SpaceX Consuming NASA, Earth Hoarding Asteroids, Tracking X37 | Q&A 298

will SpaceX eventually consume NASA are there asteroids at the LR points in front and behind the Earth can we track the space fors secret x37 B shuttle Plus in our extended version on patreon how astronomers find new asteroids in old data answering all these questions and more in this question show it's time for the question show your questions my answers as always wherever you are across my channel if a question Pops in your brain just write it down I'll gather them up and I will answer them here all right let's get into the questions music cassette does Earth have Trojans in other words are there asteroids at the Earth Sun L4 and L5 yes the Earth has Trojan asteroids at its L4 and L5 lrange points so for those of you who like don't know what a lrange point is when you have two masses and one mass is 25 times or more compared to the other Mass so in other words the Sun compared to the earth the earth compared to the Moon then you get five places where a test particle in other words something with zero mass will experience a balance of gravity and so it won't drift in any specific direction away from this location that is the sort of the textbook version of the little gr points and there are five of these spots for every two to body interaction so there's the ones three that are lined up between say the Sun and the Earth One On The Far Side of the Sun one between us in the sun one on the far side of the earth and then there are two ahead and behind of the Earth in its orbit and those ones ahead and behind those are The L4 points while the ones that are lined up they are gravitationally unstable the ones that are ahead and behind the Earth or Jupiter or whatever they are gravitationally stable in other words that if you drop your test Mass this particle into this region it will remain orbiting around inside this region and so what that does is that tends to collect debris garbage asteroids comets spacecraft and so on that if you move into this lrange region then you can at a slow on a velocity and if you go into some kind of three body interaction or some further gravitational ation from Jupiter or whatever then you can be trapped inside of this region and you just start orbiting around inside of it while at the same time this whole region is orbiting around the Sun in front of the earth and behind the Earth or in front of Jupiter behind Jupiter and so astronomers call this garbage asteroids call asteroids garbage sure why not call this stuff the Trojan regions and so Jupiter has its L4 L5 Trojan points and one sort of big surprise is that the combined mass of all of the objects in the Jupiter's Trojan belt matches the amount that's in the main belt of the asteroid belt so there's a lot of stuff that gets caught in these regions and this is where NASA's Lucy mission is going it's going to be visiting one of the trojen belts then come back and then go visit the other Trojan belt but there are trojan regions around every single planet there are trojan asteroids have been found around Mars in its L4 L5 Point they've been found at Saturn they've been found from Venus outward but the size of the object that can remain in the Trojan area get smaller depending on the mass of the secondary object in other words Jupiter is very massive and so Jupiter can have very large troen objects they can be hundreds of kilometers across earth is much smaller Earth has much less mass and so the size of the objects that get trapped in Earth's Trojan belts are significantly smaller they are in the order of tens of meters they're definitely you know kilometer at the most I think they are definitely not hundreds of kilometers the way they are with Jupiter but are there asteroids that are trojan built absolutely Horizon Phoenix warp Brave do you fear that musk will try to fold all of NASA into SpaceX all right so like do I fear that no um what I fear is is the administration making changes to NASA without the approval of Congress as what is required by law and Congress being unwilling to stand up for their own uh job being uh the people who create the laws in the United States and the Supreme Court failing to uh enforce the law uh so so like that's that's you know that's what I'm nervous about and if that series of event happens then who like it's all cuckoo banana land right like then then the administration can do whatever they want they can shut down NASA they can they can give all the parts to SpaceX they can do whatever they want so so there is the law in the United States which defines the budget that's given to NASA that defines the kinds of goals and work that NASA is supposed to do the emis mission the space launch system these are all in the law uh the various missions that are upcoming these are all part of the law that Congress sat and voted and they put out a budget and defined that this was going to happen um and what we're seeing is uh an Administration that is testing whether or not laws matter in the United States um and it's quite peculiar it's quite bizarre to watch this happen because uh you know my understanding is that supposed to follow laws and and that's a thing that that the United States is quite fond of they have the Constitution they have these documents they've set up very clearly how this is supposed to work and you're watching this potentially not work so so there's kind of two paths One path and like I'm just going to disregard it because like like I can't I can't wrap my mind around it and that is that Elon Musk and the administration they just decide what happens they take apart NASA uh you know laws don't matter who cares we're live in a Topsy Turvy world if that happens then then the dissolution of NASA is like the least of the concerns that anyone is going to have right like there's there's all kinds of other problems where laws are no longer being followed um where you know you have to be concerned about that so then you like like if laws are followed to the way you can imagine things happening with NASA is that Congress you know is going to come up with a you know with recommendations from the current