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We always say that we’re living in golden age of space and astronomy, but it feels like things are just accelerating. What does the long-term future hold for our place in the Universe?
Show Notes | Transcript
Show Notes
Star Trek: The Next Generation (Star Trek)
Starship (SpaceX)
Space Launch System (SLS) (NASA)
Orion Spacecraft (NASA)
Technological singularity (Wikipedia)
Gateway (NASA)
Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (NASA)
China National Space Administration
Tiangong space station (Wikipedia)
Chang’e-5: China’s Moon sample return mission (The Planetary Society)
Imagining a Moon base (ESA)
For All Mankind (Apple TV+)
Solving the Challenges of Long Duration Space Flight with 3D Printing (NASA)
Here’s how we could mine the moon for rocket fuel (MIT)
Regolith, The “Other” Lunar Resource (Smithsonian Magazine)
McMurdo Station (NSF)
The Expanse (Syfy)
Asteroid Mining (MIT)
How to Build a Dyson Swarm (Space.com)
The Apollo Missions (NASA)
Space Shuttle Era (NASA)
JWST (NASA)
In Depth | Europa (NASA)
In Depth | Enceladus (NASA)
Interstellar Travel – The Wait Calculation and the Incentive Trap of Progress (Researchgate)
Biosphere 2 (University of Arizona
Transcript
(This is an automatically generated transcript)
Fraser Cain [00:01:49] Astronomy Cast Episode 646. Our long term future in space. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly facts based journey through the cosmos, where we help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I’m Fraser Cain. I’m the publisher of the Universe Today. I’ve been a space and astronomy journalist for over 20 years with me, as always. His doctor, Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the director of Cosmic Quest in panel. How are you doing?
Pamela Gay [00:02:16] I am doing well. I am currently experiencing that great heat wave that is hitting mid North America and making all of us wonder if it’s time to go learn how to play a penny whistle and do our best Picard imitation. As we design spaceships to download human history into the brains of an alien that gets too close.
Fraser Cain [00:02:39] Is that is that it is the penny whistle the the key that unlocks this whole thing? Yes. That was a that was a that was a deep reach of an obscure Star Trek The Next Generation reference. Fortunately, I got it. So we are we’re on the same nerd level here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we’re continuing our jury existence. It is continuing to be wet and cold and and that is putting all of the excavation work that we need to do on our property on hold as we lose excavator after excavator into the morass of our property. I think, you know, future paleontologists will be puzzled as they see mammoth bones and excavator bones mixed in together, but hopefully it’ll dry out at some point. We always say that we’re living in a golden age of space and astronomy, but it feels like things are just accelerating. Space travel is happening. What does the long term future hold for our place in the universe? Oh my God, Pamela, I can’t believe you put this. This is catnip to me. It’s like I’m on. You know, I know we try to keep constrain the length of these episodes, but I’m just gonna go all.
Pamela Gay [00:03:54] I know.
Fraser Cain [00:03:55] Here. So prepare yourself for for for my enthusiastic, excitement for the future. But. But what did you want to talk about today before I take over?
Pamela Gay [00:04:07] So. So for the audience members who don’t know, we schedule, the episodes that we’re going to do months in advance. And the day that I was scheduling things, I was being a tank watcher and rooting on Starship as it works towards actually being a satellite launching Pez dispenser of the future. And so it was in the context of this future where we’re looking to have multiple heavy lift vehicles, where we’re looking to have fully reusable space planes that I wanted to imagine. All right. The kind of future that, like Kim Stanley Robinson has detailed out with, like, you ride this asteroid to get to this world, and then you switch asteroids. And there are communications networks everywhere. And and this is the future that that I want to dream about.
Fraser Cain [00:05:06] Right. But your enthusiasm runs headlong into the Pamela directive.
Pamela Gay [00:05:12] We’re not going to talk about actually planned missions. We’re going to talk.
Fraser Cain [00:05:16] And talk about things.
