Bright Summer star. Antares in Scorpio.

0:00 Speaker 1 With us today’s Steve Tates, otherwise known as Doctor Sky. So many things are happening up there, from the Boeing Starliner to the titanium and Boeing aircraft or any of US aircraft. Where do we start, Doctor Sky? Where do we start? This morning?

0:18 Speaker 2 Well, good morning John to you and the listener of the Cats Round table. Here we go with a Boeing dot dot dot story. We begin, of course in space with the Boeing Starline. Many people may know now, of course, it attached to the International Space Station back in early June.

0:33 It was scheduled to of course have the astronauts performed from the spacewalks, but with leaks in the propulsion system which are helium leaks and other related issues, they have now not given us a date when this spacecraft will re enter, but when it does, it will be the first US manned spacecraft that actually will attempt the land

0:53 or soft land on land. But we really don’t know, John, what the real backstory is on this, other than the fact I hate to use the word stranded in space. That wouldn’t be accurate. According to those in the reliable source area for this subject, they tell us that if they did need to do an emergency return. They could

1:11 do it, but we have to wait and see. So it is still attached. That is Starliner to the International Space Station.

1:18 Speaker 1 Amazing as a selly question. Do they have enough food, oxygen, et cetera.

1:26 Speaker 2 Up there? They do, John, It’s a very crowded place on the space station right now. I mean we have like nine humans up there. We have a total of twelve people in space. We have to add in the three on the Chinese space station. But this particular unit, the Starliner, is really a reusable spacecraft that has a

1:42 shelf life to be up in space for maybe some forty five days, so they have that issue. But John, going on with the Boeing story down on land. It’s been widely reported and investigative journalists are continuing to open up a can of worms. The story goes like this, The FAA is looking into porkality titanium that it got

2:03 from some little known Chinese companies that was sold falsified documents, and that particular series of titanium, a very important ingredient in these aircraft, were again sold to a company which was obviously aerosystem Spirit Aerosystems to be added to the assembly line on some of these Boeing jets like the seven eighty seven Dreamliner and of course the Boeing seven

2:28 thirty seven Max. But it’s interesting, John, I didn’t realize this. Fifteen percent of a Boeing seven eighty seven Dreamliner is actually titanium. And the real technicalities of this they used grade three and grade five titanium, something called TC four.

2:44 But without going to into too much detail, there pretty serious when you talk about issues like this that have what claiming to have some holes in the corrupted titanium, so they’re supposedly have removed or will be removing all the so called tainted material. A very serious story.

3:03 Speaker 1 Have they found out how it happened? I know it came from a Chinese company, John.

3:10 Speaker 2 I don’t know. And the interesting part about that is that gets into a more investigative journalism than I’m prepared to know right at this moment. But it’s says Heinous, I mean, imagine that what kind of confidence can we have.

3:22 We should have lots of competence, a lot of competence in the manufacturing processes of these particular aircraft. But it’s not just Boeing that it also suffered the problematic thing. It was also the Airbus Corporation in some of their aircraft known as the Airbus two twenty. So the story continues that the corrupted material with some nefarious players is

3:45 still open to further investigation. Just to we’ll keep you posted on that. But on the positive side, John, we talk about two things that we have for this morning. China. Of course, many people may have heard successfully returns with the Chungas six on a software landing in Upper Mongolia with some very unique samples of the moon. Because we’ve

4:05 had some nine previous missions that return lunar samples from the front side of the Moon or the near side, this one is very interesting. Four point four pounds of lunar material. And what’s strange about it or unique is that this is different material. The far side may have more mantle rocks or material from a thicker crust on

4:28 the moon as we investigate the origin of the Moon, our nearest neighbor. Fascinating story that China successfully did this in such a short time.

4:38 Speaker 1 I still don’t understand. Maybe other people who understand it, but I don’t understand it. How come we only see one side.

4:45 Speaker 2 Of the moon, John, The low moon is locked on. It’s called a synchronous rotator, and in simple, plain English, what we see is when you look at the Moon, it’s like you take your hand and hold it in front of you as the Earth is turning. The moon is also synchronously locked on, So in other words, we

5:01 never get to see the far side of the Moon. But let me also be very clear. If you are on the lunar surface, a day on the Moon lasts fourteen earth days, so you’d see the sun rise in the easterns part of the lunar horizon like we see on the Earth, but it takes fourteen earth days for

5:19 that sun to cross the lunar sky. But let’s not be fooled. The far side of the Moon also gets to see fourteen days of light as the front side, of course, never gets to be seen, or the far side, I should say, never gets to be seen, because it’s basically, with simple English, a locked down rotating object. They call

5:38 it synchronous. So the mystery of the far side of the Moon is just being unraveled with this interesting series of Chinese spacecraft to the Moon.

5:48 Speaker 1 I hear what you’re saying. I hear what you’re saying, and I understand the word synchronous, but I still do understand why we don’t see the far side of the Moon. It’s just it’s just mind boggling. That is any other moon in the Solar System like that?

6:08 Speaker 2 Yes, John, we have some other moons in the Solar System like that. For instance, some of the moons of the outer planets also have this same synchronous type of situation. The most prolific one people can look this up is the dwarf planet Pluto, which has a satellite called Sharon spelled cha Ron. It also has the same phenomenon where

6:30 you don’t see the other side. Because as this this is probably best demonstrated if you were in a planetarium environment where you could see the motions of how these things happen. So, yes, there’s just more than one, and probably many more out there in the great universe. But here’s one, John. We always end off positively with the

6:48 mystery of the week, and the big story goes like this. Geologists are claiming that the inner core of the Earth has slowed or stopped spinning and has reversed while the liquid the outer liquid core, is what controls the magnetism on the planet. In other words, it’s like a dynamo.

7:05 It’s constantly spinning. But somehow the inner core, which is actually metallic, it’s about the size of Texas, maybe some seven hundred and seventy miles in diameter. John, this has been baffling. The temperature of the inner core of the Earth is like the temperature of the surface of the Sun.

7:23 So only thousands of miles deep below the terra firma that we spand on, we have this big ball of energy. But nobody understands why this particular core has slowed or stopped spinning and reversed. Now, no danger that we’re going to talk about here that we know about. But this they say, is on a sixty or seventy year cycle.

7:44 So it goes to show that there’s many more things what in the ocean and inside the Earth, that we really don’t understand as we talk about the things that are above the earth. But isn’t that amazing, John, The things of the mysteries of the ocean and the inner part of the Earth, which is so close to us

8:00 compared to outer space, are still some of the greatest mysteries of all.

8:04 Speaker 1 Well, thank you, Steve Cage. Doctor Sky have a great Sunday and we’ll catch up again soon.

8:10 Speaker 2 Thank you, John, have a good Sunday.