Starliner Test Flight Delayed till Next Year

SpaceTime S24E129 AI Transcript

[00:00:00] Stuart: This is space time series 24 episode 129 for broadcast on the 12th of November, 2021. Coming up on SpaceTime. Star liner is next door, but it'll test flight delay till next year. China launches another top secret satellite as it continues it’s preparations for war and South Korea launches its first domestically built orbital spacecraft. All that and more coming up on space time.

[00:00:28] VO Guy: Welcome to space time with Stuart Gary.

[00:00:48] Stuart: Boeing says it's troubled CST 100 Starliner spacecraft will now not undertake another test flight towards the international space station until at least next year, the aerospace giant says if all goes well with the man test flight, a man mission Wolf fly before the end of 2022 Starla Anna was supposed to launch on a second OBL test flight back in.

However the mission was scrubbed and the spacecraft rolled back into its vehicle assembly, building and removed from its Atlas five launch vehicle just hours prior to liftoff because of corrosion issues, which developed with the propulsion system valves believe due to moisture or condensation. It seems as substance in style and his propulsion system that helps initiate a chemical reaction.

And the oxidizer interacted with humidity following a Florida thunderstorm to corrode at least 13 of the 24 valves in the propulsion system. It's just the latest in a string of problems for the Boeing style. Boeing's initial unmanned overload test flight to the space station in December, 2019, failed to reach the Albany outpost.

After Starliner experienced the series of computer program glitches, these caused the spacecraft to undertake its Oberland session burn too low to reach the space station. Then further computer issues with discovered, which had they not been detected in time would have seen the spacecraft destroyed during its returned to work.

NASA awarded both Boeing and space X contracts under its commercial crew program to transport astronauts, to and from the space station to end American reliance on Russian Soyuz rockets, which had been used since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011. But while space X's program has moved forward quickly with dragon captures on the taking four successful man mission so far and a fifth about ready to lift off as we go to where Boeing's program is now four years behind sheds.

In fact, the delays are so bad. NASA is now calling on additional companies, interested in transporting crews to the space station. This space-time stole the com NASA about to launch a new test laser communication system in a but, and China launches a new top secret satellite as it continues. What it describes is it spilled up towards war.

Oh that a more store to come on. Space time.

NASA are about to launch a new optical laser communication system. The laser communications relay demonstration or fly border United launch Alliance, Atlas 5 5, 5, 1 rocket from space launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral space force station in Florida. The laser technology is part of the us department of defense's space test program, satellite six, which will be placed into a GA stationary orbit the systems part of a revolution in new generation space technology, which is starting to make its presence felt in fields of space flight in Australia.

With the details we're joined by Jonathan Nalli the editor of Australian sky and telescope magazine

[00:04:06] Jonathan: in the November issue of Australians gone, 12 struck. We jumped into our time machine and we take a look at some of the breakthroughs and innovations that we can expect in. And space exploration in the coming decades.

And so I'll just give you three that we cover. One of them is, uh, satellites using laser beams instead of radios to transmit information to and from the ground or even between satellites and all. But this is happening right now because laser beam can carry a lot more information than radio can. So for certain purposes, they're working, you have to be really, really good, but they're also going to be using these laser beams, I think for interplanetary communication.

So if you send a spice burp in miles or somewhere, you might be able to use lasers instead of. Just saying, just signal back there. A couple of advantages to this. A little laser beam set up is locked, likely going to be a lot lighter. It's smaller than a radio set up. So it might be as much mass. They went up to.

Um, you know, you can even put something else on board instead of a big radio. There's a little light laser, but also lasers because of the wife and that work at yet, I can send more information than a radio wave radio station measure slower than the lasers. They don't travel at the speed of light. You can even pack more information into a lightweight length, then you can into radio whitening.

That's what I'm getting at there. So that be really, really good. And that means if you've got the ability to send more data, then you might be able to put bigger and better cameras and things or instruments on board leads. Because there's no point putting a super-duper camera on border, especially if you don't have the bandwidth to get the data back.

So having more bandwidth to get the data back means that you can put bigger and better instruments on board. So that's one of them. And on the topic of radio, another thing that tries to be talking about for years and years and years, uh, it looks like it might actually happen in the next decade or so.

And that is sticking radio telescope systems on the far side of the moon. Now the moon always faces as one face facing the earth and one face to face. It rotates on its, on its, on its axis at the same time as it takes to go around the earth. So it always has one face, actually the oldest one size facing away.

So if you're on the side of the moon and the far side of the metal, looking away from the earth, then you, uh, you put the, the bulk of the moon between you and the earth. So you're protected from anything that's coming from USC in this instance, interference from radio signals from here because you know, our TV signal now, radar signals or all those sorts of things are powerful enough to get out through the.

