Starship Test Flight 14 Achieves Orbit

0:00Stuart Gary This is space Time Series 29 Episode

0:02 119 Full broadcast on 5 October 2026 Coming up on spacetime, Starship Test Flight 14 successfully achieves orbit for the first time. How Earth's weather changes the planet's centre of gravity and work about to begin on the world's first orbital power station. All that and more coming up on, uh, Space Time.

0:26 Welcome to Space Time with Stuart G. The world's largest and most powerful rocket. SpaceX's Starship Super Heavy has successfully achieved orbit insertion during its latest test flight out of Texas. The massive 124 metre tall stainless steel spacecraft blasted into orbit from its launch pad at Starbase Texas in a thundering roar, climbing quickly into an almost clear blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds.

1:11Stuart Gary 9, 8, 7,

1:13 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 33 out of 33 engines lit on Super Heavy. The windows shaking a bit here.

1:32Commentator Booster and chip avionics, power and

1:34 telemetry nominal.

1:35Stuart Gary Coming up on max Q. Maximum aerodynamic

1:38 pressure on the rocket. Stress is going to come down now as we start flying through the upper parts of Earth's atmosphere.

1:45Stuart Gary This 14th test flight used Super Heavy Block

1:47 3 version 3 Booster 21 and Block 3 version 3 Starship 41. New heat shield upgrades. Experiments employed for this flight included the first ever reuse of pre flown heat shield tiles. They'd been taken off ship 40 used on test flight 13 which splashed down in the Indian Ocean off the Western Australian coast and is now being transported back to Texas aboard the semi submersible vessel Forte. With arrival time dockside in Brownsville expected this week, Test Flight 14 also employed some new hardware and software tweaks in order to address ice clogging and relight issues experienced on the last test flight. No return to launch pad tower catches were planned for this mission, but while the mission was generally

2:32 successful, it didn't all go smoothly. While all 33 of the rocket super heavy booster's Raptor engines ignited on liftoff, one unexpectedly shut down during the climb to orbit, with the others taking up the slack. The ascent was followed by a successful hot staging manoeuvre where the booster's engines gradually shut down in sequence with the upper Starship stage igniting its six Raptor engines while some of the booster's engines were still burning. Only then were the clamps released and the booster separated from Starship, performing a directional flip manoeuvre and reigniting 31 of the planned 33 Raptor engines for the boostback burn to uh, Earth.

3:10 Now, uh, on this particular test flight, the Boostback burn manoeuvre was intentionally designed to burn through the remaining liquid oxygen inside the booster's main tank to test the limits of booster performance ahead of future return to launch site missions.

3:24Commentator Although we're not doing a tower catch today,

3:26 we are going to simulate the same way that we would. So we'll do a 13 engine landing burn to slow down. We'll then transition to five and then transition down to three for the final hover.

3:39Stuart Gary After descending through the atmosphere, the

3:41 super heavy booster reignited 11 of the planned 13 engines for the high thrust portion of the landing burn before deliberately cutting down to five engines for trajectory fine tuning and then down to three engines before making a soft splashdown, uh, in the warm Gulf waters just seven minutes after launching.

3:58Elon Musk So we are just about landing burn start. So

4:01 that's where we'll first ignite the centre 13 engines, bring that down to five and then finally down to three landing burn startup.

4:09Commentator Down to five.

4:14 That looks like a pretty soft splashdown.

4:15Stuart Gary Uh, following splashdown and landing burn

4:18 shutdown, the super heavy's flight termination system was deliberately triggered to destroy the booster in a demonstration of the safety hardware. Now, while this was going on the upper stage Starship continued its climb to orbit with all six of its Raptor engines burning.

4:34Commentator Ship there still accelerating with

4:37 six out of six engines under power. That is great to see. Just crossed over 10,000 kilometres per hour.

4:44Tim Mendham Ship is on a nominal trajectory and

4:46Elon Musk we just heard that call out that ship is on

4:48 nominal trajectory. So that's great news. Things are going pretty well so far.

