Launch Date Set for NASA’s Artemis-1 Mission to the Moon

SpaceTime S25E82 AI Transcript

Stuart: This is Spacetime Series 25, episode 82 for broadcast of the 25th July 2022. Coming up on Space time, the countdown is underway for NASA's Artemis One mission to the moon. New warnings about the Dart asteroid impact mission and counting down, um, to the death of a red giant. All that and more coming, uh, up, um, on Space time.

Speaker B: Welcome to space time with Stewart Gary.

Stuart: The countdown is now on the way for the launch of NASA's Artemis One mission to the moon. NASA is looking at August 29 as a potential launch date for the maiden flight of the massive SLS moon rocket. The young man mission, which will fly beyond the moon, is expected to take around six weeks, providing a final inflight test for the new Orion spacecraft and deploying numerous small satellites which will carry out a range of deep space experiments. Artemis mission manager, Mike Serafin says the mission's primary goal will be a test of the Orion capture's new heat shield. Under actual translunar reentry conditions. Orion will be flying at some 39,400 returns to Earth. Its heat shield will reach temperatures of over 2900 degrees Celsius. That's half as hot as the sun. And it means Orion will reenter Earth's uh, atmosphere faster and hotter than any other spacecraft. That all goes according to plan with Artemis One. It'll be followed in 2024 by Artemis Two, the first Mandarin mission that will take a crew of four on a ten day journey around the moon and back with the items three mission returning people to the lunar surface slated for 20, 25, 53 years after Apollo 17 took the last humans to the moon. NASA says the big difference between Artemis and Apollo is that this time, humans will be going to the moon to stay, providing a sustained presence there and using the lessons gained to prepare for the first manned flights to Mars in the 2030s. NASA associate administrator Jim Free says that at this stage, the first launch window for Artemis One is August 29. They'll be followed by another window on September 2 and then September 5, depending on last minute close outs of Tweaks and fine tuning issues. The decision to go follows last month's successful wet dress rehearsal on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 20, which achieved 90% of preflight test goals. The last major sticking point was a persistent liquid hydrogen leak in the cryogenic umbilical um line quick disconnect plumbing to the SLS core stage. And that was resolved by simply replacing some faulty seals. During the test, mission managers simply bypassed the leak issue by closing the bleed valve in the hydrogen flow path, allowing them to work around the problem. But that wouldn't work during an actual launch, because closing the bleed valve would leave the engine thermal systems without proper regulation. NASA says it will make a final flight commitment about a week before the launch when it completes its flight readiness. Review of the Artemis One stack, including both the SLS Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft. Right now, the Artemis One launch vehicle is back inside the Vehicle Assembly Building for final inspections and modifications. These include installing the flight batteries storing payloads undertaking power tests on Orion and performing software loads on the SLS core and interim cryogenic propulsion, or ICP, stage the first and second stages of the SLS launch vehicle. Engineers have also replaced a navigation and control assembly unit and they're checking over the ICP that will give Orion its final burn needed to send the spacecraft onto its translunar orbit. Once ground crews have completed all their upgrades, checks and final tests inside the vehicle assembly building the massive rocket will take what's hoped will be its final journey back up to the launch pad. And that could happen as soon as August 18. If Orion flies during its two hour August 29 launch window it'll see a 42 day mission with Orion splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on October 10. A September the second launch window. Also 2 hours. Would see Orion return 39 days after launch on October 11 while a one and a half hour launch window on September 5 would see the Orion once again return 42 days later. Uh, this time, on October 17. If all three launch windows are scrubbed NASA will move to one of several interim launch opportunities selected for mid 2023. This report from NASA TV.

Speaker C: Artemis One will lift off from launchpad 39 B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. With £8.8 million of thrust provided by the most powerful rocket in the world our Space Launch System rocket, or SLS. The uncrewed flight will be the first integrated test of SLS our new Orion spacecraft and exploration ground systems at Kennedy. Artemis One will send Orion beyond the moon 280 0 mile from Earth farther than any human spacecraft has ever flown.

