The Lost Wanderer Podcast for May 18th, 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sh y, I'm taking of my best, leaving Earth behind

(00:24):
and to.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
The stars of the centaur reason.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
A centaur.

Speaker 4 (00:32):
On the space night, to man with the stars and
the insol.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
I'm friends and family on the stars. A screen rule.

Speaker 5 (01:01):
Story.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Not the center me.

Speaker 4 (01:07):
A space.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
At the stars and the tall season master said moves
the station, not the center, me.

Speaker 4 (01:38):
On the station.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
At the stars and the music.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Sent und.

Speaker 5 (01:59):
Show.

Speaker 6 (02:08):
Time for this nation to take a clearly leading role
in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the
key to our future on Earth.

Speaker 5 (02:20):
H All Firm on Biable.

Speaker 6 (02:42):
Today is a day from morning and remember Nancy and
I are gained the core, but the tragedy of the
Shuttle challenge.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
The following program may contain false language, adult teens, and
bad attempts of human listener discretion.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Is a vibe.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
What is President Trump's goal?

Speaker 4 (03:15):
What is his vision?

Speaker 3 (03:16):
He wants to put an American flag on Mars? By
Glaudi Basier Lamberd. I am your host Jeblef also known

(03:42):
as a cosmic bard over on Twitter slash x and
this is the Lost Wanderer podcast from eighteenth, twenty twenty five.
Happy Sunday Evening and welcome aboard the acs serenade as
is our want Here at Lost Wanderer podcast, we typically
will start out a show if any of these news

(04:04):
stories that I'm about to talk happen, and that is
of course the Artemis Accords signees. Fifty five nations have
now pinned their commitment to NASA. NASA announced Norway's decision
to join the Artemis Accords for a safe, peaceful and
Prosperous Future in Space, as the Space agency website phrases it.

(04:26):
Norway is the third country to join the Artemis Accords
so far in twenty twenty five. A signing ceremony to
Welcome Norway took place on May fifteenth at a Norwegian
space agency in Oslo, with Norway's Minister of Trade and Industry,
Cecilia Miersath signing on behalf of the Norwegian government. So

(04:47):
welcome Norway, also known around here as Finland's lesser known
cousin the Israel. That's said, we do begin and tonight
not necessarily in orbit or on the Moon or oh
even Mars. Tonight's leading story takes us to the edge

(05:11):
of the Solar system fifteen billion with a b miles
from Earth, where a forty seven year old spacecraft just
proved that legends do not die easily. Voyager one, humanity's
most distant traveler, has been drifting through the cosmic dark
since nineteen seventy seven. It's farther from us than anything

(05:33):
else we've ever built, and frankly, it had every right
to just retire and be quiet now. But last month
there was wonderful, amazing engineers at NASA reached across the
void and did something. Well, it kind of feels equal
parts Sci Fi sorcery and stubbornness. What did they do?
They turned the damn thrusters back on. So let's set

(05:58):
the stage, shall we. Boyger one's main attitude control thrusters,
the little ones that keep the antenna pointed back to Earth,
hadn't fired since twenty oh four. That's two decades of silence. Instead,
it had been relying on backup thrusters, which, like most
backup plans, were slowly crumbling under pressure. And with a

(06:20):
major Earth based antenna about to go offline for upgrades,
NASA was looking at the very real risk of losing
contact altogether. So what did they do? They gambled. The
mission team sent a software patch in a remote command
to reboot the heater circuits tied to the main thrusters,
a fix that was based on a hunch stitched together

(06:42):
by engineers who had spent years treating the spacecraft like
a sacred relic and a bit of a lab rat
at the same time. Now, keep in mind, this isn't
some local patch on a server, say in Pasadena. That
signal took twenty three hours to reach Voyager, and another
twenty three hours to hear back, almost two full days
of radio silence, and then it worked. The thruster heaters

(07:07):
came back online, the fuel lines thawed, the Lazarus thrusters fired,
and just like that, Voyger's one heart beat steadied. Now
it was a small maneuver, but the symbolism was massive.
This was just about course correction, or rather it wasn't.
This was about endurance, about a machine older than well

(07:31):
most of the people currently working on it, still holding
that line at the frontier of the known. Now, let's
not try to wax romanticize it too much. Voyager, unlike
the Star Trek movies, it's probably not immortal. The power
budget is dwindling, the instruments are going dark one by one,

(07:51):
and there will come a time when signal fades for
the last time, but not today. Today, Voyder reminded us
that even in the frozen, airless dark of interstellar space,
human hands can still reach out and touch the untouchable.
No one expected the spacecraft to still be talking to us,
let alone responding to the new commands, but Voyager. Voyager

(08:16):
never cared about expectations. It only cared about the mission.
And tonight fifteen billion, with a B miles out, that
mission is continuing. And as we come out of Voyager's
Lazarus acting, I think tonight couldn't get more hopeful, but

(08:40):
it just might because down here on Earth, while we're
reanimating probes at the edge of the heliosphere, Houston is
trying to resurrect something a little closer to home. It's
place at the center of human spaceflight. Enter the Mars Act,
a freshly filed piece of legislation out of Texas that

(09:00):
stands for a mission to modernize aeronautic resources for Space.
And yeah, it's a bit of a tortured acronym, we admit,
but it does have the subtlety of a maybe a
B movie title. But let's give it some credit. Its
aim is to inject one billion dollars into NASA's Johnson

(09:21):
Space Center to prep it for our next big leap,
which is Mars. Well, why, now, you may ask, because
js HOMO mission control, astronaut training, and the Neutral Buoyancy
Lab and enough Moon rocks to probably make a geologist
cry has been running on yesterday's infrastructure for way too long.

