Boeing Starliner spacecraft stuck in space until the end of July.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is this Sunday morning? Steve Kates otherwise known as Doctor Sky, and he entertains us every Sunday morning by making us look up in the sky and expand on mines. Steve Kates, where are we going to this morning?

0:17 Speaker 2 Well, good morning John, Happy Sunday to you and the listeners. First we begin with Boeing Starliner, A needed update. Many people are wondering on the astronauts stranded in space. The two astronauts know they’re not Boeing Starliner. For many people who didn’t hear, this was attached and has been attached to the space station since early June. But why is

0:35 it taking so long to get them back? Here’s the backstory. Apparently NASA is trying to work out the helium thruster issues. That’s what maneuvers that spacecraft, and they think they’ve got that ready, so they could not guaranteed even to return later towards the end of the month of July. But here’s an interesting factory John about Starliner. It can actually

0:56 be used about ten times before it would have to be replaced. So the bottom line here is that’s what’s happening with those astronauts. The reason is helium leaks on the thrusters. They think, or at least we hope they have that figured out for now. Interesting stuff, don’t you think that?

1:13 Speaker 1 Is interesting? And I love the fact that finally we can take off and land. But Boeing has to get their act together. I mean they haven’t been doing too well on the Arra airline business.

1:28 Speaker 2 Well that’s a whole nother story, and you’re so right, But I think what they’ll do, they’ll get the bugs out of this particular spacecraft and I think it’ll all be smooth sailing. But moving onto space next, John, we know that they have pretty much a monopoly in space.

1:41 Many agree, and I would say well deserved for all the things they’re doing. But citing inflation, they’re raising the launch price for each Falcon nine mission to sixty nine dollars sixty nine million. Excuse me, sixty nine million dollars per launch from sixty seven million. So you don’t want to think about this. The price per pound. This is

2:01 something you don’t normally hear in the legacy media. What’s the average price per pound to launch something to space? Well SpaceX kind of figured it out. Now it’s down to John about twelve hundred dollars per pound, so I don’t want to embarrass myself by adding my weight to that.

2:18 And that’s how much I would have to pay to go to space. But SpaceX is doing that obviously, they seem to be the leader. And in the world of finance, which I’m sure you know so well, the value of SpaceX is upwards of two hundred and ten billion dollars.

2:34 And if you want to launch on the big heavy rocket called the Falcon Heavy, not the biggest of all, the price per launch there is an incredible ninety seven million dollars per launch. How about those numbers for people that have to factor into getting something to space.

2:49 Speaker 1 Well, let me tell you when it comes down to a little bit more reasonable, I’ll go me too.

2:57 Speaker 2 But we got the mystery of the week, John always something I think that opens everybody’s minds to the mysteries out there. And here it is old maps that are land maps. They show the North Pole that actually had land masks. So what’s all that about? We think there’s this ice there now? Well, a famous cartographer, Gerard Mercader,

3:18 created a map of the Arctic in the sixteenth century, and in sixteen sixteen more precisely. His map included a series of land masses at the North Pole, and his maps, this is very interesting, were known as Mercader projection maps.

3:32 What does that mean? In simple explanation, he changed the curved lines that we see on maps today to simple straight lines so that sailors could pilot straight line navigation courses over the ocean. And another great mystery is KEI thought and many others sounds bizarre, but who knows that there was a gigantic magnetic mountain located at the North Pole.

3:56 But what’s even more interesting is you and I talked, John, the maps that were a long time ago. How the heck did they even figure out the general shapes which are fairly accurate to the continents without spacecraft or abilities to know much more than just simple one not just guesses.

4:12 It’s amazing.

4:14 Speaker 1 It’s strange because me and you looked at a map of Antarctica that was one thousand years old and maybe even longer, that had the actual land mass pictured out.

4:29 Speaker 2 It is incredible, John. Nobody has an answer to this, but I’m sure someday, as we unearthed so many of the different journals of the day and investigative journalism continues. Obviously we’ll be able to hopefully and maybe we’ll never solve the mystery of what’s happening with the story of ancient maps and what the world is today.

4:49 Speaker 1 The other disappointing thing I understand before we close, I understand that NASA has canceled the latest move moon rover.

5:02 Speaker 2 They sure have John. It’s called Viper, And what’s kind of said about this is it’s really a functional vehicle. It could actually go to the Moon. Its purpose is to use its technology to search for water ice at the south pole of the Moon. But the story which we really don’t know exactly why they’re doing this. I mean,

5:19 they put a lot of money into this. A company called Astrobiotics was obviously going to send it on one of their Griffin landers, but they took the parts out of it to maybe store them for hopefully a future iteration.

5:31 We’ll have to see what happens. But the big news, of course is lunar exploration. The caves and the Moon that we talk about often here where. Who knows, maybe that could be a place to live for future action that’s to shield themselves from the sun. But here man, the last thing I wanted to mention if there’s time,

5:48 something always has a giveaway to the listener, something you can see. And in the summer, you go out on a clear night, let’s say, not necessarily just in bright city lights, but if you’re on vacation or live out in the urban area, high up into the northeast sky at sunset are three bright stars which comprise maybe a

6:06 third of the sky in that direction. They’re called the Summer Triangle, and they’re made up of three bright stars Bega the stars and EBB and the star out there, and it brings up so many of these amazing stories about the heavens. But just know, each one of those stars that you look at there are just hundreds of

6:23 million years of age because they’re all bright blue stars, some super giants. Our sun is about four and a half billion years old. But eventually, John, these stars will burn out because they don’t know how to conserve energy.

6:34 They burn up all their hydrogen. They’re super hot and much larger than we have here as our sun. But a beautiful takeaway for people. And in weeks to come, John, the next big meteor showers coming over the weekends of August tenth. We’ll talk about that and the next edition of our particular spot here to talk about, and we’ll

6:53 talk about how people can take advantage of one of the better meteor showers of the year. All information up at wacradio dot com for the Doctor Sky experience and one a time John, to get us away from the you know, the politics of the world momentarily, we’ll take a breather and spend time with all the listeners of

7:12 the Cats round Table. So we wish you good morning and all the listeners.

7:15 Speaker 1 Thank you Steve Cats, and we’ll talk to you again real soon. And keep those mysteries, let’s solve a few of those mysteries. Keep them coming. Thank you so

7:23 Speaker 2 Much, absolutely, thank you, John