January 16, 2020 • 42 mins
Is space mostly empty or full of junk?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, do you think the planet Earth is getting
too crowded? Well, you know, we live in southern California,
so we do experience a good amount of traffic, even
though I get to wear sandals all year long. Well
does it make you want to move out of Southern California? Well,
you know, I'd be hesitant to give up the sandals,
but I'd love to live in outer space. Well yeah,
do you think community would be easier in space? Well,
(00:28):
it can't be much worse than it is down here
in southern California. Well, I think you better move up
there soon because space might be getting more crowded than
you think. Are you talking about Elon Musk's Tesla that
he launched out there? There's gonna be a traffic jam
off Tesla's up there pretty soon. Hi. I'm Jorhea, a
(01:00):
cartoonists and the creator of PhD Comics. I'm Daniel. I'm
a particle of physicist. But I love all things space,
even if they don't have aliens in them. And so
welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
a production of I Heart Radio in which we take
a mental tour of the universe zipping from neutron stars
to black holes to alien planets, and even talk about
(01:23):
tiny things here on Earth like little particles, electrons and
quantum tunneling. And the key is to share with you
the wonders, the mystery, the majesty of this universe in
a way that's explainable and hopefully makes you laugh and
maybe cringe once or twice. That are bad jokes only
but only once or twice. You cringes per episode, and
then you're cut off, and then you that's right, Then
(01:45):
you have to keep listening in silence. But yeah, it's
about all the amazing things we can see from this
planet Earth that we're sitting on in traffic, right, we're
sort of in the traffic of the Solar System, right
behind Mars Venus, next to the crowded asteroid belt. Yeah,
we're in an unusually dense part of the universe. You know,
(02:06):
if you took like an average cubic kilometer of the universe,
it would be pretty empty. Most likely, you just get
like a chunk of space in between galaxies. Even inside
the galaxies, most of them don't have planets in them.
So our neighborhood of the universe is pretty dense, we
have a star, We've got a bunch of planets. There's
a lot of rocks out there. Yeah, I hate it
when the asteroids hunk behind me. It's so annoying. Well, look,
(02:30):
they've been doing it for billions of years, so they
hate when like nubies come in and mess up their commute.
You know, that's right. It's people who don't signal as
the Earth signal. Lately, which way it's turning, I don't know,
but we keep launching up stuff into space out there,
messing up everybody else's commute. So, yeah, we imagine there
are a lot of you out there listening to this podcast,
maybe sitting in your cars in traffic, and you're probably
(02:52):
wondering where all these people came from. Are there too
many people on Earth? And is it too crowded out here? Yeah?
Maybe you feel like law eaching all those people out
into space and you have the four oh five to yourself. Yeah,
and so we were thinking, are there alternatives? Could you
live out in space to get away from it all?
But you might be surprised to discover that space actually
(03:12):
has a bunch of stuff in it as well. It's
not a pristine territory. It's the final frontier, but it's
also filled with traffic. It's getting crowded out there, right,
that's right. You probably heard about Elon Musk's plans to
launch thousands and thousands of new satellites to improve your
download speeds. Yeah, and not just the stuff that's going
to be launched, but there are a bunch of stuffs
(03:34):
out there already floating out there right in space. Yea.
So we thought we'd dive into this topic between the
Earth surface and the rest of the universe and talk
about how much stuff is there out there? So to
the on the program, we'll be tackling the question is
space crowded? How much stuff is up there? How much
(03:57):
room is there? And do you need to get a
fast carporal late cast just to get out to get
out to Marrows these days, well, traffic in space at
least would be more complicated because you got another dimension
to move in, right. I mean, I don't know how
they will plan to organize it, but you can always
go over with the car in front of you. That's
like a double nightmare for me. It's like multidimensional traffic.
(04:20):
It sounds like there's a zillion more ways to get
into an accident. I feel like, at least here on Earth,
if I'm stuck in traffic, I still I can still
fantasize about flying upwards or digging down and getting away
from it all. But if you're in space and it's
space jam, in a traffic jam, uh, you've got nowhere
to go. I think you owe Michael Jordans ten cents
for mentioning that was bucks, buddy. Yeah. But you may
(04:43):
have heard the news that Elon Musk is planning to
launch a bunch of satellites. They recently deployed a hundred
and twenty two satellites into low Earth orbit to test
their Internet from space idea, and his plans are to
launch a bunch more, not a hundred more, not to
hundred more, not a thousand more, but something like ten
(05:03):
thousand in the near future, stretching up to maybe forty
thousand in the far freiture. And it's all part of
his plan to create the space fornet. Is that what
he's calling it? That isn't what he should have. That
is the best possible there. You know, we got space force,
why not space Internet? Yeah, and you're probably thinking, hey, look,
(05:24):
space is big right, I mean, the universe is vast.
Daniel was just saying how space is mostly empty, how
could space ever get crowded? And you're right, there is
a lot of space up there. You know, a quick
calculation up to high Earth orbit and there's like two
hundred trillion cubic kilometers of space just surrounding our planet.
And currently humans have launched about two thousand operational satellites,
(05:47):
So that doesn't seem like much. I mean, do the math.
You get about ninety billion cubic kilometers per operational satellite.
That seems like a lot, right, And it seems that's
like the ratio between space and currently how many satellites
there are out there. Yeah, we've got two thousand satellites
that are running that are doing something that are helping us,
that are like, you know, telling you where your phone are,
(06:09):
or spying on North Korea or whatever. It takes all
the amount of space out there in sort of high
Earth orbit, and you get ninety billion cubic kilometers per satellite,
So it seems like plenty of room. It seems like
plenty of room. But I think the problem is that
if you run into one of these things in space,
it's pretty bad news. Yeah, this is very high speed traffic.
(06:31):
So we thought it'd be fun to talk about whether
there really is room out there? How dangerous is it
to launch a satellite? And how long do you have
to wait after you put on your left turn signal
before you know it's clear to pull your tesla into
low Earth orbit? Yeah, because you definitely don't want to
have a bumper to bumper collision here with a satellite
going in hundreds or thousands of kilometers per hour. No,
(06:54):
you certainly don't. I'm pretty sure your insurance doesn't cover it.
Definitely not the one you got on your rental car.
So they're about two thousand satellites right now operating out
in space. But it's not just satellites out there, right,
there's also space junk. Yeah, So I was wondering if
people were aware of this problem. Do people know that
space has more than just operational satellites on it? Do
(07:15):
people think space is totally empty and there's lots of
room out there for frontiers people to go out and
claim their chunk, or do people think that space is
mostly crowded and already filled with Elon Musk's garbage? What
are you gonna say, Elon, munk's junk, I should have
said that that was much better. Maybe he's planning a
(07:37):
business where he takes your junk and dumps it in space. Oh,
there you go, one nine hundred got space jusk junk?
Must what what must I do with my junk? And
if he didn't plan that, he's probably a listener to
this podcast because it's awesome and now he's planning it.
(07:57):
So Elon, we had one percent sticks. So as you show,
Daniel went out there into the streets and as random strangers.
If they thought that space was getting too crowded, here's
what people had to say before you hear their answers.
Think to yourself, do you think space is overcrowded or
is there a lot of room for more stuff? I
would say probably filled with satellites and crowded. Yeah, I
(08:19):
think it's like dangerous to be up there. I don't
know if it's totally crowded, but it's probably getting there,
I would imagine. I would say it was empty, mostly empty,
so like room for lots more stuff. Yeah, I think
it's definitely still mostly empty. See you, there's lots of
room for more satellites. Well, I don't think we should
put a lot more satellites, but I bet there's more
(08:40):
room of food needed to Oh. I think there's already
a lot of satellites, and I think more will have
a big impact on the light quality that astronomers can
collect data from. Mostly empty mostly empty wise that because
of the size of space and how you can put
the satellites in different layers, in different orbits. Do you agree, yes, there,
(09:04):
I think it's filled with satellites. It feels like that's
sort of relative, but it's probably as room for more.
I guess that there's a lot of space junk out there,
but there's so much. I know there's a lot of
space up there, so I don't think it's too crowded.
I know there are collisions, but I don't think they
happened that often. Um, but I'd say in the near
(09:24):
future that probably could be a problem. So why do
you think it's mostly filled up? Just because the amount
of communication that we have and data exchange, there's gotta
be satellites, old satellites to suppose satellites. So is there
like a danger of satellites bumping into each other and stuff?
I'm sure, but I don't know what they'll do anything,
But I don't know if they're made of you know,
(09:45):
but I've heard rumors of space trash too, you know.
All right, people don't seem too concerned about the crowdedness
of space. No, but I'm not sure how many of
these folks actually had like plans to launch anything. So
it's a bit of an abstract question for them, you know, Oh,
I see, I see. Do you think that maybe they're
trying not to be alarmist or maybe they're thinking, Man,
(10:06):
I got too many things to worry about here, I
got finals coming up, I got rent to pay. Who
cares about space junk? M you didn't get a lot
of concern here. No, but maybe if I told them
all about space junk and made them worry about the
future of those satellites, they'd be worried about the next
time they got on an airplane, whether the satellite that's
navig that's helping their flight and navigate, is um potentially
(10:29):
being exposed to high speed garbage. All right, well, let's
um let's talk about it. The idea is that maybe
space we're throwing too many things out there into space,
like as a species, you know, It was exciting when
we sent the first satellite out there, and it was
exciting when we sent people out there. But now I
think there's sort of a growing concern that are we
basically treating our orbital space as the next big junkyard. Yeah, exactly,
(10:56):
not a landfill, but a space fill, a space space film. Well,
I guess technically landfills are space field. Everything is a
space field from that perspective. Well, I was surprised. I
did a bit of research, and I was surprised to
discover sort of the small number and the large number
of stuff that we have in orbit. Really it's both
(11:17):
a lot and little. Yeah, it is. I mean the
small number is the number of operational satellites. Like, we've
been launching satellites for fifty years, and I know it's expensive.