Speaker D: This is not NASA doing this. This is the United States of America doing this program, the Artemis program. And there are companies all across our country that have a um part in it. So there is kind of this wave of excitement being generated just by saying we're going back to the moon.

Speaker C: After the upper stage of the rocket separates from Orion the upper stage will deploy small satellites over several days to perform science experiments and technology demonstrations. Orion will make its multiday outbound trip to the moon propelled by a service module provided by the European Space Agency. Engineers will test Orion's systems on the way to the moon. Then Orion will fly about 60 miles above the lunar surface using the moon's gravity and engines on the surface module to enter a lunar orbit. After about a month and a total distance of over a million miles Orion will return home faster and hotter than any spacecraft has before. A primary goal of Artemis One ensure Orion safely returns to Earth before we fly with humans. When we do, we'll build our capability for sustainable lunar exploration preparing us for missions farther into the solar system.

Speaker E: Initially, what we'd like to do is start establishing a presence on the moon. So we're going to establish going back there on a regular basis and then we'll end up setting up gateway and we would launch to the gateway and from gateway land on the surface of the moon.

Speaker F: We are there for weeks. Months on end and there we're going to be able to test out all the hardware and the habitats and the hatches and the suits and the rovers that will allow us to prove out those technologies. The moon will lead the way to Mars and we should be there within the next couple of decades.

