The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Look Up, Way Up ... To The Night Sky

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

A Thursday night potpourri -- starting with some things to be watching for in the night sky that hven't been seen in hundreds of years! And yes, more vaccine news.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily this for thursday of week 39 you know somebody wrote to me last night and said, you must be getting really excited about saying week 40. I guess in some ways I'm excited about saying week 40. It's got a nice ring to it. But on the other hand, week 40? Seriously? This stuff? Come on.

Yesterday was a good day with the sense that, you know, we are eventually going to, you know, head into the second half of this, which I believe we're in now. You know, with some encouragement, with the sense we're getting vaccines and we're getting them right away in spite of all the crap that we heard in the last few weeks from different people saying that we were at the back of the line. It's not like we're going to get enough to deal with everybody right away. Obviously, it's going to take six months at least to really break the back of this thing in terms of delivering vaccines to those who need it. But we're as good as anybody else in the world on that. And we seem, in fact, on the initial get-go here to be ahead of the Americans.

But let's see how it works out. Anyway, that's good news. The difficult news is things are ugly out there. And they're going to be ugly for a while yet. And we've just got to focus on all those key things. And you know what they are. I don't have to always repeat them. You know what they are. Stick with the program.

All right. Thursday, every once in a while we do a Thursday potpourri day, and this is going to be one of them because I've got lots of little things I've been saving up over the last few days that I want to get at them. First one comes with a story. As many of you know, I started my broadcasting career in Churchill, Manitoba, of all places, a little radio station as part of the CBC's Northern Service operation.

And, you know, one of the things you always hear about Churchill are the polar bears, and my gosh, I did lots of polar bear stories over the years. But there's a port of Churchill, which is open a couple of months a year. Hopefully it's going to be open longer in the future as climate change continues to have its impact on northern ice conditions. But there was something else about Churchill that did mark it as a kind of known place in the world of science and research.

And that was Churchill had its own rocket range. And at a time it was the only Canadian rocket range. I mean, we talked about Cape Canaveral and Cape Kennedy and Houston Space Center and the space operations that exist in California as well. But in Churchill, Manitoba, there was the Churchill Rocket Range operated by the National Research Council

and they used to fire Black Brant rockets every once in a while. the Churchill rocket range operated by the National Research Council. And they used to fire Black Brant rockets every once in a while. It was always a big deal. And a lot of Americans came up through there. A lot of Americans who were part of the NASA space program came through Churchill and, you know, studied rocket firings out of the range in Churchill. And when I was working at Transair before I was working at CBC, man, oh, man, I used to lug the big cartons and boxes from the different White Rocks, New Mexico,

I think, or White Sands, New Mexico. It was one of the big NASA operations, and they used to ship stuff back and forth. Anyway, so there was lots of that. But there was nothing more exciting than being out at the rocket range when they fired a rocket. So when I eventually got to the CBC and I did my time in Churchill, and then I was moved down to Winnipeg and I started working in television, I suggested, you know, we've got to go up to Churchill.

They're firing an important rocket next week. And one of the things they used to do with rockets out of the Churchill rocket range was fire them into the Aurora Borealis, the northern lights. This is late 60s, early 70s, still a mystery how these lights formed and what was going on in them on nights where they were particularly active. And so they'd fire rockets right up into the northern lights, and they'd use their various scientific instruments on board to, you know, take readings and soundings or whatever it is they take from the rockets.

So I made the case that we should go up there, do this. It was the middle of winter. So they signed off on that, the people in Winnipeg and, you know, budgeted for a trip to Churchill. So we flew up on my old airline and got ourselves established, went out to the rocket range, got the latest estimates on when this rocket would take off, and got ready to cover. Now, there were a couple of days things got delayed because the weather wasn't right or the northern lights weren't going to be as evident as they'd hoped on that particular night.

Anyway, eventually it came down to the moment. So this is 19, I guess, 71 or 72. We're still shooting film, certainly not digital, and we weren't even videotaped at that point. We were shooting film. So we picked our spot on the roof of the rocket range where we'd be filming the rocket lifting off. And it eventually got to the moment. We're into the final countdown of an hour and then 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes.

And we had everything established outside with the tripod the whole bit. And with one minute to go, out we went, the cameraman and myself, and we got out onto the roof of the rocket range, put the camera on the tripod, tightened it up, started rolling. We could hear the, you know, over the speakers, 20 tripod, tighten it up, started rolling. We could hear over the speakers, 20 seconds, T minus 20, T minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5. It was right in 5 or 4. You could suddenly hear in the camera this crackling sound.

