Space X star ship launch June. June skies.

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday Morning with us today is Steve Tates, otherwise known as Doctor Sky, and he lightens up our Sunday mornings by doing as something a little bit on the light side and expanding our minds. Steve Interesting week, chinasolute, Are they exceeding the United States in space travel?

0:22 Speaker 2 Well, John, the simple answer is yes as far as planetary exploration and lunar landings. If people don’t know this by now, the next and their series of chung A spacecraft. By the way, chung Ah is named after the moon goddess, the Chunga six. John, many people may know landed successfully on an area. That information comes to us saying that

0:44 it landed near the south pole of the Moon. But that’s not quite accurate. But it successfully landed on the Moon in the crater on the far side of the Moon called the Apollo Crater, and its coordinates are get a load of this minus forty two degrees south longitude, I should say one hundred and fifty three degrees west longitude,

1:03 So it’s not exactly near the lunar south pole. But why is this important? Because what it’s doing, it’s scooping up heavy material from the lunar surface. It can drill about six feet into the surface of the Moon. They want to get this basaltic type of material because if you look at the far side of the Moon, John,

1:19 it’s cratered heavily as opposed to the lava flows that make up those so called seas. But here’s another interesting tw us. We find out that the Chinese spacecraft actually deployed a Chinese flag, but it didn’t plant it. It actually popped a little flag out that came from the lunar lander, not the ascent module. But what makes that

1:40 even more interesting, it’s made a material like they think is on the Moon. It’s this basaltic thread. So China’s done a very good thing. They’ve launched off the surface of the Moon and they’re hoping to bring back those particles maybe about ten or twelve ounces by June the twenty fifth. That is amazing, and I do think that

1:58 they’re ahead of us in many ways doing this inaccurately.

2:02 Speaker 1 Steve, Is the far side of the Moon any different than the side we see in.

2:08 Speaker 2 Normally, absolutely, John, Because what happened to the far side if you take a look at some of these images from spacecraft, it’s so cratered and bombarded over the course of time, So what might have happened on the front side of the moon. The near side you see all those dark splotches which are actually lava flows that froze

2:26 over over billions of years. So this is important to the Chinese, not only because it’s more difficult to land there because you have to how do you get radio signals to bend around the moon. You obviously have another little relay satellite that goes around to help transmit. But the important part is it is so different, and this

2:44 is where people want to set up colonies for human habitation because there’s other areas of the Moon that the sunlight doesn’t strike on the surface, but around the edges of the crater mountains you could put solar panels up so you don’t have to deal with the heat of the daytime on the Moon, which is terrible, but it’s

3:01 a great success. And they also see that on the surface when the driller was doing its bit, there’s a symbol that it looks like on the moon called zong, and in the Chinese world that word for devotion and loyalty.

3:15 It looks like when the drill went in, it made an impression of a Chinese symbol that many people talk about. So that’s quite fascinating stuff. And the beat goes on understray.

3:26 Speaker 1 Well what else is going on?

3:28 Speaker 2 Well, John, here we have now SpaceX has got FAA approval on the next Starship four. We don’t have an exact date for launch, but they’re saying sometime in the month of June, the most powerful rocket ever. That will be another experience for people. I’d love to have all of us go down there to southern Texas. Imagine seeing

3:45 that sixteen million pounds of thrust rocket. That must be something. But John, here’s something always interesting here, a little bit out of our normal conversation. But in the mystery of the week, what substances have the greatest strength on Earth that we know about? Well, of course people may know that diamonds are the hardest known material on Earth, But

4:05 how about this. We find out that from the world of material something called graphion. What’s that It has a strength of one hundred times that of steel, all made up of complex carbon atoms. And then if you get into this microscopic world, there’s something that people are trying to build spacecraft in the future out of things called nanotubes.

4:26 These are carbon fibers that are stronger than steel and here on Earth, John, this is amazing. If you take a look at the bark spider. I haven’t seen one, and maybe you haven’t, and the listeners have it. It has the strongest biological material on Earth. How strong keen times stronger than kevlar in a spider web. That’s totally incredible.

4:47 Maybe we should put spiders to work to help make it.

4:50 Speaker 1 Sider, the spider makes that.

4:54 Speaker 2 Yes, the spider makes a web that has material ten times stronger than ca And I remember a long time ago, John, I had the honor of interviewing a doctor, Stephanie Coolok. Who is she. She’s the woman who developed with DuPont the topic of kevlar and the substance. But imagine a spider creating something that strong, that’s off the charts. And

5:17 we got one more. There’s something in the world. This is even more bizarre. Glass droplets that are known as Prince rupert drops sounds like a candy or a throat lodge. These are pieces of glass that have a skinny tail but a fat, bubbluous type front, and they actually are so strong that you could put him into a press

5:38 and they would bend the material of the press because they’re so strong. But if you touch the very end of the tail, it would instantaneously break. So these are amazing things in nature that maybe people don’t know about.

5:50 But it’s just a beautiful story to talk about these strength products that are out there in the universe, maybe hoping to help build maybe better spacecraft and more things here on the Earth to make life a little easier against the force of gravity.

6:04 Speaker 1 How about one more thing. The Boeing Boeing has a lot of controversies lately. The Boeing Starship went okay this time around last week.

6:15 Speaker 2 Yes, John, it did start off the ground after a long series of delays. Why it had liquid oxygen, league it had helium leaks and the propulsion module below the spacecraft. But we wish those two astronauts well as they’re heading of course and now hopefully by the space station. But it’s another way to get to space because for the

6:34 longest time, many people know that we depended on their Russians, fool use program spending money to give to the Russians just to get up to space. But on a lighter note, John, the one thing that the star Liner doesn’t have like other space vehicles like the Crew Dragon of SpaceX. How about this, John, the star Liner has no toilet on board.

6:56 Now hopefully that’s not a big inconvenience to astronauts going to and from the space station.

7:02 Speaker 1 Wow. Well, thank you so much, and we’ll talk to you again real soon if anything urgent, anything newer the solar flares. Is it gone or is it we still.

7:13 Speaker 2 Have problems, John, great question. Temporarily that massive sunspot has kind of, you know, diminished, but more to come on the left edge of the Sun. We’re not done with this. I predict more to come and to learn more always go to our Doctor Sky experience proudly here on talk radio seventy seven WABC at WABC radio dot com. John,

7:33 it’s an honor to be with you and the listeners of the Cats Roundtable. Have a great Sunday morning. God bless