The 9pm Moon Magic Communism on Venus with Dr Space Junk

Dr Alice Gorman (Photo: Elizabeth Weeks) and a thermal map of Venus (NASA), with digital manipulation (Stilgherrian).

Space archaeologist Dr Space Junk aka Dr Alice Gorman joins me for the second episode in the Spring Series 2020.

We talk about many things including dodgy sci-fi movies, space dreams, why the Moon deserves respect and indeed deserves to be a person, why Venus is a Russian planet, and how Elon Musk’s StarLink satellites could end up becoming a cultural icon.

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Dr Gorman was previously on a Probe episode in 2018.

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This episode it’s thanks to Ben A, Bob Ogden, David Bruce, Jason Anderson, Jim Campbell, Keith Duddy, Nicole Coombe, and one person who wishes to remain anonymous.

Episode Links

  • Alice Gorman (born 1964) FSA is an Australian archaeologist, heritage consultant, and lecturer, who is best known for pioneering work in the field of space archaeology and her Space Age Archaeology blog.
  • Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.
  • When an alien artifact discovered on Earth is found to have come from Venus, an international team of astronauts embarks to investigate its origins.
  • First Spaceship on Venus, (a.k.a. in German: Der Schweigende Stern; in Polish: Milcz?ca Gwiazda; in English: The Silent Star (also Planet of the Dead and Spaceship Venus Does Not Reply) is a 1960 East German/Polish color science fiction film, directed by Kurt Maetzig, that stars Günther Simon, Julius Ongewe, and Yoko Tani. The film was first released by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb in East Germany. It is based on the science fiction novel The Astronauts by Stanis?aw Lem.
  • Mariner 2 (Mariner-Venus 1962), an American space probe to Venus, was the first robotic space probe to conduct a successful planetary encounter.
  • These three classic newsreels from the 1960s look at two early missions to the planet Venus - the Mariner II probe sent by Nasa and the Soviet Union's Venera 4.
  • Famous guests of the hotel have included ... Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, for whom the Blue Mountains were the inspiration for The Lost World.
  • Wollemia is a genus of coniferous tree in the family Araucariaceae. Wollemia was known only through fossil records until the Australian species Wollemia nobilis was discovered in 1994 in a temperate rainforest wilderness area of the Wollemi National Park in New South Wales, in a remote series of narrow, steep-sided sandstone gorges 150 km northwest of Sydney.
  • Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent horror film written, directed, photographed and edited by George A. Romero, co-written by John Russo, and starring Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea.
  • "Night of the Living Dead" is an American independent horror and cult film directed by George A. Romero and starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a US$114,000 budget.
  • Luna 2 (Russian: ???? 2), originally named the Second Soviet Cosmic Rocket and nicknamed Lunik 2 in contemporaneous media, was the sixth of the Soviet Union's Luna programme spacecraft launched to the Moon, E-1 No.7.
  • The Venera (Russian: ???????, pronounced [v???n??r?], which means "Venus" in Russian) program was the name given to a series of space probes developed by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1984 to gather information about the planet Venus.
  • Brief audio grab explaining that Venera 7 was active for just 23 minutes.
  • As is known, the probes Venera (equipped with microphones) were the first to record the sounds of another celestial body.
  • The Mercury 13 were thirteen American women who, as part of a privately funded program, successfully underwent the same physiological screening tests as had the astronauts selected by NASA on April 9, 1959 for Project Mercury. The term was coined in 1995 by Hollywood producer James Cross as a comparison to the Mercury Seven name given to the selected male astronauts. The Mercury 13 women were not part of NASA's astronaut program, never flew in space, and never met as a group.
  • In 1959, the doctor who supervised NASA’s astronaut selection concluded that women might fare better in space than men. His testing of 25 top female pilots for reactions to isolation, centrifuge, and weightlessness proved him right, and 13 exceptional candidates were identified.
  • The Extraordinary Story of a Female Aviation Pioneer
  • John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was a United States Marine Corps aviator, engineer, astronaut, businessman and politician. He was the first American to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1962.
  • The rock cycle is a basic concept in geology that describes transitions through geologic time among the three main rock types: sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous.
  • Starlink is a satellite internet constellation being constructed by SpaceX providing satellite Internet access. The constellation will consist of thousands of mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), working in combination with ground transceivers.
  • Liftoff took place at 10:31 a.m. [18 August 2020] from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 40. Onboard the rocket are 58 satellites Starlink communication satellites and three PlanetLab SkySat Earth-imaging satellites.
  • Humanity Star was a passive satellite designed to produce flares visible from Earth. Its shape was a geodesic sphere about 1 metre (3 ft) in diameter, similar to a large disco ball.
  • That brightness worries many astronomers, who say that the huge Starlink constellation could seriously disrupt a variety of scientific observations.
  • Is it Santa’s sleigh being pulled by reindeer back to the North Pole after Santa Claus has delivered gifts to children? Well, no, obviously it’s not, but the International Space Station (ISS) — an impressively bright light due to whizz across urban skies on Christmas Day morning — could easily double as Santa’s sleigh to innocent eyes.
  • The Man in the Moon Came tumbling down And asked his way to Norwich; They told him south And he burnt his mouth With eating cold pease-porridge.
  • The Moon is seen as an inert object with no value in its own right. But should we treat this celestial object, which has been part of the culture of every hominin for millions of years, as just another resource?
  • Terra nullius (/?t?r? n??la??s/, plural terrae nullius) is a Latin expression meaning "nobody's land". It was a principle sometimes used in international law to justify claims that territory may be acquired by a state's occupation of it.
  • As you watch the Moon over the course of a month, you'll notice that different features are illuminated by the Sun at different times. However, there are some parts of the Moon that never see sunlight. These areas are called permanently shadowed regions, and they appear dark because unlike on the Earth, the axis of the Moon is nearly perpendicular to the direction of the sun's light. The result is that the bottoms of certain craters are never pointed toward the Sun, with some remaining dark for over two billion years.
  • Here in this website, my hope is to communicate and share delights, and provide the global community during this 50th Anniversary celebration a resource for accurate measurement-based reports about movements of fine dust on the Moon.
  • The Whanganui River in New Zealand is a legal person. A nearby forest is too. Soon, the government will grant a mountain legal personhood as well. Here's how it happened, and what it may mean.
  • WitchTok is a niche corner of the Internet for self described witches who lean into astrology and worship different kinds of deities. There was concern the hex would hurt the world's cosmic energy.
  • Ambient space music for expanding minds.
  • Stellardrone is a pseudonym of amateur composer (Edgaras, b.1987) who started creating music in 2007. Using only computer software (Reason, Ableton) and virtual synthesizers. He is mostly interested in ambient/electronic/space music.
  • Archived in June 2019, the last available version of the ESA's My Space Dream competition, which appears to include the final videos.

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Series Credits