, what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: that I'm judging you every time you buy your kids
Speaker 1: helium balloons. Well, and also, I mean, just imagine all
Speaker 1: the people at the Large Hadron Collide are watching one
Speaker 1: of these Worldview balloons go up in the air and
Speaker 1: thinking how many rotations would that have helped us go
Speaker 1: to I mean, it's it's one of those questions you ask, well,
Speaker 1: where's the you know, should we should we should we
Speaker 1: end up rationing helium for specific uses? Uh? Yeah. And
Speaker 1: there's another issue too, one that I think is probably
Speaker 1: the biggest one in my mind. Let's say that you
Speaker 1: solve these problems that you're using hydrogen because it's relatively
Speaker 1: easy to manufacture, you figured out a way to to
Speaker 1: avoid the problems with the fact that hydrogen is combustible. You, um,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about you know, you've got
Speaker 1: a rocket that's the appropriate size, you're getting to the
Speaker 1: height that you want. All that stuff is cool. You
Speaker 1: still can't really control where the balloon is going to
Speaker 1: be necessarily, unless you've got a crazy tether on it,
Speaker 1: it's going to be going in different directions, which means
Speaker 1: that that's going to affect the rocket trajectory. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've heard the term rocket science, but
Speaker 1: it suggests a certain level of precision. And if you
Speaker 1: can't tell where the launch pad is going to be
Speaker 1: pointed at any given moment, precision is difficult. If not
Speaker 1: impossible to achieve. And so while I wouldn't say that
Speaker 1: it's impossible we'll ever see balloons being used in in
Speaker 1: some form of launch system, I think there's probably going
Speaker 1: to be other ways to use balloons in in the
Speaker 1: space industry, like this near space tourism type stuff, uh,
Speaker 1: and less in direct launches, although who knows, maybe some
Speaker 1: engineer will come along and solve all the problems I've mentioned,
Speaker 1: and I will eat my words. So I have a question, okay,
Speaker 1: for you guys, would you rather do one of the
Speaker 1: suborbital space flights like we were hearing, you know, Virgin
Speaker 1: Galactic Offering and and that kind of thing, this other idea,
Speaker 1: or would you rather go up in one of these
Speaker 1: balloon carried capsules. Good question. You get to spend longer
Speaker 1: up there obviously in the capsule, or but the suborbital
Speaker 1: spaceflight will take you higher, right, yeah? I mean ultimately
Speaker 1: for me, I think I think the the level of
Speaker 1: uh interest I have would be vomit comet first, just
Speaker 1: so I could experience what micro gravity feels like. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then it would be the balloons because I would I
Speaker 1: think that being able to see from that altitude and
Speaker 1: get that kind of approximation. I mean, I know it's
Speaker 1: nowhere close to what the astronauts experienced when they were
Speaker 1: far enough from the Earth where they could see the
Speaker 1: entire planet, but just that that kind of sense of
Speaker 1: awe of being able to see so much of the
Speaker 1: Earth down below me, that would probably be uh, really
Speaker 1: impactful to me. And then third would be kind of
Speaker 1: the vision galactic approach. But if you ask me the
Speaker 1: same question tomorrow, my order might be totally different. I Uh,
Speaker 1: I think I think I would go for the balloons first, actually,
Speaker 1: because it just seems like such a less stressful experience.
Speaker 1: I'm just picturing myself having a really hard time enjoying
Speaker 1: the glee of weightlessness because I'm like, oh, we're really high.
Speaker 1: Oh we're really high. Oh we're going so fast. Oh
Speaker 1: I don't like this. Oh I don't like this. Like that,
Speaker 1: that's what I imagine myself doing the whole time. You're
Speaker 1: not a fan of air travel to begin with, I'm
Speaker 1: okay with it. The more that I learned about the
Speaker 1: physics behind it, the more nervous it makes me. I'm like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound right at all. How is this even
Speaker 1: a thing that I think we're just playing a trick
Speaker 1: on physics, and once it finds out, it's gonna be mad.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be like in the road Runner cartoons. While
Speaker 1: Coyote finally looks, you have just enough time to pull
Speaker 1: out the sign that says yype and then you plummet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but no, no, I mean, I mean all of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, if I had the opportunity to do
Speaker 1: any of those three, if someone like Tomorrow is like, hey,
Speaker 1: you get your choice, Uh, I'd be like all of them. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: What about you, Joe, I don't know. I honestly don't know.
Speaker 1: You ask a question of us and you don't have
Speaker 1: an answer for yourself. I guess I would today. I'd
Speaker 1: probably actually go for the balloon, you know, because while
Speaker 1: I guess you can say you've been higher in the
Speaker 1: suborbital spaceflight the balloon, you'd have more time to enjoy it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also like the idea that you are able to
Speaker 1: enjoy a cocktail or two and just kind of take
Speaker 1: it all in. I also love thee I love the
Speaker 1: idea of hacking the the p A system so it
Speaker 1: just plays my beautiful balloon on the loop for the
Speaker 1: entire time you're up there. Can you imagine the up
Speaker 1: charges on those cocktails? Yeah? Well, at any rate. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's an interesting and interesting take on space tourism.
Speaker 1: And certainly until we solve these problems of making making
Speaker 1: getting to space less expensive and more reliable and less dangerous,
Speaker 1: then creative solutions like these are going to have to
Speaker 1: fill in for those of us who really want to
Speaker 1: get as close to that experience as possible, unless, you know,
Speaker 1: we just settle for like a simulation, or we dedicate
Speaker 1: our lives to training and becoming an astronaut, which if
Speaker 1: you're doing that, that's awesome. I you know, I've gone
Speaker 1: too far. I'm beyond that that range. Now there's no
Speaker 1: amount of training that would ever get me ready to
Speaker 1: go in space like that. Well not with that attitude. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm still waiting from Mars one to call me back.
Speaker 1: So you know, I wanted to get on that alternate list.
Speaker 1: If we work out reverse aging, then yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be great, Yeah, because then I would totally get
Speaker 1: on board. Yeah, this has been really kind of an
Speaker 1: interesting thing to look at, and this was all kind
Speaker 1: of brought to our attention because we saw a little
Speaker 1: news item about the proposed plan of using balloons to
Speaker 1: take people on kind of a space tourism approach, and
Speaker 1: we thought, well, let's look into that more. If you
Speaker 1: guys have suggestions for future topics, maybe there's something that
Speaker 1: you've always wanted to know, how is that going to
Speaker 1: work in the future, Or maybe you just you know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a science fiction film that depicts the
Speaker 1: future in a particular way, and you want to know
Speaker 1: what we think that. Does our vision of the future
Speaker 1: stack up against that one? Any question like that, feel
Speaker 1: free to ask. We love getting messages from you guys.
Speaker 1: We have lots of more listener Maile episodes in the
Speaker 1: works for the near future, so keep an ear out
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