And go ahead and despise. So if you want to put a radio telescope, Anthem to space, the best place to put, it would be the fast. Those you've got the big bulky rocks of the moon blocking any interferences you going to come along. So depending on robotic missions that we'll go out there and land on the far side of the moon and literally just little, little wheel robot things rolled out these antenna systems and form of big creditable scars in the ultimate, what they call radio quiet environment.

You might know about the thing called the square kilometer, right? Which is a big radio telescope network. That's being half built in Western. Not building Southern Africa. They take some very, what they call radio quiet areas in both sides locations, where there aren't many sources in interference and they're going to be fantastic, but even they can't sort of compete in terms of radio, quiet with what we've got from the far side of the moon.

So fingers crossed that might happen. And the other technology that's really interesting that might be coming along with. Um, going back to using lenses instead of big mirrors for space observatories. Now mirrors launch mirrors at Asia, and they fall, it's expensive to make than large lenses. And they're usually a lot lighter than.

So all of that comes into play. When you're trying to launch something with the face, you want something that's a lot as possible and you don't want to make it too expensive, but there are new designs for lenses that they're working on, which means that they might be able to get very large sized lenses instead of mirrors up there and device and lenses do actually give you better, better optics, not unintended, better and better performance.

Put it that way out of the optical system. Then you sometimes get with. So I'm not sure what it basically is. You know, how I've never seen a lighthouse inside the white house. They've got this big, funny lens in front of the lot and it focuses the light into a beam. Well, it's sort of like, that's what they're thinking of.

And instead of like going out with nothing, of course, like coming into the telescope and then be focused on. Special lens system, um, to the cameras and things that you would have on board the telescope. So fingers crossed that might work too because lenses and space could be

[00:08:29] Stuart: that's Jonathan, Nalli the editor of Australian sky and telescope magazine.

And don't forget if you're having trouble getting your copy of Australian sky and telescope magazine from your usual retailer because of the current lockdown and travel restrictions can always get a print or digital subscription and have the magazine delivered directly to your letterbox or inbox.

Subscribing ZZ, just go to sky and telescope.com today. You that sky and telescope.com.edu. And you'll never be left in the dark. Again, this is space time. Still the com China launches, a new top secret satellite and South Korea launches its first domestically built orbit. Oh that a more still to come on.

Space time.

China has launched a new top secret spacecraft. The mission was phoned about a long March three bay rocket from the J Chang satellite launch center in Southwestern China, Sichuan province, Beijing describes the new Xi yang 21 as an experimental space, the breed mitigation mission. However, it's been placed into a geostationary transfer orbit where space junk isn't really a serious problem.

The Pentagon says that suggests that its real mission will be to approach and possibly even attempt to capture a disable another spacecraft in. The U S military says China's already launched at least one spacecraft able to approach and capture other satellites in geostationary orbit. The show Zhang 17 satellite, which was launched in 2016, uses a robotic arm to grapple other spacecraft, allowing Beijing to capture them, disable them, or attach spyware on them.

This is space time still the KM South Korea launches its first domestic orbital. And later in the science report and you study shows that dogs learn human words the same way people do, or that a more sort of calm on space time.

South Korea has launched its first locally built orbital rocket. The flight was launched from the narrowest space center on the Southern coast of go hawing. All systems operated nominally with first and second stages being jettisoned as planned. The third stage, then ignited as planned, but shut down 46 seconds early preventing the payload from achieving orbital velocity.

Mission managers say they'll undertake another launch attempt in may. The South Korea Nori follows on from the earlier case of V1 or narrow launch vehicle, which successfully placed the scientific research satellite into low earth orbit on its third attempt in 2013, the narrow one used a modified Russian liquid fueled and Gara rocket for its first stage with a Korean built solid fuel rocket for the second stage.

There are no real care. Salvi, two uses for locally developed Kres 0 7 5 SSL liquid fueled engines for its first age with a single KRA 0 7 5 vacuum engine for its second stage and a KRA double zero seven engine for its third stage. This space time.

And Tom Meditech, another brief look at some of the other stories, making use insights this week with a science report and you study warns that pets who become infected with COVID-19 are likely to end up with acute onset heart disease. The warnings are reported in the journal veterinary records.

Research has followed two pet cats and a pet dog who tested positive in PCR tests and two additional cats. And one dog who had SARS cov two antibodies between two and six weeks after first showing signs of heart disease worryingly the heart issues that appeared included severe Maia carditis, which is an inflammation of the heart muscles.