Pamela Gay [00:05:17] We want to see planned when we’re like gray, you’re and in our walkers recording our.
Fraser Cain [00:05:27] Right to thousand. We can’t talk about Starship because Starship hasn’t launched. We can’t talk about that SLS because our service hasn’t launched.
Pamela Gay [00:05:34] So Starship has has launch prototypes. So I’m willing to talk about Starship.
Fraser Cain [00:05:39] Sure. And then the the Orion capsule has been launched. So. But sure. So we have to talk. So let’s talk about the future. Well, so do you want to sort of where do you want to go? Let’s speculate wildly about what we see as happening in in the future. And I think for me, when I think about the far future, the one thing that that is sort of this cloud that hangs over the whole thing is the ever accelerating speed of technology and artificial intelligence and computers and its ability to utterly change what the future might look like. So, I mean, we’re going to need to set that aside and go, it doesn’t matter. Like, who know? Who cares? Yeah. Just so what if we if the singularity arises in ten years from now, when we merge with our computers and they robotically explore the universe, that is, we’re we’re not going to consider that it’s still going to be people.
Pamela Gay [00:06:36] Or at least people on Earth controlling the stream.
Fraser Cain [00:06:41] Right? Yeah, exactly. So then like, like let’s say over the next ten years, what do you see happening?
Pamela Gay [00:06:52] Ten years is still the current budget cycle. And so I’m not entirely optimistic about the next ten years. I see us hopefully, maybe putting two people who inevitably will be a woman and a person of color, or possibly both at the same time, onto the moon. That’s about as far as I’m willing to go for ten years.
Fraser Cain [00:07:14] But that’s like 2026 is the plan for that. I mean, no one said it’s not 2024. I know, I know, no one said it’s not 2024. That was the original plan for the Artemis mission. So there will be one or multiple Artemis missions?
Pamela Gay [00:07:30] Yes.
Fraser Cain [00:07:33] And we so we will see probably a couple of humans step foot on the moon. We’ll see the construction of the lunar gateway. We’ll see. Follow on missions going back to the moon over the course of the next, say, ten years. But but NASA isn’t the only game in town.
Pamela Gay [00:07:48] No. And there of there are other space agencies and corporations around the world who are looking to start putting, well, boots on the ground, on asteroids, on the moons of Mars and on Mars itself. And I feel that in ten years are largely going to still be in the infrastructure development stage for that. And some of the infrastructure we’re really going to need are things like, well, we need to be able to communicate with Mars when it’s on the other side of the sun. So I’m looking forward to things like a solar system communications network with solar sail, position correction going on so that missions can control their positions for far longer than they could if they were just, well, solar powered with propellant. So I want that future. We have small communications relay satellites that are moved by solar sails that are out there, allowing us to communicate anywhere in the solar system, even if the sun happens to be between us. And that.
Fraser Cain [00:08:54] And, you know, I mentioned some other players getting into the game. The Chinese space agency has developed a whole lunar exploration group, and they’ve shown us pictures of of the various vehicles that they are theoretically hoping to have. I would say where they are in the cycle right now, like Tiangong or three. This is their their new space station. They’re they’re now maybe 20 years behind NASA.
Pamela Gay [00:09:24] So again, stellar rating and accelerating.
Fraser Cain [00:09:28] Yeah yeah yeah. Like I would I would say it’s not. And and they’ve proven with their sample return mission that they can bring payloads back from the moon. I don’t think it’s out of comprehension that we will see someone from China set foot on the moon within the next ten years.
Pamela Gay [00:09:43] Oh, yeah.
Fraser Cain [00:09:45] But then Starship, if it does what it’s supposed to do, then it should be able to just fly up to space, refuel, fly to the moon, land, return back to Earth so we could see three fairly comfortably. We’ll see three different groups going to the moon over the next decade plus. And then, of course, the Russians have said that they might, but the Russians see a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah. The European Space Agency has, has got plans to build a lunar community. So I think.