4:52Stuart Gary However, once again one of the Raptor vacuum

4:55 engines unexpectedly shut down early.

4:58Stuart Gary We just had Engine 6, one of the RVACs shut

5:01 down early. We were planning on that one going for probably another 30 seconds. So similar to Flight 12 kind of scenario here where we had an RVAC out on the first flight of E3. So we do have engine out capability. So the ship adjusts for this. So still running on five out of this six and we should be getting to ship. Engine cutoff in about the next 10 seconds.

5:24Stuart Gary Now, Starship still achieved its planned

5:26 passive safe suborbital altitude. However, the loss of one of the vacuum Raptors triggered a review looking at a possible early return to Earth rather than the planned continuation of full orbit.

5:38Stuart Gary All right, so we are in space.

5:40 Now comes the next step. So the team obviously going to take a quick look at that. Uh, we've said it repeatedly, we're only going to commit to orbit if everything's looking really healthy and an engine out on ascent Even though you're not going to use it for, for the rest of time on orbit could drive us to not commit.

5:56Stuart Gary Eventually a go no go poll for

5:59 continuation of orbit was undertaken and approval given for that final 22nd orbital insertion burn, pushing Starship to over 26,372 kilometres per hour and lifting the spacecraft to a roughly 276 kilometre high orbit for the first time ever.

6:16Stuart Gary Uh, waiting for a final, final

6:18 confirmation on if we're going to make the attempt to go to orbit today or not. Little extra drama as we go through this position, go through this decision. The go no go poll for orbit has finished and we are go for orbit. Here we go. We are coming up on our orbital insertion burn again. We're looking for just a single Raptor to light one of those sea levels it's going to burn for uh, burn two is started. Single Raptor still lit, doing the work to push us into orbit.

6:50 Two shut down, Burn two shut down. Insertion Starship is orbital all ah, right. Successful orbital insertion burn. Starship is in orbit. Huge milestone for the Starship teams, one that we've been looking to get to for a couple of years now.

7:06Stuart Gary Then after a brief orbital coast phase, the

7:08 payload bay doors were opened and the first of 26 new version 3 Starlink High Capacity high speed broadband satellites were deployed into orbit at a rate of roughly one per minute. Three of the satellites were equipped with cameras allowing mission managers to survey Starship's heat shield as they moved out of the payload bay. The first of the 26 Starlink satellites were launched as the ship flew over South Africa, with the last flying free over Indonesia.

7:36 The satellite train formed a trailing arc behind and below the spacecraft, stretching out into orbit. Uh, the orbital mechanics of their deployment behind Starship meant they were travelling at a planned lower orbital speed, which meant they also dropped slightly in altitude again, just as expected. Once the satellites were all deployed, mission managers decided to end the flight early just to be safe and bring Starship home, um, after less than two orbits rather than the initially planned six. But because of the decision to return early, that would have meant firing one of the main Raptor engines close to and possibly affecting the orbits of the just deployed satellites.

8:14 So instead the decision was taken to use Starship's reaction control system jets to gently lower the spacecraft down to below the orbital altit of the just released Starlinks. And only once this had been achieved was the go ahead given to fire one of the main sea level Raptor engines for what was to be Starship's first ever deorbit burn, slowing the vehicle down and beginning atmospheric re entry. The manoeuvre wouldn't have been necessary if the original 6 orbit plan had been followed as there then would have been sufficient separation between Starship and the Starlink satellites.

8:48Stuart Gary We are in deorbit startup burn startup.

8:51 Single Raptor ignited. All right, good burn. Nominal descent coast trajectory burn shutdown and shut down. That means Starship is headed home. It is headed towards the ocean. So good deorbit burn. Again that's just a really critical moment. We need to slow Starship down enough so its path is going to naturally now take it through the Earth's atmosphere and for a reentry and splashdown in the Northern Pacific. So deorbit burn complete.