It's not just like anybody can launch them, but they're
not that rare anymore. And you know, governments and spy
agencies and armies all have their own satellites and companies do.
(11:37):
So I was surprised to discover there are only about
two thousand, two hud eighteen operational satellites in orbit. That's
not really that many. Really, do you think that's not
a lot. I think it's not a lot. I mean,
these days it's not that expensive to launch a satellite.
You know, elementary schools can fund us a micro's cube
sat that ends up in orbit and takes pictures of stuff.
So the prices are really coming down. So two thousand,
(12:00):
two D eighteen not just like the big ones you
see with the giant solar panels. But it could be
just like little tiny satellites. Yeah, some of those are
pretty small. Some of those are pretty small. But we
only got two thousand, two hundreds. You know, like how
many cars are on a freeway at any moment. It's
much bigger number than that, and so, and space is
really big, and so at first you think, wow, there's
not that many satellites and space is huge, so there's
(12:22):
plenty of room for more traffic. Nothing to worry, nothing
to worry. But but but the problem is that it's
not just operational satellites that are out there, right, it's
first of all, unoperational satellites, and then bits of satellites,
junk of satellites, a little bits of rockets that blew up,
you know, stuff that astronauts dropped while they were on spacewalks.
(12:45):
It turns out there's a lot of junk up there
really and it's all man made? Or is it also
like you know asteroids to somehow got caught in our
orbit or things like that. This is just man made
space junk. I mean there are meteors right that hit
the Earth and burnham the atmosphere and you see that
kind of stuff on a nice night when you're seeing
meteor showers, etcetera. But this is just man made stuff
(13:07):
that's in or wow, how many do how much? How
much of this stuff do you think is out there?
So they did a calculation and you can't count this
stuff because a lot of it is too small. But
you know, we have two thousand operational satellites right, but
in terms of space junk, there's at least twenty thousand
trackable objects that's just like chunks of stuff that you
(13:27):
can see that you can see that like you know
Norad and the Department of Defense and how those folks
are keeping track of Wow, don't they wonder what they are? Like?
Could there be spy cameras from aliens? Is what I'm
where I'm going with this, Daniel Man, I would love
if there was a spike camera. But if I was
an alien and I wanted to build a spy camera,
(13:48):
I would just put it in a rock, you know,
hide it and make it look like a big asteroid
or something. But this is just the stuff they're tracking,
you know, because they don't want their two billion dollars
spy satellite or ten billion dollars space telescope or whatever
to bump into a piece of junks. And they track
this stuff. But that's only the stuff that they can track.
They track it so that they can so it doesn't
so they can maneuver around the other space drunk. Yeah,
(14:10):
it's like air traffic control, right, you want to get
this out of the lands, you have to make sure
now the other planes are too close by, and so
you've got to manage it. And so they keep track
of all this stuff. But it's a ten to one ratio. Right.
Did the two thousand operational objects include the secret space
spy satellites that they don't really want us to know?
Or are those in the unknown category? Um, that doesn't
(14:31):
include the things that the government doesn't want us to know.
But you know, a reasonable estimates based on launches and
stuff like that, because it's pretty hard to hide a launch,
so they can track twenty thou objects. And are these
small or these like you know, a bolt from that
slipped out of the space station, or are they pretty big?
These things are pretty big. You know, they're more than
ten centimeters across. You know, the largest um fifteen hundred
(14:54):
of these things wigh a total of nineteen hundred tons,
and the largest ten thousand of them weigh like five
thousand five tons, So it's a pretty big amount of stuff.
And again, this is just the stuff that we can track.
The stuff falls apart and get smaller, and then the
numbers get crazy, and this is all just human junk
(15:15):
in space. Like we've been. We've been that careless in
space that we have twenty thousand bits of junk out there.
You showed like a national park and this is like
littered with people's picnic garbage. I guess if you're out
in space, what do you do with your junk? Well,
actually what you do is you drop it on Earth.
The best thing to do with space junk is to
(15:37):
push it down into the atmosphere because the atmosphere will
burn it up. Anything from space is moving pretty quickly,
and if it hit the atmosphere, you'll just get fried.
So the best thing to do is to drop it
on the Earth. The worst thing to do is to
leave it in orbit around the Earth. I see. The
best thing to do is to burn it in the
atmosphere so it rains down in innocent people. Nobody, almost
(16:00):
nobody has ever been heard by falling space jump. The
atmosphere is a really good force field against space junk.
It's so good that what we should do with our
space junk is throw it against the atmosphere to you know,
atomize it. Oh, I see. So this is stuff that
has maybe falling off the space station or slipped out
of an astronaut's hand, but that stayed in orbit. Yeah,
and also the products of other collisions. And if you
(16:21):
look at even smaller stuff, there are nine hundred thousand
things that are smaller than ten centimeters. That's almost a
million pieces of space junk, little tiny bits. But those
they can't track, and they that's just an estimate. These
are not tiny bits. I mean ten centimeters. You know,
we're talking to something the size of a baseball. Like
that thing going at ten kilometers per second is not
(16:42):
a tiny anything. But you're right, these things are too
small for them to track. That's a lot of baseballs.
It's a lot of baseballs. And then if you just
say like any piece of junk, no matter what size,
then there are more than a hundred million bits of
space debris. And so where did all this stuff come from?
Is it all just from you know, our astronauts being
litter bugs or litter space bugs. Yeah, you know astronauts
(17:04):
like the flame and hot cheetohs and they just crumple
up the package and toss it over their shoulder. No,
it comes from like satellites falling apart, you know, bits
of paint flaking off of satellites. Also, we fired a
lot of rockets into space, and we just sort of
like leave those spent rocket stages and little bits of
like frozen fuel that didn't get used up. We just
(17:27):
generally haven't been thinking carefully about what kind of stuff
will be left from our exploration of space because we thought, hey,
space is so big and empty, it doesn't really matter
if you create a thousand little shards of ice that
are flying at really high speed. Wow, so it is
getting crowded with joke. I mean, there aren't that many
satellite but there's millions of bits of stuff out there.
There are millions of bits of stuff out there, Yeah,
(17:48):
flakes of paint, little bits of rocket motors, frozen coolant,
and you know, sometimes it's stuff that was created sort
of on purpose. Like in the sixties, the US and
Russia had anti satellite weapons. We built special missiles we
could fire at like the enemy's satellites because you know,
maybe you don't want them flying their spy satellites over Colorado,
(18:09):
and so you want to fire a missile to take
out their satellite. Interesting space wars, space wars wars, Yeah,
and China got in the game about ten years ago.
They built a system and they tested it and they
destroyed one of their own satellites, but it created a
million pieces of space debris that are still up there.
They blew something up as a test. Yeah, they fired
(18:30):
a missile into space in two thousand seven, blew up
one of their own defunct satellites and it created a
million pieces of space junk. Great, thank you, China. And
sometimes it is astronauts, you know, like there was one
time an astraw lost a bag of tools. You know,
(18:50):
you're out there on a spacewalk, you forget to clip
it and the oops, it just sort of drifts away
from you. And that was a Sandra Bullock movie. I
seen that movie. Then that's the one part of that
movie that was correct. Um An astronaut ones like lost
spare glove, you know, so that kind of stuff is
floating out there, but it's dwarfed by this sort of
like a little just pieces of junk from satellites that
(19:13):
are broken or smashed into each other. I wonder how
that happens. You're like, you're out in space, you might die,
but you take off your glove just just to like
pick it a little something, and then whoops. You let
you gotta open your flame and hot cheetos package, right,
and you can't do those and those really thick gloves, yeah,
those big thick fingers, and then you take the cheetos
up and sort of bang them up against your space helmet.
(19:34):
You know, this thing through the shooting use velcro fore
the cheetos. No. I think there must have been an
extra glove or something. But occasionally astronauts have job stuff
that's not a big contribution to the space junk. Most
of it is like flakes of paint and little bits
of rocket cooliant and stuff like that, but it's still dangerous.
And how much of that is our space cheetos? There
(19:56):
are no Cheetos in space that I'm aware of. That's
her first for you. Also, great, so that that's a
lot of stuff out there, and so I guess now
the question is it a problem? Is it going to
be a problem, and what can we do about it?
So let's get into that. But first let's take a
quick break, all right. I know, so there are millions
(20:27):
of pieces of debris out there in just in our
immediate orbit, and some of them might be space cheetos,
some of them might not be. We don't know what
the Chinese or the Russians have been developing out there
or testing. Maybe they have a system to launch cheetos
into space at our satellites. Yeah, maybe cheetos are especially
good at taking out spy satellites, you know, I mean,
(20:48):
until you do the experiment, you never know the answer.
