NASA's Take on Starship Progress, Farthest Thing You Can See, Galactic Lagrange Points | Q&A 241 

The orbiter did NOT survive the desintegration of the stack! It was torn apart the moment it turned sideways in the supersonic airstream... The inner crew cabin on the other hand survived relatively intact until it hit the water. And the shuttle did not explode, it just kind of broke apart with local combustion where hydrogen and oxygen mixed. And yes, there is a significant difference: the lack of a shockwave.

There is only a small window of time in which crew ejection would even be possible, actually help, within the first ~2 minutes of launch. After that, it's all-in anyway. We don't have passenger ejection on planes for similar reasons. The goal then is to get to plane-level reliability with superheavy. Any RUD on starship thereafter would be too high and too fast to eject safely anyway.

One minor quibble: 1:50 - Challenger’s SRBs didn’t explode. They had burn-through that caused the main external tank to explode. In the footage (that is still seared into my memory) there are two contrails that go off slightly curvy away from the main explosion. Those contrails are the SRBs, continuing to fire away for multiple seconds uncontrolled after the main tank exploded, before range safety issued the destruct command for the SRBs. (Approximately 30 seconds after the destruction of Challenger.)

I think the concept for StarShip is that it's like an airliner. We don't have escape capsules for 747's. We have built-in reliability - and we have inspections - and we have redundancy. So I guess this change in thinking might be the reason we don't have an escape system.

Thanks for doing a video. Unfortunately, my chemo therapy is on Mondays. This puts a serious set of breaks on anything the rest of the day. So thanks again for the video. Wish I could join the live show.

As a child, 'Robinson Crusoe On Mars' (1964) used to captivate me; I wonder if it was the inspiration for 'The Martian.

Gemini capsule had actual ejection seats. Good those were never used, as the astronauts would have been burned to a crisp by the explosion, or by the engine exhaust, if the seat was triggered accidentally. If I remember correctly, Scott Manley and Tim Dodd both made great videos about launch escaspe systems.

25:00 Shape of Universe- Topology is a complicated subject with much confusion. The 3 most likely shapes of the Universe (in order): 1) Sphere (DeSitter space, closed geometry. Finite, closes back on itself). 2) Flat (likely infinite with no overall (+ or -) curvature). Locally curved only, if that. 3. Parabolic / Hyperbolic (AdS [anti-DeSitter] Open geometry, where everything curves away from itself. On small scales and large, this seems to be mathematically correct description, as well as for Black Hole geometry. AdS/cft correspondence (see current work in theoretical physics of Susskind, Juan Maldecena, et,al.) Torus is another possibility, and is a form of Closed geometry related to a Sphere. Some unique properties, like preferred frames of reference that turn General Relativity around a bit (there are no preferred frames of reference in vanilla Relativity). A 3D sphere (or 3-sphere) remains the most likely geometry of the Universe. (3D spheres can only occur in 4D or higher dimensions, and CANNOT exist in 3D space, or 3 spatial dimensions not including time as an additional degree of freedom. Another point of common confusion, as people mistakenly believe spheres in our 3D space are 3D objects, which they are decidedly _not._ Topology is tough, especially when you go beyond 3 dimensions. Good video as usual. 👍

Book suggestion - "Job: A Comedy of Justice" by Robert A. Heinlein in 1984. Won Best Fantasy Novel in 1985. But it plays with the multiverse before the concept was popular.

Janus! Thanks for the Q&A, Fraser! 😊 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊 And happy holidays!

Despite the Columbia victims still being alive for the 7 minutes it took for the front portion of the orbiter to smash into the ocean, the crew were unconscious within just a few seconds of the disastrous explosion, as the rapidly rotating cabin portion overcame their blood pressure. So, even though their emergency oxygen supply was being used by everyone, no one was awake to experience the end.

You're the emperor of space science communicators - I'm very happy to see your subs moving towards the numbers you deserve! Universe Today is a piece of art called "damn hard work"!

I truly enjoy your programs. Your efforts are greatly appreciated!

The Andromeda Galaxy is not the furthest object you can see with the naked eye. I have clearly seen M33, The Triangulum Galaxy naked eye. I believe there are other galaxies worth a try, but the problem with others isn't their brightness. M51 is plenty bright enough to see naked eye but is too small to be resolved with the naked eye. It would be fun to find a pristine dark place and try out some alternatives to M31 and M33. I think M101 is the only other possible one because it's big. But it might be worthwhile to try NGC 253. Note: HA! You covered my point! I think the Ursa Major galaxies would suffer the same fate as M51 and the Virgo Cluster: plenty of brightness but they're too small for the eye to resolve.

