Ready to get nervous about our place in the universe? Farz tells the story of the Mars Climate Orbiter - lost on the dark side of Mars forever - & other stories of near misses and lost billions of research dollars from one very very tiny mistake. We also discuss the Hubble Telescope and ask the eternal question: how do cameras work? If you're worried that you're messing up at work remember at least you're not a NASA Scientist (unless you ARE and in that case, WOAH you're listening to our podcast?!?! Thank you, we are honored).
Ready to get nervous about our place in the universe? Farz tells the story of the Mars Climate Orbiter - lost on the dark side of Mars forever - & other stories of near misses and lost billions of research dollars from one very very tiny mistake. We also discuss the Hubble Telescope and ask the eternal question: how do cameras work?
If you're worried that you're messing up at work remember at least you're not a NASA Scientist (unless you ARE and in that case, WOAH you're listening to our podcast?!?! Thank you, we are honored).
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
Taylor: Welcome to doomed to fail. We're the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters
>> Taylor: In the matter of the people of state of California v. Orenthal James Simpson, case number ba zero nine six. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
>> Farz: Hi, Taylor.
>> Taylor: Hello.
>> Farz: Did we decide that I'm no longer qualified to do the intro?
>> Taylor: sure. Hi, everyone. Welcome to doomed to fail. My name is Taylor, joined here by Fars. We're the podcast that brings you history's most notorious disasters and epic failures two times a week. And Fars, I think you go first today, but let's banter a little bit first.
Taylor: I got the best pastrami sandwich since leaving LA
>> Farz: Let's banter a little bit. So tell me about your weekend.
>> Taylor: my friend Agnes is here. Listener and friend Agnes. So we've been hanging out. Yesterday, I was exhausted, so they let me sleep, and they all went to the pool. And I'm baking some bread. Good hang.
>> Farz: What kind of bread?
>> Taylor: it's like this. It's like a fake challah because like, a challah takes like 9 hours. So it's like similar to a challah, but it takes like 2 hours.
>> Farz: The poor man's challah. Or at least the efficient cooker's challah. Yeah, I went earlier, and next time you visit Taylor, I got to take you to this pastrami shop next to my house. Or, well, it's a deli, but I got the pastrami sandwich. It is actually, you know what? You're from New York or you lived in New York, so you probably wouldn't like it.
>> Taylor: I was in a pastrami club in LA.
>> Farz: Really?
>> Taylor: we went to like a bunch of different jewish delis and stuff. It was great.
>> Farz: I would say that it is the best pastrami sandwich I've had since leaving LA and not being able to get Cantor's. But Cantor's was still better. And even at that level, I think that your experience with New York jewish delis is probably leaps and bounds above Cantor's. Is that fair?
>> Taylor: Yeah, that's fair. But still, if it's a good one, it's a good one. That's not.
>> Farz: We're not precious about our sandwiches.
Taylor: If you confuse units of measurement, bad things happen
>> Farz: So, Taylor, I'm going to go first today, and, you know, I don't actually even know where my notes are. There's so many. So many monitors up at this moment. There we go.
>> Taylor: I know I have so many monitors.
>> Farz: So I'm going to do two stories today, but they're kind of abbreviated. It's still going to be kind of long ish, but it's gonna. It's like I cut the content down quite a bit. So. So I started out by the most doomed, to fail thing I can think of that sounds innocuous. Innocuous. But isn't that innocuous? Which is units of measurement. But if you confuse units of measurement, bad things happen.
>> Taylor: Okay.
>> Farz: But then I got into my second topic, or actually the first topic in order here, and, and I thought it was a units of measurement issue, and I started researching it and I was like, 90% done. And I was like, shit. This was not a unit of measurement issue anyway. M. It was just a goof them up. So I'm going to do the, you know what? I'll start with the unit of measurement problem first. I'll go into the second. The second non one that is not part of the topic later.
>> Taylor: Okay.
NASA has a huge issue when it comes to units of measurement
>> Farz: So the first one I want to get into has to do with NASA. You know what, actually, they both have to do with NASA. Whatever. NASA has a huge issue when it comes to units of measurement and not screwing them up.
>> Taylor: Have you. Wait, are you going to talk about the people that are stuck on the space station right now?
>> Farz: No.
>> Taylor: So they flew a.
>> Farz: Well, Boeing, though, wasn't it?
>> Taylor: Exactly like, you have to be brave to get on a Boeing airplane. If you're getting on a Boeing spaceship, you have to be unbelievably brave because they, like, cancel it a bunch of times and now I think they can't get back.
>> Farz: Yeah. Those people's spouses took out trillion dollar life insurance policies when they signed up for this mission.
>> Taylor: Oh, you want to take a Boeing fucking spaceship to space? Cool. New. I'm going to start giving your clothes away as soon as you leave.