Administration from Elon Musk from other people they're going to come up with a new set of laws that Define what NASA is going to do and so you can imagine them on on the more extreme side dissolving NASA right like just shutting it down they're going like well you've got SpaceX so I don't think you can imagine them folding NASA into SpaceX you can imagine them just dissolving NASA and then any future space explor that is required by uh by the US government is just done through private contractors be it blue origin be it SpaceX be it Firefly Aerospace all that kind of stuff right you just privatize space exploration entirely but you still set aside budget and we see a a hybrid version of that right now like right now when NASA wants to send astronauts the International Space Station they pay for a commercial flight on a SpaceX crew dragon and they pay $60 million per seat and they don't have to worry about building the rocket and maintaining the rocket and all of that kind of stuff so there are places where um it makes total sense to pay for a commercial provider to deliver the results of what you're looking for uh and my guess is there's like a whole bunch of the stuff that NASA does today that could theoretically be privatized outsourced whatever right but then there's like a whole other part that NASA does that no commercial company would want to do and that is research that is taking risks on the kinds of things that no existing company corporation uh research group can afford to do testing out new kinds of propellent systems new construction methods determining how safe it is for us to go to space you know there are thousands of really interesting research projects that are done every year by NASA where nobody is asking themselves does this make money they're asking themselves can we learn how to do this does this tell us something about the nature of the universe does this tell us something about how to live and work in space does this tell us something about the nature of our planet about our atmosphere about all this kind of stuff basic scientific research and it is you know for some of it if there is a money to be made in Pharmaceuticals and and various kinds of Health therapies and and things like that you can imagine there's a you can privatize that like like companies giant um uh um pharmaceutical manufacturers will do research to figure out ways to produce new kinds of medicine but there's a whole range of of scientific discovery that's just not done right what is the return on investment for uh studying Supernova what is the return on investment like there isn't and but at the same time you know as a society we want to be able to do scientific progress and so I can imagine a version where they privatize NASA or shut it down but then they set up a completely separate very functional very streamlined research organization its only job is to research interesting and important new technologies to push human knowledge forward to help lay the groundwork for us to be able to become a true space fairing civilization and that all sounds really exciting um so as long as that happens then I think someone could very carefully with a scalpel reduce the uh you know sum of the project that NASA is working on and not it not end up being a disaster but it doesn't feel like like that's the direction that it's going right now if you seeing what's happening across various other parts of the you know of the government of the bureaucracy is very much a machete and so I'm assuming that when it becomes NASA's turn then it will be the same kind of thing and you know it's you know when you have people who are researching something very complicated they've got funds they're expecting there's Hardware they're they're depending on and you just shut all that down then they have to go look for a new job and then the whole research just ends so uh you know do I fear that musk will try to fold all of NASA into SpaceX no I don't think so like what I what I fear is them doing a clumsy job of attempting to shut down NASA when I interview The Patriot which is a thing that I do when new people join my patreon uh the feedback that I get is that people really like the question show well if you like question shows have all the question shows you can eat and that is with our monthly Patron only question show this is where my producer Anton and I will go through all of your Patron questions and I've got a little more time I can do some research and we go in depth and it's great and we get to all of the questions so if that's interesting to you definitely join patreon on and uh ask a question now to celebrate the recent newcomers we've got Nick Augustin SG Jerry Harris Paul hunt Watts wire extension Cs and Dave Swinson join the club at patreon.com universetoday Mad Monkey Oz what is the impact on the Canadian space agency due to the goings on with your Southern neighbors we have no idea right now so uh Jared isaacman hasn't been brought on board hasn't been officially confirmed as the NASA administrator yet although I mean when you see the other nominations that have flown through the Senate I can't imagine that he will have a problem getting confirmed by the Senate and then we don't know and it it's funny because I mean we've been seeing a lot of cuts to NASA you're seeing a lot of changes to the um to the website you're seeing a lot of contracts contractors people are being laid off shut down uh a lot of grants are being frozen and so that's having a an impact across a lot of stuff but we haven't seen the big ones happen yet right we haven't heard of a cancellation of the space launch system we haven't heard of uh you know a change from going to the Moon to going to Mars that kind of thing um you know Canada's involvement we built one of the instruments for the James web Space Telescope uh we Supply the robotic arms for the various space shuttles and for the International Space space station will probably be providing the arm for the upcoming lunar Gateway there's a lunar rover that has been developed by Canada and I think sort of like the you know and then we have a handful of astronauts that are active in the astronaut