(09:44):
Ye appealing paint, outdated systems, facilities built well when bell
bottoms were still cold, if they ever were. And if
we're serious about heading to Mars, I mean really serious,
then the launch pad doesn't start on the pad. It's
start with the engineers in Houston having the tools they
need to train with crews. The test systems simulate microgravity

(10:07):
and yes even figure out what astronauts are going to
eat let's say s three year trip. But because rockets
get the headlines, infrastructure gets often overlooked, but it does
get the job done. Under the Mars Act, JSSE would
finally get a rebuilt, modernized mission control capable of handling

(10:27):
real time ops between Earth, the Moon and Mars. Upgrades
to the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, the massive underwater astronaut playground
built for practicing extra vehicular maneuvers and low gravity prepares
an overhauls for the Astra Materials Lab, because if we're
going to start bringing back same Martian soil, we better

(10:48):
have somewhere respectable to put it in, not nineteen sixty
eight tupperware, but not to be overlooked, because let's face it,
it's a kind of our thing here on this show,
a brand new space food lab, because if there's one
thing worse than freeze dried sadness on a trip to
Mars is eating the same meal one thousand, two hundred

(11:09):
times in a row. Now, some folks will probably say
it's just poor political show boating a senator looking to
funnel money home, and hey, you know, they may not
be wrong to be cynical in this way. But this
isn't about building another parking garage at NASA. It is
about restoring America's space backbone before it buckles under the

(11:32):
weight of its own legacy. We have China that is
building new space stations, India is sending landers to the
mood in Houston. Let's space it. Houston needs a win,
and if the Mars Act delivers what it promises, it
might just actually get one. Because it's hard to admit

(11:54):
in this new space race, it's not necessarily about who
can go the farthest. It may actually be about who's
more ready, And sometimes being ready means laying fresh concrete
on old legends. Now that says we are coming off
the heels of Houston's billion dollar bid to reclaim its

(12:14):
spaceflight crown, we do have another NASA endeavor that's quietly
defying gravity and the unfortunate possible budget cuts meat the
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Named after NASA's first chief
of Astronomy and affectionately dubbed the mother of Hubble, this
next gen observatory is shaping up to be a game

(12:35):
changer in our quest to understand the Cosmos. Now, despite
loving financial challenges, engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
have successfully completed testing on one half of the telescope,
demonstrating its readiness for the harsh environment of space. This
milestone paves the way for the integration of the flight
solar eray on shield and deployable aperture cover, bringing in

(12:58):
the Roman Telescope one step close. Are to launch, Get
to launch no earlier than October twenty six. The Roman
telescope boast a field of view one hundred times greater
than that of Hubble, enabling it to serve a vast
swath of the sky with unprecedented detail. Its mission, if
it so chooses, to probe the mysteries of dark energy,

(13:19):
search for exoplanets, and explore the structure and evolution of
the universe. But we do have a little bit of
a kicker to this. Amidst the technical triumphs, the Roman
Telescope bases an uncertain future. Proposed budget cuts threatened to
derail this ambitious project, casting a shadow whever its potential
to revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos. Yet in a

(13:45):
bit of old style NASA fashion, the team is pressing
on embodying the spirit of exploration and resilience, because in
the general tapestry of the universe, the Roman Telescope does
represent more than just a scientific instrument. Mobolizes humanities and
during quests to reach for the stars and maybe one
day visit them. But not all is necessarily doom and gloom.

(14:12):
As NASA scrapes and fights to fund this Roman Space Telescope.
Across the launch pad to another site, we have SpaceX,
which is stacking boosters like poker chips at the high table.
But recently, y FAA has handed SpaceX a nice little

(14:33):
shiny new permission slip approval for up to twenty five
starship launches per year from the company South Texas Launch
Like aka Starbase aka well, let's face it, Elon's personal sandbox.
So that's right, we're gonna could possibly get twenty five
starship launches a year from just one site. That's not

(14:55):
really a launch cadence, it's a it's more of a
space fright skal if you ask me well for contacts.
We used to be impressed when NASA pulled off one
Shuttle mission every couple months. Now SpaceX is lining up
biweekly mega launches of the world's most powerful rocket from
the same beach that used to be known for bird
watching and tacos. That said, it's not just a numbers game.

