For the eyes of the world now look into space to the moon and to the planets beyond. This is the Space Shot, episode 442, April in orbit, Apollo 16. And what's ahead? I'm John Mulnix. Today, we're gonna take a minute to look back and then we're gonna look ahead. We're starting off with a teaser for the coffee at the Cosmo.

This may. Some space flight news, and then we'll be back to check out Apollo 16. Finally, we will wrap today's episode with a look at what I've been up to in grad school here at Wichita State and what's coming up over the summer. Let's light this candle. I. On April 14th, 2025, uh, blue Origin launched a New Shepherd mission that made history by launching the first all female crew into suborbital space.

Um, this was the first time that, uh, only females flew since 1963 when Valentina Ter Cova made her first the first female flight back during the Cold War. Six member team of the Blue Origin crew included Singer Katie Perry, journalist Gail King, aerospace engineer, Aisha Beau, civil rights activist, Amanda Gwynn, film producer Carrie Ann Flynn, and Pilot Lauren Sanchez, who also organized the mission.

Um, this 10 minute flight reached above the Carmen line, which is the recognized, uh, the internationally recognized boundary of space and allowed the crew to experience weightlessness and view the earth from space, which had to have been incredible. So, shout out to the ladies who got to experience that.

Um. Definitely you, you could, uh, anybody who wants to get me a seat, uh, please feel free. Um, also coming up here in a few weeks, I'm gonna be MCing a space shuttle panel, um, at the coffee at the Cosmo that's coming up here. Um, that will be on, oh my goodness, I believe it is Thursday, May 15th. Those typically run at 9:00 AM If for some reason I goofed on the time, I'm just rattling that off the top of my head.

I will put an update in the show notes. Um, but if you're in Kansas, drop by, um, we've got some cool guests who are gonna be joining virtually that I'm excited about. Um, and it's cool to be able to be, uh, back to mc this panel. Um, now for a little bit of Apollo history. Apollo 16 lifted off on April 16th, 1972.

One of my favorite surface activities for this mission wasn't, uh, scientific. Um, it was more of a, as they joked, the Grand Prix, uh, John Young put the lunar rover through a series of hairpin turns and hard stops, um, s turns driving the sounds like it could be on an episode of like the grand tour or top gear.

Um, there's tons of videos, um, about the Lunar Grand Prix, and there's one from the Cosmo sphere that I will try to remember to link in the comments. The lunar rover, when you look at this video, it's sipping along about six miles an hour or so, so it's not exactly wicked fast. Um, but in an un depressurized rover bouncing around in one sixth gravity, I don't know if I'd want to go much faster than six miles an hour.

During the later Apollo missions, uh, 15, 16, and 17, the lunar roving vehicle was an important part of those flights. Um, it was a battery powered machine that had four wheels each with their own individual motor. Um, the ingenious design of this rover meant that it was stored in the lower part of the lunar module in a folded configuration, and then when the astronauts would land on the surface of the moon, it would actually.

Come out of the, uh, lower decent stage of the lunar module, um, and it would unfold kind of like orig abi. The actual development of the lunar rover is just a crazy story in and of itself. Um, if you're looking for a book recommendation, there's one called, let me look at my, uh, bookshelf here across the Airless Wilds by Earl Swift.

Um, 100% worth the read. Um. Just absolutely fascinating if you are interested in that vehicle. Once they were on the lunar surface, uh, young and Duke used the rover to travel a total of about 16 and a half miles over three EVAs the distance driven range from two and a half miles for the first EVA to a whopping 7.1.

For the last, the extra mobility from the lunar rover um, allowed astronauts to check out things that they wouldn't have been able to reach on foot. Another cool note. Uh, Charlie Duke left a family picture on the surface of the moon. Um, definitely a little heartfelt memento and a cool personal touch.

I've been lucky enough to meet Charlie a few times and he's about as gracious and kind as anyone can be. Um, hearing him talk about his work at nasa, it's just always a treat. So shout out to Charlie. Young and Duke lifted off from the lunar surface at 8:26 PM Eastern Standard Time On April 23rd, uh, NASA decided to bring the crew back, uh, early due to issues with the command module.

Splashdown took place on April 27th, and the total mission time for Apollo 16 was 265 hours, 51 minutes and five seconds. Young Duke and Mattingly brought back 209 pounds of lunar material on this mission. Nearly a quarter of all of the lunar regolith and rocks brought back during the Apollo program. Uh, this flight was also Charlie Duke's only space flight, which is quite the mission to go on if you ask me.

Landing on the surface of the moon for your first time in space is hard to beat. Ken Mattingly flew on this mission and then later during STS four and STS 51 C. And John Young, if you've listened to the podcast before, is kind of just the superlative astronaut. Um, he flew twice during the Gemini project, twice during the Apollo program for Apollo 10 and 16, and then finally on two shuttle flights, TS one and STS nine.