Speaker A: And in that report from NASA TV, we heard from NASA astronauts Reed Wiseman, Jeanette Ebbs and Randy Breznick. Interestingly, NASA's Artemis one press update came on the 53rd anniversary of the Apollo Eleven moon landing. That was back in 1969 when Neil Armstrong and Edwin Bars Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the surface of another world. This is space time. Still to come a new study warns that NASA's Dart mission could leave its target asteroid badly deformed and astronomers have, for the first time witnessed a stellar pulse that's foreshadowing the death of a star uh, known as a red giant. All that and more still to come on Space time. A new study warns that NASA's planned dark uh mission slated later this year could leave its target asteroid badly deformed. The Dart, or double asteroid Redirection test is the world's first full scale planetary defense test designed to deflect an Earth asteroid before it can impact the Earth by slamming a spacecraft into it with enough force to change the space rock's trajectory. However, uh new computer simulations have suggested that instead of leaving behind a relatively small crater the impact event could leave the asteroid near unrecognizable. 66 million years ago, a giant asteroid impact on the Earth in what is now Mexico's Shucatan Peninsula caused a mass extinction event which killed off 75% of all life on the planet including all the Nanavian dinosaurs. The problem isn't that it could happen again but that without question, it will. It's just a question of when and then it becomes a question of how prepared we are. The good news is that currently no known asteroid poses an immediate threat to Earth of its nature. But if one day a large asteroid were to be discovered on a collision course with the Earth it might have to be deflected from its trajectory in order to prevent catastrophic collision. The Dart spacecraft was launched last November on a mission to undertake the first full scarlet experiment on a deflection maneuver. Uh, Dart's mission is to collide with an asteroid and in the process, hopefully deflect it from its current orbit onto a new path in order to provide valuable information for the eventual development of a planetary wide defense system. The target will be the nearest asteroid, Diamorphus discovered in 2003. Originally called Diddy Moon the 170 meters wide space rock orbits a 780 meters wide Apollo group asteroid called 65 803 Didymos in a synchronous binary system. The impact event will take place between September 26 and October 1 this year. As the collision occurs, a flyby mini satellite named Lisa Cube provided by the Italian Space Agency will image the event and later on, the European Space Agency's Hero mission will observe the asteroid after the impact to see what really happened. However, a new report in the Planetary Science Journal suggests the impact made to form Diamorphous far more severely than previously thought. The study's lead author, Sabina Radican from the University of Burn says that contrary to what 1 may imagine when petrie an asteroid evidence from the Japan Hayabusa mission shows that some asteroids can have very loose internal structures more like rubble piles than solid rock. These rubble piles are only held together by gravitational interactions at small cohesive forces, she says previous simulations of the dark mission impact almost always assumed a much small solid interior for Diamorphous, a rubble pile structure could drastically change the outcome of the collision. Redican warns that instead of leaving a relatively small crater dart's impact at a speed of around 24 0 km/hour would completely deform dimorphus. The asteroid could also be deflected much more strongly with far larger amounts of debris ejected from the impact than previous estimates had predicted. Retican says one of the reasons the scenario of a loose rubble piled structure hasn't been thoroughly investigated before is simply because the necessary methods to carry out such a study. When available. These sorts of impact collisions can be recreated in laboratory experiments and the relatively long and