Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Tonight, the return of the Mars Hoax.
NASA is testing an Alternate Astronaut Launch Escape System for Orion
A New York couple is set to be the first couple wed in Zero G
LRO/LCROSS
And of the course ground breaking ceremonies of Spaceport: America.
All that and whole lot more on this L-R-O-triffic edition
of Spacevidcast Live! for June 19, 2009
♫ ♫ ♫ Spacevidcast Theme Music ♫ ♫ ♫
Welcome to Spacvidcast Live. My name is Benjamin Higginbotham and with me is the
beautiful, lovely, wonderful, talented and incredibly awesome Cariann Higginbotham
You like that?
Cariann: (laughing uncontrollably)
Ben: I'm glad you like that. Geez...you gunna make it? Cariann: (unintelligible)
Ben: WOW. Wow. Wow. I'll just run the entire show myself today
We had an action packed adventure show. You know NASA has tried to launch STS-127
twice now... You can take a moment if you need to. Cariann: (still uncontrollably laughing).
Ben: They've [NASA] had a really hard time launching 127, it's still on the ground, and
We we're kinda starting to get disappointed and they've got the LRO/LCROSS
launch today and weather rolled in and we thought, "Oh no.
...this is going to be the third time they've tried to launch something
in like one week and it didn't go up."
Alas, it did launch, and we've got some footage. Check it out.
(Video) PAO: T-minus 30 seconds
(Video) PAO: T-Minus 15 seconds. Standing by for terminal count.
(Video) T-Minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Main engine ignition and lift off the Atlas V rocket with LRO/LCROSS
America's first step in a lasting return to the moon.
So that's part of the launch. You better now?
CARIANN: I think he played the video so that I could catch my breath. Ben: A little bit yeah.
You can watch the entire launch. We've uploaded that to YouTube in HD without the
graphics at the bottom so you an see the full launch and you can go to
spacevidcast.com, we'll post the video right there in full High Definition for you.
It's going to be awesome and you can see it from right about when the video started
which was T-Minus one minute or so all the way up through MECO
Not just SECO, but all the way up through MECO
so, that's going to be awesome, or FECO or whatever it is.
Ben: It's 15 minutes. CARIANN: MECO, SECO, GEEKO, CHICO.
Ben: it is, it's GEEKO. Absolutely. CARIANN: Works for me.
BEN: A lot of people have been asking what is LRO and LCROSS
the Lunar Reconnaissance...all that other fun jazz and you know?
we could explain it. You want to take thirty seconds to explain it? Or do you want to
role a video to explain it instead.
CARIANN: The thing is that I don't know if I would be able to explain it as well as the video.
BEN: Here's the thing. So this is a NASA produced video.
As such, it's painfully boring.
CARIANN: This is true. But, it does a really good job of explaining
What happens is we're looking for water on the moon.
We're not sure if it's there...or not. And pretty much we decided
the best way to figure this out is to blow a gigantic hole in the moon
and then look at the dust.
BEN: Did we ask the moon if we could blow a hole in it? CARIANN: You know, we didn't.
I never asked the moon. BEN: Check the Spacevidcast archive.
So we'll roll this NASA Video for you guys. A little bit boring.
It's about three minutes or so, but it's great information.
And if you've got a friend who's like 'Well why the heck are we going back to the moon?"
"Why are we sending up these..." Just guide them to this episode and
you're good to go. So here's that video.
LRO begins it's mission with the separation from LCROSS
The LRO objective is to provide the most comprehensive data set
and maps of the moon in preparation for human return.
LRO has a suite of seven instruments that will be used to identify
safe and interesting landing sites, lunar resources, and provide vital information
about the lunar environment as well a wealth of scientific information.
About five days after launch, LRO will perform a lunar orbit insertion maneuver
beginning a sixty day period of commissioning.
During this time LRO will perform instrument check outs and calibrations
and will begin providing target data to its sister spacecraft, LCROSS
After commissioning, LRO will begin its prime mission using the LROC camera
to provide hi-resolution images and maps, the LOLA altimeter
to provide topographic maps; DVINR to provide information about the thermal environment
CRATR to provide information about the radiation environment,
MINIRF to provide RADAR imagery,
and LAMP, to image the moon in the Ultra Violet spectrum.