>> Farz: No kidding? No kidding. So coming home, I, It's funny, I started doing this research and I was focusing on this one, one, one mission, and it just segwayed into mission after mission after mission. I was like, this thing doesn't just happen as a fluke. It's like, mission after mission after mission, very nervous. It happens all the time. And I think I kind of know why. So there's two things I'm going to attribute it to. One I'll actually discuss in this issue, which is bureaucracy. So I think that when things get super bureaucratic, your capacity to make any changes, like an individual person within that organization is limited. And as cool as I think NASA is in, the mission and the people, how smart they are that work there, it also feels like a really weird, stupid, gross bureaucratic government entity that is just very bleak and gray. And it's like, did you file your TPS report? It just feels really crappy.
>> Taylor: something else that I happen to know that I love is that when NASA was first started, it was called the NASA.
>> Farz: And that's a dorky.
>> Taylor: Is that fun?
>> Farz: I guess fun sort of. Also, like, all you have to do is watch fall 13 and look at, Ed Harris wearing, like, a button up white shirt with, like, no sleeves, but, like, a black tie on with his, like, crew cut. And you're like, what? Why are we doing this? Like, we don't have to look like this. We can actually be, like, cool and fun and edgy, but, like, they're not like that. And that's part of the problem.
>> Taylor: Everyone looked.
>> Farz: I guess nobody was edgy then. That's a good point.
>> Taylor: Everyone wore it. That's like the sixties outfit of.
>> Farz: I mean, I think I'm thinking about the moon rover guy. Remember the moon rover guy who had, like, his head, part of his head was shaved, or he colored his hair red, white and blue. Remember that? He's an iranian guy. That's why he stood out to me.
>> Taylor: I don't remember, but that's fine.
>> Farz: So, that's one of the reasons. The other reason is that it sounds like NASA has to hire a ton of different companies to get anything done. Like, one company builds this thing, one company builds that thing. They all kind of come together and assemble it somehow. and that seems to cause issues as well, because you're dealing with units of measurement that they might be interpreting differently. So we're going to get into a 1998 slash 1999 failed mission, one of many that is called the Mars climate Orbiter, which was part, of NASA's Mars global survey program, which the entire point of was to survey the climate and atmosphere around Mars. Because even back in 98, we were talking about potentially one day having to populate Mars. So this is not a new, new thing that we just kind of cooked up. This has been going on, actually. This was devised in the late eighties, and this launched in 90, 98.
>> Taylor: So that's,
Do you think we're ever going to actually live on Mars
Do you think we're ever going to actually live on Mars? My. My guess is absolutely not.
>> Farz: We have to. We have to because I researched it. space is incredible, Taylor. Like, you really. You should really get into space.
>> Taylor: I'm into space. I've researched space. I learned a lot about space volcanoes. But I'm just saying, I don't know if we're going to really ever go.
>> Farz: In 4 billion years our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy collide. Everything that we know of, actually, Mars will be a part of that. So getting to Mars and having to live there is. I think it's like v one of learning how to just be inter galaxial or whatever.
>> Taylor: I don't know. I think that's the great filter. I don't think we're going to get there.
>> Farz: We're all going to die. Yeah, well, you heard. You hear from first from Taylor. anyways, that was the entire point of this climate orbiter, so it was, also supposed to serve as a communication relay for a thing called the Mars polar lander. I've already kind of foreshadowed this a little bit. I'll get to what happened to that mission in a moment, but we'll move on. It was designed off of another device called the Mars observer, which it was very similar in design. The launching mechanisms, all that stuff. and, that thing, the Mars observer, it launched five years earlier, that was also lost by NASA in Mars's orbit. This goes on.
>> Taylor: I mean, it seems easy to lose things in space.
>> Farz: No, it shouldn't be this easy. I mean, if you. If you have like a 50% failure rate, if. If 50% of the planes you got on crash, you wouldn't fly. If 1% of the planes crashed, you wouldn't fly.
>> Taylor: No, I know.
>> Farz: I don't think you would. So it was. Go ahead.
>> Taylor: I mean, no, you're totally right. I definitely wouldn't. But, Space is like incomprehensibly huge. Continue.
>> Farz: I know, but just don't do it then, like, don't do it until, you know. Exactly. Whatever. Who am I to talk?
>> Taylor: I don't even know what we're hearing about.
>> Farz: I literally. I literally have trouble changing the filter on my, on, my little water filter thing that's attached to my faucet.
>> Taylor: I bought a new one recently, so, like, I'm really excited about it. I'll show you. I'll tell you about it later.
>> Farz: Please. We can do. We can do another episode on that.
>> Taylor: Perfect.
NASA lost communication 49 seconds as its Mars orbit approached in 1999
>> Farz: so this thing, the orbiter, it was developed and engineered by JPL, the Jeff Volsham lab and built by Lockheed Martin and launched on December 11, 1998. That's not the eventful part, because once it launches, it takes forever to get to where it's going. And that's when you realize everything's wrong. So it launches on December 11 of 1998, on September 23, 1999. So 286 days after it launched, it started to approach Mars, the way they do this, I had to do a ton of research into how things are launched into orbit, which is like, this stuff is so incredible, Taylor. The way, the way it works is that when you launch something and you're trying to line up with its orbit, you basically are slingshotting yourself around it and then the gravity is pulling you closer to the orbit. The thing is, the trick shot is you need to match the velocity at which that orbit is rotating. You can't overshoot it, you can't undershoot it. So what that essentially means in this case is that this thing was in outer space, flying towards Mars at 194,000 mph. Crazy number, right?