It was the film. It had frozen up. And the next thing you knew, the rocket took off. We, of course, weren't filming because the film had snapped frozen in the camera. That was not a good day. That was not a good day to phone down to Winnipeg and say, we had a problem in filming this historic flight of a black brand up into the Northern Lights.

So there you are saying, why is he telling us this story? As interesting as it may be? Well, here's why. The headline in the Washington Post, The sun is awakening with solar storms that could affect Earth. Predictions of a strong one, Thursday night, that's tonight, that could generate northern lights as far south as Oregon to Pennsylvania. So in other words, south of us, which means, you know,

you're going to see northern lights. You don't have to be in Churchill or Yellowknife or Newvick or Iqaluit. You can be in Toronto. Well, you might have to get a little bit out of Toronto, get away from the brightness of the lights. So let me just read a couple sentences from this piece in the Washington Post because it'll explain why you may tonight have a chance to see the northern lights. Just don't go out there with a film camera.

Mind you, in Churchill that night, I think it was like minus 20. So it was cold. Anyway, here's a story Matthew Capucci writes. After a lengthy slumber, the sun is waking up, crackling with activity and hurling blistering pulses of energy into space. Solar physicists are expecting an uptick in stormy space weather with implications that affect us here on Earth. As soon as tonight, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting that a solar outburst could generate northern lights or aurora as far south as Oregon to Pennsylvania. This flare-up coincides with the onset of solar cycle 25, an 11-year window within which storminess on the surface of the sun, peaks, and solar storms become routine.

A little bit of necessary background. The sun is nearly how many miles away from us? Come on, give me a guess. If you guessed 93 million miles away, you were right. But disturbances on its surface can have serious effects far and wide across the solar system. Solar scientists and forecasters of space weather track sunspots, or cool discolored regions that make appearances on the solar disk. The number of sunspots present at any given time fluctuates over the course of 11 years, each span representing one cycle. Twice in the past 10 days, impressive solar flares have heralded the building Solar Cycle 25, a stark contrast from earlier this

year when a solar minimum between cycles meant that 200 days didn't feature a single sunspot. During the heart of a solar cycle, more than 100 sunspots can crop up in a single month. So you might want to keep an eye on this. I know that there are parts of southern Canada that get to see the Aurora Borealis every once in a while. Not often, but every once in a while. And this, though, once in a while. And

this, though, sounds a little different, a little more serious in terms of what we might be able to see. So you might want to keep that in mind. And while we're looking at the sky at night, keep this in mind. I don't know whether you've ever found BBC Sky at Night magazine, but if you're somebody who kind of likes, you know, you're kind of an amateur hobby person in terms of the sky,

there's all kinds of great apps out there that help you with the sky, but BBC Sky at Night magazine is pretty good. In its latest edition, it points us to Monday, December 21st. Jupiter and Saturn will appear to be less than a degree

apart in the night sky for the first time to this extent since, take a guess, how long do you think it's been since they've been this close in the night sky? 1623. I remember that night. It was special. The last time a great conjunction occurred that was as easy to see as this year's,

now even I don't remember this one, March the 4th, 1226. Now how do they know that? Somebody writing that down at the time? Though on the 19th of February, 1961, the two planets were a mere 0.14 degrees apart, while 34.9 degrees west of the sun. What you're actually watching during a great conjunction is Jupiter catching up on and overtaking the slower moving Saturn. Okay?

Got all that? I don't know. You know, night skies can be really, you don't need to know anything. But if you can find a spot that's dark enough in your surroundings that you can focus on what's going on above you in the night sky, it can be fabulous. You know, when the excitement of suddenly seeing something moving up there and you know it's way too high to be a plane, it's got to be something else.

You know, is it the International Space Station? Is it old satellite orbiting? Is it something else? Okay, moving from the night sky to a moment on vaccines. If you listened, I guess it was a week ago tonight, we were talking to General Rick Hillier, who's the point person for the Ontario government

in terms of the distribution of satellites. One of the questions I asked him is about the security around vaccine distribution. Because obviously vaccine distribution in this part of the world is being handled by governments. They will be handing it out in terms of the way it is distributed to the general population. But the question I asked, how are you going to ensure that that is the way it remains, that there doesn't become this kind of black market, that there doesn't become a situation where there's queue jumping?