9:20Stuart Gary Reentry entry went just as planned with

9:23 Starship reigniting all three of the Raptor sea level engines in the landing burn and flip manoeuvre before undertaking a soft splashdown landing on target in the North Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

9:34Stuart Gary Final approach, Starship landing burn

9:36 startup. Hearing chatter on the loops, everything's sounding pretty good on the engines right now. We are going to look to light all three for this initial landing burn. Eventually going down to two as we get closer to the water. Go down to one for kind of a constant velocity hover and then splash down.

9:52Commentator Seeing all three lit down to two.

9:57Stuart Gary Starship has landed and

9:59 Starship has landed.

10:01Stuart Gary This mission was a key step in efforts to get

10:04 the Starship super heavy ready for regular commercial, military and scientific missions. Eventually, SpaceX boss Elon Musk envisaged its Starship as a fully reusable colonial transport system, carrying up to 100 people or 150 tons of cargo and supplies at a time into space, allowing humans to establish new colonies on the Moon, Mars and beyond.

10:26 Musk sees Starship doing for space travel what airlines are now doing for global air transport. Fast, reliable travel with frequent turnarounds at reasonable prices. And of course, NASA has already contracted SpaceX's Starship and one of its competitors, Blue Origin, to provide lunar lander shuttle services between visiting Artemis Orion missions from Earth, uh, and manned bases on the lunar surface. However, before any of that happens, Starship will need to successfully demonstrate several key milestones, including an ability to refuel in space and the capability of docking with NASA's manned Orion spacecraft. The first of these tests, the docking capability, will be trialled next year on the Artemis 3

11:08 mission, which will see both Starship and Blue Origin dock with a manned Orion capsule in low Earth orbit. Once certified for human spaceflight, Starship Super Heavy will begin replacing SpaceX's existing and very reliable workhorses, the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles and the crew Dragon and cargo Dragon capsules. Opening up a new chapter in space travel in the process changing man's spaceflight forever.

11:35 This is space time still to come. How Earth's weather changes the planet's centre of gravity and work about to begin on the world's first orbital power station. All that and more still to come on uh, space time. A new study has shown uh, that changes in seasonal weather patterns like snowfall, monsoons and oceans actually physically shift Earth's uh, centre of mass every year.

12:14 The findings reported in the Geophysical Journal International are based on detailed satellite tracking showing that these changes redistribute enough water around the planet to shift the Earth's centre of mass back and forth relative to its geometric centre. The difference only amounts to a few millimetres. But tracking these oscillations is a crucial reference point for satellite navigation and elevation measurements. The new study paints a vivid picture of springtime thaws, churning oceans and dense winter air shifting massive surface loads from season to season. The research hasn't been the first attempt to pin down Earth's real centre of mass. Over the decades scientists have pioneered many space

12:56 based techniques to define and locate the centre of mass. But it's a moving goalpost. If the Earth were a hard blue marble, its centre of mass would simply overlap, uh, its geometric centre. Problem solved. But in reality the planet is sloshing and sagging under its own weight of water, air and ice. And because of this, Earth's centre of mass continually swivels around its geometric centre by as much as several millimetres.

13:22 Previous estimates in 2017 and 2023 differed by as much as 7 millimetres, which is almost as large as the motion itself. So to reduce this uncertainty, Donald Argus from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California developed a new technique based on ultra precise satellite tracking. Driven by gravity, satellites naturally orbit the Earth's uh, centre of mass as if bound by invisible tethers.

13:48 Tiny changes in the distance between the satellites and ground stations reflect Earth's shifting centre of mass. But of course, using satellites to locate Earth's uh, centre of mass isn't a new idea. In fact, dense metal satellites launched in 1976 and 1992 were exclusively dedicated to this very task. Resembling 408 kilogramme disco balls, the two laser geodynamic satellites are uh, studded with reflective prisms and are then tracked with lasers from ground stations across more than 20 countries. However, one limitation of satellite laser ranging is the uneven distribution of ground stations around the Earth. The new technique improves accuracy by adding GPS tracking into the mix along with orbital data from several

14:34 satellites in low Earth orbit in order to provide a diverse array of targets. And it also considers how the weight of water and ice physically deforms the Earth's, uh, crust, taking ground stations along for the ride. Agus says his team are now estimating the size of the m movement of Earth's mass back and forth every year. And they're finding it's actually about half of what they previously thought. And the mass of Earth's water and air moving between the hemispheres is also smaller than previously thought.