Pamela Gay [00:10:18] I’m sorry.
Fraser Cain [00:10:19] Yeah I saw oh yeah. They, they’re they’re now starting to work on human spaceflight. So I think it seems within the next ten years, 20 years for sure, we should have some kind of vibrant research base on, on the moon as we saw in for for All Mankind.
Pamela Gay [00:10:39] And, and what has me excited about this is, is just to go back to what you were saying about Starship is, is SpaceX is currently contracted to do a special version of Starship that goes from Lunar Gateway to Moon and is just a ferry back and forth between those two points. And so we can imagine that just like when you’re doing a long duration flight where you have to switch planes in different places, that you will hop a starship, fly to the gateway with one set of engines, swap vehicles, and then ferry yourself down or be ferried down rather to the surface of the moon. And it’s it’s going to be a lot like what we’ve seen in so much science fiction in the past. And I like when things start to pretend to be science fiction.
Fraser Cain [00:11:37] It’s. Yeah, it’s it’s always kind of exciting to see ideas. Star Trek communicators. Translation systems.
Pamela Gay [00:11:45] Yeah.
Fraser Cain [00:11:45] Artificial intelligence systems that you can talk to. It’s all getting quite exciting. Yeah. Now what about. So let’s push a little farther. I mean, I mean, I think there’s some there’s some underlying technologies that will come into play, like we’re going to see more 3D printing in space. Yeah, 3D assembly manufacturing. But it’s going to be really in its nascent stages over the next decade or so as, as we’re seeing a bunch of proofs of concept solar panels being printed in space, maybe on the moon trusses, large telescopes assembled out of parts, etc., etc.. And so I think we will see the technology be developed, but not necessarily implemented. Now let’s take us into the sending Humans to Mars range. When do you think we’re going to see people going to Mars?
Pamela Gay [00:12:35] I always have a heavy sigh when I ask that question, because my brain always starts doing red alert radiation. Radiation? There’s radiation, and there’s like this klaxon in the back of my brain that we still haven’t solved that particular problem. Ignoring that and assuming that can get fixed, which is a giant scary assumption.
Fraser Cain [00:12:55] Or people are just willing to take the risk.
Pamela Gay [00:12:57] Or people are just willing to take the risk. I, I feel like we’re probably 20 years out from that. I will need to land a bunch of infrastructure ahead of astronauts. We need to get better at things like returning at least rocks from the surface of Mars until we can get rocks back. I’m not feeling so good about getting the humans back. But it’s it’s starting to be the kind of thing where I would feel comfortable giving a talk to a group of elementary school kids and saying, some of you will be the first ones to set foot on Mars. And I haven’t felt comfortable saying that before without feeling like I was lying.
Fraser Cain [00:13:40] So in the like late 20, thoroughly 30s, early 2040s, we could see the first footsteps on On Mars. Yeah, I think I think on the traditional route that’s accurate, like the NASA builds the Space Launch System or builds a certain amount of space infrastructure, sends a spacecraft down to Mars to to start building fuel, maybe sets up a station on Phobos as a place as a, as a staging area to go down to the surface of Mars, etc.. But the other alternate future timeline is the one where Elon Musk and SpaceX gets the Starship functioning as planned. Yeah, can do this whole thing. In one go that the thing just flies to Mars lands. People get out. It builds its fuel and then it returns.
Pamela Gay [00:14:38] I feel like we’re going to want to do one test flight without humans on board, which is like automatically going to be four years basically. And then it would be another two to the next launch window. So I think the realities of iterative design thank God is what they’re doing. They will do iterative landing on Mars I really hope. just to make sure that it does go and come back healthy.
Fraser Cain [00:15:13] And so that’s that is like I mean even if they go for the, say, the 2028 launch window, like if, like if Starship launches in 2022, it becomes more usable and successful by 2024, they start to develop the actual hardware, and maybe they can launch by the 2028, 2030 launch window.