>> Taylor: That's terrifying.
>> Farz: It had to brake, apply reverse thrusters to get it down to 52,000 mph. As it's approaching Mars orbit, line up parallel to the orbit and then slowly just merge into it. Like traffic.
>> Taylor: Like traffic, right? The fastest traffic humanly or you can ever possibly imagine.
>> Farz: So crazy. And that's the thing, you look at stuff like that, you're like, okay, these people, it's got to be really hard to do what they're doing.
>> Taylor: So maybe, oh no, we're not saying that the people at NASA aren't smart dumbasses. they smart.
>> Farz: I could do what they do. so on this day in September, things are looking fine as the orbiter was slowly starting to align itself with Mars orbit. And for a brief period of time, it was planning on losing communication with the earth as it goes behind Mars. That's just like naturally when it ends up happening. so at this point is when they realize that something went wrong. So imagine this thing has been flying at 194,000 mph for 286 days. They figured out this is the amount of precision these guys have. They figured out that they lost communication 49 seconds earlier than they should have after this thing traveled 14 billion mile or whatever that comes out to.
>> Taylor: I'm so nervous and I like, like I'm sweating, I'm so nervous. I hate this. Keep going.
>> Farz: Well, that's where the story on this piece ends. Because it lost, it went behind Mars 49 seconds earlier than it should have. Never to be heard from again. Nope.
>> Taylor: What?
>> Farz: Done. It's gone. So it's gotta be, it's gonna be. So can you imagine dedicating so much of your life to this thing and then all of a sudden that's it, it's gone. Like, what do you do?
>> Taylor: I know I want to throw up. And I think that, because like when you watch NASA, when like something goes well, and everybody's so excited. You're like, I wish I was ever that happy at work, you know? But you're like, I guess, like, the lows are low also.
>> Farz: That was a trick question, Taylor. What you do if you're that guy or gal is you go to Chili's and get a margarita.
>> Taylor: I love chili.
>> Farz: There you go. So an investigation was launched to figure out how, on earth, a $193 million project, the equivalent of nearly $400 million today, was lost. This is, like, a consistent theme anytime you research these things. Congress does not like funding NASA. Like, consistently, across its entire history, they've not been pro funding NASA. And so when they lose money to this degree, it's always like, what just happened? First off, I don't even know why you were spending this money to begin with. Now, I know that even the thing that you thought was viable out of it, you're not going to get out of it. So explain to us what happened. So they did, what they found out was that Lockheed Martin had used us customary units as its calculation for the total impulse produced by thrusters. I'm going to talk about that more in a minute.
>> Taylor: Okay.
>> Farz: Versus what NASA used, which was the metric unit. That's what NASA always uses, the metric unit. So an impulse unit is the change in momentum of an object. So when you slam, like a tennis ball or a golf ball, the momentum shift, one way or the other, is an impulse unit. And if you measure it differently, then it has obviously different ramifications. So the outcome was that the orbiter ended up applying a lot more propulsion to insert itself into that orbit. Like I said, it has to kind of slow itself down and then starts, what would you call merging? It had to merge into the orbit traffic, and it applied a lot more of that sideways thrust than it should have, because that miscalculation based on what's called us customary imperial system, is called us customary unit versus metric units. Okay, make sense?
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Ish.
>> Taylor: Yeah. I actually, I've been thinking about doing, like, an episode on, like, why things are different. Like, why. Why do we do this? And, like, why do sometimes people drive on the left side of the road? And, like, why does paper different sizes in Europe? Like, all those kind of things.
>> Farz: I would love to brainstorm things to cover.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Why is ice such a luxury in Europe? Why do you. Why do you only get one packet of ketchup at, the McDonald's in Germany?
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: These things we need to figure out.
NASA blamed itself for not double checking the math. They had two engineers who were like, the math is wrong
>> Farz: So what they think ended up happening is that as this thing went behind Mars, it propelled itself through the orbit and then just started running itself into the ground. They assume that it basically imploded or exploded about 35 miles, above Mars surface, where it would have, it's assumed that that's where you would have impacted the thick atmosphere of Mars and probably caused it to descend. Right. So ultimately, NASA actually blamed itself for not double checking the math. And again, so stupid. They had two engineers who were like, the math is wrong. The math is obviously wrong. And they're like, no, no, you didn't file the form, so it doesn't fucking matter. The math is wrong. Go follow form, and then maybe we'll.
NASA launched the Mars polo lander in September of 99
>> Taylor: Consider this, like, everyone should be in trouble.
