TED2019: Space junk, rockets and aliens
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jane Wakefield reports from the TED conference in Vancouver, Canada, on the businesses shooting for the stars. Chief Executive of Rocket Lab Peter Beck shares his concerns about the amount of space junk being left in orbit. Former astronaut Nicole Stott explains why an ill-fitting space suit can be a big problem. And Assistant Professor of Astrophysics at University of Arizona, Erika Hamden, tells us why space exploration is suddenly cool again.
(Photo: An astronaut in space, Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | T-MIS 30 seconds. |
| 0:01.8 | Welcome to Business Daily. |
| 0:03.6 | I'm Jane Wakefield. |
| 0:04.8 | The director on Countdown 1. |
| 0:06.0 | SpaceX, Falcon Heavy, go for launch. |
| 0:07.9 | And today's program, coming from the TED conference in Vancouver, is all about space. |
| 0:13.4 | The sound you're hearing is from the launch of Falcon Heavy, a rocket designed by one of the biggest names in the space industry, |
| 0:21.8 | entrepreneur Elon Musk's Space X. |
| 0:28.4 | But while SpaceX may be the most famous name in the commercial space sector, there are hundreds of others. |
| 0:34.4 | Most aim to offer commercial satellite launches, but there is much more happening, |
| 0:39.0 | from space tourism, exploration, even mining. Space is again capturing the global imagination, |
| 0:45.8 | and every week sees a new launch or discovery, like the amazing picture of the black hole published |
| 0:51.7 | recently. I've been talking to some of the people at the cutting edge of this sector. |
| 1:01.1 | And asking, why is space getting cluttered? |
| 1:04.3 | It's kind of the industry's dirty little secret that the majority of all the junk on orbit |
| 1:08.2 | is not dead spacecraft, it's dead rockets. |
| 1:10.6 | There's this cloak of mystery around things. |
| 1:12.7 | When they get launched, who's launching it? |
| 1:14.1 | What are they trying to do? |
| 1:15.0 | This is leading, I think, to this tragedy of the commons. |
| 1:18.3 | And should we bother to go to space at all? |
| 1:21.4 | I would love to go to space. |
... |
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