(15:20):
This FAA license clears the way for rapid development, rapid iteration,
and admittedly a few rapid unscheduled disassemblies along the way,
because let's face it, starships not flying satellites yet, not
officially delivering any cargo, and definitely not taking anyone to

(15:42):
Mars yet. But these twenty five flights. Well, they're part
of the test campaign, the mad dash to make a reusable,
two stage, stayless, steal orbital juggernut that can launch one
hundred tons or more to orbit and lay itself like
it just won some sort of bets. But the approval itself, well,
it is kind of a signal the FAA is betting

(16:06):
that SpaceX is not only ready to fly more, they're
ready to fly more often and to learn fast from
their mistakes. That means launch, explode, learn, tweak, refly, and
do it all without turning book that you get into
a no go zone for six months. I said, of course,
when it comes to SpaceX, not everyone is thrilled. Environmental

(16:31):
groups are watching very very closely because you know, they
don't actually have jobs, so they can watch very very closely.
The areas, coastal wildlife and small communities have been stuck
in a balancing act between cutting edge engineering and not
getting blessed off the map every other Tuesday. Okay, with
some of the reason you wrap it unscheduled, it could

(16:54):
be a little bit of a fair concern, but we
know most of it is because they just hate Elon.
But from a spaceflight perspective. This is how Starship moves
from hype to hardware. Twenty five launches a year means
real data, real stress test, a real shot at finally
making reusable, rapid turnaround heavy lift flight more than just

(17:16):
say a press release. And for space Acts, it's not
just about Mars. It is about launching satellites for Starlink,
It's about contracts with NASA and the Pentagon, and it's
about showing the world that orbital access isn't a once
in a while magic trick. It will be a service.
So whether you do love Musk or love the groan

(17:37):
at him, you can't deny the math. Starship is now
cleared to fly more often than your cousin will visit
the Gem. And in world of rocketry, reputation is evolution.
I meant repetitions. Sorry about that, And every flight brings
the future a little closer. That said, just rememberber to

(18:00):
duck when the launch windows open, just in case. But
if Starship is the shiny new hot rod of the
SpaceX fleet, then the Falcon nine is the indestructible pickup
truck that just won't quit. Dented, dusty, patched up, but

(18:23):
still basically outrunning everything on the highway. And now, well,
now it's made history again. On May thirteenth, Booster B
ten sixty seven, yes that's her name, don't wear it out,
launched twenty eight more Starling satellites in the orbit, making

(18:45):
her twenty eighth flight. You heard rate twenty eight. That's
more than most astronauts will ever rack up in their careers,
let alone what they would he dream of. This Booster
has been around the block. She's flown crude missions, cargo,

(19:06):
runs the ISS communication satellite you basically name it. She's
dropped payloads in orbit, kissed the stratosphere and glided her
back way back down like she's got it all memorized.
If rockets could smoke cigars, this one would doublely have
a stogie in her nozzle. No, Clinton's not running it.
I know where you're going with that, ordy. And what's more,

(19:30):
he landed again and did it perfectly on the drone ship.
Just read the instructions. Out there botting along in the
Atlantic like it, you know, just out for a little
casual straw sholl sipping margarriedle on an inflatable raft. Well,
let's let's put this in a little bit of context.

(19:53):
The Space Shuttle, its main tank was jettisoned after one use.
The solid boosters needed full over Falcon nine, it's flying
the same firstage again and again and again and then
a little more again, with a turnaround table that is
actually getting shorter every year. Now this isn't just engineering,

(20:17):
it's kind of a manufacturing defiance. It's SpaceX looking at
the traditional model of use once rebuild everything and saying, Hi,
why are we doing this? Booster B ten sixty seven
has now helped put hundreds of satellites in the orbit,
part of the ever growing starlink consolation. Love it or
hate it, it's changing the game for global Internet access

(20:40):
and this booster has been the heart of that system,
a literal engine of deployment, helping pave the path toward
low Earth orbit as a service and not just a spectacle.
And now, yeah, I know it's easy to get number
this well, another starlink launch, another Falcon nine, But don't

(21:01):
let this reputation foll you. Every successful reuse of this
booster is a thunderous middle finger to the old ways
of doing things. And it's truth that you don't need
a new vehicle every time that you want to fly,
Sometimes the grizzled veteran is still the one you trust
to get the job done. So here's to be ten

(21:21):
sixty seven, the workhorse, the mule, the legend. If Starship
is the future, Falcon nine is the foundation it stands upon,
and for as long as she keeps flying, you damn
well better believe we will be watching. Now that leads us,

(21:46):
that kind of leads us to everyone's everyone's favorite segment.