>> Farz: And I mentioned earlier the Mars polo lander. So this thing actually launched two months after. This was all part of this exploratory program that NASA was launching. So there's a bunch of these things being launched in succession. And so they launched this thing, the Mars polar lander, two months after. So around, November of that same year. So this thing destroyed itself in September of 99. In November of 99, it had arrived in that same, area, and that was also lost. And what they assume happened to that one around the same, around the same place that it was supposed to enter into orbit, is it, it went through to land on, it was supposed to land on the surface. There was a known vibration that would happen when this thing was entering into Mars orbit, and that vibration would cause the computer software to think that it was actually touching down and landing on the surface when it wasn't. And so what happened was they think that this thing went through the, orbit and the vibration happened, causing a software bug to present itself and it didn't descend to the ground the way it was supposed to. It assumed it was already on the ground, so there was no arresting mechanism to slow its descent, and it just crashed into the ground. So there goes another about $400 million. So, that's two pretty fun events. One thing I didn't mention is that, we got our, the imperial system is actually based off the UK weights and Measures act, and we just call it something different than they do, but it's the exact same thing. So the UK still uses that system?
>> Taylor: The UK doesn't use the metric system?
>> Farz: No, I mean, not according to what I research.
>> Taylor: You know what the most wild thing is, is that they use stone for like a, measurement of weight, but it means 14 pounds. So they'll be like, oh, I gained two stone and you're like, why would you have to add by 14?
>> Farz: Anyway, so they. So the UK adopted the metric system in the sixties and seventies, but they still use, Okay, it's one of this. You can add this to your list of things, of why do they do things the way they do things. Because some things, some units of measurement are metrics, some are not. Some are imperial.
>> Taylor: So, just wildly confusing.
>> Farz: Also, the UK uses dry weight measurements called bushels and pecs.
>> Taylor: That's what I'm m talking about. Like, the fuck is that?
>> Farz: What is that?
>> Taylor: That is something from a goddamn nursery rhyme. UK.
>> Farz: Yeah, get with the program, uk.
>> Taylor: I do tell the children all the time I love them. a bushel and a peck and two kisses on the neck.
>> Farz: Do you really say that?
>> Taylor: Yeah, I don't know where they came from, but I say that to them all the time. And I like, especially when they're babies and they would, like, be like, kissing them on the neck. Anyway.
>> Farz: That is very cute, actually.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
The Hubble telescope is a very large telescope that's in outer space
>> Farz: so the other story I have, it's also NASA related, and this one's probably a little bit more well known. And this is the one where I researched. I got to the very end of the research was like, shit. That's not why it went wrong. So let me, let me explain real quick. So I'm going to talk about the Hubbles, telescope. So, again, everybody knows what the Hubble telescope is, basically. it's just a very, very large telescope that's in outer space. it's in earth's orbit. So it's about 340 miles or so above the surface of the earth. Originally, I don't think I knew that. Did you think it was further out?
>> Taylor: I think I thought it was on earth.
>> Farz: No, no, it's.
>> Taylor: If I had to guess, I would have been like, it's on earth. Not that it's on earth. Yeah.
>> Farz: No. So there's a reason why it's in outer space. So basically, there was a astronomer in 1946 called Lyman Spitzer, who was like, hey, we can. We're never going to actually be able to understand and see what's outside of what's, what's in outer space if we don't get off Earth. And the reason for that is because there's a thing called atmospheric turbulence on Earth. And so that causes issues with our visibility into outer space. So, for example, when you see a star twinkling, that's atmospheric, turbulence. That star is not actually twinkling.
>> Taylor: Right. That's just because the light getting to us and like, things going and being.
>> Farz: In the way, being refracted by our atmosphere. So in this thing, you can't see it, but I'm doing a little wavy thing. So, so basically, like I said before, anytime NASA seems to do something, Congress doesn't like approving this stuff. So a ton of energy and effort went into trying to get the Hubble, space telescope up and running. Like, there was astronomy associations, lobbying groups, there's different countries that were involved in it to help fund part of it. ultimately, they ended up securing about 36 million from Congress in 1978 to start building the telescope, which is like a drop in the bucket of what it actually ends up costing. But that being said, I pulled some schematics on how this thing works, and I'm just going to admit to you and anyone listening, I don't understand how cameras work.
>> Taylor: I'm laughing because, like, I like the idea that you understand how schematics work of anything, and then either I have no fucking idea. Please.
>> Farz: Was it capturing my soul? Like, what does it do? How does it.
>> Taylor: And I know that, like, I did. Do you ever make a pinhole camera in school?
>> Farz: No.
>> Taylor: You, like, get, like, a piece of, like, photographic paper and, like, a pinhole, and then, like, it, it makes an image. But, like, I don't know. We had a dark room in, in 7th grade, and I remember being in there a couple times, but, No, I don't get it either.