LCROSS' primary objective is to explore the possible presence of water ice
in the Lunar surface using the spent Centaura stage as an impactor.
As LRO is heading to the moon, so is LCROSS.
But instead of going to orbit around the moon,
LCROSS performs a Lunar fly-by to change its trajectory
putting it into a near polar orbit around earth.
We do this so that when we return for impact
in October of this year, we approach the impact target at a very steep angle,
to maximize the impact energy to excavate as much material as
possible, and to time the event
for optimal lighting and observability conditions.
About nine hours from final approach, LCROSS separates from the Centaur
leaving lunar gravity to pull it in.
LCROSS then makes a 180 degree rotation to point it's suite of instruments
toward the impact site. It performs a short burn to slow itself down
to follow four minutes behind the Centaur.
As the Centaur impacts the surface at about 5600 miles per hour
about 350 metric tons of material are excavated
kicking the regolath out of the crater flow and into the sunlight
Following four minutes behind,
LCROSS uses it's suite of nine cameras, spectrometers and sensors
To search for a definitive answer to the question of whether there is water on the moon.
LCROSS relays its data directly back to earth
in real time. There is no onboard storage since
four minutes later LCROSS itself impacts the surface creating a second plume.
After the impact, LRO will observe the new craters of the Centaur and LCROSS
gathering additional information about the geological makeup
of the lunar surface.
LRO continues its exploration mission for a year past commissioning
and then will become a scientific mission under
NASA's Science Mission Directorate
These missions together are first of NASA"s Exploration Systems Missions Directorate
providing important information for the planning and
implementation for human return to the moon.
CARIANN: I think Ben fell asleep....evwyone be vwery, vwery qwiet.
BEN: Wow, that was a ah, whoo
action packed video. Thanks NASA.
I'm not sure we should have...
I'm going to take a quick aside here
We get quite a bit of shlack...CARIANN: Is this like Jerry's corner?
BEN: This is Benny's corner. BOTH: Benny's corner.
BEN: We get quite a bit of shlack off of YouTube, and even our own
website for not taking this serious enough
and not being real rah, rah. And y'know
you're right. And we're not going to.
We like to have fun with this. That's what we are.
That's our niche, our genre. We like to laugh and enjoy,
giggle throughout the entire episode. It's what makes us, us.
It's our attitude and our ambience.
And I found that the space community
has a couple things that are interesting.
One is that it's this big, exclusive club,
and we're not part of that exclusive club, but that's OK.
And for some reason,
and forgive my language, it also seems to have a giant stick up it's butt.
It DOES! I don't know why but everyone is like
"You have to take this seriously. Be more serious. (grumbling noises)"
SCREW THAT!
CARIANN: I think that what part of the issue is that...
BEN: (reading from chat) Nothing says funny like space exploration
CARIANN: There is a lot of stuff out there that is very serious
And, uh, it...it...kinda like that video
it's sorta boring. Y'know if you really do get down
into the nitty gritty, all of the details, and there's plenty of people who do that
we didn't feel the need to just be another one of those people.
BEN: And we're not. And we even got this during our L O L...
LRO/LCROSS stuff. It was like "Well can you do this type of thing
can you do a standard def type thing?" No! No!
Y'know what? We're going to do a high def feed. We're going to push the boundaries
of what technology can do and we're going to have fun doing it. And if you
want to see standard def feed, there's nothing wrong with that.
Some people want the serious, like CNN broadcasts
suit and tie type thing. And that's perfectly fine.
Absolutely okay. But that's not us. So you're
going to need to go somewhere else.
You've got plenty outlets for that. I would love to
have you come in here and have fun with us.
If you want the more serious stuff, head on
over to the more serious outlets. Enjoy your time there, but there's no reason that
everyone needs to be so serious all the time.
Lighten the frack up people! So anyhow, that's just my...