You gotta keep an open minding science, right, Yeah, you
want you want that um you know that cheesy powder
that they have to get into the enemy's satellite mechanism,
And that's the worst, the worst of those gyro mechanisms. Yeah,
that's especially designed by food scientists to be a space weapon,
(21:08):
gets all over your your spy leans and then it's
all ruined. Space junk really is a problem. Okay, so
it is. It is a problem that scientists are concerned
about right now. It really is. Yeah, And it's a
problem sort for two reasons. One is that it's a
danger to the stuff that's out there, and the other
is that it's likely to make more of itself. So
first of all, you worry just like is the stuff
(21:29):
going to bump into something valuable? I mean, you build
your complicated space telescope or spy side light or whatever,
and you shoot it up into space, and then somebody's
junk comes along like ten to fifteen kilometers per second
and just trashes it. Wow, fifteen kilometers per second? Like,
is that if it's in a different orbit or like
(21:51):
you know, like in um you can't tend to think
in space it's everything being kind of at the same
speed that you are. But is it possible for things
to be in a different orbit and come at you
at that speed? Absolutely? This is not organized self driving
cars in space right where everything is moving along with
no relative velocity. There's lots of different orbits that cross right,
and there's no traffic lights, and so you can free
(22:12):
for all. It's a free for all exactly. There's no
cops up there whistling to people to stop or anything,
and so your orbit path could totally cross somebody else's
orbital path. That's a problem. Even a flick of paint
would probably do some harm to your solar panel or
Cheeto's bag, for sure. A tiny fleck with paint going
at fifteen kilometers per second is like getting punched by
(22:33):
Mike Tyson, right, and nobody wants their satellite getting punched
by Mike Tyson, especially in space. That would be extra embarrassing.
Maybe NASA should do that, you know, they should have
like last pre flight check, Mike, please come down and
punch the satellite and see how it goes. But it's
a real problem. And you know, sometimes you can protect
parts of your satellite, we'll talk about that later, but
(22:54):
some parts you just can't. Like you don't want to
build a shield in front of the lens of your
space telescope, that's why you built it right to look
out into space, or you have these big solar panels.
You can't really do much to protect them. They're supposed
to be out there gathering sunlight, so you're really vulnerable.
And even if you put armor on your satellite, that's
just gets more expensive, right because every little ounce you
(23:16):
send it to space because like right, yeah, you can't
armor your solar panels because that blocks them and that
they don't work. So it's a real problem. And they
try to keep track of this stuff and because they
don't want their expensive satellites to get hit by space junk,
and so they have you know, as we were saying,
tracking on like twenty thousand of these things. And they
observe a lot of close calls. There's something like twenty
(23:39):
close calls every day between a satellite and some piece
of trackable junk. Like every day times there's somebody freaking
out in some control room going turn left, turn left,
watch out for that space to Yeah, And they're pretty
careful about this stuff, and so they have to like
contact the owners of the satellite and say, hey, some
piece of junk is coming your way. You might want
to move up or down or let to write or
(24:00):
just any direction really to get out of the way.
Oh wow, are there like traffic controllers or space can
you can I study to be a space traffic controller. Yeah.
I think it's a pretty stressful job. But the Defense
Department does this, you know, because they've got a lot
of satellites up there that are pretty valuable and pretty
important for national security, and so they keep track of
this stuff and they contact satellite owners if their satellite
(24:22):
is in the path of some junk. Oh wow, imagine
getting that call. I think it's not too unusual, you know.
I think most satellites a few times a year have
to maneuver around space junk because it's getting kind of
crowded up there. And we've even had collisions. Really, and
what happens You just obliterate the satellite or yeah. Yeah,
that's the problem is that when to like defunct satellites
(24:44):
hit each other or when a piece of space junk
takes out of satellite, what do you get more space
junk more? Right, that's the other problem you're saying, And
he said junk gets junk. Yeah, It's like if you
litter in the park, somebody else walks are like, Oh,
looks like this park isn't cleaned up too much. I'll
just dump all my trash here. Um, But I'm not
(25:06):
sure that analogy works, but the idea that it's wondering
how that works. It's more like if you if you
find a piece of litter in the park and you
go to grow it, it it turns into two pieces of litter, right, yeah,
I guess so, or this literal taxi and breaks you
into pieces of literal in park right covers you and
Cheetos does It's terrible, um, But the idea is that, yeah,
(25:27):
that if a piece of space junk is a satellite,
it causes more space junk, and then the number of
pieces of space junk grows, and then you have a
higher chances of making more space junk, which of course
just makes more space junk. And so you can see
this sort of cascade effects possible. You get enough stuff
out there, the chances of collision grow very quickly, and
(25:47):
then the chances have become almost certain, and then you
just have spaces just totally filled with junk, right, dangers
junk right that you can't get through. Yeah. And so
some sort of space groups, advocacy groups predictlarly sort of
tipping point where we're gonna get too much junk pretty
soon that you're gonna get this cascade effect, and it
might destroy a huge number of things in orbit and
(26:08):
basically make space unusable. You can actually kind of extrapolate
and and see the point where it's just the jungle
just multiply beyond making space reachable. Yeah, because you can't
fly a rocket with people in it through space if
it's totally filled with space junk. You can't launch a
satellite into that orbit if it's totally filled with space junk.
(26:28):
And if all the satellites that we had out there
right now ended up getting hit by space junk and
turning into more space junk, you have an enormous number
of pieces of junk, and it would make space basically unusable.
You know what we need, I think, Daniel, we need
like a giant space vacuum that would totally suck space
already has a vacuum. Why doesn't space just suck it
up into outer space? Suck it up space? Um, But
(26:52):
it's you know, it's already sort of a problem. Like
we have people out there in space right now in
the space station, and these folks a few times a
year or have to move the whole space station like
into a higher orbit in order to avoid some piece
of junk that's coming nearby. They're actively doing, you know,
like Frogger is like changing names all the time. It's
space space. Yeah, and sometimes they have to like rush
(27:14):
the astronauts into one of those escape capsules because the
big pieces of junk is coming that didn't spot soon
enough and can't get out of the way, and it
might like you know, debilitate the space station and those
folks that have to basically fly back down to Earth.
I feel like you're quoting that Tender Bullet movie again.
I think it might go the other way around. I
think the Sandra Bot movie is based on real events.
(27:38):
So and I think it also happened with the Space
Shuttle ones right, like it like it actually did some
damage through the Space Shuttle. All the time, every Space
Shuttle comes back is pitted with space junk. You'll find
like holes in the wings, they find scratches in the windshield.
It's not unusual when the Space Shuttle comes back to
find like, you know, bits of stuff embedded in the
windshield all the way down to like half the depth
(27:59):
of the wind She old, yeah, yeah, exactly. You're like,
what is that squeak squick? Is that Cheetos? What how
did that get in there? Yeah, it's a it's a
dirty environment out there, and so you know how you're
driving down the highway you end up with like a
bunch of bugs on your windshield. Imagine those bugs were
going you know, ten times a speed of sound or something,
or they were like ball bearings just over the highway.
(28:23):
That would be pretty dangerous. Yeah, it would be pretty dangerous.
And so it's a real problem. We got to make
sure there's not too much space junk up there, and
we've got to clean it up sort of before it
gets too late, before it starts to multiply out of control. Okay,
have a new product idea for elon musk already, I'm
sure I'm not ready. Giant space windshield wipers. That's what
(28:45):
we cleanse the atmosphere. Well, you know, we're going to
talk about solutions to the space junk problem. And that's
not the dumbest one that's on the list. Oh really,
all right, it's already taken. It was already in a
movie with Sender Bullock. So that affects our ability to
go out into space. Does it affect actually us here
on Earth if space gets filled with junk? Well, this
(29:08):
sort of the direct problem and the indirect problem. The
direct problem is, like, do you have to worry about
a piece of junk falling out of space and conking
you on the head? Right, Well, there's about one piece
of space junk per day that falls out of orbit
and into the atmosphere, but those burn up. Right, as
we were saying before, it's actually a good thing for
(29:28):
space junk to hit the atmosphere because it gets fried,
it gets shredded, and it's just a nice you know,
another meteor in the night sky. It's pretty rare for
this stuff to actually hit the Earth. There was once
in a woman in Oklahoma was hit by a piece
of rocket, but usually you don't worry about it. Like
the Air Force when they launch rockets, they don't even
really care where they go because they just mostly burn up.
(29:51):
Of course it had to be Oklahoma, I feel, where
else are you saying Oklahoma deserves it? Or just like
weird stuff happens in Oklahoma? And say I was if
I was writing a Steven Spielberg movie where a piece
of dunk kids the womin in the head, it would
probably be an Oklahoma. Alright, that's good to know, but
I think the more direct issue for people out here
is that we rely on stuff in space. When your
(30:13):
flight is taking off, it's using a navigational system that
relies on satellites. When your phone is locating itself because
you got lost while going for a hike, it's using GPS.
So our society really relies on space technology. And if
all that was destroyed or became unusable, you know, hey,
listening to Daniel Jorge explain the universe would take longer
(30:34):
to download, you would get laws trying to get to
some WiFi or something. Yeah, precisely. So it's important part
of our society. We want to maintain it. It's not
really a direct danger to you unless you're an astronaut,
but it's important that we take care of the space
near the Earth. Right, it's not good. It's not good.
It's not good. All right, let's get into what we
can actually do to maybe clean up some of the
(30:55):
space junk maybe or prevent it or um work around it.
But first let's take another quick break. All right, Then
space is a little bit of a problem, and you're
(31:16):
also telling me it's kind of a problem or it
might become a problem for astronomers too. Right, like people
trying to study space. Yeah, there's been a big uproar
recently because of Elon Musk's plans to basically fill space
with satellites. He's launched, you know, something like a hundred
and twenty these things so far and then sort of
low Earth orbit and they streak across the sky. And
(31:39):
if you have really valuable time on a telescope because
you want to study something super far away and you've
been waiting months for your like ten hours of telescope time,
and then Musk satellites you sort of zooming from the lens,
you know, then you get a big streak. You don't
want that photo bomb. You don't want that photo bomb.