>> Farz: Yeah. Okay, so I'm, So, people, if anybody understands how cameras work, please tell us. That's one, one thing. I thought it was like, I was like, if you send me back to, like, the 15 hundreds, I would know nothing. I couldn't invent a car. I couldn't create a match. I don't know how any of this stuff works.
>> Taylor: Like, the thing, like, oh, I'm going to go back and invent things. I'm not going to fucking invent anything. I can invent the telephone. I'm m going to be like, I swear to God, you guys, there's something we could do, or we could talk to each other, and the people would be like, you're a witch, or you're crazy, and put me in a dungeon, and that would be it.
>> Farz: I could totally see us doing this, going back to the 15 hundreds. It's like we're going to invent a telescope, and then it eventually whittles its way down to, like, we just, like, invent scissors. And even those barely work.
>> Taylor: I know. Exactly. Oh, you guys already have wheels? Okay, what else?
>> Farz: What else can we work on?
>> Taylor: We'd be dead.
>> Farz: A dog leash. Are dogs pets?
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: They are not pets.
The original launch day for Hubble was October of 1986
Okay, so the original launch day for Hubble was October of 1986. But NASA was having some other challenges in 1986, namely that the space shuttle Challenger was destroyed and killed all the pilots on it, or astronauts on it in January of that year. So basically everything NASA related, all their operations came to a halt. So you could explain to Congress what went wrong in that situation. as a result, Hubble basically sat in storage for about four years, where it would be basically tested, powered on and off to make sure its systems were in good working order. It would have updates added to it throughout the process. Ultimately would cost around $6 million a month to store this thing, which, yeah, goes back to what I spent the $32 million they budgeted, allocated for. This was really, really cute in 1978. So on April 24 of 1990, it was launched in the cargo hold of the discovery space shuttle. So it launched, like I mentioned earlier, it launched in earths orbit. So not that far out. I said 340 miles above the surface, actually 336 miles above the surface. And over its first few weeks, they basically just like turned it on and off and would run tests, calibrated stuff. There was a lot of stuff that goes into it. Again. Science, science. Cameras, science. So on May 20, it sent back its first image. Immediately scientists noticed a problem and it wasnt hard to observe the problem. So if you ever look up hubbles first images, you will see that its basically refracting light in a very obvious way. Its like, if I'm trying to think like a way to describe it. So if you like move your, if you're trying to take a picture and you move your camera around while you're taking a picture, it kind of like reflects, reflects light in that way. That's kind of what they look like. So So basically what they realized looking at these images was that there was an issue with the mirrors within the camera on Hubble that they had to address. Given the level of precision we're talking here, it is imperceivable what might have, it is imperceptible to humanize what was wrong with the camera. But basically what it meant is the mirror that was responsible for refracting the light out of the light source was off by 2200 nanometers. For context, a human hair is 1000 nm thick.
>> Taylor: Jesus.
>> Farz: A red blood cell 7000 nm thick. So this is like a third of it's so crazy precision these guys in. So anyways, that's the scale we're talking about. What they discovered during the inquiry was that they're, again, they outsource all this stuff. So they hired a manufacturer called Perkin Elmer, which is still around today. and they were the manufacturer responsible for creating the mirror. So they had used a device called a reflective null corrector to measure and ensure the surface area of the mirror was smooth within the appropriate intolerance levels that NASA had defined for them. So let's figure out what a reflective null corrector is. Let me go ahead and put my science on.
>> Taylor: I already know that. It's okay.
>> Farz: We'll skip it then. We'll skip it.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: so basically, what you do is you put the mirror on the ground. Probably not on the ground. It's very expensive. You do something with it. This thing, this null corrector, is a device that is positioned on top of the mirror, and there's a pinhole on the top of it, and there is.
>> Taylor: I said pinhole.
>> Farz: You did. You did. That was related to something totally different, but we're gonna. We're gonna bypass that. Whatever it's around within this device are all kinds of lenses that reflect light back and forth amongst each other until they deposit that light source back out into the side, called a deflector, which is the observable place you would look at to see if this thing is correctly. smooth enough. So, at the top, you have a laser that shoots through that pinhole and then does this reflection. Reflection, and then pass it back to the deflector. So if everything is great, what you see is just a normal ray of light. If you're looking at the deflector, all you see is a normal ray of light. If it's not okay, if it's off by the tension levels that are being defined by the designers, then you get that wavy look. When you were a kid, you would see channels that you weren't supposed to be watching on tv. It would just be up and down. it would show up like that. That would be the clear indicator that you were off on your smoothness level. The thing that happened was that they use multiple null connect. sorry. multiple null correctors while they're measuring this thing. So upon final inspection, they decided to use a totally different, new, untested reflector that they built themselves. So, throughout construction, they were using these, like, pre made, prefab, whatever, reflectors. And then when it gets to the final thing, like, we need to be the best we can possibly be. This is NASA. We got to do the top work. We can possibly do. We're going to create our own to be as perfect as possible. When they realized that the lenses inside that thing were off by 1.3 mm. So if you were looking at the deflector, you saw a straight beam of light, but you didn't know that inside the thing that was displaying that beam of light, there was this malady.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Farz: So NASA set to trying to find a solution, and the problems were to replace the same mirror in space would be impossible, literally, just logistically, would have been impossible to do it.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: Bringing the telescope back to Earth to replace it was cost prohibitive. So what they decided to do was we know how off we are on the mirror itself, so why don't we just install another mirror that just counters that imbalance, that aberration.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: What they devised was this thing called a corrective optics space telescope. Axial replacement.