Speaker 4 (21:53):
And now assholes in space.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
That said, we know, we know, we know they're assholes.
Let's start with a round of applause or China no, seriously,
being honest, God, I can't even believe I'm saying this.
They've earned it, They've earned the applause. They recently pulled

(22:40):
off one of the most ambitious celestial recovery missions we've
seen in years, rescuing not one, but two lunar satellites
that had gone rogue during admission to the Moon. You see,
back in December, these two satellites part of a mysterious
Chinese lunar mission. They ended up a little bit of all,
of course, how far, of course, I'll try drifting helplessly

(23:01):
between Earth and Moon and somewhere vaguely toward oops for
one hundred and twenty three days. But instead of writing
them off or letting them become cosmic confetti, Chinese engineers
went full kind of Apollo thirteen here and orchestrated a
high stakes multibody gravitational slingshot maneuver, using the Earth, the Moon,

(23:23):
and even the bit of the Sun's gravity to guide
them back into usable orbit. That's like playing some interplanetary
billiards right here, and it worked, and now these satellites
are actually back in action, you know, doing them oh,
whatever it is that they're doing, because officially Chinese Space

(23:44):
Agency hasn't really said anything about it. But that said,
at least they didn't kill a cow with satellites coming
back into Earth but not knowing what China is up
to actually kind of brings us to our second exhibit,
the Yaugan satellites on Mayol Loven trying to launch another

(24:07):
trio of what it calls electromagnetic environment detection satellites. You
may know them better by their street name Spybirds launch
from T one on Long March six a rocket. The
satellites are now happily floating information listening, watching and according
to Western analysis, probably scanning radar, signature, tracking naval fleets

(24:29):
and troll you know, triangulating, well, you know, anything that moves. Now.
To be fair, China is not the only one playing
this game. But what makes it worthy of this segment
assholes in space. It's kind of the utter nonchalance of
it all. They launch them under vague scientific label, slapp

(24:51):
remote sensing on the side, cute little animation in their
press release you while everyone knows what they're for. It's
like claving your missile silo, Uncle Mao's corn barn. We
know what it is. And while these launches are stacking up,
China now has dozens of these platforms in orbit. We
are watching a bit of a quiet militaration of space

(25:13):
happening one trio at a time. But wait, there's there's more.
Because while China is busy flinging satellites in the gravity,
slingshots and geopolitical you know, side eyes to everyone, but
the Russia has decided to return a time capsule. And

(25:33):
no I'm not talking about the hobbit that we just
watched on the Vincent Charles Project. Let me introduce you
to Cosmos or eight two, a failed Soviet Venus Lander
from nineteen seventy two. This ancient hunk of Cold War
optimism was supposed to head to Venus, supposed to being
the key word here because it didn't quite make it. Instead,

(25:57):
it ended up in a decaying orbit around Earth, forgotten
by history, ignored by Russia, and quietly circling for over
fifty years like some junkyard ghost until this month Cosmos
four A two re entered Earth's atmosphere on made tense,
splashing down somewhere in the Indian Ocean, like an interplanetary
message and a bottle that said, in a poetic way,

(26:21):
twisted way, an object built for Venus, our nearest neighbor,
took five decades to come back home, and when it did,
it just fell silently, unceremoniously into the drink. No announcement,
no warning, just a decade's old failure, closing its arc
with a splash. But there is a kicker to this

(26:42):
that re entry wasn't tracked until it was practically over.
That's a little bit of a problem with space debris.
The things we forget, they tend not to forget us.
So here's what this asshole is in space segment really

(27:03):
says TYA is proving they can plan the same sandbox
as NASA when it comes to orbital mechanics, but they
still wrap every scientific move and layers of military fog.
They're quietly building a space surveillance network under the radar
literally and a little bit figurally. I hope I use
that correct run. And Russia. Russia is so deep into

(27:23):
its long, slow space decay that even if it's abandoned,
hardware is returning like a bad memory. That said, we're
still sending up new satellites, new crew, new billionaires, and
the orbital show is only getting more crowded. Sooner or
later someone is going to have to clean it up,
or the whole orbital system becomes kind of a demolition
derby waiting for a champion. But heybe maybe, just maybe,

(27:48):
if we're lucky, we'll just slingshot some of that craft
out of our way and around the problem, only to
visit about a thousand years from now when space junk
comes back and you have to do it all over again.
So after we have covered this gravity slinging Moon satellites,
the shadowy spy payload, and the Soviet garbage crashing back

(28:09):
to Earth. There's really one logical next question, and I'm
just gonna throw this out here. Shouldn't we maybe talk
to each other a little bit up there? Well? That
is exactly a growing number of space policy experts that

(28:29):
they're now asking this loudly in the wick of escalating
orbital tension between particularly the US and China. The idea
is borrowed from the Cold War, a direct line to
China and the US, and just throwing this out here,
let's call it, I don't know, top of my head,
a space hotline that don't work right, but this one

(28:56):
will run from Houston to Beijing and and you know,
maybe it has a quick speed dial to get elon
on hold as well. Because we have to face it,
space is getting crowded. We have thousands of satellites and
lower Earth orbit. Dozens of country and private companies are
now launching rockets like a fireworks contest, and more than

(29:17):
a few mystery objects that probably aren't doing weather research.
And when things go sideways, when a satellite gets knocked
off course or a booster explodes in the wrong orbit
or all, I don't know, spicided like it's a little
too cozy with someone else's payload. There's no guaranteed way
right now to pick up the phone and say, hey, hey,
are we cool? We cool over here. Now, technically, the

