Ep. 764: Cleared For Launch!

Astronomy Cast

Science, Astronomy, Natural Sciences, Space

4.8 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Astronomy Cast Ep. 764: Cleared For Launch! By Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay Streamed live September 17, 2025. This week, we look at the process behind rockets getting licensed to launch, and everyone around the pad getting notified to stay away as T-0 approaches. (Can you say "errant boat"?) We have a saying around here: “One does not simply book a return trip from a rocket launch.” That’s because they are an intensely complex chain of events that need to go right before it’s wise to let that rocket leave the launchpad.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm
0:02.0	Oh Thank you. I'm Astronomycast, Episode 764, cleared for launch.
0:52.9	Welcome to Astronomycast, 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 Frisor Kane. I'm the publisher of universe today. With me, as always, is Dr. Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Sciences Institute and Director of Cosby Quest. Hey, Pamela, how are you doing? I am doing well. I am team lava lamp.
1:14.1	I have joined the the cadre of websites that hide behind Cloudflare and won my battle with bots.
1:21.8	Yeah. Thanks to a little help from a giant organization. And now I'm here to discuss the science.
1:28.7	We're recording on a Wednesday.
1:30.3	Yeah.
1:30.5	And I appreciate everyone's patience as I slayed my personal web server demons.
1:37.7	Yes.
1:38.3	Yeah.
1:38.5	Another vote for me for Cloudflare.
1:40.9	I hide universe today behind Cloudflare and I cash 98% of the content that's on
1:50.6	Universe today. Now it's all HTML documents and images, but it's incredible, like how much
1:55.2	my web server just sits unused all the time, occasionally providing a page over to Cloudflare, and then Cloudflare
2:02.2	is doing all the heavy lifting of generating that. And in fact, we have different policies.
2:10.0	You're like trying to use Cloudflare to stop all of the voracious AI scrapers that are tearing
2:17.2	apart your site. I just let them all through.
2:19.7	So you have that control. In your case, you're like, no, this is bringing my entire organization
2:24.9	to its knees. And I'm like, I don't care. Creative Commons 4.0, fill your boots. Train away.
2:31.6	I would be fine if the servers didn't keep falling over. So reconstructing the
2:37.0	servers is in the plans, but I don't have the time. So right now, Cloudflare. Yeah. And when I was used,
2:45.1	when I used to be running WordPress, when I used to be running something that was PHP heavy, I had to
	...

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