15:02 The authors tracked Earth's centre of mass as it oscillated seasonally, and they attributed this movement to three categories oceans, atmosphere and continental water, made up of land ice, snow, lake and river water, as well as soil moisture and groundwater. They found that snow accumulation in North America and Eurasia reaches its maximum in March and shifts Earth's centre of mass by about 3 millimetres towards the North Pole. But then a month later in April, rainwater in the Apple river basin peaks at around 2,400 gigatons, swinging Earth's centre of mass some 2.2 millimetres towards South America.

15:39 And then the monsoon weather of Southeast Asia comes in, attaining a maximum of 600 gigatons six months later in November, adding to the annual oscillation. It doesn't end there. Between August and October, the oceans swirl with meltwater and rain and Earth's centre of mass shifts towards the South Pacific Ocean. See, the Pacific Ocean is so large that mass changes there overshadow, uh, the loss or gain in other oceans. Those seasonal dynamics in the Mediterranean, Red North Baltic and Barents Sea also help shift Earth's centre of mass in their own small way. The authors also used a model developed by the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting to estimate how atmospheric changes affect Earth's centre

16:23 of mass throughout the seasons. Fascinatingly, they found that cold, dense winter air helps to tip the scales over Arabia, Asia and North Africa around December 2021 each year and around South America and South Africa around June 21. The new mass calculations are consistent with observations made by Grace Foe the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow on mission. Launched in 2018, this mission's twin satellites map monthly fluctuations in the Earth's gravitational pull due primarily to mass m movement of water above and below ground. The two satellites fly in a precise formation and when the lead satellite passes over a dense body like say, a swollen river valley, the extra gravitational tug changes the distance

17:09 to its twin by a small but measurable amount. This report from NASA tv.

17:22Frank Webb Water is one of the main indicators of how

17:24 the planet is responding to our evolving climate. We built our civilization around the climate that we had and the water resources that we had. And if those are changing, that can have a profound impact on how we operate our society.

17:39Phil Morton Grace and Grace Follow on measure the motion

17:42 of water around the Earth and they measure that in all forms of water. Water that's stored underground, water in the ocean, water that's frozen in the form of glaciers. So all of that together, uh, Grace can measure.

17:55Frank Webb Grace Follow on is a mission to

17:57 measure how water is distributed on the planet and how that changes from month to month.

18:02Phil Morton GRACE stands for Gravity Recovery and Climate

18:05 Experiment. And it's a follow on mission to this mission called Grace that uh, we launched in 2002 and that mission ended. And Grace Fallen is going to continue that science legacy.

18:13Frank Webb Even though grace flew for 15 years. Climate

18:16 is one of those things which takes place on decadal time scale scales. It's really important that we look at these trends over longer time periods so we can establish the forces which are driving them.

18:26Phil Morton One follows the other, and between them they

18:29 accurately track the distance between the two satellites and as they fly over changes in mass on the Earth, they move back and forth and we track those little changes very accurately. And we do that with Global Positioning System satellite information and, and with STAR cameras that are onboard the two spacecraft.

18:51 I think there's an increasing awareness and consciousness around the Earth that water is a critical resource and that uh, the sea level is rising, the polar caps are melting, and that all these have long term ramifications on how we live.

19:07Frank Webb The Grace Follow on measurements give us very

19:10 clear and tangible information so we can make sound decisions in the future of how we manage our resources.

19:17Stuart Gary And in that report from NASA tv, we heard

19:20 from Grace project scientists Frank Webb, Phil Morton and Michael Watkins from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. This is space time still to come. Work about to begin on the world's first orbital power station. And later in the science report, the United States military follows Israel's lead and begins deploying new high energy laser weapons into the field. All that and more still to come on, um, space time.