(29:42):
US and China already have a so called space communication channel.
It was created a decade ago, but in classic diplomatic fashion,
it's kind of dusty, and it's rarely used and wrapped
up in so much red tape you think it was
a Christmas gift from the bureaucracy. And let's face it,
that will eventually be a problem if it's not already,

(30:04):
because unlike earth bound diplomacy, orbital screw ups happen fast.
One miscalculation, one fake a debris and one oops, we
didn't mean to park our satellite next year reconnaissance platform,
and suddenly you're having an international incident seventeen thousand miles
per hour. So I think the experts are right. We
need a hotline that actually works, one that's manned, maintained,

(30:26):
and let's face it, treat it maybe as mission critical,
and not just for polite exchanges about launch windows, but
for real time orbital conflict resolution, because whether you trust
China's intention or not, we don't. Whether you think we're
headed for Cold War two with busters and rockets. We are.
The worst possible place to have in miscommunication is three

(30:47):
hundred miles above Earth when you have no breaks. Now,
please don't get me wrong. This isn't about trusting your
geopolitical rival. It's not about blindly crashing into them while
trying to or you know, say orbit or TikTok satellite
or something like that. We know a working space hotline
won't solve everything, but maybe it's a start, a tool,

(31:09):
a way to say, hey, we saw something weird was
that you before it turns into headlines and posturing, Because
in the void, silence isn't golden. Silence actually ends up
being a risk. And if we do want to keep
space open, sable and not filled with fiery re entries
that kill cows from diplomatic failure, then perhaps, just perhaps

(31:34):
it is time to talk. And with that, we have
orbital junk returning like Soviet postcards, spybirds flapping through low
Earth orbit, and the world's two biggest space powers basically
trying to ghost each other instead of picking up the phone.
Probably had a good point to take a break, So

(31:54):
let's grab a drink, reclibrate your ow, national inertial damplers
and settle in for maybe about three three and a
half minute or so. We'll be back in a bit
unless the Chinese satellite flies too close to the wrong
antenna and it ends the show early. Don't touch that, Donald.

Speaker 4 (32:23):
Dick, Dick, will you pull me close?

Speaker 7 (32:31):
Benef still.

Speaker 5 (32:34):
A title breath of gravity cute.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
I flew.

Speaker 5 (32:40):
Repassing round and leave my light upon the ground.

Speaker 7 (32:47):
You're hunger sayings and ax ray screams. You swoll hop
you shred on trees, stand right fall you know with
lost lot of pain. I ben't follow you when you

(33:10):
for game its I lose l for days to fall,
for days to rise, until the dark consumes Mysca lasius

(33:54):
pain every dutch you take, you.

Speaker 5 (33:59):
Take it so live then fall a feel phrase the
cord will crack and drift away.

Speaker 4 (34:12):
I was born in a fire shape in time. You
wann had to find a your prisoner oo bride, I
choose to fall. Well, I'm bad.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
For you you for cat you're born.

Speaker 4 (34:39):
Song ca reader for days to fall, four days to rise,
for days to fanish from your no more.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
Welcome you back aboard acs serenade. If you're still with
us after the intermission, well, congratulations, you survived the orbital
debris report, the Soviet re entry surprise, and the diplomatic
silence a thousand satellites. Thank you for tuning in. I
do greatly, greatly appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (35:59):
But now.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
You got to get to a little bit of the
doom reporter. And I know I'm stepping a little bit
on Owl's toes here, but I don't think he's doing
a show tonight, so I will pick up the slack.
So let's talk about dying stars and backup planets, shall we,
Because according to Elon Musk, Earth isn't just in danger

(36:22):
from wars or AI or poorly cooked hot pockets. No,
our doom is written into the very laws of stellar
evolution itself, and it's only a matter of time before
the Sun, our Sun, our big beautiful ball of fiery glow,
that lifegiver that we all sort of take for granted
and never blame for solar global climate change, swallus up

(36:44):
like a bloated corpse and fries everything that we love. Eventually?
Can I mentioned Happy Sunday and a recent reminder that
optimism is just panic with the timeline most said that
he's said what he said basically for years. If humanity
wants to survive in the long run, we need to

(37:04):
get off this rock, not tomorrow, not because the climate
change or political drama, but because the clock on the
sun is ticking and eventually it will cook Earth like
a frozen burrito. So right now his first step. His
answer Mars, not the Mars of dusty rovers, selfies in

(37:25):
disappointed water hunts, but a self sustaining city. A Plan
B for the species. Probably not a great term if
we want to keep our species alive. I think we
need to come up with a better term than Plan B.
But think geodesic domes, pressurized potato farms, oxygen generators, and
a flag with a giant We made it. Middle finger

(37:47):
pointed at the cosmic inevitability. All this isn't just kind
of a metaphor. It is part of SpaceX's real end game.
Worship isn't just a launch vehicle. It's a colony arc.
If you will, hopefully not arkship B, a modern may
flower that with heat shielding. Musk isn't dreaming of Mars

(38:08):
tourism or billion billionaire vacation package. He's talking long term
species survival. A footprint legacy etched into the red dust,
just in case the universe ever tries to erase us. Now,
I know we're talking timelines in the millions of years.