Well, one of the ways that could happen, there wouldn't be a black market, but one of the ways it could happen is if there was a kind of parallel private service for vaccines. Now, there's no indication that's going to happen in Canada. Nothing will surprise me, though, if at some point in the next year, we hear that there are ways to get a vaccine. But I mention this today because I notice in the Financial Times a story out of India. The COVID vaccine will be available for private sale in India. Serum Institute of India, now we've talked about them before, they are the world's largest vaccine manufacturer.

They have a license to produce the Oxford AstraZeneca shot. And they've already manufactured 40 million doses. Serum, that's the company, will initially supply the Indian government, but then expects to sell 20 to 30 million doses to private facilities. They don't say where. Just India? Private facilities elsewhere in the world? Doesn't say.

This, of course, though, raises concerns of a secondary market for the vaccine. And given the global nature of the response required, is challenging for equitable access around the world. That story out of the Financial Times. So, I don't know about you, but a lot of people seem to have been thinking about either selling their house because they can't afford it during these difficult times, or selling their house because they can't afford it and they want to go bigger and go elsewhere. Story in Bloomberg. Million-dollar home buying soars with U.S. rich on a shopping binge. Wealthy Americans largely untouched by the

recession and eager for more living space have been on a home buying binge. Demand for million dollar homes is growing faster than any other tier in the pandemic. In October, applications for mortgages larger than $3.25 million jumped 59%. The biggest gain for all segments measured by the Mortgage Bankers Association. In comparison, the increase for mortgages from $150,000 to $300,000 was only 13%. Now, investors are concerned all this might not last. Shares of luxury builder Toll Brothers fell the most in a month Tuesday after the company crushed estimates with a 68% jump in home orders for the three months through October.

But the stock dropped because investors are worried this boom will not last. Now, you know my fascination with the airline business, and at least once a week I try to get in a couple of airline stories, because I think they affect us all in many different ways. You don't have to travel on an airline or go to an airport not to be affected by the airline business because it's such a huge part of the economy. But if you follow the airline business at all, then you know about the story of the 737 MAX. It was about two years ago

after two terrible accidents. The plane was grounded over concerns about its safety. So the Wall Street Journal is reporting this week that Boeing has delivered a 737 MAX to United Airlines, the first carrier to receive a newly produced model of the jet after regulators ended a nearly two-year grounding last month. That affected airlines around the world, not just in the States. Canada's Whalair Canada grounded its whole fleet of 737 MAX. A United crew took possession of a MAX on Tuesday of this week,

according to a spokesman for the carrier. It was the first of eight finished MAX planes expected to be delivered to the United by the end of the year, so in the next couple of weeks. The United spokesman said the airline would inspect and test fly each MAX before reintroducing the aircraft back into passenger service. Oh, thank you. Pilots also would have to undergo new training approval by the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration. It was clear in a couple of the accidents, they weren't in those two fatal accidents,

neither of which was in the States, but it was clear that the pilots who were flying those aircraft, who died in those aircraft, were not properly trained to fly this level of new tech. And there were issues around the new tech. Anyway, this is obviously a big deal for Boeing because they're going to survive, they've got to get the Boeing Max, which is their 737 Max, which is their kind of signature plane for the future, the near future. They've got to get it back in the air. And here's the one other story about the airline business.

Okay. It comes with a little background story this was in the economist in the swamps of 1950s florida a loud roaring occasionally disturbed the serenity of the local alligators under conditions of strictest secrecy engineers from pratt and whit, an aerospace company, were testing a new type of engine that was powered by a strange substance apparently piped in from a fertilizer plant in the nearby town of Apex. In reality, the town was just a name on a map, and the fertilizer plant was a ruse. The disturbances were the result of Project Suntan, an attempt by America's Air Force to build a plane fueled with hydrogen. It nearly worked. The engines operated successfully, but storing and supplying the hydrogen itself proved too expensive for production to continue.