>> Taylor: Cool.
>> Farz: Called Costar, which is really cool. So and so that was built in device to, compensate for the aberration and the existing mirror. So on December 1993, the mission was mounted to fix the mirror. This was super risky, so.
>> Taylor: Right. Does someone have to go? Someone has to go do it.
>> Farz: Someone has to go do it. So in orbit, maintenance was not the standard for NASA. The risks associated with it were crazy. And as I described, they've already lost, like, a space shuttle, 14 different, mars land.
Taylor Half: Would you rather die in deep space or under the ocean
A lot of things have gone wrong. So they don't want to risk this, especially because if risking it means you can lose a human being or equipment to deep space, and there's no recovery mechanism, but you don't get that person back.
>> Taylor: Yeah, I hate it.
>> Farz: I was thinking, Taylor, is that, would you rather, did I ask you this already? Would you rather die that way or in, like, that? Titanic.
>> Taylor: Ah.
>> Farz: submarine.
>> Taylor: I feel like maybe in a titanic submarine, because it just happens so fast. Like, what do you do? You just drift away until you starve to death or you run out of.
>> Farz: Oxygen, I would assume run out of oxygen or die of thirst.
>> Taylor: That's really scary. I mean, maybe it's beautiful and you, like, get really introspective when you're out there, but no, I hate it.
>> Farz: They have to give those guys, like, cyanide capsules, right?
>> Taylor: Oh, yeah, actually, that's a really good point.
>> Farz: They have to, there's no way. They're like, yes, Bill, I need you to go walk into outer space. And if you're knocked off. There was one story I read, where they had to repair a satellite and the ways they were trying to catch it. Wasn't working. So an astronaut literally just held on to the space shuttle with one arm and then grabbed the satellite with his other arm and pulled them together. I was like, it's insane.
>> Taylor: What a job. That is insane.
>> Farz: So, okay, well, there we go. listeners let us know how you'd rather die in deep space or under the ocean. So.
>> Taylor: Oh, my God.
>> Farz: since they needed to basically do this mission anyways, they decided they were going to upgrade to some components with the Hubble. and ultimately the mission was a success because on January 13, the first incredibly high quality images of the Hubble come back. and so, yeah, 1999, January 13. I mean, we were kids back then, but it was a momentous kind of human, accomplishment that this ended up happening from there on out. Several other missions to maintain Hubble were undertaken until, again, the 2003 Columbia disaster where the space shuttle burned up on reentry. by that point, plans were already in place to eventually replace Hubble with what would later become known as the James Webb telescope. it was predicted to be a gap in observable, signs through telescopes between the decommissioning of one and the commissioning of the other. But, that's not the case. So the operational lifecycle of Hubble was supposed to be 15 years. That's it. It's still functioning. It's 30 years on the, and it's still sending back images. And it is pretty incredible. It sent us some incredible stuff. It is the reason why we now know that there is a black hole in the middle of our galaxy. it is the way we have learned about how galaxies are born and collapse. It took the first document, a picture of a star being essentially born. That's called the pillars of life, if you've ever seen that image. And one other thing I learned is that it's, this stuff is so crazy, Taylor. So I think we've all heard that the images that we see from Hubble or James Webb or whatever, that's actually not the real images, that NASA has to kind of colorize them and make them kind of look a certain way. So that's sort of true. Were you gonna say something?
>> Taylor: Well, I just, I looked at a bunch of the Hubble telescope pictures while you were talking and there. Beautiful.
>> Farz: They're crazy beautiful. Yeah.
>> Taylor: Oh, my God.
>> Farz: So here's, here's actually what's going on. So I learned and, didn't write any of this down. So I'm going off memory here and you know how good my memory is. So I learned that human eyes can only perceive 0.4% of visible color. So there's so many things going on around us that we can't actually see. Sorry, I say visible color. I should have said visible white, which is equivalent to color.
>> Taylor: Right.
>> Farz: So when we say that, NASA has to kind of colorize these things, otherwise, like, this isn't what it really looks like. Half true. So what happens is both with Hubble pictures and with James Webb. So, in Hubble's case, Hubble only captures pictures in black and white. And the reason for that is that if you apply gradients to black and white images, you actually can pick up a lot more contrast than you can if you capture them in full color as perceived by humans. And so what they do is they take black and white pictures and colorize them as they actually would be observed by human eyes if you were to view them. So when you look at a Hubble picture, it is true that that picture isn't authentically the picture Hubble took. But if you saw the thing that Hubble saw, you would see it with your own eyes as it is produced by NASA.