Pretty amazing how many spacecraft he flew. The, the decades that young was able to go through the changes that he saw in vehicle capabilities is pretty amazing. We're actually entering a time where astronauts will be flying in space on a variety of American spacecraft, um, Boeing Star liner, if they can iron out the kinks.

It's been a little bit rough for that spacecraft. Uh, SpaceX, SpaceX's Dragon, the Orion spacecraft, um, eventually Starship. Maybe dream chaser one can, one can hold out hope. Um, it's interesting to see that, you know, how many different types of spacecraft that are gonna be flying here soon with private companies also doing suborbital flights.

The amount of spacecraft taking people to space is even higher. Um, with Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. That's it for the Apollo history. Um, just a quick update for what I've been doing in grad school. Um, first off, big shout out to the Wichita State University Cosmos Shocks team. You're gonna hear from some of them soon, um, in an upcoming episode, so be on the lookout for that.

Uh, make sure you are subscribed to the podcast so you don't miss that episode. This year I was lucky enough to take part in the NASA suits design Challenge. The SUITS stands for Spacesuit User Interface Technologies for students. Um, it's a design challenge. Um, this year teams were tasked with building either a space suit, heads up display, um, or a um, display for a virtual pressurized lunar rover Cosmo Shock's team is building a user interface for the virtual pressurized rover.

Uh, we're doing that in Unreal Engine, which is pretty cool. Um, some of the people on the team, including the team lead, are game design majors, so they're able to take those skills, um, and do something totally different with them, which is pretty cool. Another thing that's, uh, interesting about the, um, design challenge is that NASA's digital environment for the moon, uh, called dust is actually, uh, it's the digital Unreal simulation tool.

NASA loves their acronyms. Um, but dust is actually in Unreal Engine too. The reason being is the video game engine actually provides an incredibly accurate lighting representation. If you've seen, oh gosh, the, the new Star Wars shows, like the Mandalorian, um, new Star Trek shows. They film a lot of those.

Um. Effects scenes, not on a traditional blue screen anymore, but on something that a lot of places call the volume, which is like a giant video wall that actually runs scenes that are built in Unreal engine. Um, allowing the actors to have like a, a. Essentially the closest you can get to a Star Trek style holodeck in 2025.

But basically it allows people to recreate digital environments with incredible visual fidelity. Um, I've got some pictures, uh, of the Cosmo Shocks team at the, uh, video wall that is at the Wichita State, uh, WSU Tech campus. So I'll make sure to get that in the show notes as well. Another big part of this challenge, um, is working on interoperability between designs and between schools.

Um, so we're making sure that our user interface can work with the system being developed by the team that we've been partnered with, which is, uh, Columbia. For me personally, I've been pushing into things I've never done before, like learning Python. For those of you who have listened to the podcast for a long time, I was a political science major, history minor.

Space nerd, uh, love science, that kind of stuff. But I've never done any coding. So slowly, slowly learning that. We've also been doing, uh, learn learning how tests are conducted for user interfaces and user experience. Um, we've been writing proposals, giving presentations. It has been a crazy semester, um, between being a husband and dad.

Uh, my day job, the Cosmo Shocks team and classes. To say that there's never a dull moment would be an understatement. The grad school experience at WSU has been awesome, and I just wanna take a minute to shout out the faculty advisors, um, for this challenge. Maggie Shun over and Brian Foster, they've helped create an environment where we're able to tackle big problems and learn.

Um. It's supportive and fun. A little stressful, but definitely fun. Um, we are all anticipating our trip to Johnson Space Center. Sounds like we've got a jam packed week when we're gonna be down there in May. Um, with everything from testing our design at the lunar rock yard, um, to tours, oh no, and there's little Astrid wake it up.

It's, uh, early in the morning here. I'm trying to sneak in a recording, so hopefully you can't hear that baby monitor too loud. So we'll wrap it up here. It's gonna be fun. The next few episodes I'll have some, uh, Cosmo shocks details and we'll be sharing more from this design challenge. Um, one other quick thing, we're gonna be taking a family trip to Florida late June.

Um, there's an education conference and then we're also making a trip to the Space Coast, so fingers crossed we can see a rocket launch or three when we're out there this summer. That's gonna wrap it for this episode of the Space Shot. Just a reminder, if you're near Hutchinson, Kansas, I'll be at the Cosmosphere on Thursday, May 15th to mc that space shuttle history panel.

Um, come say hi and hear some amazing stories from the shuttle program. I. The next few months are gonna be full of nerdy space awesomeness, and I am excited to share these stories with you in the coming episodes. As always, if you've got any questions, want to connect or have ideas for an episode, send me a note, john@thespaceshot.com.

Until then, I'm John Mulnix and I'll catch you on the flip side.