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(gentle music)

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- Hey, I'm Thomas Zurbuchen,
also known as Dr. Z.

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- And I'm Ellen Stofan
also known as Dr. E.

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And this is the next
episode of E.Z. Science.

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- We're here at the Steven
F. Udvar-Hazy Center

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our other Air and Space Museum.

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Today we're gonna be
talking about something

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a little different that some people

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might not associate with NASA.

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- That's right, we're
talking about balloons.

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Balloons that float very, very
high up in the atmosphere.

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- Now this was actually
a really special balloon

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called the Breitling Orbiter 3.

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It took Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones

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around the world nonstop
for the first time in 1999.

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So a record breaking flight
that we celebrate here

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at the Hazy Center but
you have a little bit

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of a connection because obviously Thomas

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you're from Switzerland and
this launched from Switzerland.

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- Exactly right, I remember
of course watching this.

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There was tremendous coverage
in all of Switzerland

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also all over the world.

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- Well to me what we
celebrated here at Hazy

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and at the Air and Space Museum

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is this idea that innovators and explorers

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help to change the world.

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And balloon science
really helps us understand

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not just our world better but
actually the whole universe.

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- That's exactly right.

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That essential idea of the balloon

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is to move and experiment
over the atmosphere.

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Per square inch, there's something like

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15 pounds of atmospheric
weights on top of us.

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- Sometimes we have to make
our spacecraft really small

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if we're trying to get them
all the way up into orbit.

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But going up in a balloon

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we can actually take a
fair amount of weight.

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That's important because
the more mass you have

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that means the more instruments
and more science you can do.

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- [Thomas] Exactly right, so
we can bring up to 8000 pounds.

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- [Ellen] How big are
these balloons and how long

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do they actually stay up?

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- We have a variety of balloons.

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The biggest ones are so big they'll fill

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a whole football stadium.

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Some of them last for hours and days

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and the longest ones, the
super pressure balloons,

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last for up to 100 days.

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- And one of the things
I think it's important

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for people to understand
is they actually rely

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on balloons every day in a way

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that they might not know about.

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Weather balloons launched every day

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help us to understand and
predict tomorrow's weather.

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- NASA launches about 15 balloons a year

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from a variety of locations all the way

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from New Zealand to Texas.

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- We actually have three
different NASA instruments

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that flew on balloons
in our downtown museum.

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All of them we're looking at radiation

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left over from the Big Bang

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to help us understand the Big Bang better.

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- These measurements have really

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transformed our understanding.

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- Now it's hard for people to understand

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how we can be studying the Big Bang

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from our atmosphere,
something that happened

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billions and billions and
billions of years ago.

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But all those particles are
coming from a huge distance.

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It takes them a long time to travel to us.

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So it's really almost
an echo of the Big Bang

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that just took a long
time to reach the earth.

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And that helps us to actually
understand that event

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that we don't understand very well yet.

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- So as we make those measurements

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and combine them with
measurements from the ground

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but also from spacecraft,

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that picture of the earliest
moments of the Big Bang

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and then also the evolution
of the first galaxies,

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you know the evolution of matter,
is really coming together.

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We've made a lot of progress and in part

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because of these balloons.

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- Now we also study the earth
from balloon based instruments

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like I know one of the
experiments that was done

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not that long ago was actually looking at

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how much solar radiation
comes back from the earth

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into space which is important for us

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trying to understand how does Earth's

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climate and weather work?

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And that solar radiation
and how much stays in,

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how much leaves is really
critical to understanding that.

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- Yeah, that's right.

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What's really important
about that experiment too

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is that we used the balloon
really as a platform

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to try the technology.

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We can afford probably 1%
of the cost, go try it out,

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and make sure we understand
it before we're finally ready

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and putting it up there in space.

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You know the other thing that
we don't often talk about

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and I'm really passionate about

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is it's with these very
balloons we actually train

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the next generation of explorers

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and the next generation
of instrument makers.

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- We actually run a summer camp

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here at the National Air and Space Museum

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for girls on aviation.

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And one of the things
that we have the girls do

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is actually launch a
weather ballon basically

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up to the stratosphere.

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Seeing the looks on their
faces when the data comes back

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and realizing that they're
part of this experiment,

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you go try, you put something
up there, is really exciting.

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- So Ellen I have a question for you.

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How long do you think it would take

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until we have a balloon in
the atmosphere of Venus?

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- Venus is a perfect planet
to explore with the balloon

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because while it's very hot on the surface

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it actually gets cooler as you
go higher in the atmosphere.

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So you can't really have a rover on Venus.

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That mobility where we want to visit

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lots of different sites, it's
just too hot with a rover.

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So the idea is could we
send a balloon to Venus

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that could go up into
the atmosphere, cool off,

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move along, come back and
explore a different site?

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- Perhaps one of your
innovators will figure out

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how we get to Venus with a balloon.

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- Absolutely, that's our role here

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at the Air and Space Museum is to inspire

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that next generation of
innovators and explorers.

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If you have topics for us or questions

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please send them in and
we'll talk about them

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on a future episode of