>> Taylor: Say that again.
>> Farz: So the pictures Hubble takes always want black and white.
>> Taylor: Okay.
>> Farz: What NASA then does is they apply gradients to the level of black and white in the shades of gray that are on the image and then overlay them with visible light colors. So if you were to see that object, like pillar of light, have you seen pillar of life yet?
>> Taylor: No.
>> Farz: Okay. Google pillar of life.
>> Taylor: Is that a picture?
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Ooh, yeah.
>> Farz: It's one of the most famous pictures that Hubble ever took. That's the birth of a star as it's being captured in real time. And, if you were to see that with your own eyes, that's what it would look like. But if you were to see the hubble picture of it, it would actually be all black and white.
>> Taylor: Got it.
>> Farz: So another example of that is James Webb. So, James Webb is, I want to say 1900 or 19 million. Sorry, 1.9 million mile away from Earth. It is way further out in deep space. It is different than Hubble because it actually is set to capture light on the, ultraviolet band, wavelengths. And so what it can do is it can see through clouds. So where Hubble can't see through clouds, you can kind of see what's directly in front of it.
The window for a return flight to Boeing's starliner is closing
James Webb can. And so, again, everything we see from James Webb is run through the similar filter because our eyes can't see ultraviolet. So.
>> Taylor: That'S crazy.
>> Farz: Yeah, it's nuts.
>> Taylor: It's like, wild. I just don't even understand.
>> Farz: I don't understand.
>> Taylor: I know you said it like twice, but it's like. It's so crazy to think that there's, like, other things happening that I am not seeing.
>> Farz: Yeah. So one of the. One of the other things that Hubble told us. Hubble is the reason why we are so confident now in gray matter being all around us. So we know that. Sorry. Dark matter, so we know that, like, it is presumed that, like, everything that, like, when is around us, like, there's dark matter, like, there's another entity or property that exists all around us at all times that we just don't perceive, there's always here. And Hubble is part of the reason why we know that as well, so.
>> Taylor: Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, I mean, I feel like. Just, like what? I just. There's just so much out there, but that's the thing.
>> Farz: Okay, so here's what I was thinking. I was thinking, like, okay, if we have to be off this galaxy in 4 billion years, a pretty good way to figure out how to do that is get to Mars. And then let's go a little further. And then let's go.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: And, like, in like, a thousand years, we probably will have figured out how to, like, leap onto another galaxy or something. I don't know. But, our problem is time. Time's a problem? The problem is that you can't. It just takes too long.
>> Taylor: And like the, like, do people really get. Has anyone ever actually been frozen in space to go far? No, it's never really happened. That's just like Sci-Fi.
>> Farz: Are you asking, has anybody been cryogenically frozen and then revived in outer space?
>> Taylor: Yeah. The answer is no, right?
>> Farz: I think the answer is no.
>> Taylor: So, I mean, like, is that really what we would have to do, like, in the movies?
>> Farz: But no, man. event horizon.
>> Taylor: Do you know how to do that?
>> Farz: Event, horizon. Got it right. What you do is you bend space time to a certain point and then you cross through, except every now and then you.
>> Taylor: You go to hell.
>> Farz: Oh, you just gotta be careful not to do that.
>> Taylor: Everyone's like having an orgy and eating each other at the same time.
>> Farz: Really strange. Really strange scene. That was a great movie, though, right?
>> Taylor: Oh, my God. Watch event horizon, friends. If you haven't. It's really good.
>> Farz: Classic.
>> Taylor: Yeah.
>> Farz: So, that's my story. I'm sticking to it. I don't know what NASA's up to lately. I think they mostly ceded outer space, stuff to SpaceX. Like, it feels like SpaceX is super involved.
>> Taylor: I don't know how, but let's see. Who are those people? Who are Boeing?
>> Farz: Boeing apparently is in outer space now.
>> Taylor: I mean, they shouldn't be. They should be worrying about their problems at home before they worry about their problems in space. Boeing spaceship.
>> Farz: I mean, if those people die in outer space, the stock's got to tank, right?
>> Taylor: I mean, yeah, it looks like they're stuck in space due to multiple issues with Boeing's starliner. The window for a return flight is closing. I don't know what that means. Did a sticky valve. Left them stuck in space. Multiple issues.
>> Farz: I mean, so it's the sticky valve.
>> Taylor: It says it's been delayed for the third time on Friday, June 21. So this Friday, they, have no new return date. I mean, these.
>> Farz: Can you imagine being, like, the astronaut up there and you facetime your, like, wife and, like, what are you doing, honey? It's like, nothing. It's like, what, what's. What's that behind you? And, like, she's at, like, actively trying to buy a funeral plot for you.
>> Taylor: Mm
>> Farz: Actually, it's pointless because you're not going to come back, so what does it matter?
>> Taylor: Oh, 100%. You're not going to get buried anywhere.
>> Farz: Yeah, exactly.