I'm going to get off my soap box for a moment. We're not going to change.
We like the show. We'll work with you as a community and
If there are things we want to change in the
show..tweak a little certainly. But generally,
we're going to have fun. We're going to be light.
We're going to laugh.
CARIANN: And we're going to make fun of NASA EDGE.
BEN: And we're going to make fun of NASA EDGE A LOT! A LOT!
Next show I should wear like a suit and tie and you could wear a business suit
Oh man.
So that was LRO/LCROSS
I apologize for...y'know we should have
done that right before the break, because
I swear to you the most boring video
I've ever seen produced.
You know what, we should talk like that for the rest of the show.
CARIANN: I don't think I can. I just don't think its possible for me to do it.
BEN: So speaking of...
Alright. The return of the Mars hoax. We touched on this a little bit last week
CARIANN: Yes we did. BEN: But this time I've decided to come up with a giant graphic
Check out our giant Moon/Mars graphic. This is awesome.
There you go. They're saying that when you look up in the sky, it's going to look like this
You're going to see a giant Mars
As big as the Moon
in the sky. CARIANN: Hmmmm.
BEN: No. CARIANN: No. BEN: If you ever see
that hoax, slap the person that forwarded it
to you and tell them "Never, ever, ever
send me something this silly again."
Exactly! @The_Co_Host got a question about it from a viewer today
I've been getting questions about it from family and friends
You know what? (reading from the chat) Exactly, where's the FAIL thing?
It's not going to happen.
I like how Mars is in front of the moon.
CARIANN: It's just as logical as that Mars will
look as big as the moon. BEN: It doesn't make any sense. So I'll leave it at that.
If you get an email or something that says
When you look up on whatever day
CARIANN: And this is the only time....
it's like there's a timeline on it. "This is the only time you'll be able to see this in the next six thou-sand years."
BEN: We're so lucky to be alive! Yeah...
Nope. Nope. Not at all.
(reading from chat) My email told me it's true...
CARIANN: Good try though. BEN: And I've actually had like
intelligent people ask me about it. I just...people don't...
I don't think people understand how amazingly far away
Mars is. So...
(reading from chat) The king of Nigeria told me it was real.
NASA is going to begin testing an
Alternate Launch Escape System for astronauts on the Orion
it's for the Constellation program but it sits atop Orion
And this alternate astronaut launch abort system is called
MAX Launch Abort
Launch abort system whereas I wrote lunch, apparently
C'mon, you guys do that a lot, right? CARIANN: Lunch instead of launch.
BEN: I do it all the time. I don't know what it is
but I always end up writing lunch.
MLAS is basically, it's a
it's coming up. I believed they moved back the test date
to the 22nd of [June] and I apologize
I don't think it's in the calendar. Basically it's a
Alternate Launch Escape system and what this is, is when you launch
the ARES rocket with CONSTELLATION on top
in case something goes critically, critically bad with the
rocket, they can
rip Orion away really, really fast {poof!}
pull it away from the vehicle as fast as possible
and like a mile away so that as the rocket is exploding
the crew is safe. Given...they're pulling 10 G's.
It's safe, but it's like CARIANN: They're "safe"-ish.
BEN: They're safe, but
it's, it's, you know, a good pull.
Well this alternate Launch Abort System
instead of using a single solid rocket at the top
this one uses four I believe. CARIANN: (reading from the chat room) And TheCoHost this saying this
hasn't been approved yet. That's correct. This is simply
just a test. They're not
This is not, by any means replacing anything
nothing is going on. But they're kind of running these programs in conjunction with one another
is my understanding just to make sure that
everything is absolutely safe. CARIANN: Well and I like
that idea that they are putting in one more 'cause
God forbid, you know what I mean that something happens
on the launch and that would just...suck hardcore.
So it's nice that they're at least thinking about it
That they are trying to test something out.
BEN: And the neat thing is that the Launch Abort System they've got now
has the single, solid rocket motor on top
so if it does it's thing, there's some videos of that,
this one has four or more. CARIANN: To really, really, get it out of the way.