20:04 The United States military is moving forward with plans to build an orbital power station in order to beam energy down to the Earth's, uh, surface. The Pentagon has awarded Catalyst Space a contract to build a robotic spacecraft to help assemble an orbital power plant under the Asgard programme. Catalyst Nexus spacecraft will carry modular tiles developed by the U.S. naval Research Laboratory and place them in low Earth orbit. Its automated robotic arms will then assemble the tiles into a large solar array, which will then collect the converted sun like energy into microwaves and transmit that to receivers on the ground.

20:41 Now, uh, if the technology can be scaled up, it could deliver power to remote bases, to unmanned systems as well as war zones, without the need to be entirely dependent on vulnerable power grids or fuel convoys. An orbital assembly would let these systems grow beyond the size constraints of a single launch vehicle. The platform will be designed to be resupplied, expanded and upgraded as needed. The Naval Research Laboratory has already tested solar to microwave conversion aboard its X37B space shuttle and it has transmitted 1.6 kilowatts of power across a distance of more than a kilometre on the ground. But this will be the first project combining power beaming with robotic orbital construction, potentially laying the

21:24 groundwork for future orbital energy infrastructure supporting not just military operations, but also satellites and in manufacturing processes. It's an exciting new uh, horizon and one which is destined to grow. This is space, time. And time. Now to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news in Science this week with a Science report. A new study claims a combination of unhealthy lifestyles and pre existing illnesses could be the main reason why men are more likely to get cancer than women. The findings by Chinese researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical association could explain most of the discrepancy between Chinese men and women. But these differences appear to be less important when

22:22 investigating why cancer affects more British men than women. The authors analysed health Data on nearly 135,000 Chinese people and uh, over 455,000 Brits. Looking at 34 cancers and lifestyle factors including smoking, heavy drinking, physical inactivity and diet, as well as any pre existing health conditions including chronic liver disease, diabetes and obesity. They found that together, uh, these Factors accounted for 84% of the male female gap in China, but just 26% of the gap among Britons.

22:57 The United States military have now followed Israel's lead and commenced deploying high energy laser weapons in the Strait of Hormuz in order to shoot down Iranian drones and cruise missiles. The new directed energy weapons are easy to operate with some being controlled by modified Xbox style game consoles.

23:15 The new weapons systems are being used against the Islamic Republic at a fraction of the cost of conventional interceptor missiles. American laser weapon systems had previously been demonstrated using gamepad style controls designed to make them easier for soldiers to learn and operate. The United States Secretary of War Pete Hegseth tested one of the systems during a uh, June demonstration at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where directed energy weapons were used against aerial targets.

23:43 The lasers are invisible to the unaided eye, but they are capable of disabling targets by concentrating energy in a small area until critical components overheat, uh, or fail. Their deployment highlights the growing link between space and missile defence systems, increasingly providing both warning and tracking data that helps terrestrial systems identify and engage incoming threats.

24:05 The IDF has been deploying similar directed energy weapons systems against missiles, mortars and rockets fired by Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad terrorist groups since the start of the year. A new study shows countries with more cats tend to be happier the findings, reported in the journal PLOS One, are based on data from 93 countries, including Australia and New Zealand. The study looked at economic factors such as gross domestic product, family income and health costs.

24:36 They found that domestic cat density was strongly correlated with positive happiness scores worldwide, consistent with studies on the benefits of pet ownership. However, countries with higher levels of the parasitic disease toxoplasmosis, which can be spread by cats, tended to be less happy. The authors say this paradox could be explained by higher numbers of cats in wealthier countries, where the cats are more likely to be kept indoors, more likely to be vaccinated and more likely to be fed pet food, giving them a greatly reduced chance of catching or spreading the disease.