(38:28):
The Sun's not gonna go full supernova next Tuesday, and
Musk point it isn't you know? Pack your bags now,
it's this. If we don't start building the latter to
the stars today, we might not have it when we
need it decline now. Of course, some will call this
hubers because they hate Elon, and others will call it

(38:50):
science fiction because it does sound like it. But remember
every great migration started with someone looking at the horizon
asking what happens if we stay too long? And Musk
he's actually betting that the real test humanity won't be
survival on planet Earth. It'll be starting over or continuing
somewhere else. Let's say we conquer Mars. Let's say we

(39:17):
outlift solar flares, dodge extinction events, build city ships the
size of moons, and turn the stars into tools. Great, right,
what if none of that actually ends up? Mattering? What
do you mean, Jeff? Because the universe it's dying, and

(39:39):
according to a new study, it's dying faster than anyone expected. Yay,
buckle up, happy Sunday scientists modeling in the fate of
the cosmos. And I don't think that the gradual heat
death we all learned in our favorite astronomy class or
hopefully your favorite astronomy podcast. You know, that slow fade

(39:59):
in the third momodynamic nothingless might not be a slow
after all. It's still billions upon billions of years away. Sure,
but the numbers have shifted. The entropy curve isn't the
gentle downhill slope we thought. It's a bit of a
sharper colder drop off, like you know when you know
your marriage is over. And when this universe dies, it

(40:20):
won't be with a bang or a whimper. It'll be
with a freeze, a long black, empty stillness, no energy,
no light, no structure, no purpose, just a blank canvas
of foreverness. Now this isn't just some nihilistic clickbait headline.
It really is hardcore cosmology. It's about the ka of

(40:43):
fundamental particles, about the slow breakdown of all order as
galaxies drift too far apart to see each other, with
stars burning out and even black holes evaporating into nothingness.
It's a cosmic ghost town with no ghost. The real
question isn't is the universe dying? We've kind of always

(41:06):
known that. The real question is what are we going
to do about it? Are we going to treat our
time here like it's just a waiting room and the
collapsing mall, or you know, are you going to build something,
some record, some monuments, some species wide firework that fights
the dark with meaning, Because maybe we won't stop the
death of the universe, but we might outlive its first chapters.

(41:30):
We might find ways to surf infantry and punch through it,
or rewrite the script entirely, and maybe, just maybe the
end isn't the end. Maybe it's just a warning do
something beautiful while the lights are still on. So, yeah,
the universe is dying faster than we thought, But that
just means our job just needs to be done a

(41:54):
little more urgent. But speaking of things falling apart faster
than expect that, let's check in on a poor, unfortunate
star that's basically doing death spirals around the cosmic blender
roughly three hundred million light years away, and a galaxy

(42:15):
with a charming name Leita three h nine one seven
three eight. Don't dial that number, you will not get
the person you're thinking. Astronomers have found a star, but
not not just any star. One that's called in an
orbital death sentence. This unlikely celestial object is is circling
a super massive black hole. And it's not doing it

(42:36):
at a safe distance either. All oh, oh no, this
one is plunging directly through a black Hole's this creation
disc once every roughly four four and a half days.
That's not really an orbit. That's kind of a cosmic
at red rover, Red rover, come over, you know. Every
time it leaves around, the star dives into the swirling

(42:57):
chaos of gas and plasma surrounding a black hole, kind
of like swan diving through a hurricane made of knives.
And yet somehow it still comes out the other side
for now. But each pass it shaves a little more off,
a little more mass stripped away, a little more fuel

(43:17):
for the black hole's bottomless appetite. That said, the result
we get X ray outburst, regular time flashes of high
energy radiation like an intergalactic metronome ticking down to the
star's eventual execution date. Astronomers call these events qpes, or
quasi periodic eruptions. It's kind of a fancy term that

(43:39):
basically means the stars screaming every time it loops through hell,
kind of like we do every time we wake up
with the alarm that and have to go to work.
And according to the calculations, this can't go on much longer.
The clock is ticking. But then six years give or take,
this very little sun will be torn apart completely. No
more orbits, no more outburst, just raw stellar matter digested

(44:03):
by gravity and forgotten by time. No, no panic on
this story. Don't worry. We're safe. Earth is nowhere near
this mess. We have our own mess story about. But
it is worth taking a moment to appreciate what this
really means. We are watching a star die in real time, wow,

(44:24):
real time for us, and not with a supernova, not
with a puff of cosmic dust, but slowly, painfully, oddly,
elegantly orbits by orbit. It's kind of a cosmic theater
at its most brutal, a doomed waltz with a black
hole as the final partner. Remember the next time you

(44:49):
look at the stars and wonder if the universe is peaceful, Nope, nope,
some stars do go gentle into a good night and
some scream every four days until they don't. That's okay,
We just we're we have the surviving stars that are

(45:09):
getting shredded, and the universe is hurtling toward oblivion. We know,
but let's take a breather and marvel at something maybe
maybe a little more. How do I do? How do
I say uplifting? I'm not used of that term uplifting.
It's an English word I'm not familiar with. Because after