BEN: To really, really, get it out of the way. So that's coming up moderately soon
on the 22nd [June]. I know it got pushed back. So, it's cool.
I think that's at the Wallops Flight Facility.
Something like that
I don't know. It's somewhere out there. CARIANN: NASA EDGE host or TheCoHost
will let us know. BEN: (reading from the chat) And BZ is saying
"The hard part isn't pulling the capsule away,
it's getting it of course from the problem." Which actually kind of goes with
getting it away because you have to get it away in any direction
fast and far enough away that any explosion
that could be going on in any direction. Because you don't know CARIANN: Cause all that shrapnel
That's a huge rocket and the capsule is only like
so big when compared to the entire rest of the rocket
BEN: Capsule...rocket!
CARIANN: So when all of that blows up you want to be over here.
BEN: Yep. Way, way far away. Exactly.
So, you do need some basic stuff
and you do need some basic computers. But you also need some pretty powerful rockets
that aren't going to interfere with the actual launching of the vehicle
should everything go okay. CARIANN: Right. That's a lot of stuff going on.
BEN: It needs to be powerful. It needs to be fast. It needs to be lightweight
It needs to be aerodynamic-ish. So lots of things going on. I thought that was kinda cool
You know, that's happening moderately soon
And for those of who wanted to get wed in Zero G
And wanted to be first...
Okay and Jeph is saying it's not instant, there is reaction time.
Moving on. For those of you who wanted to be wed first in Zero G,
a New York couple is beating you to it.
AND, they have to have a special Zero G wedding...
CARIANN: Okay. They didn't have to have
BEN: They wanted to have a special Zero G wedding thing
CARIANN: They didn't haaave to have
a special Zero G wedding outfits
Okay, because that is ridiculous.
But, they do. I don't know if you got the picture or not. There you go. Okay.
It's a gorgeous wedding dress as far as I'm concerned.
BEN: Look how happy he is.
CARIANN: Well, he's got to wear one too. They're both wearing the dress. (Both laughing.)
The thing is that in my mind it's zero g, right? So theoretically stuff can go floating all over
the place. The last thing that I want is to have this great big ole skirt that could fly
back up in my face and flashing my entire wedding party now on my wedding.
Do you see what I'm saying? If it were me I'd wear a pant suit.
It would probably be white. BEN: That's probably why it's a special dress.
CARIANN: Is it weighted? BEN: Maybe, I don't know.
CARIANN: Is it velcroed to her legs? BEN: That really wouldn't make sense, now would it?
But it's got all this stuff on it. BEN: But it's still --
CARIANN: (Fluffing sound indicating poofy dress.)
BEN: Maybe it does. Maybe it has like velcro and things to keep it down like wires and things
to keep its shape. We don't know. Look at that. Look how happy they are.
They are so happy. They are getting wed in zero g but they're cheating. So for those of you who
actually want to be wed in space, they're not in space, they're just going on a parabolic flight.
So it's kinda like faux zero g, right? It's simulated zero g, so I'm not sure that
this actually counts.
CARIANN: You guys are laughing at me for saying weights. I know,
it's been a long day, alright I'm sorry.
BEN: Are they really?
CARIANN: there are like really? Weights? zero g's?
BEN: I was really hoping they would gloss over that.
CARIANN: No, it's me. I'm the one who says stupid stuff and y'all know it.
Alright, so don't even.
BEN: (Laughing) CARIANN: It's been a long day.
Ben: Yeah, you know.
CARIANN: It's been a long week.
BEN: You have seen them when they move like 10 ton things with one finger in space, right?
CARIANN: No. BEN: No? Okay, just checking.
CARIANN: I don't watch NASA TV.
BEN: That's because it's like (muffled whur, whur sounds) and then children's programming
and then NASA Edge comes on and we like "click."
CARIANN: (Gasping sound). I'm not.
BEN: I'm hateful. I'm so hateful to them, aren't I?
CARIANN: I know. I adore Blair and Chris.
BEN: You know why? Because they haven't stepped up to the Moon Pie challenge, yet.