Pamela Gay [00:15:35] I’d say 2030.
Fraser Cain [00:15:37] Yeah, they they send the spacecraft, it lands, it rebuilds its fuel. And as you say, it’s a four year. So it’s back by 2034. All this time they’re preparing an actual human crew, and maybe it’s a NASA crew or some kind of collaboration that still gets you into that same window. So I think, you know, you’re 2038, so that’s 2040. That’s that’s roughly the same time. So I do think that that we really won’t see, and I agree with you 100% that that we won’t see humans set foot on Mars before the end of the 2030s.
Pamela Gay [00:16:10] Yeah.
Fraser Cain [00:16:10] And there’s a lot of hope and a lot of hype right now about about Elon Musk’s plans and promises. But we always know that we’re living on Musk time, and we have to double in add ten to anything that he says.
Pamela Gay [00:16:26] Yes, yes. Sadly, that is our reality now.
Fraser Cain [00:16:32] As we push farther, things get hazier.
Pamela Gay [00:16:37] So they got.
Fraser Cain [00:16:39] Space infrastructure, we’ve got space base, 3D printing assembly. We’ve got maybe the beginning of in-situ resource utilization, where we’re harvesting water from the moon or harvesting regolith from the moon, where we’re starting to maybe gather material from asteroids, volatiles, things like that. Where do you think what happens next? Do you think?
Pamela Gay [00:17:04] I I’m really hoping for that either space station that is using asteroid resources or that we actually go ahead and do the thing, we hollow out an asteroid and we live in that sucker. I think.
Fraser Cain [00:17:20] Soon that that’s feels like a.
Pamela Gay [00:17:22] I feel like that is the 20 years after Mars.
Fraser Cain [00:17:27] Yeah. So in the 2060s. Yeah.
Pamela Gay [00:17:30] So when, when we’re at the point of our bodies are definitely trying to eagle on us and we’re wondering if the robots are ready yet, I’m hoping that at that point we we will start seeing people. I mean, imagine if we could get to the point that you could land on a carbon rich asteroid and use the carbon to 3D print carbon fiber devices. That that kind of ability would open up the capacity to build structures anywhere.
Fraser Cain [00:18:10] I think that we’re going to go through a desert of of really interesting things happening, a space exploration winter that that will happen. Why once? Because I think that there’s actually not a lot of really interesting places to go in the solar system with human beings. There’s the moon. So we’ll have a base on the moon. There’s Mars. Sure. We’ll have a base on Mars. You’re sending new crews that will show up, and the other crew will come back, and they’ll be doing their work, like. Like the base in Antarctica doesn’t get enormously bigger, and we don’t see hundreds of bases popping up across Antarctica. You just have McMurdo station. Yeah, and a couple of other research bases, because that’s all you really need. And so I actually think that that we’re going to see those, those footholds made in various places around the solar system, that makes sense. An asteroid, the moon, Mars. And then that’s it. For a long time, I would guess for 100 years plus. That’s my personal opinion that that there’s nowhere else that’s in the in the moon. Mars and that asteroid are only useful because they are scientifically interesting. There’s no reason to go to them beyond we want to learn more. And you only need to send a small number of people to learn more. And I don’t think there’s any real value in in almost anything else that people have envisioned in the, in the long term future of space exploration. But I will caveat that later on.
Pamela Gay [00:19:42] Yeah. So I’ve watched far too much expanse, as have you. And sure, some of the earliest science fiction books I remember reading were about mining asteroids. And the part of me that knows humans have thumbs and can do things faster and more effectively than robots at many stages of development is like, okay, if we find a capitalist reason to be out there using our thumbs. Maybe that will accelerate exploration. Mars. What’s the backup plan?
