Episode 99: All Things Spaceflight with Astrophysicist Dr. Jonathan McDowell

A recent space tourism flight on the Blue Origin capsule featuring an all-female crew including Katy Perry and Gayle King sparked some controversy over whether it was a publicity stunt to promote Jeff Bezos’ space tourism business or whether it had some scientific purpose. We were curious about humans’ venture into space, so we called on the go-to-expert on all things space flight Dr. Jonathan McDowell. Dr. McDowell is an astrophysicist on the Chandra X-ray Center team at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian, supporting NASA'sChandra X-ray Observatory space telescope mission. He studies black holes and quasars, and leads the science software algorithms team for the Chandra X-ray Observatory.Jonathan's astrophysics publications include studies of cosmology, black holes, galaxies, quasars, nearby galaxies, and asteroids.Jonathan is the editor of Jonathan's Space Report, a free internet newsletter founded in 1989 covering technical details of all space launches.Jonathan and I talked about space tourism, the Chandra Xray Observatory at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics right here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, how he became interested in space, learning from Stephen Hawking, and all things spaceflight. Jonathan discussed satellites and space junk, commercial and government entities in space, the Big Bang, and whether Klingons and Vulcans exist and what the likelihood is that we will ever meet one.My only disappointment in this whole discussion was that Dr, McDowell did not agree that tom Baker was the only real Dr. Who.