4.8 • 739 Ratings
🗓️ 9 May 2019
⏱️ 25 minutes
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0:00.0 | Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory, |
0:05.2 | we're asking the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge. |
0:10.5 | To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content, |
0:15.1 | check out go.nebula.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur. |
0:20.5 | This episode is sponsored by Brilliant. |
0:24.0 | It's always amazing to watch a rocket take off from the ground and fly up through the clouds |
0:29.3 | into space, but why not start off higher up to begin with and launch from above the clouds? |
0:38.7 | So today we are back to the Upward Bound series to cover a topic that's been requested |
0:43.2 | a lot, which is why we don't launch rockets from blimps or planes, and if we could. |
0:49.6 | Since we've been discussing floating whole cities or even continents in the sky of late, it felt appropriate |
0:55.4 | to cover floating launches. |
0:57.4 | Plus, we've been spending a lot of time in the far future in recent episodes, and some |
1:02.7 | folks have asked for an episode about near future prospects and grounded in the emerging |
1:08.0 | technologies of today, and this topic seemed appropriate, |
1:11.9 | except for the grounded part obviously, one out of two isn't bad. |
1:16.4 | We'll also be taking a look at JP Aerospace's Dark Sky Strato Station, an enormous |
1:22.6 | lighter-than-aelifter that offers a somewhat slow but very cheap route to space, some non-space applications |
1:30.2 | of these technologies, and we'll jump out a little further ahead in the future to look at what |
1:35.3 | might be on the table for aerial launch systems if we've got an abundant source of power. |
1:41.8 | We should start though by asking why you'd ever want to launch from higher |
1:45.5 | up, because you definitely do if you can, but not for the reasons most folks think. As we've |
1:52.4 | mentioned throughout the series, the big challenge for launching from Earth isn't getting up high, |
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