And he's only launched a hundred He's planning to launch
thousands and thou these things. So astronomers are worried. First
(32:03):
of all, like easy going to be blocking your view.
Is ground based astronomy going to be impossible in the
near future just to improve our Internet access. But then
also from the space junk point of view, like you've
got thousands of things up there, one of them goes
wrong bumps into another one, like it could pretty quickly
go bad. I mean if it was Bill Murray, you'd
be like, hey, that's a cool photo bomb on my photo.
(32:24):
But Elon Musk, that's just annoying. Yeah, precisely. And remember,
you know, you have ten times as many things up there.
It's a hundred times more likely to get collisions because
you have many more ways to get collisions. And so
he's planning to launch thousands of these things and just
a few of them have to go wrong for it
to sort of cascade and create a disaster, reached that
(32:45):
tipping point where it all just pulverizes everything and it
becomes a deadly, deadly barrier for space travel. Yeah, he's
thought of this, of course, and he has planned, and
you know NASA and f A, whatever say that he's
planning is good and essentially involves making sure that any
of these satellites that go wrong basically just fall and
(33:06):
then they get burned up in the atmosphere. And that's
not a terrible plan because that's what we want. We
want to push all this stuff, all the space junk
down into the atmospheres. The atmosphere does the job for us.
So the friction of the atmosphere basically melts all this stuff.
So how does that work. So that's one way we
can kind of avoid the space junk problem is to
(33:26):
make sure it comes down. But how can they do
that if it's like, if sanidite becomes disabled, what's going
to make it actually maneuver into the atmosphere? Well, you
can just get lucky and hope that it's the way
that it maneuvered or got disabled makes it fall. But
you know, there's a lot of stuff out there that's
in stable orbits, and uh, one thing we can just
do is wait, you know, stop launching stuff and just
(33:48):
wait because eventually all this stuff will fall. Remember, the
atmosphere is not just like a turn off. There's no
perfect space in near Earth. There's a very slight atmosphere
and it drags on stuff and slows it down. Right,
But the problem isn't the problem that it's just one
piece per per day that falls. Wouldn't that take you know,
how would take a long time. So that's not really
(34:08):
a solution. So people have some crazy ideas, you know.
One of them, of course involves lasers. Of course, Hey, physicists,
how should we solve the problems lasers? No? No, I
just really want to comb my hair. Oh yeah, do
you want to know what the problem is first though,
just lasers. Lasers, That's right. The solution is always lasers,
(34:29):
and the answer is always aliens. Um No, But lasers
is not a terrible idea because if you could shoot
a laser at this stuff, you could slow it down.
You could You don't even need to blow it up, right,
You don't want to blow it up. But you want
to do is slow it down a little bit so
it drops and then the atmosphere takes over. So you
just gotta sort of like a blade it a little
bit on the side. I remember we talked about those
(34:50):
guys that are also using lasers to maybe save the
Earth from incoming asteroids. It's a similar idea. You don't
have to blow up the whole asteroid. You just got
to sort of shave off a little at city in
one side so it misses. In this case, you want
to just sort of like rough it up a little
bit so that it falls into the atmosphere. Wow. Like
literally you'd be like pew pew, pew, pew pew taking
(35:11):
stuff out of out of the sky. There for the test,
That's exactly what it sounded like. Oh really, well, why
imagine that I can foresee what physicists but sound effectively.
But you know, shooting death rays into the sky, it
would take a lot of death rays. And so this approach,
of course has some problems. So people studied about ten
years ago, but it doesn't seem like it's really going
(35:31):
to solve sort of the larger scale problems of having
a hundred million objects. So my son practicing video games
all this time just to get ready for that job
of shooting down space degree, I should tell him there's
no career in that. That's right. Yeah, I think you know,
that was very impressive long range planning. But I'm hoping
there are other ways that you're something can make money
(35:52):
with those skills. Okay, So that's so shooting them down
with lasers not a great, uh good long term solution.
What are other ways we can have solved this space
jump problem. Well, another one is a ship called clean
Space one which looks, I'm not joking, like a big
net and the idea is to gather space junk together
and then again dump it into the atmosphere. Right, it's
(36:14):
sort of weird, but we're treating the whole Earth is
like a trash can, and the Clean Space up. What
you gotta do is gather the stuff and then dump
it into the trash can. And so this is maybe
your son could operate this thing, you know, steer this
thing around, gathering space jump. That's what every parent wants
for your son to be a space janitor. Thank you,
Daniel Hey, it's pretty glamorous. I mean space janitors. Come on,
(36:36):
that's the way you work your way up, right, That's
how you become an astronaut. You've got space, you get
a job as a janitor, and then you know, step
by step, eventually you're piloting the space station I mean spacetaniter.
It's just like, you know, barely a step above podcaster.
So at least it's a step up. Um. But that's
not a joke. You know, this is an idea. Gather
the stuff and then dump into lower orbit and hope
(36:58):
that it eventually decay, is down to burn up. So
this would be what does this look like like a giant?
Like a giant like four rockets holding a giant net
in between them. It looks basically, yeah, like a big net.
You know, it's got like four big arms and some
lines between them, and they would essentially just like reach
out like an tuck a huge claw, grab a piece
of space junk and then drag it down into lower orbit.
(37:22):
But this would work for you know, maybe like the
twenty thousand defunct large trackable objects we have, but it
wouldn't really help clean up all the other tiny stuff,
all right, So then what can we do about those?
Not that much? I mean, one thing we can do
is we can stop adding more stuff. Right when has
it ever worked with humanity? We could start being responsible,
(37:44):
I promised, starting today, we're gonna be good. Really this time,
this time it's gonna be We're gonna be good. I'm
gonna stop eating those cheetos tomorrow tomorrow. But here, actually
there's a bit of hope because Americans, at least American
space agencies have tried to design their rockets to produce
less space junk, so create like smaller number of larger
pieces of debris that are more likely to fall into
(38:06):
the atmosphere. They don't explode bits of coolant into space
because earlier we're like, oh, I don't care whatever it's
out in space, But now we do care, And so
are more recent rockets produced less space junk per launch,
per launch, or per like if you lose it per
launcher launch. Every time you launch a rocket there's stages
of it that are supposed to burn up and don't.
(38:27):
Always there's bits of coolant that you know, that league
or solid rocket fuel that wasn't burnt up. And so
are more recent rockets are better at that. They produced
less junk per launch, but still they do produce junk.
So you know that's that's not a way to clean
it up. It's just a way to like be bad
less quickly. So I think what I'm getting from you
is that to solve the space junk problems, scientists have
(38:49):
come up with a couple of solutions. One is, wait
a million years. That solves a lot of problems. To
convince you managed to stop littering that never happened. Or
three shoot lasers at it. Yeah, and so we're all
waiting for your son to be good enough at the
laser to solve this problem. Doesn't sound like there's a
good solution here. No, there's not a great solution to
(39:10):
cleaning up space junk. And so in the interim, what
we've done is just trying to protect our satellites. You
put a shield around it to try to protect it
and they're pretty clever. This is really cool design. It's
called a Whipple shield. And the ideas and don't just
like make your satellite really heavy with armor, but put
a really light thin shield, but have it be separated
from the satellite a little bit. And the idea is
(39:31):
that it doesn't destroy the space junk, is sort of
deflects it, it turns it, it breaks it up and
and changes its direction. Oh interesting, Yeah, and so you're
more likely to survive impact with space junk, and so
you know, we have some technology to protect ourselves, but yeah,
we sort of painted ourselves into a corner here. Space
is filled with junk and it's not an easy way
to clean it up. Well, hopefully those um maybe in
(39:53):
the future space general will be like the most valuable
profession on the planet. Yeah. I think we also just
need to find some new way to put the cost
of making space junk on the people producing it, because
right now the cost of space junk is on the
people launching a new satellite. Like you have a billion
dollar satellite, you have to protect yourself from the space junk.
(40:15):
The people who satellite made that, they're free and clear,
they don't really care. So somehow we need to make
sure that the people who are producing space junk bear
the cost of it, and maybe that'll help fund to
clean up somehow. Interesting. It's like carbon credits, but for
a space junk. Yeah. Or we need everybody have like
an insurance card so that when things bump into each other, say, hey,
(40:35):
that was your piece of junk. Now you owe me
a billion dollars. Oh interesting, So more more like cars
actually then, you know, for creating a traffic jam up there. Yeah.
We also lawyers to solve this problem. Space lawyers, space lawyers.
All right, maybe I'll try to steer my son towards
that profession. It sounds like it might have law that
(40:57):
that'll impress his grandparents also. All right, Well, it sounds
like there are a lot of things out there in
space that you might run into, and it's going to
get crowdier crowder in the next couple of years. Yeah,
and cheesier and cheeto here, that's right, and spicier and
flaming and flaming hot. Well, hopefully flaming hot, because that
(41:19):
means it's burning up. Yeah, what happens if you drop
a space cheeto? Actually, it does get flaming hot. Right
as it burns up in your entry. So yeah, in space,
all cheetos are flaming hot. There you go. How can
we ask for a better adding to So think about
that next time you were going to launch your own
(41:39):
micro satellite into space. Do you really need that out
there or are you just contributing to the problem. So
next time you look out there into space at night,
think about that beautiful star you might be looking at
could be a piece of cheeto. I've got nothing after that.
And that's it all right, everybody, Thanks are listening. We
(42:00):
hope you enjoy it. Then thanks everyone, see you next time.
