SciShow Tangents - The Apollo Program

Episode Date: July 16, 2019

From 1961 to 1972, thousands of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, seamstresses, pilots, and even a child or two worked on the Apollo Program, collaborating to bring humanity to the moon. Today, Tangents celebrates this unparalleled work of collective science and engineering!  Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:[Truth or Fail]Golf Club:https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/objects-of-intrigue-alan-shepards-golf-clubhttps://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/08/16/why-was-alan-shepard-allowed-to-bring-golf-clubs-to-the-moon/#1d7fe6b67f86Family Photo:https://www.businessinsider.com/apollo-16-hidden-family-portrait-on-the-moon-2015-10Ashes: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/eugene-shoemaker-buried-moon-celestis-nasahttps://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/news82.html[Fact Off]Greg Force: Boy Hero: https://www.honeysucklecreek.net/other_stations/guam/index.htmlhttp://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/07/20/apollo11.irpt/index.htmlSpacesuit seamstresses: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/neil-armstrongs-spacesuit-was-made-by-a-bra-manufacturer-3652414/http://mentalfloss.com/article/82726/how-playtex-helped-win-space-racehttps://www.racked.com/2018/9/5/17771270/spacesuit-girdles-playtex-seamstresses-nasahttps://gizmodo.com/how-to-sew-a-spacesuit-5788241[Ask the Science Couch]Michael Collins lonely: https://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/jul/HQ_09-164_Collins_statement.htmlhttps://www.space.com/16971-michael-collins-apollo-11.htmlhttps://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_11/overview/[Butt One More Thing]Moon poop bacteria:https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/3/22/18236125/apollo-moon-poop-mars-science

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. This week, as always, we've got our regular crew. I'm joined by Sam Schultz. Hello. Sam, what's your tagline? Emergency mustard supply. That's good to have one of those. We're also joined by Stefan Chin. Hi.

What's your tagline? Oh, up, up, and away. Sari Riley is also here. Yep, I'm here. All right. What's your tagline? Easy breezy and very queasy. And I'm Hank Green. Yep, I'm here. All right. What's your tagline? Easy, breezy, and very queasy. And I'm Hank Green. My tagline is vibrating.

Every week on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one-up and amaze and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory and we're playing for Hank Bucks. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but judging by previous conversations, we won't be good at that. So if the rest of the team deems the tangent unworthy, we will force you to give up one of your Hank bucks. Now, as always, we introduce this week's science topic with the traditional science poem this week from me.

In July of 1969, the numbers counted down. A trio of historic dudes then lifted off the ground to sky to space to land again upon another world. A treasure of geology, Earth's history unfurled. Two men stepped upon the land, their feet sunk in the dust. Fighter pilots, both of them, one kneel, the other buzz. The rocks they tread upon that day were foreign in some ways, and others, they were part of us, if you look back a ways. The moon was once the earth, the earth was once the moon. To to bridge that gap life evolved from algae

to baboons it took four billion years to cross that ocean once again but with will and ingenuity we did that thing my friends are you sure so the topic this week is apollo celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. Sari, what is Apollo besides a god? It's a space program that had—I feel like you're better equipped to define this than I am, so I didn't look it up. But it's the space program that was like the big space race thing that happened where we made the push to put a man on the moon. And so it was all the missions leading up to that, all the manned space flights that were leading up to that and the eventual four landings oh no six landings i think okay so is everything after apollo 11

landed on the moon except for 13 so 11 12 14 15 16. Oh. I didn't know 17 existed. The secret mission. The forbidden mission. There was 18 and 19, which didn't happen. There might have been more than that even. But there were planned missions that they were like, actually, this has gone pretty well. And we keep doing this. We will learn more science, but we are increasing the odds of someone dying on a moon. And also there wasn't that much public opinion supporting it.

We all like it now. But back in the day, a lot of people were like, yeah, we got other things to work on here. Were they bringing back helpful information from all the moon trips?

I mean, we learned a lot planning the moon trips. We learned a lot in terms of science. The moon is sort of like this time capsule of what the Earth geologically consisted of

four and a half billion years ago. So it's definitely a scientific trove up there. But yeah, that's what Apollo is. It's the only time that people have ever gone to another world. And it was 50 years ago and we still haven't done it again. Over what span of time did this happen? From 1969 to 1972 were the landings. That's pretty wild that they got to the point where they could bring up

like a buggy for them to drive around and stuff. I think that they always had sort of the weight capability of doing that. They didn't change the rockets at all. They were dipping their toes in the water at first, seeing what they could do. Okay. Yeah. Can we get them there at all? When they come back inside, will they die of moon dust?