The author say the virus appears to only be transferred from humans to pets rather than the other way round. More than 5 million people have now been killed by the COVID-19 Corona virus since the deadly disease first spread out a war and China. However, the world health organization admits the real death toll is likely to be at least twice that level with, well over a quarter of a billion people.

Now infected paleo anthropologists have renamed a new species of ancient human ancestor. Homo Berto answers. Uh, report in the journal, evolutionary anthropology issues, news and reviews says the species lived in Africa during the middle Pleistocene around half a million years ago. And was the direct ancestor of Hemis sapiens, modern humans, the middle Pleistocene.

So the rise, not just of hummus sapiens in Africa, but also our closest relatives. The Neanderthals in Europe. However human evolution during this edge is poorly understood a problem which paleoanthropologists call the muddle in the middle homo answers hopes to bring some clarity to this puzzling, but important chapter in human evolution.

The name Berto insists derives from a skull found in Boda DIA in Ethiopia, the author say the new species will describe most middle place. This in humans from Africa, as well as some from Southeastern Europe. Well, many others from Europe will now be reclassified as Neanderthals. And you study shows that dogs extract words from continuous speech using similar computations and brain regions as humans do the findings reported in the journal.

Current biology represents the first demonstration of a capability to use complex statistics to learn about word boundaries in non-human mammals. Human infants can spot new words in speech stream before they learn what those words mean to tell where a word ends and another word begins. Infants, make complex calculations to keep track of syllable patenting syllables that usually appear together, uh, probably words and those that don't probably.

To explore how similar the responsible brain regions behind this complex computational capacity in dogs is compared to humans, researchers tested dogs and discover that the dogs may also be recognizing similar complex regularities in speech. The question now is do dogs reflect skills that developed by living in a language rich environment or during the thousands of years of domestication, or does it all represent an ancient mammalian capability?

And new study is tried to connect different types of supernatural beliefs with different types of personality traits. The findings reported in the journal of humanistic psychology are based on a very small sample group of just 199 people who took an online assessment of narcissism Macchia village, psychopathy, and Saturday.

To minim from Australian skeptics says what the study was far too small to draw any real conclusions. It was amusing finding that those with higher levels of religious beliefs tended to have lower levels of psychopathy, but higher levels of satisfaction, which probably explain some of those long sermon.

Well, people who believed in Sakha Kinesis tended to have lower levels of Macchia realism. And those who believed in paranormal perceptions, such as pre-cognition and hauntings tended to have higher levels of it's an interesting study

[00:16:23] Jonathan: with an interesting result. It's not the biggest survey ever done.

It's 199 people who did an online survey. And basically they asked people how you religious or do you believe you follow scientific rules, religious rules, or you believe in paranormal phenomena, that sort of stuff. I basically asked them a number of quick. I looked at what they call the doc hatred, which is four characteristics of people.

One is narcissism. One is psychopathy or sociopathy, but sociopath, basically, I don't deal well with other people and I don't have a lot of empathy for them. And I don't have a love of remorse for them. I don't care about them.

[00:16:57] Stuart: We often the bed is where that she was associate path or a psychopath.

Whenever camera inclusion, we decided that the symptoms were the same. It was just the way that person became such a person is what's different once taught and the others.

[00:17:11] Jonathan: Yes. Machiavellian ism, which is, I love to manipulate and control people and say this, which they'd like to hook people. Basically. I like to, you know, control them and have them have a surfy ride sort of attitude towards other people.

That's the dark Tetrad. And I basically allocated these beliefs according to those characteristics. And they found that people with a religious band tended to be more. Not psychopaths. I would understand people. I can deal with people, but they tend to be a bit, uh, judgmental, which is the site of some sort of things.

If you don't fall on my face, you're going to get a hill. And so if you're not okay, then the paranormal people be, the paranormal tend to be not. So say this at all, but they tend to be more psychopathic, sociopathic. They tend to not react, not relate well to other people. And the people who fell assigned certain really boring.

Um, they don't go up and down so much. They don't have major issues one way or the other, but the thing is 199. People differences between them is pretty minor. If it's a mild fluctuation, if you go into your counselors to websites, the significant variation, you probably don't get very significant. Yeah.

The invasive case, we need more study on this. And of course that's what every research project says. We need more study keeping grants, wanting to talk to tens of thousands of people to get some sort of idea of what characteristics they have. And you have to make sure those characteristics are genuine ones and you can sort of separate them out.

Any interesting study. I think we, as much as

[00:18:35] Stuart: we can say about this, From Australian skeptics.

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[00:20:34] VO Guy:  You've been listening to space-time with Stuart Gary. This has been another quality podcast production and from bitesz.com.