Star Trucking with Franklin Chang-Diaz and Miranda Chang – Part 1

When humanity heads out for the stars, what will be powering our spacecraft? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome father and daughter team Franklin Chang-Diaz, NASA astronaut and founder of the Ad Astra Rocket Company™, and Miranda Chang, Ad Astra’s Global Communications Director for Part 1 of this two-part episode. (We’ll be posting Part 2 next Saturday!)

As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing. Lucy, the robotic NASA mission to the asteroid belt, just passed by its first asteroid Dinkinesh (which has been given the Ethiopian (Amharic) name for the human-ancestor fossil known as Lucy and means “You are marvelous”!). As it did so, it discovered Dinkinesh is actually a double asteroid, in that it has its own orbiting moon, Selam, but that’s not all: Selam is a contact binary, meaning it’s actually two distinct bodies touching each other but not connected.

Next, we turn from discovering asteroids to visiting them, and that’s where Franklin and Miranda come in. Franklin spent 25 years at NASA. He was one of the ninth group of astronauts, the class of 1980, and flew 7 missions in space, the most spaceflights anyone has taken to date. An astronautic jack-of-all-trades engineer, physicist and more who describes himself as a “glorified plumber/electrician”), Franklin flew on each of the Space Shuttles except the Challenger, visited the Soviet space station Mir, took 3 spacewalks and even helped build the International Space Station.

Miranda tells us about Ad Astra’s flagship program, the VX-200 VASIMIR engine (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket), a new type of high-power, electric in-space propulsion. They’re vastly more powerful (compare a hair dryer to a diesel engine) and more efficient than existing ion propulsion systems.

We jump right into audience questions with one from Mohammed, who asks, “Engineering is problem solving. What happens when you can’t solve the problem?” According to Franklin, “In space, you work the problem until you find a solution and you never stop...eventually, you have to find something.” Miranda adds, “The whole idea of engineers is that there is never “no solution”...The are always working to find a solution...every time I think we’re don, there is no solution for that, they have like three...” Franklin also takes on the NASA mantra, “Failure is not an option.” In his experiences, “Failure is how you learn.... giving up is not an option.”

You’ll also hear about Miranda’s role and how creative storytelling is a critical aspect of helping people understand the complex technical realities of space exploration and the advanced propulsion systems and orbital mechanics Ad Astra deals with.

Miranda explains how Franklin got into the science of propulsion, and how he had started working on the VASOMIR engine even before he joined NASA. He was an engineer who spent a lot of time in the physics laboratory, and he came from Costa Rica specifically to become an astronaut during the burgeoning interest in space exploration during the period of the Apollo program.

That’s it for Part 1. Please tune in next Saturday for the conclusion.

We hope you enjoy this episode of The LIUniverse, and, if you do, please support us on Patreon.

Credits for Images and sounds Used in this Episode:

– NASA’s 1980 astronaut group, including Franklin – NASA, public domain

– Lucy spacecraft – NASA, public domain

– Lucy/Dink’inesh fossil – 120 on Wikimedia commons, CC BY 2.5

– Dinkinesh and its moon Selam – NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOAO, public domain

– Dinkinesh and Selam from the side – NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL, public domain

– Franklin on a spacewalk (EVA) – NASA, public domain

– Canadarm 2 on the ISS – NASA, public domain

– Ad Astra’s VX-200 VASIMR test engine – Ad Astra Rocket Company™, from online media gallery

– NEXT, a typical electric ion engine – NASA, public domain

– STS-111, Franklin’s last shuttle launch – NASA, public domain

– Swoosh.wav – Berglindsi on Freesound, CC BY 3.0

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