Which was an open question. Or will they bring moon dust contaminants back to Earth and then kill all of us with alien bacteria? No was the answer. Everything was fine. Yeah. We've also got a SciShow thing coming out. It's like the first time we're doing something like this. A long form sort of documentary style episode where we talk about whether Apollo was a good

idea. I mean, I probably can guess where we came out on that question, but just asking it, I think, was really interesting. And so if you want to check out SciShow, we're trying something new. And you can check that out. We sent people to Alabama. We sent people all over the place. Yeah.

So that is Apollo. Now it is time for Truth or Fail. Stefan has prepared three science facts for our education and enjoyment. But only one of those facts is real. The rest of us have to make our guesses. And if we get it right, we get a Hank Buck.

And if we don't, then Stefan gets it. Stefan, take us into your mind of lies and duplicity. Okay. So these are things that Apollo astronauts left on the moon. One is real. Two are fake in some way. Fact number one. During Apollo 11, the cremated ashes of a NASA engineer who had tragically died in a car accident were deposited on the moon.

Number two. I feel like I would know that. During Apollo 14, Alan Shepard left two golf balls in a makeshift golf club on the moon after taking a couple swings, sending the balls flying for miles and miles and miles. Okay. and miles and miles. Okay. Or number three, during Apollo 16,

Charles Duke left a portrait of his family on the moon with a message on the back including his name and home planet. So one, cremated ashes of an Apollo engineer. Two,

Alan Shepard's golf balls and makeshift golf club. Or three, Charles Duke's family portrait with the name and home planet on the back. My gut's telling me the golf ball one

is a trick somehow. Yeah. Yeah. So I know that people hit golf balls on the moon. Right. Makes sense me the golf ball one is a trick somehow. Yeah. Yeah. So I know that people hit golf balls on the moon. Right. Makes sense that that would be Alan Shepard. So the golf balls must still be there. They didn't go to collect them. No. But what about this makeshift golf club? Why not

just bring a real golf club if you bring in golf balls? Yeah. I don't know. Where do you hide it? Do you have to hide it, though? It doesn't weigh that much, I don't think. I think it weighs more than you'd want to bring on a mission like a they got like a little pouch a smaller one do they have like a weight allowance like you could bring a certain amount of stuff that is your choosing i think i read something like it was half a pound what stuff which is not very much so like small memorabilia like pictures or coins or things like that. Okay.

Wow, that's cruel. Yeah, I don't know. You're not going to let me bring it. What else are you going to bring? A golf club. A baseball bat so that I can hit baseballs and rocks on the moon. They just need to do a whole sports mission to the moon to see how fun they all are. I feel like that seems kind of likely because if he would have had to makeshift his own golf club.

Yeah. But wouldn't you have brought it home if you made a golf club on the moon? And maybe you just hit it with like a moon rock or something, like a long rock. A really long rock. No, he definitely had a golf club. I've seen the pictures. Charles Duke seems like something you'd do. That's pretty cute.

Everybody should have done that. Yeah. It's less than half a pound. Mm-hmm. Got to put it down upside down so it doesn't get bleached by the sun. Pre-made it ashes of an Apollo engineer, everybody. Seems like it could happen. That sounds like something that would come up when you Googled the Apollo revolution.

It also seems like lots of people die. And none of them got to go up. They should have gotten a bunch of people's ashes, mixed them all up, taken a can of that. And it's like 50 or 60 people in there. That's how they make hamburger. All right'm gonna make sam guess i'm gonna go with the picture the picture i'm gonna go with golf clubs i'm gonna go with the picture as well it was the picture i actually knew that and i did not say it you played it really cool uh thanks i'm pretty sure he left it face up because well in an interview he said that he put it down took a picture of it and then

never looked at it again and so but he was pretty sure that it would have been faded by now yeah the message on the back was this is the family of astronaut charlie duke from the planet earth who landed on the moon on april, 1972. Oh, that's nice. But now that there's no picture on it, it's kind of a weird message. Yeah. Yeah, the aliens will be like, wow, these people are white. So the ashes thing happened in the 90s. So it wasn't Apollo related at all.