Before you still have a question after listening to all
these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to
hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one word, or
(42:23):
email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(42:45):
Ye
Hey, Daniel, do you think the planet Earth is getting
too crowded? Well, you know, we live in southern California,
so we do experience a good amount of traffic, even
though I get to wear sandals all year long. Well
does it make you want to move out of Southern California? Well,
you know, I'd be hesitant to give up the sandals,
but I'd love to live in outer space. Well yeah,
do you think community would be easier in space? Well,
(00:28):
it can't be much worse than it is down here
in southern California. Well, I think you better move up
there soon because space might be getting more crowded than
you think. Are you talking about Elon Musk's Tesla that
he launched out there? There's gonna be a traffic jam
off Tesla's up there pretty soon. Hi. I'm Jorhea, a
(01:00):
cartoonists and the creator of PhD Comics. I'm Daniel. I'm
a particle of physicist. But I love all things space,
even if they don't have aliens in them. And so
welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
a production of I Heart Radio in which we take
a mental tour of the universe zipping from neutron stars
to black holes to alien planets, and even talk about
(01:23):
tiny things here on Earth like little particles, electrons and
quantum tunneling. And the key is to share with you
the wonders, the mystery, the majesty of this universe in
a way that's explainable and hopefully makes you laugh and
maybe cringe once or twice. That are bad jokes only
but only once or twice. You cringes per episode, and
then you're cut off, and then you that's right, Then
(01:45):
you have to keep listening in silence. But yeah, it's
about all the amazing things we can see from this
planet Earth that we're sitting on in traffic, right, we're
sort of in the traffic of the Solar System, right
behind Mars Venus, next to the crowded asteroid belt. Yeah,
we're in an unusually dense part of the universe. You know,
(02:06):
if you took like an average cubic kilometer of the universe,
it would be pretty empty. Most likely, you just get
like a chunk of space in between galaxies. Even inside
the galaxies, most of them don't have planets in them.
So our neighborhood of the universe is pretty dense, we
have a star, We've got a bunch of planets. There's
a lot of rocks out there. Yeah, I hate it
when the asteroids hunk behind me. It's so annoying. Well, look,
(02:30):
they've been doing it for billions of years, so they
hate when like nubies come in and mess up their commute.
You know, that's right. It's people who don't signal as
the Earth signal. Lately, which way it's turning, I don't know,
but we keep launching up stuff into space out there,
messing up everybody else's commute. So, yeah, we imagine there
are a lot of you out there listening to this podcast,
maybe sitting in your cars in traffic, and you're probably
(02:52):
wondering where all these people came from. Are there too
many people on Earth? And is it too crowded out here? Yeah?
Maybe you feel like law eaching all those people out
into space and you have the four oh five to yourself. Yeah,
and so we were thinking, are there alternatives? Could you
live out in space to get away from it all?
But you might be surprised to discover that space actually
(03:12):
has a bunch of stuff in it as well. It's
not a pristine territory. It's the final frontier, but it's
also filled with traffic. It's getting crowded out there, right,
that's right. You probably heard about Elon Musk's plans to
launch thousands and thousands of new satellites to improve your
download speeds. Yeah, and not just the stuff that's going
to be launched, but there are a bunch of stuffs
(03:34):
out there already floating out there right in space. Yea.
So we thought we'd dive into this topic between the
Earth surface and the rest of the universe and talk
about how much stuff is there out there? So to
the on the program, we'll be tackling the question is
space crowded? How much stuff is up there? How much
(03:57):
room is there? And do you need to get a
fast carporal late cast just to get out to get
out to Marrows these days, well, traffic in space at
least would be more complicated because you got another dimension
to move in, right. I mean, I don't know how
they will plan to organize it, but you can always
go over with the car in front of you. That's
like a double nightmare for me. It's like multidimensional traffic.
(04:20):
It sounds like there's a zillion more ways to get
into an accident. I feel like, at least here on Earth,
if I'm stuck in traffic, I still I can still
fantasize about flying upwards or digging down and getting away
from it all. But if you're in space and it's
space jam, in a traffic jam, uh, you've got nowhere
to go. I think you owe Michael Jordans ten cents
for mentioning that was bucks, buddy. Yeah. But you may
(04:43):
have heard the news that Elon Musk is planning to
launch a bunch of satellites. They recently deployed a hundred
and twenty two satellites into low Earth orbit to test
their Internet from space idea, and his plans are to
launch a bunch more, not a hundred more, not to
hundred more, not a thousand more, but something like ten
(05:03):
thousand in the near future, stretching up to maybe forty
thousand in the far freiture. And it's all part of
his plan to create the space fornet. Is that what
he's calling it? That isn't what he should have. That
is the best possible there. You know, we got space force,
why not space Internet? Yeah, and you're probably thinking, hey, look,
(05:24):
space is big right, I mean, the universe is vast.
Daniel was just saying how space is mostly empty, how
could space ever get crowded? And you're right, there is
a lot of space up there. You know, a quick
calculation up to high Earth orbit and there's like two
hundred trillion cubic kilometers of space just surrounding our planet.
And currently humans have launched about two thousand operational satellites,
(05:47):
So that doesn't seem like much. I mean, do the math.
You get about ninety billion cubic kilometers per operational satellite.
That seems like a lot, right, And it seems that's
like the ratio between space and currently how many satellites
there are out there. Yeah, we've got two thousand satellites
that are running that are doing something that are helping us,
that are like, you know, telling you where your phone are,
(06:09):
or spying on North Korea or whatever. It takes all
the amount of space out there in sort of high
Earth orbit, and you get ninety billion cubic kilometers per satellite,
So it seems like plenty of room. It seems like
plenty of room. But I think the problem is that
if you run into one of these things in space,
it's pretty bad news. Yeah, this is very high speed traffic.
(06:31):
So we thought it'd be fun to talk about whether
there really is room out there? How dangerous is it
to launch a satellite? And how long do you have
to wait after you put on your left turn signal
before you know it's clear to pull your tesla into
low Earth orbit? Yeah, because you definitely don't want to
have a bumper to bumper collision here with a satellite
going in hundreds or thousands of kilometers per hour. No,
(06:54):
you certainly don't. I'm pretty sure your insurance doesn't cover it.
Definitely not the one you got on your rental car.
So they're about two thousand satellites right now operating out
in space. But it's not just satellites out there, right,
there's also space junk. Yeah, So I was wondering if
people were aware of this problem. Do people know that
space has more than just operational satellites on it? Do
(07:15):
people think space is totally empty and there's lots of
room out there for frontiers people to go out and
claim their chunk, or do people think that space is
mostly crowded and already filled with Elon Musk's garbage? What
are you gonna say, Elon, munk's junk, I should have
said that that was much better. Maybe he's planning a
(07:37):
business where he takes your junk and dumps it in space. Oh,
there you go, one nine hundred got space jusk junk?
Must what what must I do with my junk? And
if he didn't plan that, he's probably a listener to
this podcast because it's awesome and now he's planning it.
(07:57):
So Elon, we had one percent sticks. So as you show,
Daniel went out there into the streets and as random strangers.
If they thought that space was getting too crowded, here's
what people had to say before you hear their answers.
Think to yourself, do you think space is overcrowded or
is there a lot of room for more stuff? I
would say probably filled with satellites and crowded. Yeah, I
(08:19):
think it's like dangerous to be up there. I don't
know if it's totally crowded, but it's probably getting there,
I would imagine. I would say it was empty, mostly empty,
so like room for lots more stuff. Yeah, I think
it's definitely still mostly empty. See you, there's lots of
room for more satellites. Well, I don't think we should
put a lot more satellites, but I bet there's more
(08:40):
room of food needed to Oh. I think there's already
a lot of satellites, and I think more will have
a big impact on the light quality that astronomers can
collect data from. Mostly empty mostly empty wise that because
of the size of space and how you can put
the satellites in different layers, in different orbits. Do you agree, yes, there,
(09:04):
I think it's filled with satellites. It feels like that's
sort of relative, but it's probably as room for more.
I guess that there's a lot of space junk out there,
but there's so much. I know there's a lot of
space up there, so I don't think it's too crowded.
I know there are collisions, but I don't think they
happened that often. Um, but I'd say in the near
(09:24):
future that probably could be a problem. So why do
you think it's mostly filled up? Just because the amount
of communication that we have and data exchange, there's gotta
be satellites, old satellites to suppose satellites. So is there
like a danger of satellites bumping into each other and stuff?
I'm sure, but I don't know what they'll do anything,
But I don't know if they're made of you know,
(09:45):
but I've heard rumors of space trash too, you know.
All right, people don't seem too concerned about the crowdedness
of space. No, but I'm not sure how many of
these folks actually had like plans to launch anything. So
it's a bit of an abstract question for them, you know, Oh,
I see, I see. Do you think that maybe they're
trying not to be alarmist or maybe they're thinking, Man,
(10:06):
I got too many things to worry about here, I
got finals coming up, I got rent to pay. Who
cares about space junk? M you didn't get a lot
of concern here. No, but maybe if I told them
all about space junk and made them worry about the
future of those satellites, they'd be worried about the next
time they got on an airplane, whether the satellite that's
navig that's helping their flight and navigate, is um potentially
(10:29):
being exposed to high speed garbage. All right, well, let's
um let's talk about it. The idea is that maybe
space we're throwing too many things out there into space,
like as a species, you know, It was exciting when
we sent the first satellite out there, and it was
exciting when we sent people out there. But now I
think there's sort of a growing concern that are we
basically treating our orbital space as the next big junkyard. Yeah, exactly,
(10:56):
not a landfill, but a space fill, a space space film. Well,
I guess technically landfills are space field. Everything is a
space field from that perspective. Well, I was surprised. I
did a bit of research, and I was surprised to
discover sort of the small number and the large number
of stuff that we have in orbit. Really it's both
(11:17):
a lot and little. Yeah, it is. I mean the
small number is the number of operational satellites. Like, we've
been launching satellites for fifty years, and I know it's expensive.