complex process of creative formation following such an impact matter of hours in the case of Dart make it impossible to realistically simulate these impact processes up until now. However. Her new modeling approach which takes into account the propagation of the shockwaves as well as the compaction and subsequent flow of material has allowed her for the first time model the entire cratering process resulting from impacts on small asteroids like dimorphus. This space time still to come counting down to the death of a red giant. And later in the Science report the latest State of the Environment report painting a dire picture of climate inaction in Australia. All that and more still to come. Um, on space time astronomers have for the first time witnessed a rare dynamic event foreshadowing the death of a star known as a red giant. They've seen spectacular pulsations in the star uh causing it to dramatically change size, brightness and temperature. The doom star Tursaminoris, which is about twice the mass of the sun is located some 30 light years and away in the constellation of Ursa Minor. The Little Bear Tsamineaurus has been monitored closely since 19 five. Until 1979, its brightness had varied over a period of 310 to 315 days. However, from 1979, its period decreased suddenly to 274 days, and now appears to be decreasing by around 2.75 days per cycle. The study sources have been observing the star as it diminishes in size, brightness, and temperature over the past 30 years. The latest death rows, reported in the Astrophysical Journal and on the prepress physics website Archive.org, reinforces predictions about our own son's ultimate fate. Tursama Norris was born about 1.2 billion years ago, and over the past few million years, during its last stages of life, the red giants been undergoing a series of pulsations whereby its size, brightness, and temperature have fluctuated wildly. Now, energy production in tiers and minora has become unstable. During this phase, nuclear fusion flesh up deep inside, causing thermal pulses. And these pulses cause drastic rapid changes in the size and brightness of the star, which are detected over centuries. One of the study's lead authors, Dr. Meredith Joyce from the Australian National University, says it's a rare opportunity to observe the signs of still raging over a human time scale. Joyce anticipates that Yosemite Norris, and our own son, for that matter, will, uh, both end their lives relatively quietly and slowly, more of a whimper than the massive explosions caused by larger, more massive stars going supernova. Uh, she says the observations support the hypothesis that our sun, too, will eventually turn into a red giant, ultimately losing its outer envelope as an ever expanding, glowing ringshaped shell of gas called a planetary nebula, uh, and exposing its white hot stellar core as a white dwarf star, uh, a super dense stellar corpse about the size of the Earth, which will slowly cool over the eons. Joyce says that like the ESA minoris, the sun, too, will become much bigger as it approaches death, consuming Mercury, Venus, and possibly the Earth in the process. She believes Tursa Minoris is now entering one of the last remaining pulses of its life and expects to see it expand again in our lifetimes. The star will then become a white dwarf, possibly within the next few hundred thousand years.

Speaker G: It was declining on a really short time scale, and something of that severity indicates a dynamical event. But until recently, we didn't really have the tools to model this, which is sort of where I came in.

Speaker H: When scientists talk, uh, about a declining radius, do they mean it's physically getting smaller?

Speaker G: Yeah, it's physically getting smaller. But the way that we actually detect the decline in radius is a bit more nuanced than looking at it directly. What they have been able to do is measure changes in basically interior pulsation periods, which it gets kind of physics at that level. But for all intents and purposes, we can say we've seen it decline significantly in its actual size in the past 30 years, pretty dramatically.