But Eugene Schumacher was a planetary geologist who with his wife and another astronomer had co-discovered this comet that impacted jupiter apparently that was televised i didn't know they televised like comet impacts but that was the first time that we saw things impact oh it was like other objects yeah yeah basically live footage of it happening yeah but he had he was involved in apollo astronaut training and like wanted to go to the moon himself, but had a disease that disqualified him. So when he died in a car accident in 1997, they took some of his ashes and put it on the lunar prospector and launched that, which eventually crashed into the moon. So he eventually made it. Oh, crashed into the moon on purpose. Yes. After the mission was done.

the moon on purpose yes after the mission was done yeah tell me about this golf club that misled sari thanks so the golf club part was the lie like he did not leave the golf club the golf balls are still there they know roughly where they are but the golf club he brought back and that's now in a golf museum somewhere and it was a makeshift golf club yeah so a lot of people think that this was like he smuggled it on because I think it was a half pound. I think you're right about that. So the handle of the golf club is like part of a tool that they were already taking because that was the heavier part. And he had a custom like head made for the end so that it would attach to that like pole. He apparently also like got permission for this.

Like they were like, no, let's not do that. But then he was like, look, if anything goes wrong, I won't embarrass the agency. I won't do it. And eventually, he was very persistent about it. And then they were like, yeah, okay, fine. Seems like something a bunch of dudes in the 70s would be into. Yeah, totally. Golf on the moon. Yeah. Next up,

it's time for a short break, and then The Fact Off. We're back. Hank Buck totals. Sarah, you've got nothing. Sam, you got one. Stephanie, you got one. And I'm in the lead with two.

Now it's time for the fact off. Two panelists bring science facts to present to the others in an attempt to blow our minds. The presentees each have a Hank Buck to award the fact that we like the most. And this week, it is Sam versus Sari. We're going to go by the person who most recently bought some space-related memorabilia. Uh-oh. I just did. Oh, you just did? Uh-huh.

What did you buy? It's like a long poster of the Apollo program that I found in a print shop in L.A. Wow. So I think that counts probably. That does. That seems like it counts. Have you bought anything since Sunday? No. I don't know the last Have you bought anything since Sunday? No.

I don't know the last space memorabilia thing I've bought. So I guess that means that Sam's going to go first. Yeah. I'm a bigger space fan, I guess. All right. Give us your fact, boy. A fairly important element of the Apollo 11 mission, and like all the Apollo missions, was the ability for astronauts and mission control to be able to talk to each other for the entirety of the trip,

both when they were on the moon, but maybe even more importantly, when they were leaving the earth and coming back to the earth. Both near earth and deep space communication have their own sets of like considerations and problems. When you're far from earth, you have a direct path to more antennas and like dishes that pick up your stuff, but the signal's weaker. So you need really big ones to pick it up. Okay.

Is that right? Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. When you're close to Earth, you can't see as many antennas at once, but your signal's better, so you need, like, lots of little ones. NASA had a system to track and communicate with near-Earth manned missions from all the previous programs they did, and they had something set up to track deep space stuff.

But they had to kind of like make changes to their near-Earth program with deep space satellites to make Apollo work because it was a little bit of deep space, a little bit of close-up. Mostly what they did was build a lot of the huge dishes to talk to them. And then they built tons of little antennas, and they built even more of them where the splashdown was going to happen because that was where they were going to be closest, obviously. So the first of these dedicated communication stations was built in Guam in 1966. It was set up for near earth communication and it would be the last antenna capable of

communicating with Apollo 11 before they landed. Fast forward to the night of July 23rd, 1969, which was just a couple hours before Apollo was going to splash down the morning of July 24th. So Charles Force was the director of the Guam tracking station, which was the last one they'd be able to communicate with. And he had a big problem because a bearing in the antenna had seized up and communication was basically impossible once they got close enough. So to properly fix it, they would have had to take the whole antenna apart and put it all back together.

And by then they would have be landed or dead or whatever would happen. But he did have an idea, which was to grease the bearing that made it turn. But the problem was that the hole to get to the bearing was too tiny for all of the guys who worked there to reach their arm in. to get to the bearing was too tiny for all of the guys who worked there to reach their arm in but luckily he had a 10 year old child named greg force or g force and he called him up at 10 o'clock at night and he had him driven over to the base they greased up his arm and he reached in the little hole in this big dangerous piece of machinery and he greased up the bearing and he made the whole thing work again, and they landed safely,

which they might have done anyway, but they landed safely, and then he got to shake Neil Armstrong's hand, and he gave him a little note that said, thanks for helping with the Apollo mission, Greg. Was his hand still greased? I was going to ask. I think this was like a couple years later.