It's not just like anybody can launch them, but they're
not that rare anymore. And you know, governments and spy
agencies and armies all have their own satellites and companies do.
(11:37):
So I was surprised to discover there are only about
two thousand, two hud eighteen operational satellites in orbit. That's
not really that many. Really, do you think that's not
a lot. I think it's not a lot. I mean,
these days it's not that expensive to launch a satellite.
You know, elementary schools can fund us a micro's cube
sat that ends up in orbit and takes pictures of stuff.
So the prices are really coming down. So two thousand,
(12:00):
two D eighteen not just like the big ones you
see with the giant solar panels. But it could be
just like little tiny satellites. Yeah, some of those are
pretty small. Some of those are pretty small. But we
only got two thousand, two hundreds. You know, like how
many cars are on a freeway at any moment. It's
much bigger number than that, and so, and space is
really big, and so at first you think, wow, there's
not that many satellites and space is huge, so there's
(12:22):
plenty of room for more traffic. Nothing to worry, nothing
to worry. But but but the problem is that it's
not just operational satellites that are out there, right, it's
first of all, unoperational satellites, and then bits of satellites,
junk of satellites, a little bits of rockets that blew up,
you know, stuff that astronauts dropped while they were on spacewalks.
(12:45):
It turns out there's a lot of junk up there
really and it's all man made? Or is it also
like you know asteroids to somehow got caught in our
orbit or things like that. This is just man made
space junk. I mean there are meteors right that hit
the Earth and burnham the atmosphere and you see that
kind of stuff on a nice night when you're seeing
meteor showers, etcetera. But this is just man made stuff
(13:07):
that's in or wow, how many do how much? How
much of this stuff do you think is out there?
So they did a calculation and you can't count this
stuff because a lot of it is too small. But
you know, we have two thousand operational satellites right, but
in terms of space junk, there's at least twenty thousand
trackable objects that's just like chunks of stuff that you
(13:27):
can see that you can see that like you know
Norad and the Department of Defense and how those folks
are keeping track of Wow, don't they wonder what they are? Like?
Could there be spy cameras from aliens? Is what I'm
where I'm going with this, Daniel Man, I would love
if there was a spike camera. But if I was
an alien and I wanted to build a spy camera,
(13:48):
I would just put it in a rock, you know,
hide it and make it look like a big asteroid
or something. But this is just the stuff they're tracking,
you know, because they don't want their two billion dollars
spy satellite or ten billion dollars space telescope or whatever
to bump into a piece of junks. And they track
this stuff. But that's only the stuff that they can track.
They track it so that they can so it doesn't
so they can maneuver around the other space drunk. Yeah,
(14:10):
it's like air traffic control, right, you want to get
this out of the lands, you have to make sure
now the other planes are too close by, and so
you've got to manage it. And so they keep track
of all this stuff. But it's a ten to one ratio. Right.
Did the two thousand operational objects include the secret space
spy satellites that they don't really want us to know?
Or are those in the unknown category? Um, that doesn't
(14:31):
include the things that the government doesn't want us to know.
But you know, a reasonable estimates based on launches and
stuff like that, because it's pretty hard to hide a launch,
so they can track twenty thou objects. And are these
small or these like you know, a bolt from that
slipped out of the space station, or are they pretty big?
These things are pretty big. You know, they're more than
ten centimeters across. You know, the largest um fifteen hundred
(14:54):
of these things wigh a total of nineteen hundred tons,
and the largest ten thousand of them weigh like five
thousand five tons, So it's a pretty big amount of stuff.
And again, this is just the stuff that we can track.
The stuff falls apart and get smaller, and then the
numbers get crazy, and this is all just human junk
(15:15):
in space. Like we've been. We've been that careless in
space that we have twenty thousand bits of junk out there.
You showed like a national park and this is like
littered with people's picnic garbage. I guess if you're out
in space, what do you do with your junk? Well,
actually what you do is you drop it on Earth.
The best thing to do with space junk is to
(15:37):
push it down into the atmosphere because the atmosphere will
burn it up. Anything from space is moving pretty quickly,
and if it hit the atmosphere, you'll just get fried.
So the best thing to do is to drop it
on the Earth. The worst thing to do is to
leave it in orbit around the Earth. I see. The
best thing to do is to burn it in the
atmosphere so it rains down in innocent people. Nobody, almost
(16:00):
nobody has ever been heard by falling space jump. The
atmosphere is a really good force field against space junk.
It's so good that what we should do with our
space junk is throw it against the atmosphere to you know,
atomize it. Oh, I see. So this is stuff that
has maybe falling off the space station or slipped out
of an astronaut's hand, but that stayed in orbit. Yeah,
and also the products of other collisions. And if you
(16:21):
look at even smaller stuff, there are nine hundred thousand
things that are smaller than ten centimeters. That's almost a
million pieces of space junk, little tiny bits. But those
they can't track, and they that's just an estimate. These
are not tiny bits. I mean ten centimeters. You know,
we're talking to something the size of a baseball. Like
that thing going at ten kilometers per second is not
(16:42):
a tiny anything. But you're right, these things are too
small for them to track. That's a lot of baseballs.
It's a lot of baseballs. And then if you just
say like any piece of junk, no matter what size,
then there are more than a hundred million bits of
space debris. And so where did all this stuff come from?
Is it all just from you know, our astronauts being
litter bugs or litter space bugs. Yeah, you know astronauts
(17:04):
like the flame and hot cheetohs and they just crumple
up the package and toss it over their shoulder. No,
it comes from like satellites falling apart, you know, bits
of paint flaking off of satellites. Also, we fired a
lot of rockets into space, and we just sort of
like leave those spent rocket stages and little bits of
like frozen fuel that didn't get used up. We just
(17:27):
generally haven't been thinking carefully about what kind of stuff
will be left from our exploration of space because we thought, hey,
space is so big and empty, it doesn't really matter
if you create a thousand little shards of ice that
are flying at really high speed. Wow, so it is
getting crowded with joke. I mean, there aren't that many
satellite but there's millions of bits of stuff out there.
There are millions of bits of stuff out there, Yeah,
(17:48):
flakes of paint, little bits of rocket motors, frozen coolant,
and you know, sometimes it's stuff that was created sort
of on purpose. Like in the sixties, the US and
Russia had anti satellite weapons. We built special missiles we
could fire at like the enemy's satellites because you know,
maybe you don't want them flying their spy satellites over Colorado,
(18:09):
and so you want to fire a missile to take
out their satellite. Interesting space wars, space wars wars, Yeah,
and China got in the game about ten years ago.
They built a system and they tested it and they
destroyed one of their own satellites, but it created a
million pieces of space debris that are still up there.
They blew something up as a test. Yeah, they fired
(18:30):
a missile into space in two thousand seven, blew up
one of their own defunct satellites and it created a
million pieces of space junk. Great, thank you, China. And
sometimes it is astronauts, you know, like there was one
time an astraw lost a bag of tools. You know,
(18:50):
you're out there on a spacewalk, you forget to clip
it and the oops, it just sort of drifts away
from you. And that was a Sandra Bullock movie. I
seen that movie. Then that's the one part of that
movie that was correct. Um An astronaut ones like lost
spare glove, you know, so that kind of stuff is
floating out there, but it's dwarfed by this sort of
like a little just pieces of junk from satellites that
(19:13):
are broken or smashed into each other. I wonder how
that happens. You're like, you're out in space, you might die,
but you take off your glove just just to like
pick it a little something, and then whoops. You let
you gotta open your flame and hot cheetos package, right,
and you can't do those and those really thick gloves, yeah,
those big thick fingers, and then you take the cheetos
up and sort of bang them up against your space helmet.
(19:34):
You know, this thing through the shooting use velcro fore
the cheetos. No. I think there must have been an
extra glove or something. But occasionally astronauts have job stuff
that's not a big contribution to the space junk. Most
of it is like flakes of paint and little bits
of rocket cooliant and stuff like that, but it's still dangerous.
And how much of that is our space cheetos? There
(19:56):
are no Cheetos in space that I'm aware of. That's
her first for you. Also, great, so that that's a
lot of stuff out there, and so I guess now
the question is it a problem? Is it going to
be a problem, and what can we do about it?
So let's get into that. But first let's take a
quick break, all right. I know, so there are millions
(20:27):
of pieces of debris out there in just in our
immediate orbit, and some of them might be space cheetos,
some of them might not be. We don't know what
the Chinese or the Russians have been developing out there
or testing. Maybe they have a system to launch cheetos
into space at our satellites. Yeah, maybe cheetos are especially
good at taking out spy satellites, you know, I mean,
(20:48):
until you do the experiment, you never know the answer.