Speaker H: So these stars are sort of pulsating, and as they do. So they're pumping up a lot of carbon and things like that from deep inside, aren't they?

Speaker G: Yeah. So what I have been sort of deeming this is a thermonuclear hiccup. So it's encountering a lot of instability in its nuclear energy generation pathways. And what it's trying to do to compensate for this instability is increasing and decreasing rapidly in its size and brightness.

Speaker H: And this is where you come into the picture.

Speaker G: So until recently, we didn't have the sort of technology or the software or understanding to model these kinds of pulsations with the accuracy required. And within the last three years, um, some new tools and techniques have been developed to do this with higher accuracy. And I was able to sort of synthesize that and put those together and, um, come up with models of the star that actually let us look at things as rapid as the pulses.

Speaker H: And what is that letting you do now? You're modeling these pulses. How does that help with the understanding of the star and what it's doing and where it's heading?

Speaker G: Well, because the evolution of the typical star, any star, really is happening over the course of billions of years. It's really difficult for our computers to model them at the precision of a few decades or a few centuries. And so what I was able to do was develop a technique to look at the evolution of stars on these really small time scales, which is, of course, what we're actually able to observe as humans.

Speaker H: So the star lives its life on the main sequence. A star like our sun a star like our sun will live its life on the main sequence, fusing hydrogen and its core into helium. Now, eventually, it runs out of hydrogen in the core, and at that stage, it migrates off the main sequence onto what we call the red branch. And here it's fusing helium in its core into heavier elements, carbon and oxygen. And this, uh, star has moved beyond that stage. This is now, uh, moving on to the asentropic giant branch. Uh, tell me about that.

Speaker G: Yeah, so at this point, the tier semi north has undergone several phases of evolution that the sun has not yet encountered, which includes the main sequence, the sub giant branch, the red giant branch, and then sort of a duplicate of the red giant phase called the asymptotic giant branch phase. So by this point, it's exhausted all of its hydrogen and all of its helium. And because it's of a higher mass than the sun, it evolves more quickly, which means that it's exhausted these nuclear reserves in a much faster time than the sun has.

Speaker H: What will happen to it now? Is this big enough to undergo a coal collapse, or is there not enough mass for that? And it will end up as a white dwarf like the sun, puffing off its outer layers.

Speaker G: So this is not large enough to undergo a supernova explosion, you, uh, need a star that's at least eight times roughly the mass of the sun in order for that to happen. So this star we expect, based on our modeling, will undergo a few more of these thermal pulses, roughly five to ten is what we predict, and then sort of die off slowly into its white dwarf phase. And that is something that we expect the sun will undergo as well. But the thermal pulses, in the case of the sun, there will likely be fewer, if there are any at all, and they will be less dramatic than the ones we're seeing into you, me.

Speaker H: And that's because this stuff started off about twice the mass of our sun.

Speaker G: Yeah, that's right.

Speaker H: And so what happens now? You're just going to check the accuracy of your model with the observations over.

Speaker A: The next 30 years? I guess so, yes.

Speaker G: What we have here is a pretty unique opportunity to actually verify that our modeling is predictive on time scales of decades, which is incredible for evolutionary models, because we're used to working in millions or billions of years. And over the next 30 years, we should have enough information to at least verify if the star is slowing down, which would confirm or support the hypothesis that we have made the correct assumptions about how stars evolve during thermal pulses.

Speaker H: Once all these thermal pulses stop and the star starts to I guess the.

Speaker A: Term I'm looking for is move into.

Speaker H: Its white dwarf phase. So there'll be this white dwarf in the center, which is the superheated core of the star. And then the outer envelope will have pulsed off, and it will become a beautiful planetary nebula, which will then enrich the universe with sort of elements that life originates from.

