Universe Today Podcast

In this week's questions show, I explain why it's probably not time to reconsider the definition of a moon, if we could make artificial gravity with a chunk of a neutron star, and why a supermassive black hole isn't the anchor for an entire galaxy.

In this week's live QA, we talked about rotating space stations, the materials that can be made in space, what telescopes and binoculars I use. And there were a lot of questions about James Webb.

In this week's questions show, I explain why we'll never know which stars have no planets. How we could prevent a catastrophe to Earth, and why aliens might still be a threat to us.

No guest this week, just a live QA with me and the audience about all things space and astronomy. People had questions about how planets can capture asteroids to turn them into moons, what rocket James Webb will use to fly to space, and why you can't use antimatter to destroy a black hole.

Even as the first rockets were launched into space decades ago, aerospace knew it was a wasteful process. Rocket stages, motors, and complex equipment crashed into the ocean or burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Could spaceplanes bring the costs down? Flying to orbit with a combination of jet engines and rockets and then safely re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere again.

Single-stage to orbit spacecraft and spaceplanes have always seemed out of reach, and actually not that practical. But what about a two-stage, fully reusable spaceplane?

Exodus Space Corporation has been secretly working on this concept for a decade now, and what they’re proposing is pretty revolutionary.

While we’re all waiting for James Webb to launch - which it will - the Extremely Large Telescope to be constructed, and LUVOIR to get approved.

(Please get approved, please get approved.)

We’re going to need a way to pass the time. So let’s have our imaginations take flight, out into the Universe, and consider some of the most incredible ideas suggested for telescopes.

Unless you’ve been crawling through scientific journals like me, I guarantee you’ve never heard of any of them. But when I’m done, you’re going to want to fund all of them.

In this week's questions show, I explain why Starship probably won't contribute to human carbon emissions, if there's a galactic Prime Directive, and if SpaceX has finally perfected the single-stage to orbit.

Featuring Tony Darnell from Deep Astronomy and the Space Junk Podcast

After decades of research, including multiple landers and orbiters, science can definitively say: Venus sucks. Seriously, that place is the worst, with its boiling temperature, intense pressure, sulfuric acid rain, and more.

But was it always this bad? According to new research from NASA and various universities in Sweden and the US, Venus might have actually been the first habitable world in the Solar System. And it might have maintained a reasonable climate for billions of years, finally rolling over into a runaway greenhouse effect just a few hundred million years ago.

This week I was joined by astronaut Ron Garan to talk about his new book "Floating in Darkness". Ron is an accomplished F-16 pilot, flying combat missions during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

He flew to space twice, first aboard STS-124, and then a six-month stay on board the International Space Station as part of Expedition 27.

On Saturday, September 28th, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stood in front of an audience in Boca Chica, Texas, and presented the fully assembled SpaceX Starship, 50 meters tall and made from shiny stainless steel.

As part of his presentation, Musk showed off the history of the company’s developments so far and gave us an updated view of what Starship and its first stage Superheavy booster will look like when they’re fully operational.

It was actually a pretty short presentation, and there weren’t a lot of details. But he stuck around to answer questions from many space journalists, and we’ve got a much better idea about Starship and what happens next.