You gotta keep an open minding science, right, Yeah, you
want you want that um you know that cheesy powder
that they have to get into the enemy's satellite mechanism,
And that's the worst, the worst of those gyro mechanisms. Yeah,
that's especially designed by food scientists to be a space weapon,
(21:08):
gets all over your your spy leans and then it's
all ruined. Space junk really is a problem. Okay, so
it is. It is a problem that scientists are concerned
about right now. It really is. Yeah, And it's a
problem sort for two reasons. One is that it's a
danger to the stuff that's out there, and the other
is that it's likely to make more of itself. So
first of all, you worry just like is the stuff
(21:29):
going to bump into something valuable? I mean, you build
your complicated space telescope or spy side light or whatever,
and you shoot it up into space, and then somebody's
junk comes along like ten to fifteen kilometers per second
and just trashes it. Wow, fifteen kilometers per second? Like,
is that if it's in a different orbit or like
(21:51):
you know, like in um you can't tend to think
in space it's everything being kind of at the same
speed that you are. But is it possible for things
to be in a different orbit and come at you
at that speed? Absolutely? This is not organized self driving
cars in space right where everything is moving along with
no relative velocity. There's lots of different orbits that cross right,
and there's no traffic lights, and so you can free
(22:12):
for all. It's a free for all exactly. There's no
cops up there whistling to people to stop or anything,
and so your orbit path could totally cross somebody else's
orbital path. That's a problem. Even a flick of paint
would probably do some harm to your solar panel or
Cheeto's bag, for sure. A tiny fleck with paint going
at fifteen kilometers per second is like getting punched by
(22:33):
Mike Tyson, right, and nobody wants their satellite getting punched
by Mike Tyson, especially in space. That would be extra embarrassing.
Maybe NASA should do that, you know, they should have
like last pre flight check, Mike, please come down and
punch the satellite and see how it goes. But it's
a real problem. And you know, sometimes you can protect
parts of your satellite, we'll talk about that later, but
(22:54):
some parts you just can't. Like you don't want to
build a shield in front of the lens of your
space telescope, that's why you built it right to look
out into space, or you have these big solar panels.
You can't really do much to protect them. They're supposed
to be out there gathering sunlight, so you're really vulnerable.
And even if you put armor on your satellite, that's
just gets more expensive, right because every little ounce you
(23:16):
send it to space because like right, yeah, you can't
armor your solar panels because that blocks them and that
they don't work. So it's a real problem. And they
try to keep track of this stuff and because they
don't want their expensive satellites to get hit by space junk,
and so they have you know, as we were saying,
tracking on like twenty thousand of these things. And they
observe a lot of close calls. There's something like twenty
(23:39):
close calls every day between a satellite and some piece
of trackable junk. Like every day times there's somebody freaking
out in some control room going turn left, turn left,
watch out for that space to Yeah, And they're pretty
careful about this stuff, and so they have to like
contact the owners of the satellite and say, hey, some
piece of junk is coming your way. You might want
to move up or down or let to write or
(24:00):
just any direction really to get out of the way.
Oh wow, are there like traffic controllers or space can
you can I study to be a space traffic controller. Yeah.
I think it's a pretty stressful job. But the Defense
Department does this, you know, because they've got a lot
of satellites up there that are pretty valuable and pretty
important for national security, and so they keep track of
this stuff and they contact satellite owners if their satellite
(24:22):
is in the path of some junk. Oh wow, imagine
getting that call. I think it's not too unusual, you know.
I think most satellites a few times a year have
to maneuver around space junk because it's getting kind of
crowded up there. And we've even had collisions. Really, and
what happens You just obliterate the satellite or yeah. Yeah,
that's the problem is that when to like defunct satellites
(24:44):
hit each other or when a piece of space junk
takes out of satellite, what do you get more space
junk more? Right, that's the other problem you're saying, And
he said junk gets junk. Yeah, It's like if you
litter in the park, somebody else walks are like, Oh,
looks like this park isn't cleaned up too much. I'll
just dump all my trash here. Um, But I'm not
(25:06):
sure that analogy works, but the idea that it's wondering
how that works. It's more like if you if you
find a piece of litter in the park and you
go to grow it, it it turns into two pieces of litter, right, yeah,
I guess so, or this literal taxi and breaks you
into pieces of literal in park right covers you and
Cheetos does It's terrible, um, But the idea is that, yeah,
(25:27):
that if a piece of space junk is a satellite,
it causes more space junk, and then the number of
pieces of space junk grows, and then you have a
higher chances of making more space junk, which of course
just makes more space junk. And so you can see
this sort of cascade effects possible. You get enough stuff
out there, the chances of collision grow very quickly, and
(25:47):
then the chances have become almost certain, and then you
just have spaces just totally filled with junk, right, dangers
junk right that you can't get through. Yeah. And so
some sort of space groups, advocacy groups predictlarly sort of
tipping point where we're gonna get too much junk pretty
soon that you're gonna get this cascade effect, and it
might destroy a huge number of things in orbit and
(26:08):
basically make space unusable. You can actually kind of extrapolate
and and see the point where it's just the jungle
just multiply beyond making space reachable. Yeah, because you can't
fly a rocket with people in it through space if
it's totally filled with space junk. You can't launch a
satellite into that orbit if it's totally filled with space junk.
(26:28):
And if all the satellites that we had out there
right now ended up getting hit by space junk and
turning into more space junk, you have an enormous number
of pieces of junk, and it would make space basically unusable.
You know what we need, I think, Daniel, we need
like a giant space vacuum that would totally suck space
already has a vacuum. Why doesn't space just suck it
up into outer space? Suck it up space? Um, But
(26:52):
it's you know, it's already sort of a problem. Like
we have people out there in space right now in
the space station, and these folks a few times a
year or have to move the whole space station like
into a higher orbit in order to avoid some piece
of junk that's coming nearby. They're actively doing, you know,
like Frogger is like changing names all the time. It's
space space. Yeah, and sometimes they have to like rush
(27:14):
the astronauts into one of those escape capsules because the
big pieces of junk is coming that didn't spot soon
enough and can't get out of the way, and it
might like you know, debilitate the space station and those
folks that have to basically fly back down to Earth.
I feel like you're quoting that Tender Bullet movie again.
I think it might go the other way around. I
think the Sandra Bot movie is based on real events.
(27:38):
So and I think it also happened with the Space
Shuttle ones right, like it like it actually did some
damage through the Space Shuttle. All the time, every Space
Shuttle comes back is pitted with space junk. You'll find
like holes in the wings, they find scratches in the windshield.
It's not unusual when the Space Shuttle comes back to
find like, you know, bits of stuff embedded in the
windshield all the way down to like half the depth
(27:59):
of the wind She old, yeah, yeah, exactly. You're like,
what is that squeak squick? Is that Cheetos? What how
did that get in there? Yeah, it's a it's a
dirty environment out there, and so you know how you're
driving down the highway you end up with like a
bunch of bugs on your windshield. Imagine those bugs were
going you know, ten times a speed of sound or something,
or they were like ball bearings just over the highway.
(28:23):
That would be pretty dangerous. Yeah, it would be pretty dangerous.
And so it's a real problem. We got to make
sure there's not too much space junk up there, and
we've got to clean it up sort of before it
gets too late, before it starts to multiply out of control. Okay,
have a new product idea for elon musk already, I'm
sure I'm not ready. Giant space windshield wipers. That's what
(28:45):
we cleanse the atmosphere. Well, you know, we're going to
talk about solutions to the space junk problem. And that's
not the dumbest one that's on the list. Oh really,
all right, it's already taken. It was already in a
movie with Sender Bullock. So that affects our ability to
go out into space. Does it affect actually us here
on Earth if space gets filled with junk? Well, this
(29:08):
sort of the direct problem and the indirect problem. The
direct problem is, like, do you have to worry about
a piece of junk falling out of space and conking
you on the head? Right, Well, there's about one piece
of space junk per day that falls out of orbit
and into the atmosphere, but those burn up. Right, as
we were saying before, it's actually a good thing for
(29:28):
space junk to hit the atmosphere because it gets fried,
it gets shredded, and it's just a nice you know,
another meteor in the night sky. It's pretty rare for
this stuff to actually hit the Earth. There was once
in a woman in Oklahoma was hit by a piece
of rocket, but usually you don't worry about it. Like
the Air Force when they launch rockets, they don't even
really care where they go because they just mostly burn up.
(29:51):
Of course it had to be Oklahoma, I feel, where
else are you saying Oklahoma deserves it? Or just like
weird stuff happens in Oklahoma? And say I was if
I was writing a Steven Spielberg movie where a piece
of dunk kids the womin in the head, it would
probably be an Oklahoma. Alright, that's good to know, but
I think the more direct issue for people out here
is that we rely on stuff in space. When your
(30:13):
flight is taking off, it's using a navigational system that
relies on satellites. When your phone is locating itself because
you got lost while going for a hike, it's using GPS.
So our society really relies on space technology. And if
all that was destroyed or became unusable, you know, hey,
listening to Daniel Jorge explain the universe would take longer
(30:34):
to download, you would get laws trying to get to
some WiFi or something. Yeah, precisely. So it's important part
of our society. We want to maintain it. It's not
really a direct danger to you unless you're an astronaut,
but it's important that we take care of the space
near the Earth. Right, it's not good. It's not good.
It's not good. All right, let's get into what we
can actually do to maybe clean up some of the
(30:55):
space junk maybe or prevent it or um work around it.
But first let's take another quick break. All right, Then
space is a little bit of a problem, and you're
(31:16):
also telling me it's kind of a problem or it
might become a problem for astronomers too. Right, like people
trying to study space. Yeah, there's been a big uproar
recently because of Elon Musk's plans to basically fill space
with satellites. He's launched, you know, something like a hundred
and twenty these things so far and then sort of
low Earth orbit and they streak across the sky. And
(31:39):
if you have really valuable time on a telescope because
you want to study something super far away and you've
been waiting months for your like ten hours of telescope time,
and then Musk satellites you sort of zooming from the lens,
you know, then you get a big streak. You don't
want that photo bomb. You don't want that photo bomb.