They're trying to move on to the chipotle challenge, but they haven't even completed
the Moon Pie challenge. I don't think they're allowed to actually move on until they
complete the Moon Pie challenge. When we come back, ground breaking ceremonies for
Spaceport America. The most awesomest thing ever is getting more awesomer.
CARIANN: Right. BEN: We'll be right back.
(Endeavour video with music) ♫
(Calendar of Events Graphics with music background) ♫
BEN: Oh wait. CARIANN: Oh sorry. BEN: That's awesome music.
CARIANN: How you doing? BEN: Wahoo! (Both making funny sounds.)
BEN: You know a lot of people were booing and hissing during the break for STS-127.
Do you know why they were booing and hissing?
CARIANN: Because 127 -- BEN: Scrubbed twice in the middle of the night. These people
were not smart people. Do you know why they were not smart people?
CARIANN: Why? BEN: They did not buy Crow River Coffee's Blastoff Blend which
would have kept them up nice and awake during those scrub times. And Blastoff Blend is
this month's Coffee of the Month. CARIANN: Yea! BEN: And you can get it at
www.CrowRiverCoffee.com. And I happened to hear from Crow River Coffee that you're
all a bunch of cheap ***. And you haven't bought enough coffee yet.
CARIANN: (laughing) BEN: (laughing)
BEN: It's my show. I can say what I want, right?
CARIANN: Apparently. Well, then. BEN: Seriously, Crow River Coffee Blastoff Blend, get some
coffee, something, something. Enough said. Don't make me pull this show over.
CARIANN: (laughing) Ben: Back about a year ago, no over a year ago
when was Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander on the channel?
CARIANN: Not quite a year ago. We were there in October or November of last year.
BEN: I don't remember. Alright, 2008. There was the big announcement of Spaceport America
going in New Mexico. That was pretty much awesome but there was nothing there yet.
Right? It was just kind of a plan. CARIANN: A great big, open field with a sign
saying "Spaceport America." BEN: Coming soon. New Home of ...
CARIANN: The funny thing is that it was kind of like that 50's retro thing -- like
"Coming Soon Spaceport." You know what I'm saying. It was nice and bright and sunny
and then you'd look out and just see dirt for miles.
BEN: Yeah, but that kind of is New Mexico, right?
CARIANN and BEN: Dirt for miles. BEN: Mountains in the background.
CARIANN: White Sands and that's it. BEN: And White Sands, absolutely.
And *** Galactic made the announcement that is going to be their U.S. home of operations.
CARIANN: Yes. BEN: And *** (aah) Spaceport America came up with a bunch of neat
different things and as of today is groundbreaking for Spaceport America. They are going to
begin building (well, it's not really our first spaceport), but I guess it's our first
consumer spaceport ...
CARIANN: Right. Private spaceport BEN: Private spaceport for *** Galactic, XCOR,
Armadillo Aerospace where you'll be able to go and actually fly into space.
CARIANN: And, look at that thing. BEN: It's interesting looking. (Laughter.)
CARIANN: Alright, there's some people who ... BEN: Yeah, okay ...
CARIANN: have some thoughts about that. It's a little ...
BEN: You know what -- it's space age and high tech. Space tech.
CARIANN: It's a little George F. Keith. But, you know, besides that it's all good.
(Laughter.) Okay, that enough of that picture. So, (laughter) it's cool that we're getting one.
BEN: Is _______ on the right track was not quite what we think it ...
CARIANN: See, Byron said it's like a manta ray. Exactly, like a manta ray.
BEN: Okay, we'll just drop that part of it. But the neat thing is so we were there and
we were asking why New Mexico. 'Cause, seriously, it's like in the middle of nowhere.
It's kind of hard to get to. Why would you build a spaceport in New Mexico.
CARIANN: In the middle of nowhere. BEN: In the middle of nowhere and there
were a bunch of really good reasons that were brought up.
CARIANN: Brilliant reasons. Reasons I would never in a million years would have come up
in my own head. BEN: For example, the weather is pretty much the same all year round.