Fraser Cain [00:20:19] Well, no, I don’t think they will. No, I like. Space power from space. It’s way cheaper to get your power from Earth than it is. Oh, yeah. Something to space. Totally getting minerals. It is way cheaper to dig a hole in the ground. It’s right under your feet than it is to try and send a space mission off, to find an asteroid, to try to harvest material from the asteroid and try to bring that material back home to Earth. It totally makes sense to use that stuff in place. Yeah, if you’re on a moon, on a moon base, by all means dig into the frozen crater of water to get water for you for your station. In the same way that I’m sure people at McMurdo melt snow for their toilets. They don’t bring it in from from Argentina.
Pamela Gay [00:21:04] But imagine putting a construction facility on a good sized asteroid that has all the carbon you could want some water or some some metals, and using that as the construction platform to build things that go even further out into the solar system where we’re standing.
Fraser Cain [00:21:24] Still be easier to build them from Earth.
Pamela Gay [00:21:27] And that makes me sad. That makes me sad.
Fraser Cain [00:21:30] I’m sure you know, ten year old me is screaming at me right now, and I definitely feel like we’ve somehow switched places.
Pamela Gay [00:21:37] Now. I know in.
Fraser Cain [00:21:38] Our in our, in our world. So the caveat that I was sort of getting into is essentially cheap energy, cheap access to space that that there will come a time when like the like when you watch The Expanse. The key to the expanse is the fusion drives that they use that that allow you to take off from a planet, fly around the solar system at high velocity that turn. The hazardous trips to space. Into something is more like oceangoing vessels again that that until you can get there, until you can trivialize space. It will, it will. There will be very few economic reasons to go to space that can’t be solved by here on Earth. Yeah. And so our technology will be increasing our infrastructure, as you said, I totally agree. We’re going to have those communication systems across the solar system. We will be building our infrastructure in space, and we will be developing our technology. And there will come a time and it might be 100 years from now, maybe 200 years from now, when we have trivialized space again. And then you get this second spring, you get this blooming of all of this use of the solar system, and then we’re just running headlong until we create our Dyson swarm, in my opinion. But I think we’re going to have a few, like decades, if not 100 years plus of there never being anything more than a couple of people on the moon, a couple of people on Mars, and a couple of people on an asteroid or two.
Pamela Gay [00:23:09] So, so there’s this whole problem that we have been always ten years away from fusion drives that actually produce more energy than they take is what’s going to hold us back on putting. Yeah, I think so.
Fraser Cain [00:23:25] I think sad.
Pamela Gay [00:23:26] I feel the era correct. I can still be smart about it.
Fraser Cain [00:23:30] But I think like like just use an analogy, right? Like look at the Artemis missions. Yeah. Like back in the Apollo era, they spent a quarter of $1 trillion developing the Apollo program. Yeah, space shuttle was like half that, but still a ludicrous amount of money, the space station, etc.. Yeah, but the amount of money it’s actually been spent on the Artemis missions when you go back, is just in the dozens of billions of dollars, which is which is not a lot compared to it’s it’s a fact.
Pamela Gay [00:24:01] It’s a.
Fraser Cain [00:24:02] Percent. Yeah, it’s 10% the cost of what the Apollo missions were. And it seems perfectly feasible. And Starship even works is 10% of that again. And so now you every time you decrease your, your cost by a factor of ten, it it raises possible purposes. Possible reasons. Yeah. You know air flight that we can we can fly in strawberries from South America on the off season. Couldn’t be done with without cheap air travel. It’s true. It could be said that it’s it’s very bad for the environment as well. So so I think that that there are there are these two curves. There’s this curve of just our increasing or ever increasing capability in terms of, of power and knowledge and technology and all this kind of stuff. And then there is the difficulty and as we cross and if you could do things early, but then you tend to retreat, you get the Apollo missions because you went too early, like, like the Apollo missions were done 50 years too early.
Pamela Gay [00:25:09] Yeah.