Speaker G: Yeah, some of the most beautiful captivating pictures, uh, and astronomy are of these dust shells surrounding dead stars. And that's, in essence, what the thermal pulses are forming. They're blowing off these layers of dust that will encircle the degenerate core radially, forming, um, these shells that eventually migrate into the interstellar, uh, medium, um, and provide the universe with the gas and dust particles it needs to form the basis of all planets and all life.

Speaker A: That's doctor Meredith Joyce from the Australian National University. And this is spacetime on the hills of last week's spectacular first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Astronomers have now released stunning new web images of Jupiter and some of its moons, as well as its hard to see ring system, also captured during the telescope's instrument test phase, a new images and spectrum of several asteroids. Astronomers say the new images demonstrate James Webb's ability to track solar system targets and produce images and spectra in unprecedented detail. The new Jovian images show distinct bands that encircle the planet, as well as the Great Red Spot, a giant anticyclone large enough to swallow the Earth. Also in shots, the German ice moon Europa, the target of NASA's upcoming Europa Clipper mission. The moon's Thebe and Matisse were also visible in the image, as was Jupiter's rarely seen ring system. Scientists are especially eager to see these images because they provide proof that James Webb will be able to observe satellites and rings the bright solar system objects such as Pluto, Saturn or Mars. They also want to use James Webb to explore the tantalizing question of whether or not they can see plumes of water and materials spewing out from moons like Europa and Saturn's ice moon and Celadus, both of which have deep subsurface global liquid water oceans. Oceans which could harbor life this space time and time. Now to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news in Science this week with The Science Report. The latest State of the Environment Report is painting a dire picture of climate inaction in Australia. From coral bleaching to declining Koala numbers. Um, almost every environmental catalog has deteriorated, according to the five year study, which found Australia's environment is in poor shape and rapidly getting worse, with climate change, mining pollution, invasive species and habitat loss identified as key areas of concern. Addressing the National Press Club in Canberra, the Federal Environment Minister, Tanya Fursec, described the findings as shocking. Over the past decade, Australia has seen more than 377 plant and animal species listed as threatened. That's more than any other continent. And continued land clearing is the cause. In fact, more than 6.1 million native forests have been cleared just since 1990 alone. And to make matters worse, we now have more introduced plant species on Australia than native ones. And just when you thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, we found the number of threatened native animal species has increased by 8% in the last five years alone. Average land temperatures have increased by one four degrees Celsius since the early 20th century. And extreme events such as bushfires and floods are, um, both becoming far more intense. For example, a single heat wave in 2018 killed some 230 flying foxes, and more than a million fish died in the 2018 2019 heatwave in the Murray Darling River system. Then there was the Black Summer bushfires of 2019 2020. They alone burnt out some 8 million land, killing some 3 billion animals. The study shows that some, um, 19 ecosystems in Australia are currently at risk of collapse. The report was handed to the former Morrison government at the beginning of last year, but they chose not to release it, despite claims that the study was carried out by 30 independent scientists. Critics of the report claimed that many of the authors aren't scientists at all, but activists with no true scientific degrees. Hospitals are once again gearing up across Australia, with deaths from covered 19 once again on the increase as the new highly contagious BA Five strain spreads. Health authorities are also seeing more cases that require ventilation in hospital as a result of the new variant and demand for booster vaccinations is increasing around the country. It follows similar increases across Europe, where the increased transmission among older age groups especially is starting to translate into severe disease. Covalent related deaths have also increased in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and across the Americas. The World Health Organization says the number of new cases globally has risen 18% in the last week alone. The latest statistics show that one in 30 people in the UK had the virus in the last week. That's an increase of 32% on the week before. Uh, so far, uh, over 6.4 million people have been killed by the covert 19 coronavirus. However, the World Health Organization says the true death toll is likely to be over 15 million, with some 570,000,000 confirmed cases globally. America's director of national intelligence says the SARS COVID two virus which causes COVID-19, most likely originated in gain of function experiments at China's Wuhan Institute of Virtualloy sometime before September 2019. While as the Northern Hemisphere continues to swelter under a heatwave summer, the United Kingdom has crossed the 40 degrees Celsius milestone for the first time in recorded history. Thermometers hit 43 degrees Celsius at Conningsby in Lincolnshire, while 33 other locations went past the UK's previous highest temperature of 38.7 degrees, set back in 2019. The heatwave caused a huge surge in the number of wildfires across the UK. With thousands evacuated and many homes being lost. Scotland and Wales have also set new records, with the town of Charter Hall and the Scottish borders reaching 34.8 degrees Celsius, eclipsing the previous record of 32.9 degrees recorded in 2003. Meanwhile, the Welsh village of Hawaiian Flincher set a new record of 37.1 degrees Celsius. That's around 100 on the old Fahrenheit scale. And of course, the heat waves have not just been localized in the UK. The rest of Europe are also reporting sweltering temperatures, leading to widespread wildfires and thousands of deaths across the continent. Professor Darren McAvoy from RMIT University in Melbourne says climate change science has long projected an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme events, and the heat and fires currently devastating areas of Europe and North America can be considered a warning sign of things to come. He says what is considered extreme now is likely to become more commonplace in the near future. Strategic lawsuits against public participation, also known as slap suits or intimidation lawsuits, are lawsuits intended to censor, intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of an expensive legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition. In a typical slap suit, the plaintiff doesn't expect to win the case. But the plaintiff's goal is accomplished if the defendant is forced to succumb to fear, intimidation, mounting legal costs or simple exhaustion. Abandoning, um, their criticism. And the reason we're talking about slap suits is because they're becoming a popular legal tool among shocky pseudoscientific practitioners to protect freedom of speech. Some jurisdictions have passed new antislapsuit laws, which often work by allowing a defendant to file a motion to strike or dismiss on the grounds that the case involves protected speech on a matter of public concern. The plaintiff then bears the burden of showing a probability that they will prevail. If the plaintiff fails to meet their burden of proof, their claims dismissed, and the plaintiff is required to pay penalties and costs for bringing the case. Tim Menu from Australian Skeptic says other than the Australian Capital Territory, there are no, uh, proper slapsuit laws in Australia, leaving the field wide open for snake oil salesmen and con artists to continue promoting their fake cancer cures and weight loss treatments until the law eventually catches up with them, which could take years if ever.