CARIANN: Yep. BEN: It's mild with hardly any storms. CARIANN: Dry. BEN: Dry.
And that was interesting too. It was dry and so it's noncorrosive for the vehicle.
CARIANN: Yep. BEN: Pretty awesome. CARIANN: Brilliant.
BEN: Didn't think of that. You know, I don't normally lay awake at night
thinking to myself "Where would I want to build a spaceport?" CARIANN: Right.
BEN: But they did. I mean, someone sat there thinking about this stuff and they
decided that New Mexico was the place to go. And noncorrosive, similar weather all year round
and is built next to the White Sands Missile Range. And so they get -- my understanding
is that they share some of the restricted air space with the ... Yeah. CARIANN: Yeah.
They already have their restricted air space cleared off for them at least until ...
BEN: Hey, no, we're not allowed to talk about the Spacevidcast rocket yet
CARIANN: I'm sorry. BEN: That's still confidential. Can't be talking about that yet.
CARIANN: We'll just edit that out. We ...
Ben: (BEEP.) Actually, you know what we have, hang on, I'm just going to *** everyone off.
Check this out. (Bleep noise.) Yeah. (Laughter.) CARIANN: Okay. Anyhow, so, yeah, it's
flat, it's clean it's dry it's right by the restricted air space.
BEN: And it's the beginning of privatized space travel for mere mortals to go into space.
This is one of those exciting things that we were talking about in 2009. I'm getting
passionate. Oh my gosh, I can feel it coming on. This is the beginning of where everything changes.
I was actually talking about this in the office. 2009 and 2010 are the foundation years for
everything. You're not going to see a whole lot but they're the years where we build up the
infrastructure and get the permits and all the weird back end stuff worked out.
The foundation of the house, as it were and then from 2011 and on, that's when we start
building the structures. 2010 is when we stop the space shuttle program. It's when we get
*** Galactic flying. It's when we get Spaceport America going. It is going to an amazing ...
CARIANN: (laughter) BEN: No, no. There's nothing wrong with the space shuttle. It's
just time to move on, be it the Aries Rocket, direct, I don't care. But it's time to move to a
vehicle that can go back to the moon. That's what NASA should be working on.
The moon and Mars. This low earth orbit thing, I'm done with that. That's all I know.
The only thing NASA has done in my entire life is low earth orbit. I'm sick of that. Let's go back
to the moon and on to Mars. And in 2010, that's the moment in time -- well, they've been working
on it for a while, right? CARIANN: Right. BEN: But that's really the one of those moments
when you go "No more shuttle." You gotta do something. And, that, of course, will
probably change from here to there. But right now, it's still 2010. Exactly. You know, I'm
trying not to step on the soap box ... CARIANN: Trying? Really? 'Cause they're pushing
it off the stage for you. And as far as I know, there is no legal caffeine limit in Minnesota and
if the co-host and/or the NASA Edge host did actually break our bobble rocket that we
sent you, then you owe me 500 bucks. I'm just saying.
BEN: They broke our bobble rocket? CARIANN: They're saying, they're like "Oops, it fell
off the table." That's fine. BEN: I see how it is. CARIANN: And you wonder why we make
fun of you. BEN: Exactly. So, anyhow, I'm excited for Spaceport America. You can
actually watch the groundbreaking ceremonies live starting Friday in the U.S. --
actually I suppose it's Friday everywhere, universal time -- at 11:00 Mountain time
that's 12:00 Central time, 1:00 Eastern time, what's that, 5:00 coordinated universal time.
CARIANN: Okay. Ben: So, 5:00 UTC, you can actually go to SpaceportAmerica.com
and they've got a u-stream channel there. We'll see if we can't broadcast a little bit of
that on Spacevidcast, as well. And go for that. Certainly check that out. It's going to be cool.
You're watching, in my humble, but accurate, opinion, history being made. You like that?