Starship. The shuttle didn't have ejection seats for all crew either

Thank you for all your hard work Fraser.

Thanks for another great video, look forward to many more!

Jon Kelling if you are referring to the Space Shuttle, yes it originally had ejection seats, but only two seats, the size of the crew that originally flew it to space.

I'd think the one big error in "The Martian" is where he uses a bit of flimsy plastic sheet and some tape to hold enough internal atmospheric pressure to actually breathe it!

"Vendikar". 'A Taste of Armageddon' is a great episode. Thanks for another great video, Fraser!

Thanks for the recommendation Fraser. Here’s one for you, again not sci fi, but most enjoyable nonetheless … “Piranesi”, Susanna Clarke.

thank you once again for references!

The part that bothered me most about The Martian was his air. The structure looked nowhere near pressure tight so he's at the ambient pressure of about 1%. Even at near 100% oxygen in that barely any pressure and presuming he got there very slowly, could be stay conscious?

Your videos are always so informative and professional. I'm just curious, what video editing software do you use for your videos?

I could see Starship going either way with becoming a crew vehicle. Either they re-invent a Dragon equivalent or just re-use Dragon itself on top of Starship, or they really do just test the system like a hundred times through successful re-entries and landings and then say it's safe enough for crew. Most rockets are usually crew rated over after a few tens of successful, reliable flights. Starship could manage a hundred flights if it's fully reusable. And test ouf the issues before putting crew on-board. I do think the end-goal is a spaceship that works like an airplane, so reliable that it doesn't need an abort option for passengers.

A pole. I wasn't expecting that! Thks Fraser

Nimbus! I enjoyed all of this week's questions but this one made me hopeful for the future of science in space.

Question: Given the possibility that the observable universe may only be a tiny fraction of the entire universe:- is it plausible that we happen to exist in a vast blob of matter containing the whole observable universe, and that other blobs of matter and antimatter exist, and so there is no baryonic asymmetry?

@frasercain, I think that it would be relevant to compare with planes as well. No one would request escape system in a Boing 474. We passengers accept the risk when flying. Yes, the likelihood for a disaster is different, but the concept is the same.

22:23 OMG I am literally playing Stellaris watching this, great callout to an even greater 4x grand RTS game.

Nice analysis.

Question in the thumbnail is the first question answered. Nice.

Tricky choice for best item as they're all good, but I think Nimbus just gets my vote (closely followed by the two Starship questions).

I like the "Volcan" story!! Super interesting 😊

Challenger Explosion: I was in 4th Grade, we watched it in the auditorium, when it exploded, the teachers just turned the screen off and ushered us back to class, they didnt talk about it or anything, just acted like everything was fine... Which is ironic, sense their was a teacher on board.

Thanks for confirming the fact about the Storms on Mars and the lower air pressure. This has been a question for me whenever you listen to commentary on Mars videos and the terrible nature of storms, it never added up for me.

I think it's kind of silly to expect SpaceX to have the HLS ready on time given it's practically 2024 now and they haven't even managed to get Starship into orbit.

I still can't get over the fact that The Martian chose to show Martian sunsets red instead of blue as they should be. I don't know if they genuinely did not catch that or did they think that the audience would think that it looks too strange and it would break their immersion. Still a great movie of course! But this is a pet peeve that would forever be with me :)

Answering [Vulcan] Yes, the center of the Milky Way and Sgr A* have lagrangian points and the L4 and L5 must each contain another SMBH much smaller than Sgr A* and if we find them, we could triangulate the positions to find the center of the galaxy!

I love how knowledgeable you are about space everything and not afraid you do not have all the answers. Can you explain how a Black hole (that rips suns and planets and dust apart ) that can be so greedy about sucking in all matter and at the same time eject matter! How the heck can it do that? what turns a black hole on and off?

Regarding NASA's thoughts on the IFT-2, NASA administrator Bill Nelson tweeted the following shortly after the test: Congrats to the teams who made progress on today’s flight test. Spaceflight is a bold adventure demanding a can-do spirit and daring innovation. Today’s test is an opportunity to learn-then fly again. Together @NASA and @SpaceX will return humanity to the Moon, Mars & beyond.