(45:32):
a very long absence on this show, over in Switzerland,
scientists at more specifically at the Large Hadron Collider just
pulled off one of humanity's oldest dreams. They turned lead

(45:56):
into gold. And this isn't a riddle, This isn't some
Goloman bilbo talking in some dank caves. And it's not
a metaphor. It's not even a magician's parlor trick. And no,
they didn't consult Hogwarts textbook or Whisper, you know, Philosopher's
Stone into a Beaker or anything like that, not that
I've actually read those books, because I refused to. This

(46:18):
was actual physics. We're all precise, high speed, high energy
particle physics. At the Large Hadron Collider. They took lead nuclei,
cranked them up to near light speed, slammed them into
each other in a near miscollision, not a full on smash,
you know, because they do need to break every now

(46:38):
and then, just close enough for their electromagnetic fields to overlap,
sparking a quantum interaction that ripped three protons out of
a lead atom. The result gold, pure atomic gold created
from lead by stripping away just the right pieces. Now

(47:01):
I know what you're thinking before you start melting down
old car batteries. There there is a bit of a
catch here. The amount of gold created. It's about twenty
nine pickograms. Now we're gonna assume here because we like
to think our audience is intelligent. You know what a
gram is. You may not be familiar with the pykeogram,

(47:23):
but that is point zero zero as zer as here
a zero zer a zero zero zero zero two nine grams.
It gets a little worse than that too. It all
decayed and nanoseconds, and already I wasn't even thinking about
that kind of gram. Thank you for making me laugh.

(47:47):
In fact, the electricity required to run the collider probably
costs more than the gold itself is worth by several
orders of magnitude. But here's the thing. It works. They
actually did it. What mystics and alchemists dreamed of in
candle light studies and probably a couple of drinks of
alcohol in a smoke of something weird. We achieved with magnets,

(48:11):
size of buildings and energies approaching the Big Bang. Is
it practical?

Speaker 5 (48:17):
No?

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Is it profitable? Hell no? What is it profound? You
better believe it is Because for all the gloom out there,
for all the entropy, orbital wreckage, decaying stars and doomsday timelines,
this is kind of a story that Ry reminds us
we're still in the game. It reminds us that humanity

(48:39):
isn't just sitting around waiting for home the universe is dying.
Oh No, We're still experimenting, still transforming, still turning the
impossible into real things that sparkle, if only for moments,
and maybe, just maybe that's how we beat the darkness,
one atom at a time. Coming out of this wonderful

(49:05):
gold from Lead particle party at CERN, let's take a
bit of a deep breath, because while most stories about
Yellowstone make you wonder how many seconds you have to
say goodbye before the super volcano you know, erases half
the continent. I'm gonna give you a Yellowstone story that's
actually hopeful. I know, I didn't mean to burst your bubble.

Speaker 5 (49:30):
Here.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
It turns out, buried beneath the geysers and geothermal oddities
of America's most famous Magnat cauldron, there's a quite a
well a treasure trove of carbon free helium. And it's
not the kind you used to make you know your
voice squeaky at parties. This is helium four, a non radioactive,
stable isotope that's vital for rockets, nuclear reactors, superconducting magnets,

(49:55):
and just about every sci fi sounding technology that we're
currently building. And according to researchers, this ancient helium has
been trapped for hundreds of millions of year, stored in
old volcanic rock, and it leaks out in tiny puffs
through Yellowstone hydrothermal systems, a slow and steady release from
earth core, not the explosive doom we always associate with

(50:16):
that place lately. And like I said, the kicker, it's
carbon three. That means it didn't get produced by say,
the so called fossil fuels or even industrial extraction it's
just natural, noble and ready to lift things off this
planet or cool down the hottest experiments on it. Geologists

(50:37):
now believe that if this resource could be tapped and
extracted responsibly, it might provide a rare and critical source
of helium that could support everything from deep space missions
to particle accelerators. Okay, so yeah, Yellowstone has supervolcano potential,
but it's still one of the biggest geological what ifs

(51:00):
on the planet that we know of for now, but
you never know. So in a way, it's breathing gold,
not the little gold from the large Hadron collider story,
but helium gold, the kind of stuff that keeps you know,
Mr Eyes humming, cubit stable and rocket fuel lightweight and

(51:27):
let's face it, in a new cycle drowning an existential crisis.
This kind of feels like a potential wind. Sometimes the
Earth doesn't crack open to kill us. Sometimes it may
just need to exhale and we get the gift of it.
It's like secondhand pot smoke. So we've surfed doom, we've

(51:51):
dodged these volcanic hype, transmuted lead into gold, and we've
now even tapped helium from the breath of yellowstone. But
before we dive into our start gu forecasts, we're grinding
ourselves in something quieter and older, because apparently, when the
sun prepares the disk behind disappear behind the moon, the

(52:15):
trees prepare to not in panic, not in fear, but
in rid them. And the Dolomite Mountains of northern Italy,
a grove of spruce trees, real rooted, ancient things, showed
signs of synchronized bioelectrical activity hours before a recent solar eclipse.