Give him a wet lily with his greased up hand. What's up, Neil? I love it. Yeah, so little boy saved the day. I'm glad that his arm is safe. Yeah, they put little boy-sized holes into their antennas, I guess. Yeah, and how lucky that it was his own son. Because you can't just put a call for a boy at 10 p.m. at night.

I need a boy. I need a small human. I bet Greg's arm would fit in there. You think Greg's arm would fit in there. You think Greg's arm would fit in there? He called his wife and had her measure Greg's arm. How big a round is it? I feel this way about modern car engine bays. Like, they're so small and tight.

Yeah. Like, you can't reach anything. No. But I was looking at a picture of the oxygen generation system on the ISS. And, like, it's all designed so that everything is very boxy. There's a lot of room, so it looks like you can just take off a couple screws. I was like, that's how it should be done. It's not the prettiest, but it's functional.

But you don't need a little boy to fix it. You don't need a little boy. If I wanted to put new RAM on my laptop, I could do that by buying a new laptop. That's pretty much it. Yeah. You need a really little boy to reach into your laptop. Through the USB port. Yeah, just I need Ant-Man to shrink down with some RAM and then like, whoop.

Okay, good fact, Sam. Okay, there's a nonverbal cue to start going. So space suits have to be really, really carefully made to keep astronauts safe. They have to be pressurized carefully made to keep astronauts safe. They have to be pressurized and have a tight seal to keep in oxygen, resist extreme temperatures, protect against UV radiation, be tough but flexible enough so that they can do things. And so when I picture spacesuits being manufactured, I imagine like high-tech machining and proprietary polymers and some sort of like complicated NASA facility where they're doing all this in secret. But for the Apollo 11 mission, the spacesuits worn on the moon were custom made for the astronauts

using a lot of the same materials as bras, diaper covers, and girdles, and they were handcrafted by seamstresses with more sewing, gluing, and rubber-dipping precision than luxury clothing on giant custom sewing machines where each foot pedal push did just one stitch

through somewhere between 17 to 21 layers of fabric. Whoa. And so they had like hundreds and hundreds of meters. Giant needles? I think they had small needles but big machines to fit all those layers of fabric in there. Sam, a giant

needle is just a stick. It's pointy. A giant four needle is still pretty small and they need small needles because i think the nasa specifications were 1 64th of an inch of precision couldn't make too big a hole in it yeah couldn't make too big of a hole couldn't like go off seam too much because everything needed to be sealed so precisely these spacesuits were called the al7 a for ap, 7 for the generation, so there were like six before that, and L for the International Latex Corporation who made the suits.

And ILC was mostly known for Playtex underwear and stuff, but there was a part of the company that submitted bids for industry and government contracts of flight suits and things like that. This happened over lots of years and there were bid processes and there was work with other military suppliers to the Apollo missions spacesuits. And it was all very fraught. And the International Latex Corporation was dismissed a lot and they were fired once. And it almost didn't happen. Like their involvement was almost completely nixed until there was a spacesuit competition in July 1965 where they competed against two other agencies and won. Mostly because of the strong bendy joints that they developed called convolutes for mobility because a lot of the other spacesuits submitted were really boxy and couldn't let the astronauts move or like fit within the lunar module model.

Got to wear that thing inside. Yeah and you can't put it on outside oh i never even thought about that yeah you gotta like bend over and pick up rocks and do all that with a tight seal so yeah i just thought it was cool that a lot of the reason the apollo 11 astronauts were safe like bouncing around on the moon was because of expert seamstresses who are so good at their jobs and doing like traditionally very feminine work, but on a superhuman level, like more than any other clothing process that has ever been.

That also sort of makes me think of the women who wove all the coding. Yeah. Because it was like individual copper wires that they had to weave together to like hard code all the like software for Apollo. Core rope memory. The little old ladies, they knit.

They knitted software. They knitted software. Yeah. I feel like I'm going with Sari. This is a better anecdote, Sam? Greg wasn't really doing science, though. He just had a greasy arm. Yeah.

Sari seems like sort of a big endeavor. And also like with the communications, it's just like all of the things that had to happen that weren't like big space rockets. You also have to build a bunch like a whole communication network and you have to figure out how to make spacesuits that you can walk around on the moon with. Almost everything that happened wasn't the big space rocket. Yeah, mostly the big space rocket was, we'd already, we know how to do that. Yeah, I would think once you got to the point of little ladies knitting stuff for you, you'd be like, maybe we should wait a few years until we know how to do this. But I guess it was an important step. Well, you can listen to our new episode of SciShow.