Everyone needs to watch the show "For all Mankind". It is like the tv show version of the martian combined with every dramatized movie about apollo. This show is about the space race pivoting into putting a base on the moon and each season skips 9 years ahead. It is unbelievably awesome. The show is centered on nasa, astronauts, and engineers. It is "alternative history"(but actually good). It basically is about what happens with nasa and the nation if the space race did not end with landing on the moon.

"Observable fog of us." Thank you, Fraser.

I thought you were going to bring up the fact that both the Enterprise and Columbia were built with ejection seats. Of course there were only two, so they were only installed during the test flights.

Tim Dodd did a whole thing about the Starship escape thing.

"The dream is, that you've got this greenhouse and you've got your Martian plants out there, ya know, or your 'poo potatoes' or whatever..."

Only came here for starship / nasa. Didn't bother with the bait. I'll find out later. Love you Fraser. Will watch later.

As I recall, the first Cosmonaut ejected and parachuted down for landing. Seems that Gemini also had a form of ejection seat... have to look that up.

Commercial Airplanes don't have crew escape capsules. We design airplanes to the safety margins needed. The same should be done with spacecraft.

The book was awesome.

For the Question Show: What does it mean for a Black hole to spin exactly? I've just realized now that whatever i assumed was spinning must lie under the event horizon and can therefore not be measured, so is it the event Horizon itself thats spinning, or something else entirely? Thank you so much for the content you provide and the quality standards you hold yourself and your team to. Your channel is a treasure trove of science communication and a wonderful place to learn about the universe!

Remus. It's gotta be that one, both question and answer.

21:08 A tablet/smart phone is also a good example of the Star Trek data pads. They had data pads that seemed to be single-use. You wrote a report and then handed it off for someone else to read, or you could load a book onto it and read a book, but it seemed like you had to clear data from it to be able to use it for anything else. Today we have data pads that are multi-use and multi-functional. You can write multiple reports on a tablet/smartphone, and read a ton of books. Smartphones even double as a communicator sometimes! Star Trek still has us beat on Holodecks though. Not sure I'd want to use a public one though no matter how self-cleaning they are.

Remus. Great book and movie

I think that people probably underestimate the time in which we could populate the solar system with Von-Neuman like robotics, and how that would be leveraged to supercharge the industrialization of space. 50-100 years seems like a conservative estimate.

The orbiter was NOT in one piece after the explosion. Aviation Week and Space Technology did a deep dive years ago. There are valves on the oxygen system that were tuened, indicating that someone was alive , post explosion, but thats it. The crew cabin was allegedly pretty visible during its descent. If the entire orbiter was in one piece, it would have been clearly visible.

Hey Fraser, I understand that our solar system is not stationary, can we track the movement of our solar system?, Is it elliptical too?

Nimbus, very interested in the next batch of telescopes.

Shuttle had no escape mechanism. Period. The team of "aerospace engineers" on Capitol Hill decided it was unnecessary. Challenger *should* have survived and brought its crew safely back. The problem was that the damage to the thermal protection system was such that the Shuttle could not survive a mach 20 reentry. But after the SRB separation, and *after* the damage had already happened, the crew on the Shuttle, and in the control centre in Houston, had insufficient information about the condition of the TPS to honestly answer "Yes" when they were polled on the "Go for orbit." If they had access to a real-time image of the leading heat shield the Shuttle could have aborted either back to KSC or to Europe. So why wasn't there a camera mounted on the ET and feeding its image to the flight deck of the Shuttle? As I understand it Houston only saw the damage when PHOTOGRAPHIC FILM from a chase plane was developed, by which time Columbia was already in orbit, that Houston learned how much of the heat shield was gone. I wonder how Houston notified the seven astronauts that they should phone their families to say goodbye? Note that the first stage of Falcon has *never* failed and the only time the second stage ever failed the Cargo Dragon successfully separated and safely rendered and could have been recovered except for a trivial programming glitch which meant its parachutes did not deploy. The Cargo Dragon, unlike the Crew Dragon does not have a working launch abort system. All other NASA spacecraft discarded their launch escape systems after first atage MECO in order to reduce the mass that has to be accelerated by the second and third stages. For comparison Starship should only need a launch escape system while the first stage is firing, and for that the engines of the second stage are more than adequate. Crewed Starships will have nine Raptors. Further Elon Musk has publicly indicated that Starship will not carry a Crew until after it has flown autonomously over one hundred times successfully. By comparison NASA risked crew on the VERY FIRST SHUTTLE and intends to risk astronauts on just the SECOND SLS flight! Even the GODLESS COMMIES did not risk cosmonauts on the first flight of their Shuttle clone!