25:12 Scientists have finally created a true blue coloured rose Researchers from the Suntory Global Innovation Centre in Kyoto first developed a sort of blue rose back in 2004 using a gene for an enzyme called Delphine Philodin that produces a blue pigment, but that turned um, the rose more mauve or lavender rather than a distinct true blue. So now Centauri scientists have added four CO pigmentation genes from three different blue flower species into a light pink coloured rose. These include a gene from the flower Canterbury bells that provides the vivid blue pigment malvidin, two genes from wishbone flowers which produce key helper molecules and a gene from gentian flowers which produces a specific CO pigment

25:56 called isaoreantin, which deepens the blue shade and the resulting rose bushes have reliably produced unique violet blue flowers across seven years of greenhouse testing in Japan and three years of field trials in Colombia. And time out A brush up um on the truth behind a lot of those common myths and misinformation you might have trusted, but which scientists show are clearly wrong. The sceptics Timms Mendham says there's a lot of old persons tales out there that have been around for ages, but the truth is very different.

26:29Tim Mendham Common myth. This was just almost like a

26:32 survey done. There was a crowd sourcing thing that was done. They set up all these sort of common myths. People reacted to them. First one they turned up with is the taste zones on the human tongue. One side is salty, one side is sweet, down the front is this and the other etc. And then they wear Umami. Fits in, but never mind. But no, these little maps are wrong. There's no such thing. Doesn't exist.

26:50 Do you wait 24 hours before reporting a missing person? No, you don't have to. If someone's missing, you can do it whenever you like. There's no legal requirement. Do dogs see in black and white? No, they do see colour. They just got a bit of a problem with red and green. So they're colour blind, but they do see colour. Is there an elf wolf that puts everything and everyone in line? There's a leading wolf that might be a guiding spirit, but not necessarily to try and make everyone toe the line. There's. That happens in chickens. The amount of spiders you eat while being asleep. That's a fascinating one because there was a story going around that you eat about 12 spiders in your life or something, your mouth is open and spiders

27:21 crawling. It was actually invented by a tech journalist to prove how fake news travels around the Internet, which is interesting. Someone made up a story and see how far it would go. And it went a long way, except that the journalist never existed and neither did the magazine they claim that she wrote for.

27:34 So in other words, someone made up, uh, a fake story about a fake story. And how far back it goes, you don't know. But who was the journalist who made up the story in the first place or made up the theory in the first place, saying that there was a journalist who made up a story about the spiders. There's urban legends within urban legends. Don't get up too close to a baby bird. The mother will smell it and abandon the nest. No, don't touch them. But not necessarily. They won't abandon the nest. Shaving makes your hair grow back thicker. No, just like when you get older, you get more hairs coming through.

28:03 Shaving doesn't have a lot to do with it, apart from evening out the length of the hair and making them look thicker. Red flag to a bull. No, uh, bulls are partially colorblind, but it's the matter of waving the cape that, um, upsets the bull. They don't like people waving a flag at them. It doesn't have to be red. Looks good, but it doesn't have to be. Albert Einstein failed his math suggestion. No. That there was a confusion between the way they mark exams in Germany versus Switzerland, the scoring system. But it to five best to worst or one to five worst to best. They actually did quite well. In math, you only use 10% of your brain. Now, this is one that settled the time. I always thought it was a good excuse

28:38 to actually drink too much because then you clear away the parts of the brain that don't work. But no, you use your whole brain to get the 10%. Heaven knows where that came from, but people still believe it. No, you use your brain all the time. Even when you're sleeping, the little brain bits are working away quite happily. Thank you.

28:52 All over the place. So no sugar makes kids hyperactive? No, the tests have shown that it doesn't. The issue is it might have been the circumstances where they get lots of sugar, they become hyperactive, such as a birthday party or something like that, where if someone doesn't get sweets very often and you give them one, they get all excited. So, uh, it's a situation rather than the sugar.

29:10 Lightning never strikes the same place twice? No. Obviously a lot of buildings have lightning rods. Some buildings have lightning laboratories built into them to try and measure how often lightning strikes and what force it is. You often don't get lightning hitting the same place twice, but it can. No reason why not. Great Wall of China is visible from space. No. One of the problems is that the Great Wall of China is not that wide. It's about a single line roadway and it's not 1m.

29:33Stuart Gary It's a whole bunch of walls.

29:34Tim Mendham It's a whole bunch of walls. Yeah, because

29:36 it's decayed and all sorts of things like that. But I mean, it's.