Talk about the little ladies? We don't, but we talk about how there's some logic to the idea that maybe if we'd put this back a few years, it would have been easier. But there's also some logic to say, like, maybe if we had waited, there wouldn't have been a political will to do it. And we'd still be sitting here never having been to the moon. Was the political will all Soviet? Marginally, it was proving that America and capitalism were better than the Soviet Union and communism. Stefan, did you award your point? I have to give a point.

I like the seamstresses. I think Greg deserves a point. Yeah. To Sam. Thank you, Greg. And Stefan. Is Greg still alive? Yes.

I believe he is still alive. He wanted to be an astronaut, but he was colorblind, so he couldn't be one. So now it's time for Ask the Science Couch, where we ask listener questions to our couch of finely honed scientific minds. listener questions to our couch of finely honed scientific minds. At SPath73 asks, how alone was Michael Collins while Armstrong and Aldrin were on the surface of the moon? Did he ever lose communication with Houston? Ooh, I don't know the answer to that question, but generally asking how alone was anyone is just like, I don't know, man.

How alone are we all? It's like, I don't know, man. How alone are we all? Locked in our bodies, incapable of ever exiting them, occupying the physical space. But arguably, he was in the most alone position anyone has ever been in. He had the least amount of people next to him that anybody else ever had. But he did have those two people that were on the moon. Yeah.

But everybody else had more people nearer to them than the whole rest of the every other human being for sure do you think he was still within five feet of a spider i bet not that all the spiders got scrubbed out they should have sent him up with like questionnaires they did like post interviews where i like what did you do when you were completely alone yeah but like when i'm alone in my room it's basically the same as orbiting around the moon yeah alone is alone you can't be more or less alone he didn't really have that many days to think about it either, I guess. Less than a day. Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 hours, 36 minutes on the lunar surface.

And so he only spent less than a day completely alone in the command module. But was he ever completely out of communication with Houston? I actually don't know. I feel like he must have been. He didn't have a system for relaying the data. Did he orbit the way that he could always see the Earth? Or did he orbit the way that he was always see the Earth or did he orbit the way that he was going behind the moon?

Behind the moon. He's behind the moon? Yeah. Yeah. So for about 47 to 48 minutes of each orbit, he was behind enough of behind the moon

that he couldn't have any radio contact with Earth or anyone else. And so there was a chunk of time. And I think someone did the math based on like the 21 hours, 36 minutes, he was alone in the command module. An estimate is that he made 18 orbits while that. So like 18

times for about a little less than an hour, he was completely out of contact with anyone else. Did he have any statements on his aloneness? He says contradictory statements about his aloneness that sounded really sassy but he can't keep his story straight it's been 50 years he remembers things differently yes so like the very big michael collins quote is that i am alone now truly alone and absolutely isolated from any known life i am it if a count were taken the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon and one plus God knows what's on this side. Very, very dramatic.

Very angsty, very dramatic. I am the most lonely man ever. Was that a written line? He must have written that down. Nobody says that. Maybe he thought that's when nobody could hear him. He was just talking to himself. Just muttering to himself.

He thought that's when nobody could hear him. He was just talking to himself. Just muttering to himself. But a July 15th, 2009, so 10 years ago, feature on NASA had new statements from him. And this quote was, Far from feeling lonely or abandoned, I felt very much a part of what is taking place on the lunar surface. I know I would be a liar or a fool if I said that I have the best of the three Apollo 11 seats, but I can say with truth and equanimity that I'm perfectly satisfied with the one that I have. Those things aren't necessarily contradictory.

And also the question was, circling the lonely moon by yourself, the loneliest person in the universe, weren't you lonely? Prime, were you lonely? Answer, no. No, I wasn't lonely. That's good. I have two questions. Prime. Do you always? Answer? No. No. I wasn't lonely. That's good. I have two questions. Would you be mad if you didn't get to step on the moon if you were up there?

No. I think I might be a little bit. I think I'd be mad if I was an Apollo 13 astronaut and I thought I was going to and I didn't. Yeah. I might be mad when I found out on the day when they gave the assignments and they were like, but I'm like, when you're up there. That's true. I think in my mind, I'm like,

oh yeah, I'd be so mad. But thinking about my actual personality, like if I find out I have to go to the pool, I'm like, ooh, dangerous. I don't want to. You have to go to the pool? So people are going to the pool, I'm like, all right, I guess have to go to the pool you know so people are going to the pool I'm like alright I guess I'll go to the pool

it's on the deep end I don't know if I'll make it so I don't know I think I would be I think I'm the opposite of Stefan where I think I wouldn't be mad where it's like oh I'm used to behind the scenes stuff like I write for videos I don't do anything on camera but if it comes to going to

the moon I think I'd be really like the competitive fire or like something in me would spark up and I'd be like, no, I want to put my foot on that rock. Yeah, you just like hit Neil Armstrong in the head in the morning and you're like, it looks like he's going to have to stay up. Yeah, or like talk someone else into it. Be like, you know, command module pilot higher rank.