Gemini had ejection seats. The first shuttle mission had ejection seats as well.

Hi Fraser, question show question: can you explain David Hilbert's specific contributions to General Relativity? Thanks in advance

I will take your advice and watch the martian, i've actually never really thought about it since it came out, so I never watched it, but since you say its good ill check it out

Hi Fraser, love your show and so does my 7 month old baby! She gets upset if I try to remove her from watching. I have a question for you: are there any RU-vid channels on science/space/astronomy for kids that you recommend? Thanks!

I haven't seen The Martian but I'm very much looking forward to watch it in a few years.

The Martian is amazing !

Challenger broke apart from aerodynamic forces after the explosion. There is a detailed Challenger report video which shows this frame by frame. The crew compartment broke free but stayed in one piece. It appears the crew survived the SRB failure, but lost their lives when the crew compartment hit the ocean.

19:16 The book says that the "Hab Canvas" was super good at blocking radiation. That was why he couldn't take Pathfinder into the hab to make communicating with Huston easier. It was designed to protect the inside from radiation. So in that respect he would have been able to grow them. The perchlorates were not in the book because it wasn't known when the book was written. However, is not that hard to get rid of them. As you say, you wash the perchlorates out. Then using the same system Watney used to have a hot bath, you distil the water to separate the perchlorates and then reuse the water to wash the soil again until you get enough out.

@frasercain Fraser, what were your favorite discoveries of 2023, and what are you most excited about for this coming year?

I'm sure we'll witness the singularity start within the next 10 years. So many sci-fi stuff will be doable... What a time to be alive!!

I was a kid when I first saw the Challenger going bye-bye. I didn't understand what they were saying on the news, but I remember watching the video of the launch and thinking "There's something wrong with that!" as flames started jumping out from areas that they shouldn't have been jumping from. Then the whole thing went BOOM and I was really scared that they might stop all space exploration (I understood the constant threat of nuclear annihilation that we all lived under [even in Australia] during the late Cold War, but in '86, I don't think I really understood that the USSR was a competing entity and that if the USA had ceased all space flights, the USSR would likely have continued and so the loss to humanity would have been minimal). Anyway, even now when someone mentions "space shuttle disaster," my first thoughts are always of the Challenger, rather than the Columbia.

Given a choice between getting to see Betelgeus go super nova to finding and seeing planet 9 which you you pick and why?

. I have read where a black holes temperature is almost absolute zero. But when things are compressed, like in an air tank, they heat up. So how are black holes so cold?

I was about to make a joke about loving to talk about Triton becoming the new Lagrange point and then the next question was a Lagrange question It will never be surpassed

I just wish to say here, that, pace the common belief that M31 is as far away as the human eye can see, in fact, M33 can also be fairly easily seen, even from a "exurban" locations, provided your eyes are completely dark adapted and you view from a location that shields you from all stray light. For example, I was quite surprised one early pre-morning in Montana in August when I awoke to go to the bathroom. When I entered the room, I took a quick glance up through the room's glass "skylight" and immediately saw two familiar faint blobs of light in the sky, which I knew from my long experience of observing, and by their relative locations, had to be M31 and M33. And more surprising still, M33 was at least as bright as M31! That seemed very odd to me, since the skylight was composed of double or triple pane glass thick enough to insulate the room during the very cold Montana mountain temperatures of January and February. We are hardly talking optical glass quality, of course, but the view was quite clear, at least to the naked eye. Stranger still, my eyes, although stronger then than now, -- after a retinal detachment, -- were still limited by my severe myopia and astigmatism, neither of which can be fully compensated for by eyeglasses. So I would estimate my vision to have been roughly 30/20, hardly anything like the

Hey I think I thought of a solution to Starship's lack of crew escape system, at least during the ascent stage: send the Starship crew to space on Dragon capsules and launch the empty Starship and then have the crew transfer into the Starship in orbit.

Sorry i left a response to a 9 month video earlier. Here is my question. "What if you could take a significant portion Earth's mass like dirt and rock and gather it in one place(like the north or south pole)? Would that change the Earth's orbit, rotation or tilt?" Thank you for reigniting my passion and wonder for astronomy!

Will stable Lagrange points fill up with "garbage"? If so will this make putting something there prone to damage from "garbage"?