Space Force is launching two satellites today from Vandenberg Air Force
>> Taylor: I also like the kids we talk about all the time about how many, just, like, dead dogs are in space, you know? Cause, like, the Russians were like, we did it with Laika. but you're like, no, you didn't. You did it with, like, a thousand other dogs first.
>> Farz: Poor things, poor things, poor babies.
>> Taylor: They have no idea. They're just, like, in a thing, like, floating forever.
>> Farz: I mean, the good news is they have no idea that nothing is gonna happen. So, like, they're never gonna understand how bad their situation is. That's the problem if you're at an outer space, like, you know how bad it is.
>> Taylor: Yeah. You know you're not going to get back.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: These two are there together. Barry. Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams. I hope you're listening. Do you get the Internet up there? Download our podcast. It'll take a lot of your time. It'll distract you from the fact that you're floating in space with so much content. You guys, 45 days. But at least two of those days can be constant, doomed to fail episodes.
>> Farz: I mean, your auction is going to run out way before our content will.
>> Taylor: We're sorry, because you are very. You are very brave.
>> Farz: No, I don't. Brave. I mean, there's a fine line between brave and stupid. I mean, Stockton Rush was also brave, right?
>> Taylor: Yeah, I know.
>> Farz: anyways, that's my episode. That's my story. I'm sticking with it. please write to us@doomdefaultpod.com. if you have other fun topics about space, because it is, man, once I started learning about the telescope and what it took pictures, I was like, it's. There's one picture, there's a picture of it. It's like, it's like a tiny picture. And it's from Hubble. And they say it captures 250,000 galaxies. What does that mean? What does that even mean?
>> Taylor: I told you that one time we saw Starlink in the sky and we thought that it was end of the world.
>> Farz: Yeah, I saw. I was in LA. I was in LA and I went to this one grocery store and I saw and was like, oh, everybody just stopped. All traffic stopped. Everybody just looking into the sky. It was one of the first times they launched. What was in 2016 or something?
>> Taylor: No, no, I've seen the launch, but I also saw the satellites. So you can see the satellite. There's like 15 dots in a row just like going across the sky at night. And the first time we saw it, we were like, this is it. They're here. Thank God, because I'm fucking ready for change. And, but no, it was, it was Starlink satellites. So you can, like, see them in a row, which is pretty cool.
>> Farz: Can you see when they're supposed to launch?
>> Taylor: probably. My dad always sees, he lives by, he lives in Florida and he can see, like, cape Canaveral from his house. No, what's that one? Whatever. The one in Florida. And he, will take videos of it launching, which is super cool.
>> Farz: Taylor, they're literally launching at 847 Pacific today.
>> Taylor: Oh, well, I'll go outside.
>> Farz: Yeah. From Vandenberg Air Force. Wait, Vandenberg is called the Space Force base? That's so much cooler.
>> Taylor: I know. They changed, like, a lot of things to space Force recently, which also sounds cool. I met someone in Japan whose son works for Space Force and I was like, that's cool.
>> Farz: I mean, I will, I will admit when, when Trump was announcing space Force, at first I was like, oh, my God, what? What next? We're gonna wage war on dolphins next? Like, I don't get it. And then, like, now it's like you're seeing like, Russia's planning nuclear bombs and shit in space. Like, okay, like, maybe there's a point I don't.
>> Taylor: We are not getting to Mars is another. It's another. Another check on the not getting to Mars side of the pros and cons of space.
>> Farz: We're going back to sticks and stones. yeah, if you want spaceflightnow.com, it'll give you all the launch schedules for, for SpaceX. And also one other fun fact. You can go on a website which I'm going to tell you the name of in 1 second. Hold. Hold. Please hold. Keep holding. Okay, there it is.
So if you go on space telescope live. org, you can actually see what Hubble and web telescopes are looking at
So if you go on space telescope live.org, you can actually see what the Hubble and web telescopes are looking at in that moment.
>> Taylor: Whoa.
>> Farz: I mean, sort of telescope live.
>> Taylor: Amazing. Cool. I want to show this to my children. Hold on. Let me write this.
>> Farz: Like, right now. Webb, is fixated on a supermassive black hole.
>> Taylor: I get so scared.
>> Farz: Yeah.
>> Taylor: Hubble's looking at stars. Oh, cool.
>> Farz: So anyways, that's my story.
Our website is up. You can go to it and find all of our links
Taylor, is there anything you would like to say?
>> Taylor: our website is up. By the grace of God, I'm super stoked.
>> Farz: Thank you, Jesus.
>> Taylor: I know. I'm so excited. So the website is up. You can go to it and find all of our links to things. So very, very excited.
>> Farz: what's the website?
>> Taylor: Doom to fill. All right. Doom to fill. Pod.com. dot.
>> Farz: We're great at promotion. Correct. Awesome. Well, thanks, Taylor. We'll go ahead and show this off and rejoin you all in a few days.
>> Taylor: Cool. Thanks, virus. That was scary. Thanks for your time.