Suntan was just the first of a string of failed attempts to use hydrogen to power heavier than air flight the allure is great hydrogen packs three times as much energy per kilogram as kerosene the current standard aviation fuel and lightness is at a premium aloft tupolov and what was then the soviet union tried in the 1980s. Boeing tried in the 2000s. A small demonstrator has flown in Germany. But nothing has, as it were, really taken off. Yet, there are indications that once again, testing is taking place on the part of some aircraft manufacturers to see whether or not they can get airborne

successfully and economically with hydrogen. That's something to watch in the future. Nothing around the corner here, but they're working away at it. Okay, here's our last story for today. I love this one. This one hopefully will, I don't know, put a little smile on your face. You probably saw, I'm sure most people saw, because it's been one of the good things in a week where there's so much evidence of bad things happening because of COVID-19.

We saw the site in the United Kingdom of the first vaccines being delivered. We saw the first woman to receive the Pfizer and BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine outside of the clinical trials that have taken place. And outside of, you know, we should mention there have been vaccines delivered, introduced in Russia, in parts of Asia, some in India. Many of those still in trials, but others, especially in Russia, they're giving out vaccines even though the vaccine tests weren't completed on the vaccines they're handing out,

they're administering. Anyway, in England, much stricter regulations, and they were the first to start putting vaccines in arms as of Tuesday of this week. And the first woman to receive was Margaret Keenan. She was 90 years old, grandmother. Moments later, now, did they go to Central Casting to find this guy? A man named William Shakespeare was vaccinated.

Shakespeare, who, like the 16th century playwright, grew up in Warwickshire, said he was pleased and praised the staff at the hospital, which is just 20 miles from Stratford-upon-Avon, or as we say here in Stratford-upon-Avon in Ontario, the namesake of the more famous Stratford in Britain, which is, of course, the birthplace of the famous artist William Shakespeare. The irony was not lost on the internet, as memes and social posts immediately began erupting

with captioned adaptions of the titles of Shakespeare's plays, including these two. And I repeat them to give you a moment to enjoy. How about The Taming of the Flu? The Two Gentlemen of Corona. All right, I know you're booing. Corona. All right, I know you're... I know you're booing. All right, before we go, book update, book update. Number two this week.

Jan Arden's book knows the head of us. Into the number one position for the top nonfiction book of the week. So three weeks at the top, that's pretty nice. An instant number one bestseller for extraordinary Canadians, the book Mark Bullrich and I did. But all credit to Jan Arden for inching ahead. Inching ahead.

So we've got to get at her this week. Catch up. And we're not that far away from Berkey's book, Burke's Law, the hockey book this winter. But extraordinary Canadians, it's special. And obviously we're very proud of the success of this winter. But Extraordinary Canadians, it's special. And obviously we're very proud of the success of this book and your desire to have it or give it out as a gift. And here's the latest update on the book plate situation. I have on my desk here, ready to go. I don't know, 150 letters that have come in in the last two days, two or

three days since I ran out of book plates. They should be arriving. I expected them yesterday. They didn't come yesterday, but I expect they will come either today or tomorrow. So they'll be out in this week's mail, and you should get them next week. And the deal, once again, please recall, I'll sign a book plate and mail it off to you as long as you include in your request on email to me at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Proof of purchase. Okay, it can be a picture of you holding the book or it can be a copy of the receipt, whatever. I do that and away it goes with this.

You know, I'll sign a plate and ship. These plates are very small. Some people send a request for like these huge long citations on the book plate. That's not going to happen. The book plate basically has enough room for a signature, especially my sloppy signature. Today's Thursday. That means tomorrow's Friday.

Very good, Peter. And that means the weekend special, number 39. And I'm still looking for and have been receiving a variety of different letters and emails. Some of you are still focused on this, something good that happened to me this year. And there have been some good entries again this week. But the other area is to also consider something that you're doing special for the holiday season about to come upon us. Now, what's interesting, Mark saw this today and sent me an email early this morning and said,

guess what, The Daily, which is the podcast the New York Times does, which they have like a mountain of resources to put their podcast together, but it's a great podcast. It's kind of like the front burner on CBC. But The Daily is kind of acknowledged as the premier podcast out there. They started a contest of sorts today saying, write to us and tell us about something good that's happened to you this year.

Now, where would they've got that idea, I wonder? Who knows? But good for them that they're having a contest. I didn't notice, are they also going to put out a signed copy of Extraordinary Canadians? That would be a great idea for the Daily of the New York Times to do, don't you think? Okay, enough's enough That kind of wraps this edition of the Bridge Daily Hope you enjoyed it Thanks for listening I'm Peter Mansbridge

We'll be back in 24 hours hours.