And he's only launched a hundred He's planning to launch
thousands and thou these things. So astronomers are worried. First
(32:03):
of all, like easy going to be blocking your view.
Is ground based astronomy going to be impossible in the
near future just to improve our Internet access. But then
also from the space junk point of view, like you've
got thousands of things up there, one of them goes
wrong bumps into another one, like it could pretty quickly
go bad. I mean if it was Bill Murray, you'd
be like, hey, that's a cool photo bomb on my photo.
(32:24):
But Elon Musk, that's just annoying. Yeah, precisely. And remember,
you know, you have ten times as many things up there.
It's a hundred times more likely to get collisions because
you have many more ways to get collisions. And so
he's planning to launch thousands of these things and just
a few of them have to go wrong for it
to sort of cascade and create a disaster, reached that
(32:45):
tipping point where it all just pulverizes everything and it
becomes a deadly, deadly barrier for space travel. Yeah, he's
thought of this, of course, and he has planned, and
you know NASA and f A, whatever say that he's
planning is good and essentially involves making sure that any
of these satellites that go wrong basically just fall and
(33:06):
then they get burned up in the atmosphere. And that's
not a terrible plan because that's what we want. We
want to push all this stuff, all the space junk
down into the atmospheres. The atmosphere does the job for us.
So the friction of the atmosphere basically melts all this stuff.
So how does that work. So that's one way we
can kind of avoid the space junk problem is to
(33:26):
make sure it comes down. But how can they do
that if it's like, if sanidite becomes disabled, what's going
to make it actually maneuver into the atmosphere? Well, you
can just get lucky and hope that it's the way
that it maneuvered or got disabled makes it fall. But
you know, there's a lot of stuff out there that's
in stable orbits, and uh, one thing we can just
do is wait, you know, stop launching stuff and just
(33:48):
wait because eventually all this stuff will fall. Remember, the
atmosphere is not just like a turn off. There's no
perfect space in near Earth. There's a very slight atmosphere
and it drags on stuff and slows it down. Right,
But the problem isn't the problem that it's just one
piece per per day that falls. Wouldn't that take you know,
how would take a long time. So that's not really
(34:08):
a solution. So people have some crazy ideas, you know.
One of them, of course involves lasers. Of course, Hey, physicists,
how should we solve the problems lasers? No? No, I
just really want to comb my hair. Oh yeah, do
you want to know what the problem is first though,
just lasers. Lasers, That's right. The solution is always lasers,
(34:29):
and the answer is always aliens. Um No, But lasers
is not a terrible idea because if you could shoot
a laser at this stuff, you could slow it down.
You could You don't even need to blow it up, right,
You don't want to blow it up. But you want
to do is slow it down a little bit so
it drops and then the atmosphere takes over. So you
just gotta sort of like a blade it a little
bit on the side. I remember we talked about those
(34:50):
guys that are also using lasers to maybe save the
Earth from incoming asteroids. It's a similar idea. You don't
have to blow up the whole asteroid. You just got
to sort of shave off a little at city in
one side so it misses. In this case, you want
to just sort of like rough it up a little
bit so that it falls into the atmosphere. Wow. Like
literally you'd be like pew pew, pew, pew pew taking
(35:11):
stuff out of out of the sky. There for the test,
That's exactly what it sounded like. Oh really, well, why
imagine that I can foresee what physicists but sound effectively.
But you know, shooting death rays into the sky, it
would take a lot of death rays. And so this approach,
of course has some problems. So people studied about ten
years ago, but it doesn't seem like it's really going
(35:31):
to solve sort of the larger scale problems of having
a hundred million objects. So my son practicing video games
all this time just to get ready for that job
of shooting down space degree, I should tell him there's
no career in that. That's right. Yeah, I think you know,
that was very impressive long range planning. But I'm hoping
there are other ways that you're something can make money
(35:52):
with those skills. Okay, So that's so shooting them down
with lasers not a great, uh good long term solution.
What are other ways we can have solved this space
jump problem. Well, another one is a ship called clean
Space one which looks, I'm not joking, like a big
net and the idea is to gather space junk together
and then again dump it into the atmosphere. Right, it's
(36:14):
sort of weird, but we're treating the whole Earth is
like a trash can, and the Clean Space up. What
you gotta do is gather the stuff and then dump
it into the trash can. And so this is maybe
your son could operate this thing, you know, steer this
thing around, gathering space jump. That's what every parent wants
for your son to be a space janitor. Thank you,
Daniel Hey, it's pretty glamorous. I mean space janitors. Come on,
(36:36):
that's the way you work your way up, right, That's
how you become an astronaut. You've got space, you get
a job as a janitor, and then you know, step
by step, eventually you're piloting the space station I mean spacetaniter.
It's just like, you know, barely a step above podcaster.
So at least it's a step up. Um. But that's
not a joke. You know, this is an idea. Gather
the stuff and then dump into lower orbit and hope
(36:58):
that it eventually decay, is down to burn up. So
this would be what does this look like like a giant?
Like a giant like four rockets holding a giant net
in between them. It looks basically, yeah, like a big net.
You know, it's got like four big arms and some
lines between them, and they would essentially just like reach
out like an tuck a huge claw, grab a piece
of space junk and then drag it down into lower orbit.
(37:22):
But this would work for you know, maybe like the
twenty thousand defunct large trackable objects we have, but it
wouldn't really help clean up all the other tiny stuff,
all right, So then what can we do about those?
Not that much? I mean, one thing we can do
is we can stop adding more stuff. Right when has
it ever worked with humanity? We could start being responsible,
(37:44):
I promised, starting today, we're gonna be good. Really this time,
this time it's gonna be We're gonna be good. I'm
gonna stop eating those cheetos tomorrow tomorrow. But here, actually
there's a bit of hope because Americans, at least American
space agencies have tried to design their rockets to produce
less space junk, so create like smaller number of larger
pieces of debris that are more likely to fall into
(38:06):
the atmosphere. They don't explode bits of coolant into space
because earlier we're like, oh, I don't care whatever it's
out in space, But now we do care, And so
are more recent rockets produced less space junk per launch,
per launch, or per like if you lose it per
launcher launch. Every time you launch a rocket there's stages
of it that are supposed to burn up and don't.
(38:27):
Always there's bits of coolant that you know, that league
or solid rocket fuel that wasn't burnt up. And so
are more recent rockets are better at that. They produced
less junk per launch, but still they do produce junk.
So you know that's that's not a way to clean
it up. It's just a way to like be bad
less quickly. So I think what I'm getting from you
is that to solve the space junk problems, scientists have
(38:49):
come up with a couple of solutions. One is, wait
a million years. That solves a lot of problems. To
convince you managed to stop littering that never happened. Or
three shoot lasers at it. Yeah, and so we're all
waiting for your son to be good enough at the
laser to solve this problem. Doesn't sound like there's a
good solution here. No, there's not a great solution to
(39:10):
cleaning up space junk. And so in the interim, what
we've done is just trying to protect our satellites. You
put a shield around it to try to protect it
and they're pretty clever. This is really cool design. It's
called a Whipple shield. And the ideas and don't just
like make your satellite really heavy with armor, but put
a really light thin shield, but have it be separated
from the satellite a little bit. And the idea is
(39:31):
that it doesn't destroy the space junk, is sort of
deflects it, it turns it, it breaks it up and
and changes its direction. Oh interesting, Yeah, and so you're
more likely to survive impact with space junk, and so
you know, we have some technology to protect ourselves, but yeah,
we sort of painted ourselves into a corner here. Space
is filled with junk and it's not an easy way
to clean it up. Well, hopefully those um maybe in
(39:53):
the future space general will be like the most valuable
profession on the planet. Yeah. I think we also just
need to find some new way to put the cost
of making space junk on the people producing it, because
right now the cost of space junk is on the
people launching a new satellite. Like you have a billion
dollar satellite, you have to protect yourself from the space junk.
(40:15):
The people who satellite made that, they're free and clear,
they don't really care. So somehow we need to make
sure that the people who are producing space junk bear
the cost of it, and maybe that'll help fund to
clean up somehow. Interesting. It's like carbon credits, but for
a space junk. Yeah. Or we need everybody have like
an insurance card so that when things bump into each other, say, hey,
(40:35):
that was your piece of junk. Now you owe me
a billion dollars. Oh interesting, So more more like cars
actually then, you know, for creating a traffic jam up there. Yeah.
We also lawyers to solve this problem. Space lawyers, space lawyers.
All right, maybe I'll try to steer my son towards
that profession. It sounds like it might have law that
(40:57):
that'll impress his grandparents also. All right, Well, it sounds
like there are a lot of things out there in
space that you might run into, and it's going to
get crowdier crowder in the next couple of years. Yeah,
and cheesier and cheeto here, that's right, and spicier and
flaming and flaming hot. Well, hopefully flaming hot, because that
(41:19):
means it's burning up. Yeah, what happens if you drop
a space cheeto? Actually, it does get flaming hot. Right
as it burns up in your entry. So yeah, in space,
all cheetos are flaming hot. There you go. How can
we ask for a better adding to So think about
that next time you were going to launch your own
(41:39):
micro satellite into space. Do you really need that out
there or are you just contributing to the problem. So
next time you look out there into space at night,
think about that beautiful star you might be looking at
could be a piece of cheeto. I've got nothing after that.
And that's it all right, everybody, Thanks are listening. We
(42:00):
hope you enjoy it. Then thanks everyone, see you next time.
Before you still have a question after listening to all
these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to
hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one word, or
(42:23):
email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(42:45):
Ye
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Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
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