29:38Stuart Gary Technically you can see it from space now,

29:40 but only because the spy satellites are so good in resolution now.

29:44Tim Mendham Yeah, that's right. Yes. I mean, but yeah,

29:46 not for the human eye. Not to the human eye. And doesn't matter whether you're in the space station or what. It's not that wide. I mean, you've got three or four people walking abreast and that's about how wide it is. Napoleon Bonaparte was. No, he was average. It might have just been a publicity, a pejorative thing put out by the Brits. Five foot seven, which was average. It's not that unusual at the time. People are getting taller over the Years. Even in the last 200 years, people are getting taller. The little corporal, they referred to him as. That was sort of saying almost putting him down.

30:11 Similar way you sort of criticise the Nazi leaders based on their, um, testosterone level. But anyway, yeah, so he was. He was. He wasn't tall by. Necessarily by our standards these days. Cracking your knuckles causes arthritis now. Certainly annoying.

30:23Stuart Gary I've never been cracking my knuckles.

30:25Tim Mendham It doesn't cause arthritis. It said that.

30:27 Yeah. It's popping fluid in the joints, forming bubbles. Form, blow up. Yeah. You have to wait three hours after eating to go for a swim. Apparently you don't. But they suggested that it is designed to stop kids throwing up if they've eaten too much. It's the same as eating a bit of food with 32 chewing or something. I don't think anything lasts 32 chews on a particular food.

30:45 Certainly not. Sue. Cats kill babies. They take the breath away, which is just out and out. Silly story. Also that cats used to lie on top of babies and suffocate them. No evidence. But it's a story that goes around. And lemmings don't. Suicide lemmings don't, uh, go rushing around when they over breed breeding season, get forced off and run away and fall over a cliff. No, that was made up.

31:03 There was actually suggestion. There was a Disney documentary. No, it's made up. And, um. Convincing that it's made up. All those things. Common beliefs that are sort of sound like fun and some people believe them. Seriously. Some people might believe them too. Seriously. And they organise their life according to them. Sorry to disappoint you.

31:18 There's a lot of falsehoods out there,

31:20Stuart Gary people who misunderstand average life

31:22 expectancy.

31:23Tim Mendham Yes. This is a wonderful thing, actually,

31:25 that people say that way back when the average life expectancy was 40 years. So aren't we doing a lot better? What we're doing better as is that babies don't die as often. So your average is a very poor indication of how long people live. People in the past lived till 80. Right. But, uh, there's also a lot of babies died under one year old, a lot more than now. So, therefore your average age between babies dying and people living to 80 was 40, roughly. Whatever. And these days your average age is in the 70s because part of the population is not dying at a very young age.

31:55 So, uh, that pushes the average up. So it's a bit of a statistical anomaly or a statistical lie or a falsehood or wrong impression. It is accurate, but it gives a false impression as to how long people lived. The problem was how many babies died. And therefore living to average age 40 doesn't mean when you turn 40, you can't in the old days.

32:12Stuart Gary And that brings you on to, um, do women live

32:14 longer than men or is it just that men are in more dangerous environments and so they're more likely to die? And so the proportion of men compared to women living to a rope old age is lower?

32:24Tim Mendham Yeah, well, that women nag me.

32:26Stuart Gary Men just want to die. Earlier, a sexist would

32:29 say this, would

32:30Tim Mendham say, okay, was it lies, damned lies and

32:33 statistics. And you got to look behind the statistics all the time about any survey you see. Look behind the statistics questions which put

32:41Stuart Gary your mind in that frame of mind.

32:42Tim Mendham Leading questions, leading analysis, all

32:44 sorts of things. Yeah, statistics is a funny business, actually. And, um, I think 97% of statistics are wrong.

32:50Stuart Gary That's the skip Timms Mendham. And

32:53 this is Space Time. And that's the show for now. Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through bytes.com, soundcloud, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from spacetimewithstuartgarry.com spacetime's also broadcast through the National Science foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both iHeartradio and TuneIn radio. And you can help to support our show by visiting the Space Time Store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies, or by becoming a Space 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 rewards. Just go to

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