(52:39):
You heard that right, hours hours before the light changed,
before shadows curled, before birds got really really weirder. The
ones that are still real, most of them aren't. The
trees started reacting, their internal voltage is usually chaotic, and
then the you began to sink. And it wasn't the

(53:02):
young staples leading the charge. It was the elders, old
growth spruce trees that have been standing longer than we've
had radios started humming the same two, which leads us
to the inevitable question, what the hell did Tolkien know
and when did he know it? Because, let's be honest,

(53:23):
the answer the first to warn of darkness long before
men and elves and now science is telling us that maybe,
just maybe, real trees aren't quite so different. So I said,
no one is saying the forest is planning a march
on eies and guard although, let's face it, if Yellowstone
starts walking, I am FI filing for you know, orbital

(53:44):
relocation immediately. But this isn't fantasy. This is real world data,
bioelectrical rhythms aligning information perhaps being shared through roots, fungi,
or electromagnetic fields we haven't mapped yet. It's not photo
synthesis panic either. This happens before the light even shifted.

(54:06):
It's kind of anticipation, not reaction. And while we humans
look to the sky with telescopes and countdowns, maybe the
Earth has been telling us all along with its own
ancient timekeepers buried in root systems and flowing quietly through
the trees. So this next eclipse, don't just pack your

(54:28):
ISO approved shades. Maybe take a walk in the woods prior.
Maybe that is why the birds react weird, because you
might just be standing among the original skywatchers, the ones
who don't need calenders, the ones who do not forget,
and who knows, maybe when the light fades, just maybe

(54:51):
hear and feel them whisper. So now that we have
survived the diet stars and whispering trees and philosophical doom,
let's return to the one thing that truly never disappoints,
the sky itself. So poor a drink, step outside the airlock,

(55:11):
and let's lose ourselves. In the next two weeks of
cosmic wonder. We begin with the waiting gibeous moon just
pass its fullness on the twenty third. That great lunar
iye will drift later and later into the night, leaving
darker skies for stargazing as we approach the end of May,
and as we greet the last quarter moon, a half

(55:31):
lit promised that the new cycle begins again soon, but
before it fades, it leaves us with that one final gift.
Our last episode, we stood under May's full flower moon,
and if you missed its golden rise, you missed a
poem written in moonlight. But don't worry another full moon.
We'll be back probably next episode, and the EP will

(55:54):
try to make me say more Native American words that
I cannot pronounce. That'll always be a fun time. Next
we do have planets on parade. If you're up before
sunrise point your eyes east. There is a quiet planetary
performance waiting. Saturn rises first, blowing faintly amber, like an
old god reaching up. Mars sneaks up just behind. It's

(56:16):
still dim, but rising a little earlier each day, and
by the end of the window, Jupiter begins his slow return,
peeking out in the morning haze like he's been gone
too long and he knows it. The best time of
view is four thirty to five thirty am, especially around
the time frame of May twenty seventh through the thirty first,
when the crescent moon will flirt with these planetary gods

(56:37):
and the pre dawn theater. We don't really have any
major showers report, but don't be surprised if you've douced
about the occasional rogue sporadic meteor, especially after midnight. These
comics sparks are lone wanderers, and we kind of lost
or kind of love any loan or lost wonder around here.

(56:59):
And as the Earth toward June, the night's geometry will
shift Bega, DANEB and Oftier. The three break stars forming
the Summer triangle begin to climb high in the east
after midnight. If you've got a telescope, or even vernocular.
So we get toward Vega, and remember Vega is only
twenty five light years away. That's just a quarter century

(57:20):
of photon travel, a birthday candle flicker and universal terms.
And on one final note, if your skies are clear
and your soul needs a little bit of grounding, wh back.
No apps, no filters, no hashtags, just you in the infinite.

(57:44):
Stars don't care who you voted for. They don't care
or know that you forgot to do laundry. They just
shine and they've been doing that longer than words have existed.
So give yourself maybe five minutes to feel a little small,

(58:05):
but then get back up and feel infinite. So that's
it for tonight's show. Thank you for tuning in when
and however you do. Special thanks to nasaspacex, space dot Com,
our technical NASA Space Flight, Popular Mechanics and more for
the great information on the stories tonight. Thanks to my
executive producer as always, for your help and more importantly,

(58:28):
your inspiration. I hope you enjoy the show, maybe learned
a little bit, and maybe hopefully how to laugh for
two as well. Is a pretty big place.

Speaker 5 (58:42):
It's bigger than anything anyone who's ever dreamed of before.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
So, if it's just us, it seems like an awful
waste of space.

Speaker 5 (58:57):
Right when I was young, it seemed that life was
so wonderful, a miracle, Oh it was beautiful, magical dat
a bird in the trees. What they'd be singing so happily,
oh joyfully, oh playfully watching me? But then Missabial lay

(59:25):
the tea tree out of peace, sensible, logical, oh, responsible, practical,
And then they show me a world where recogn he
so deep, buildable or clinical intellectual, cynical,