Speaker B: He, uh, was surfing Philippine health sites, being a GP himself, and he came across a Filipino naturopath who was making all sorts of strange claims and things. And he started speaking about this, um, naturopath and pointing out some of the, let's say, errors that she was making in her claims, including about her own qualifications and things like that. That didn't go down well with the, uh, naturopath who was actually now living in America. She had been having some issues in the Philippines herself, actually was making claims that didn't go down well, so she decided to sue for damages, huge amounts of damages, hundreds of thousands of dollars, she's claiming. Plus, because once he had to take down all his videos and all sorts of stuff, the usual thing, he's fighting that, trying to find the money to do this. And apparently this is what can happen nowadays. There's a situation called tourism liable in which people can, because you've put something up online, someone in any other country can sue you and they don't necessarily have to sue you in the country where you're from or where they're from. It used to be the case that people used to often go to UK to raise legal suit because that had traditionally large payouts for claimants. So they thought that was a good place to UK is now cracked down on that, thankfully.

Speaker A: This reminds me very much of the Steve Navilla case.

Speaker B: Yes. Steve Novella of the Skeptics Go to the University, is also a bureaucracy professor at Yale, I think it is. They raise claims about someone in particular and that they got hit heavily with a legal suit.

Speaker A: They won the case in the end. These are called Slap suits and they're basically designed to make people who are speaking out against injustice shut up about it.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. I mean, the Slap stands for a strategic lawsuit against public participation. Now, the claims that the person might be making, I mean, the person who is being sued, the claims that they're making about the other person might very well be true. But there's a situation where you go in to see if there's a case and the. Idea there is that it's just going to cost you a lot in legal fees and things like that. And basically it's designed to shut you up even before you get to trial. And this happened in Australia to Ken Harvey, who's a notice of health specialist and campaign against old Med, things like that, made a claim against notoriously criminal because he's been charged in jail traffic or something of a diet product that was basically put on your tongue and you'll lose weight. And he raised that as being a con, a chunky product, which it is. And this fellow sued him with this obvious Slap suit to try and just get to shut up so he could keep selling the product while the court case, while this pre trial was going on, he was trying the money to pay for this so they can set up a grassroots campaign to raise money to cover his legal fees, which we did. And we've done similar things elsewhere.

Speaker A: Case in Germany, wasn't it?

Speaker B: That's right. Brit Hermes, who was an ex naturopath and suddenly found out how silly most of the stuff the naturopath claiming are. And she, uh, made a comment about someone in America she's in Germany, in America about their claims and especially about their situation with racist donations for a particular fund. She got sued. And Australia again, with Australian skeptics, again set up this grassroots campaign globally because she was going to get hit with huge amount. Trouble with Germany is you don't get necessarily large damages even if you went. There was quite a lot of money spent, over €50,000, I think we're spent on that. But through the global skeptical community, we managed to cover her fees. It's a situation that a number of practitioners of dodgy claims are using these days to try and shut people up and then continue to sell until it goes to court and they found out to be sort of dodgy and therefore it doesn't go any further. And the person, the victim who is being sued claims damages and doesn't get much, especially if the person might disappear. Has happened with a Ken Harvey case.

Speaker A: Slapsuits are, uh, generally regarded as being the dregs of the industry. It's like lawyers who chase ambulances.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Is anything being done in the legal profession in this country to stop?

Speaker B: Because the term is frivolous litigation. What's the term for this? That might be the term, actually, that people bring cases and if they're frivolous, they just get thrown out of court. And that's probably what happens with most of these. But in the meantime, it costs you money. You're being intimidated. You're going on a great deal of stress. It can cause you a real stress, real personal health, financial, obviously stress. And you might end up, quote, winning, but you're losing because you lose all this money and that sort of thing that can affect you. And it's a damaging situation. Yes, they are the bottom feeders of the legal profession, but legally you're entitled to bring a case. And what happens is that the legal system decides if your case is MexicoUS or if it's, um, worthwhile. And most of these things turn out to be sort of pathetic cases and not worthwhile following up. Meanwhile, the pseudo practitioner has benefited the act. Australian Capital Territory has done the protection of public participation, which is intended, to a certain extent, look after these other things. But it's about public interest as much as anything. A, uh, party starting or maintaining a proceeding against the defendant for an improper purpose may be ordered to pay a financial penalty. You cut the costs, and that includes the court's cost.

Speaker A: That's Tim mendem from um. Australian Skeptics. And that's the show for now. Space time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts, itunes, Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Acast, Amazon Music Bytescom, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider and From Spacetime with Stuart Garycom. Spacetime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on science owned radio, and on both iHeartRadio and tune in radio. And you can help to support our show by visiting the Spacetime Store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies. Or by becoming a Spacetime patron, which gives you access to triple episode, commercial free versions of the show, as well as lots of bonus audio content which doesn't go to air access to our exclusive Facebook group and other awards. Just go to spacetime with Stewart Garycom for full details. And if you want more space time, please check out our blog, where you'll find all the stuff we couldn't fit in the show, as well as heaps of images, news stories, loads of videos and things on the web I find interesting or amusing. Just go to spacetime with Stuartgarry Tumblrcom. That's all one word and that's Tumblr without the e. You can also follow us through at stuartgarry, on Twitter, at Spacetime with Stuart Gary, on Instagram, through our Spacetime YouTube channel and on Facebook. Just go to Facebook.com um, spacetime with Stuartgarry and Spacetime is brought to you in collaboration with Australiansky and Telescope magazine, Your Window on the Universe. You've been listening to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary.

Speaker B: This has been another quality podcast production from Bitesz.com.