Fraser Cain [00:25:10] Because they could. And now the Apollo missions are again very, very feasible by multiple groups. And shortly in ten years from now, 20 years from now, they will be done by potentially hundreds of different groups could do this. So. So I think that but in terms of discovery, we’re just going to find rocks and rocks.
Pamela Gay [00:25:31] I know.
Fraser Cain [00:25:32] Rocks and.
Pamela Gay [00:25:32] Snow. No stone rocks. I know where you.
Fraser Cain [00:25:35] Go across the solar system. You just got rocks. It’s more or less sunlight falling on them.
Pamela Gay [00:25:40] I feel like if we capture enough, I hints at biologicals in the fluid coming from geysers on Europa and in solidus. Everything that we just said is going to get thrown out the window in order to go looking for life.
Fraser Cain [00:25:56] No, we just added one more station. The Ansel Adams research station. The Europa research station. That’s it. I know, it’s like, I don’t know what’s happened over the. Somehow I’ve been completely flipped around in last 15 years. But I think the hope is that our future growth, our energy use, our our capability grows inexorably forward at an exponential rate. And everything that’s on your wish list will happen just when it’s time, and it’ll be later. It’ll be. It might be 50 years later, maybe 100 years later. I absolutely am convinced that 3000 years from now, we will have dismantled every planet in the solar system to build our Dyson swarm, except for the places that we think are wildernesses.
Pamela Gay [00:26:47] There’ll be some national parks.
Fraser Cain [00:26:49] And the vast majority of humanity will be living in space. No question in my mind that that is what the future holds. But only once we trivialize it. And if we try to do it early, like living in in Antarctica, it’s just it’s not a nice place to live. Yeah. So it’s true. It’s true. Yeah. Yeah. So I think. It’s going to be really exciting for this next 50 years or so as we build those those first science stations out there across the solar system. That’s going to be really cool. And the robots will continue. We will continue to pump out the robots.
Pamela Gay [00:27:24] So one more racing within our lifetime.
Fraser Cain [00:27:26] So one last question then when do you think we take a crack at going to another star system?
Pamela Gay [00:27:33] I suspect someone will start sending itty bitty little tiny things within our lifetime. But as for humans, I give it a couple hundred years.
Fraser Cain [00:27:45] Yeah, I’m I would I would say.
Pamela Gay [00:27:48] We need to figure out hibernation.
Fraser Cain [00:27:50] I would say 200 years before we take a crack at sending even a single probe to another star system, feasibly, with a reasonable flight time.
Pamela Gay [00:28:00] Yeah. Versus yellowing something.
Fraser Cain [00:28:02] Yeah. Just sending something in a direction and knowing that’s going to get there in a thousand years, right? Something that’s going to take relativistic speeds. And I’m going to guess 700 years before we send human beings to another star system. This is my guess.
Pamela Gay [00:28:16] May our robot bodies allow us.
Fraser Cain [00:28:19] Yes.
Pamela Gay [00:28:20] And if that happens or not?
Fraser Cain [00:28:23] Yeah. I’ve better have my robot body for sure. Yeah, because I want to be a part of that. But yeah. No, it’s funny because if you. And that number is actually comes from this paper called the weight calculation. And you just you take the. You take the exponential energy growth of humanity over time, and then you line up against that the amount of energy that’s required to send a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri. Just the amount of the total amount of energy used to send it. And where those lines cross is about 700 years from now.
Pamela Gay [00:28:56] Okay. That makes.
Fraser Cain [00:28:57] It so. Yeah. And to send it in about 90 at 10% the speed of light. And the way calculation is like when you do, you go, do you set off on your voyage to Alpha Centauri and only to be humiliated as a faster spacecraft goes past you? And that day that that will never happen is that in about 700 years from now? Yeah. Up until that point, every time you set foot, set flight for another star system, you will be passed by the next generation.
Pamela Gay [00:29:28] Of Star Trek episodes that they redo every series. Yeah. Yeah.