You got to do all these checks, make sure we can get back to Earth. Are you a Slyther you know, command module pilot, higher rank. You gotta do all these checks, make sure we can get back to Earth. Are you a Slytherin? Yes. Hell yeah, me too. That's why we'd be mad. We got like three Slytherins on this podcast.

Are you one too? Oh man. That's a bombshell. Do people know that? I mean, look. Okay, here's my second question. More science-tific. More science-tific. More science-tific.

How do they keep them warm up there? Do they just have a bunch of heaters? Yeah, heaters, man. Well, first, in the daytime on the lunar surface, it's hot. Right. The sun's hitting you. So you've got to cool people off. Yes, the bigger challenge is cooling systems in spacesuits.

So is the thing on their back for that kind of stuff? Yeah, it's like an AC unit, basically. Interesting. And then the capsule just had heaters and air conditioning, too? Yeah. The's like an AC unit, basically. Interesting. And then the capsule just had like heaters and air conditioning too? The space station has to deal with that a lot where it's just like, it's in the cold and then it's in the hot

and it's like blazing hot and blazing cold. That's a huge amount of energy too, right? What are they powering that? Is that solar powered? Solar powered, yeah. Yeah, a lot of the materials that they create to launch into space. So like the spacesuits that I talked about, they had to develop a new material to go on the outside where it's like Teflon coated fiberglass to withstand thousands of degrees Fahrenheit worth of temperature.

And that is the kind of design that goes into a lot of material science that goes into space as far as I can tell. into a lot of material science that goes into space, as far as I can tell. It's like, how do you create really, really resistant materials that won't melt or burn up or things like that in these extreme fluctuations? So the people who are making diaper covers were best for that, apparently. It turns out you need some industrial strength stuff to keep it all in there. Keep everything sealed up tight. If you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShowTangents, where we will tweet out topics for each upcoming episode every week. Thank you to at Tagalong572, at Artemis Myths, and everybody else who tweeted us your questions this week.

Hank Buck, final scores. Sari and Stefan are tied for last with one. And Hank and Sam are tied for first with two. Hooray. If you want to see what we're up to on SciShow, head over to YouTube.com slash SciShow where we have our big long-form documentary kind of thing going up soon where you can learn all about Apollo and what we did and why we did it

and whether it was a good idea at youtube.com slash scishow. If you like this podcast, it's easy to help us out. You can leave us a review wherever you listen. That helps us know what you like about the show. And other people see that we have a good podcast. And then they will also listen to it. And then they'll tell their friends. And then someday we will take over the world.

Or just the moon. Also, we're always on the lookout for new episode ideas. And Sam had an idea. So if you go and leave us a review and you put your topic idea in there, we will put it into consideration for an episode. So write your ideas in your reviews, everybody. Cheese would be a great one. Somebody can have that idea for free. Second, you can tweet out your favorite moment from this episode.

I love it when people do that. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I have been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Stefan Chin. And I've been Sam Schultz.

SciShow Tangents is produced by Complexly and the amazing team at WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who also edits a lot of these episodes along with Hiroko Matsushima. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno. And we couldn't make any of this stuff without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing.

So in the episode about satellites, we talked about how astronauts left poop on the moon. And there are 96 bags of poop up there, they think. They estimate 96 bags of poop. There might be more. In recent years, scientists have been wondering about the contents of those bags and specifically if the microbes inside of them could either still be alive

or lived for a long time after they were deposited on the moon. So the odds that this happened aren't really that great due to temperature variations, the possibility that the bags didn't retain the moisture from the poop, and like the constant bombardment by solar rays. But even if they lived for a little while, we might be able to go back, get them and

look at them and see what natural selection looks like in a lunar environment. Oh, my gosh. I love this. I want to send another mission to the moon just to get poop. Yeah. So do a lot of like NASA scientists want to do the same thing. They want to go get. I'm surprised they didn't get one

in any of the later missions. They're not close together. I was going to ask. You couldn't drive over there and pick up some Neil Armstrong's poop? Come home, auction it off. I got a bag of

Neil Armstrong's poop.