CARIANN: I do like that. BEN: Humble, but accurate. No, seriously, we're building
history right here. This is -- You're watching your own ability to go into space. Given it's
$200,000 right now, but ... CARIANN: Governor Richardson ... BEN: Did he accept that
position with Obama? CARIANN: No. Okay, so he's there -- actually if you follow Jeff Foust
on Twitter, he was twitting a whole lot of stuff from there 'cause he was there for all the
hoopla and ceremonies and stuff like that, so he's got a lot of really good information on his
Twitter stream. You also have a couple of Twit picks from where he was and you can see all
of that stuff. Where was I going with this? BEN: I have no idea.
CARIANN: Okay, so the other really good idea -- the reason for New Mexico -- is because
the New Mexico government (thank you Paco Dinero, that' what reminded me) the state
actually gives benefits to space companies when they base themselves in New Mexico.
Which means Spacevidcast is
on its way, as far as I'm concerned. BEN: New Mexico. CARIANN: Awesome.
BEN: Here's what we need. SPF 25,000 and lots of bottled water. CARIANN: Yeah, I don't see
this white accidentally. I have to work at this. BEN: This is amazing. CARIANN: Just saying.
Space vodcast really. BEN: Oh man, on that note, certainly guys, certainly join us for the
groundbreaking at Spaceport America, hit the Spaceport America website,
SpaceportAmerica.com. Go to Spacevidcast.com. We'll see what we can
stream and broadcast. It's going to be awesomely cool. And check us out every
week, every Friday at 2:00 Coordinated Universal Time, shuttle no shuttle, mission no mission
it was a pretty active day. You know, we had LRO/LCROSS go up today. We broadcast
that in high definition and we transitioned right into our show.
CARIANN: And they had a window at 5:12 Eastern Time, but then they had another
one at 5:22, then another one at 5:32 and they ended up going at 5:32 because there were
some storms which was very reminiscent of the STS-127 hold, hold, hold, because of the
lightning and stuff like that. So it was a liiiitle scary there for a while.
BEN: We've got a really cool shot of it ... CARIANN: A very cool shot.
BEN: On my Flickerfeed if you go to Flicker.com/BenjaminHigginbotham
and, no, I won't spell that for you, there is actually a space shuttle section. I extracted the
segments of the video that have the lightning bolt and you can actually see the progression
of the lightning bolt. CARIANN: Very cool. BEN: It's very pretty actually.
CARIANN: You know, you guys are asking what's the picture behind us. This is a live feed from
NASA TV. I know it's really hard to tell, but what's going on is the picture of the Orbiter,
that's 127. But they don't have the lights on 127. So this is the rotating superstructure right
over here. CARIANN: Exactly. BEN: An they were like -- "You know what. We don't want to
pay that bill for the lights. Just turn it off. We're not launching anyhow." (Sound of system
powering down.) CARIANN: Which is funny because they still had the camera
situated on it. So we're not really sure what's going on with that. But, yeah, that's what
that is. And, don't blame us, blame NASA. I'm just saying the shuttle, not the orbiter?
Isn't it the orbiter with the whole thing? Isn't the shuttle when it's not the, or is it vice-versa?
BEN: No, the orbiter is just the vehicle with the wings. The shuttle is the entire stack.
CARIANN: Sorry, shuttle, shuttle. BEN: The orbiter with the things.
CARIANN: Shuttle, shuttle, shuttle, shuttle, got it, shuttle.
BEN: On that note, join us next week, next Friday, at 2:00 a.m. Universal Time for
those lame people that can't do time zone conversions in the United States that's
Thursday nights at 7:00 Pacific time, 9:00 Central time, 10:00 Eastern time, okay, for the
3 people in Mountain time, it's 8:00 p.m. Mountain time. I get yelled at once in a while by some
guy on a mountain herding sheep "What time is it Mountain time?" 8:00. It's 8:00
Mountain time. CARIANN: Hey, we say watch. BEN: How they'll watch I don't know. Maybe
on iPhone. CARIANN: You go to a different time zone. (Laughter) You go where technology is.
BEN: Thank you. Thank you, guys, so much for watching. We'll you next week. And everyone
watching live stay with us. The post-show is up next.
Credits and ♪♫®©™£¥€¼½¾