Fraser Cain [00:29:32] And they they will be passed by the next generation, and they will be passed by the next generation. It’s only 700 years where you won’t actually be passed. So that’s my guess, 700 years. But I fully anticipate as well. A million years from now, humanity or some version of it will be on every star system in the entire Milky Way.
Pamela Gay [00:29:53] Or will have found some way to interestingly annihilate or self annihilate ourselves for interactions with one another and other races.
Fraser Cain [00:30:01] Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So so I am I’m less hopeful in the, in the sort of medium term and yeah, quite ambitious about the long term. So don’t worry.
Pamela Gay [00:30:12] I still have humans living in asteroids. I don’t know why. I just really, really want that future.
Fraser Cain [00:30:18] I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t understand why.
Pamela Gay [00:30:21] There’s not always a reason to our wants.
Fraser Cain [00:30:25] Still trees and oceans.
Pamela Gay [00:30:27] But you can create it. You can do it in closed environments. Sure. And.
Fraser Cain [00:30:34] And you can go.
Pamela Gay [00:30:36] Serengeti inside a spun up asteroid. You know, worlds.
Fraser Cain [00:30:39] Another place you can recreate the Serengeti.
Pamela Gay [00:30:42] The Serengeti, the Serengeti.
Fraser Cain [00:30:44] It’s right there. You just. You could walk there, but you could.
Pamela Gay [00:30:48] But one could.
Fraser Cain [00:30:50] One could walk to the Serengeti.
Pamela Gay [00:30:51] I just read about things like how climate change is going to make the Joshua Tree go extinct and and things like that. And I’m like, we need to create ecosystems. And biosphere two didn’t work, so let’s do it harder. Which is completely unreasonable. But yeah, we can’t stop climate change.
Fraser Cain [00:31:08] Yeah, we’re not doing any of that stuff. So we definitely should sort of climate change. All right. That was super fun. But thank you for, for letting letting me think far off into the future. Always really fun to do. But now we. But now that’s it. We’re back to the firm. Pamela. Directive. We don’t talk about things until they exist. Thanks, family.
Pamela Gay [00:31:30] Thank you, Fraser, and thank you to all of you out there supporting us this week. I would like to thank our Patreon supporters, William Andrews Gold, Andy Kelly, Jeff Collins, Simon Patron, or Parton, rather, Kellyanne and David Parker, Jeremy Kerwin, Stuart Mills, Rob cuff, Harold bargain. Hagen, Philip. Walker, Marco. Rossi, Jim Schooler, David. Gates, rando, Matthew Horstman, Nikki Lynch, the lonely sand person, Scott Bieber, Alex Cohen, Jesus, Trina, Justin. Proctor, Scott. Cohen, Paul L, Hayden, Daniel. Loosely, Mathias. Hayden, Jeff. Wilson, Alex. Rain, Gregory. Singleton, Niall. Bruce, Tim. MC, makin. Cooper, IRA. Unset. Grove, Nate. That, Wyler, Kenneth. Ryan, Omar. Del. Riviera, Steven shearwater and Paul de Disney. Thank you all so much. We couldn’t do what we do without you.
Fraser Cain [00:32:31] Thanks everyone. We’ll see you next week.
Pamela Gay [00:32:33] But my. Astronomy cast is a joint product of the Universe Today, and the Planetary Science Institute. Astronomy Cast is released under a Creative Commons Attribution license. So love it, share it, and remix it, but please credit it to our hosts, Fraser Cain and Doctor Pamela Guy. You can get more information on today’s show topic on our website. Astronomy. Cars.com. This episode was brought to you thanks to our generous patrons on Patreon. If you want to help keep the show going, please consider joining our community at Patreon.com Slash Astronomy Cast. Not only do you help us pay our producers a fair wage, you will also get special access to content right in your inbox and invites to online events. We are so grateful to all of you who have joined our Patreon community already. Anyways, keep looking up. This has been Astronomy Cast.