Date: May 31, 2012
Title: Planetary Radio Live at the National Air and Space Museum
Podcaster: Mat Kaplan
Organization: The Planetary Society
Links: Planetary Society: http://planetary.org, National Air and Space Museum: http://airandspace.si.edu
Description: Planetary Radio from the Planetary Society recently recorded a show in front of an enthusiastic audience at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. Here’s the premiere of two segments from that session, featuring Bill Nye the Science Guy and Emily Lakdawalla.
Bio: Mat Kaplan is the Planetary Society’s Media Producer. He has also hosted and produced Planetary Radio, the Society’s award-winning weekly podcast and public radio series about space exploration and development, for nine years. The show presents the men and women who are leading our push into the final frontier, along with regular contributions from Bruce Betts, Emily Lakdawalla, and Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye the Science Guy. Catch it on a local radio station, Sirius XM Satellite Radio, in the iTunes Store, or at http://planetary.org/radio . With this return to 365 Days, Mat and the Society kickoff a monthly contribution on the last Thursday of each month in 2012. (With the exception of August, when it will be heard on Thursday the 23rd.)
Today’s Sponsor: This episode of 365 days of Astronomy is sponsored by iTelescope.net – Expanding your horizons in astronomy today. The premier on-demand telescope network, at dark sky sites in Spain, New Mexico and Siding Spring, Australia.
Transcript:
Mat Kaplan: Welcome back podcast fans. I’m Mat Kaplan of the Planetary Society with another of our monthly contributions to 365 Days. This time we’re taking you to Washington DC for a special treat. The Planetary Society was part of the USA Science and Engineering Festival in April. The festival included what was supposed to be a night of stargazing on the capitol mall, right behind the National Air and Space Museum. A cloudy sky kept the thousands of attendees indoors, but there are many, many worse places to spend the evening than the Air and Space Museum. The Smithsonian Institution allowed us to record Planetary Radio Live in. PlanRad Live is the version of our weekly radio and podcast series that is performed before a live and always enthusiastic audience of space and astronomy geeks. Our gift to you for today’s installment of 365 Days of Astronomy is a preview of that show. You are the first to hear these two short excerpts. Bill Nye the Science and Planetary Guy will share the sense of awe he feels when he visits the Air and Space, but first we’ll hear from the Planetary Society’s ace blogger…
Mat: Science and Technology Coordinator, Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, I think what we’re about tonight is R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Emily: That’s right. I’m talking about respect for moons. And the reason I’m talking about that…we have to go back to Pluto. How many of you out there think that Pluto should still be a planet? (APPLAUSE) Well, I’m here to tell you that if you think that Pluto should be a planet there’s about another 150 things out there that you also think should be planets. And I’m not just talking a bout Pluto’s friends in the Kuiper Belt. Things like Make Make and Quaror and Sedna and other very interestingly named objects. I’m talking about a lot of things in the solar system that are just as big as those things. In fact, many of them are even larger. They’re worlds just as exciting to explore. Things like the Galilean satellites of Jupiter, whose names are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Things like the moons of Saturn whose names are Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, Hyperion, and Phoebe. Things like the moons of Uranus which, if I can get this one, this is hard, Miranda, Titania, Ariel, Umbriel and Oberon
Mat: No notes, everyone! No notes!
Emily: And we have to go all the way out to Neptune to get to Triton which is the weirdest one cause it’s orbiting Neptune backwards, and we think it might actually be a Kuiper Belt object, as Pluto is now. All of these things are worlds unto themselves that are just as exciting to explore as any planet, and yet most people don’t know their names. And because they don’t know their names they don’t think they’re worth exploring. And I’m here to tell you that they really are, and that they’re the most exciting things for us to go to. Like a mission to Europa to find out what’s going on in its oceans. So I hope that you will all say, rah, rah! Let’s go explore some moons of the solar system! Please give the moons some respect!
APPLAUSE
Mat: Respect the moons. You are crazy for moons.
Emily: I am crazy.
Mat: Thanks so much, Emily. That’s Emily Lakdawalla, the Science and Technology Coordinator for the Planetary Society, and the editor of its very popular blog at planetary.org. Let’s give her another hand.
APPLAUSE
Mat: I’m Mat Kaplan. We’re in the Moving Beyond Earth gallery at Washinton’s DC’s National Air and Space Museum. Please help me welcome the Chief Executive Officer of the Planetary Society, my boss, Bill Nye the Science Guy.
APPLAUSE
Bill: Thank you, Mat. It’s great to be here.
Mat: Thank you, Bill. You know, you and many of the people in our audience are here for a stargazing party sponsored by Celestron. Unfortunately, not too many stars out tonight. It’s part of the USA Science and Engineering Festival that’s brought, I think it’s safe to say over 100,000 fans of science to the Washington Convention Center. And you’ve been very busy over there.
Bill: Yes, we’ve been very busy at our crazy booth. We have met a lot of space enthusiasts. And people that really appreciate the process of science, people who understand how complex it is to bring back images from other worlds and images of our own from space. And this perspective, I claim, changes us. Changes us for the better.
Mat: Do you share my sense of utter awe by this place that we are in right now?
Bill: Oh, man. So just to talk again briefly about ME! I remember, you guys, when the Air and Space Museum was a hut, a military, what’s called a Quonset hut. And it had a few artifacts in it. It was down the Mall a little ways. And this place was built in 1976, it was opened at the 200th anniversary of the United States. The things that you find in here. First of all, everybody, to everybody in the world, I remind you, this Museum is free. And that is a remarkable thing—that a country feels that these artifacts and this information should be available really to anyone in the world who comes here. And that’s remarkable, but the other thing is the objects you see are built by people who just thought about every shape, every rivet, every sensor, everything had to be thought through so very carefully. Rockets, spacecraft. Everybody, you get this, I hope you get this wild feeling. You say to yourself, well that looks just like the first airplane to ever cross the North Atlantic with one guy in it all by himself. That looks just like the Spirit of Saint Louis! And then somebody will tell you, that is the Spirit of Saint Louis. And then I hope you get the same feeling I get every time I look at it. Wow! That’s pretty small, man! And this guy, Charles Lindbergh, pulled it off. And then I’ll just, another moment…I guess this is a lot in my head. But when you take aerodynamics, you can show that the ideal shape for a supersonic wing—this is where a airplane or rocket or almost a rocket is gonna go faster than the natural speed of molecules—it should have a double wedge shape. It should have a sharp edge on the top and the bottom. And you walk up to the X-15, which is hanging from the ceiling…it’s got double wedges! Like they weren’t kidding! I thought they were just…like that was some sort of exercise for students! No! They really did it! Everything in here is a result of space exploration which I claim brings out the best in us, makes us think through everything. And it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful.
Mat: Bill Nye the Science and Planetary Guy, on stage at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Bill joined us for the recording of a Planetary Radio Live episode in the museum’s Moving Beyond Earth gallery. Earlier you heard the Planetary Society’s Science and Technology Coordinator Emily Lakdawalla. I hope you’ll join us to hear much more of our recent visit to the Air and Space Museum. You’ll find Planetary Radio on a local public radio station, on Sirius XM Satellite Radio, or at the Planetary Society website at planetary.org/radio. I’ll be back with another 365 Days of Astronomy podcast on Thursday, June 28. Clear Skies.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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