24:48 "...infinite universe..." if the universe are infinite, the matter in the universe are also infinite, and if the universe was created in a big bang, what "banged" must also have been infinite, and if the universe have expanded for ~13,7 billion years, at what speed if it is infinite?

i dint wath but read martian and LOVEEEDD IT, i liked Weirs book Artemis way more tho its just so amazing and im in the process of reading project hail mary

Project Hail Mary is in my top 10 sci-fi of all time, for sure.

@frasercain - Does the stage 2 Starship have enough delta with 6 or 9 Raptors to achieve hot staging soon after launch? Is it possible if the stage 1 Booster is still under 33 Raptor power, or how far would they need to be throttled back to allow hot staging and avoid the stage 1 crashing back on to stage 0?

I don't get the focus on an escape system. The Shuttle had an escape system. It was never used. And, in fact, the escape system that the shuttle had was of no use in either of its two fatal missions. If they survive re-entry, give them a clear method of individual egress, and parachutes they can strap on.

Thank you! It was worse than we thought. Everyone involved signed up and knew the risks. At the same time- they deserved more respect. And maybe one more redundancy (parachute) 😢

Yes, I do think that your observable universe is very different to mine. I live near Heathrow Airport in London. We get to see many lights moving in the night sky. They are called planes. You have all that wild land with dark skies and sasquatch.

Fraser, random question that’s been on my mind and I can’t seem to find an answer (that I understand at least), but in Guth’s inflationary multiverse, what are these pocket universes “in”? I can understand one universe not having to be in anything, but multiple throwing me off for some reason. Or put another way, if we’re disconnected from them due to distance, but hypothetically we could travel FTL, what is separating these universes? I guess to me it seems like there would still be s narrow corridor of sorts connecting them, but maybe I’m viewing our big bang in some preferential way.

Project Hail Mary *chefs kiss*

Hi Fraser, What makes me wonder is what's the purpose of the Orion capsule? The hls has to go from LEO to LLO anyway. Why not use a safe vehicle like a crew dragon to get to the HLS in LEO and from there to go the gateway or land straight on to the surface of the moon.

"Remus". Yes, The Martian was very realistic, only a few nitpick details like having an RTG power the system to make the fuel for the return vehicle. A 100 kW reactor would be more realistic. Edit: The audio book is very good, excellent accents.

Re: The first segment: I think Jon Kelling's question might have been in reference to the Gemini seat ejection system

One major thing on Mars that scientists are really interested in is the presence of Xenon-129. Xenon occurs in a natural state but not Xenon-129 (at least not on Earth). The reason scientists are interested is Xenon-129 was never on Earth until 1945 after the first nuclear explosions! Scientists are starting to theorize how Xenon-129 came to be on Mars, one of those theories is that Mars was inhabited by an advanced culture who could have had a nuclear war that caused the planet to lose its capacity to sustain life and then become the lifeless highly radioactive planet it is today. One last thing about the Martian, due to the radioactive soil anyone living on the surface will die in weeks unless they are protected from the radiation. This is the reason why a lot of newer colony designs have living quarters underground or in a dome with all surface soil removed.

in regards to the best sci fi book iv ever read. i have to say thats "Rendezvous With Rama" by Arthur C Clark. about humanities first encounter with an extra terrestrial intelligence. that book changed the way i see the universe.

On lagrange points: Has there been surveys to see if there are objects in the sun/milky way lagrange points?

In the case of greenhouses on Mars, one possible means of dealing with it is multilayered glass with phospors on the outside surface that are activated by that cosmic radiation and leaded glass below to absorb that radiation.

I vote Nimbus! Also, would it make any sense to explore above and below the plane of the solar system? Or is it essentially empty of the fun stuff?

Just pop a dragon capsule on the top!

Why does the Rover and Probe creators do not put dust wipers on the solar panels? Or at least make them rotate to dump the dust?

Hey, have you checked out “for all mankind”? Thoughts on how scientifically realistic it is?

Orion can't do LLO? And, can you animate lunar orbit (number of days of light on the dark side, etc.) ?

❓ can you explain light curves. Why are they called that? What can we learn from them? How are they created?

Right now its more concept vechicle avout 5 to 10 more flights before any kind of human cargo goes on board, there will be three phases yet to happen phase one will be sub orbital flight on try two now may take 3 more flight attempts, phase two will be LOE, LOW EATH ORBIT, phase 3 will be landing of starter pack, and return of main vechicle to orbital stand, then phase 4 will be material to orbit, and lunar landing, where we would be today if there were no regulatiry requirements set on spaceex restricting launches