core and sort of one of the big prominent missions for a Canadian coming up is Artemis 2 this is where they're can to do this flyby around the moon and so there's a Canadian astronaut that is uh going to be on that flight if it Happ happens there's been like just so much news that's been breaking about the impact of the new Administration on science in general about the various new regulations the kind you know the kinds of work stopes have been happening the changes to the amount of overhead expenses that people are able to charge for like it's been across the board but we haven't seen much so far that we've needed to report on for space exploration specifically uh nothing's really gotten cut so maybe it's going to we're going to wait for Jared isaacman to come in and then he'll start implementing the various changes that are in the works or maybe it's just going to be Steady As She Goes or just going to keep going with whatever were the plans beforehand you know it's very hard to to stop spacecraft their mid construction so uh yeah but so right now we haven't heard any impact in in how it's going to affect the Canadian space agenc genc yet but you know as soon as like I'm waiting for various impacts to happen and then we're going to report the hell out of them JB grooves does the astronomical Community track the space Force Space Shuttle sort of so what you're talking about is the X-37B and this is a space plane that has been was originally developed by the Air Force is now handled by space force and every couple of years the space force launches the x37 into low earth orbit it spends a year a year plus two years in orbit around the Earth and then it re-enters the atmosphere lands and then whatever purpose it had has now been complete and you know we don't know exactly what the X-37B does it's classified but when you think about what you could do in that kind of a mission it sort of constrains your possibilities which is you know and also NASA has had experiments on the X-37B and they've talked about those experiments and so you get a sense of like what NASA is doing is probably what space force is doing they are testing Electronics in space they are deploying different instruments to find out how well they work they're trying trying out different kinds of materials exposing them to the vacuum of space for a long period of time to find out how well they behave and so you can imagine you know if space force is going to develop new camera systems new materials new things like that for their upcoming super scary secret spy satellites they're going to want to make sure these things work in space and this is the way that they can launch these things to space try them out for a couple of months in space and then bring them back to Earth and see how they did but can you track the position of the X-37B and the answer is absolutely uh it's really hard to hide an object in low earth orbit now NORAD the US space force uh and other groups are tracking all of the various objects in space and they do classify the positions of a lot of their objects and so they're not in the public databases but there are other databases that you can find some of these things um but then there are private companies leolabs is a good example and they are tracking the location and position of pieces of space junk that are a few centimeters across and so they can absolutely track the position of something like the X-37B and you can imagine that various other nations the Chinese the Russians others totally know what is the current position of the x37 in fact we've seen examples where the Chinese version of the x37 or other satellites or ones done by Russia have changed their orbits and so it's possible that various nations are working on satellites that can do things they can loiter they can uh catch up to and try to observe more closely other satellites from other nations but you know once you launch these things into orbit they're relatively easy to catch like I'm sure you can go outside if you know where to look you can watch the X-37B fly overhead with your own eyes we've got a longer version of this show with one additional question over on patreon so if you want to watch it with no ads totally free click the card or in the show notes all right those are all the questions that we had this week thank everyone who joined me live for the question show we record this every Monday at 5:00 p.m. at some place or Time in the World um and so you can join that show and ask your questions as well as the questions for people who put into the YouTube comments I really appreciate it super fun all right I'm going to chat about my shelf but not my not myself my shelf but first I'd like to thank her patrons thanks to Abe Kingston barely griffing David Gilton and David mats Dustin cable Greg fely Hudson James Clark Jeremy M Jim Burke Jordan young Josh Schultz Michael Purcell Paul robach Sean Sergeant spider.io Steven Findler money Thomas El scadron and vad CH who support us at the master of the universe level and all our patrons all your support means Universe to us so for the last couple of weeks on the question show people have been asking me what's on the shelf behind me there's all these little knickknacks and Googs and what are they and so I've been picking one item each week and bringing that and there might have been one in a recent question show but a lot of them are in the overtime segments or uh in during the live stream but we'll see how many of them actually make it out but I thought I would I would share one and so this is a uh globe of the sky all of the constellations this was actually said to me bu moag Globes about 10 years ago and they asked me if I wanted one and I told them absolutely yes please and ask me which one I wanted and I wanted the one that was the celestial sky and so this gives you all of the constellations shows you the Milky Way and yet this thing sort of spins around inside this little plastic sphere now this is not sponsored except they gave me one um but I I just think it is a genuinely really cool thing so this is one of the things that is on the shelf behind me all right we'll see you next week