Shadowing Practice: The Missions Bringing Us Back to the Moon - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Chuck.
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Yes.
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We're going back to the moon.
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I didn't know I've been in the first place.
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Nash.
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NASA.
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Alright, NASA is going back to the moon.
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Yes.
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Let's back up a little.
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Right.
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Okay?
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The first and only other time we went to the moon was the Apollo program.
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Correct.
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As you know.
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We went to the moon nine times.
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So we faked it nine times.
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Not even in my marriage has that much faking taken place.
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Apollo 8.
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Okay.
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Went to the moon, orbited and came back.
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Okay.
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Took that famous picture of Earthrise or the rocket.
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Earthrise, that's right.
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Apollo 10.
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Okay.
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Went to the moon, orbited the moon, deployed the Lander, and it came back up.
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Right.
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So that's Apollo 10.
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Right.
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Apollo 11, everyone remembers.
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Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, walk on the moon.
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Right.
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And they leave Michael Collins up in the capsule.
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Just left him up there.
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Didn't even give him the opportunity to go down later and check it out for himself.
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You know what I mean?
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It's in the plan.
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These are professionals.
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That is rough.
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You know what I mean?
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You're gonna make me the chauffeur.
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I gotta go to the moon.
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You're gonna make me the moon chauffeur.
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I didn't even get the moon chauffeur.
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I'm the moon chauffeur.
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Then there's Apollo 12.
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Apollo 13, the ill -fated one.
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- Right.
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- Old Hollywood movie.
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- Yes.
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- On that, directed by Ron Howard.
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And then Apollo 14, 15, 16, and 17.
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- Okay.
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- All right.
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Why did we go?
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We're Americans, we're explorers, it's in our DNA is what we are told.
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Right.
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That's not why we went.
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That's not why we went.
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No, why did we go?
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- You could wanna go for those reasons, but that's not what makes it way to write a check.
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Who writes the checks?
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Congress writes the checks.
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You gotta spook Congress somehow into writing the check.
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So Kennedy says, - We go to the moon and do this, that, and the other thing.
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Because it is hard.
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- So, so Yuri Gagarin comes out of orbit.
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- Okay.
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- Okay?
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- Right.
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- First man in space.
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- Yeah.
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- In order to orbit the earth.
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- Right.
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- Six weeks later, we have a joint session of Congress.
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President Kennedy says stirring words, "Put a man on the moon, return him safely to earth before the decade is out." Go earlier a couple of paragraphs in that same speech.
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and even utter the man's name.
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The events of recent weeks are any indication of the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere,
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then we need to show the world the path of freedom over the path of tyranny.
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- Voldemort is back!
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Dumbledore, I tell you, Voldemort is back!
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- The enemy is established.
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The godless enemy is established.
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The checks were written.
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- And yeah, well there you go.
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- And they'd already beaten us with the first animal in space, Laika.
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They already beat us at all of that.
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We needed something to beat them.
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So we said, let's go to the moon.
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We're going to land on the moon.
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And walk around.
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And walk around.
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Even though they beat us in all these other categories.
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Right.
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And we did.
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So what happens we get to the moon look over our shoulder no Russkies we're done here
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So did we really go to explore no, or do we go to just beat the Russians right?
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We have not been back to the moon in 50 years.
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So you know many scientists went to the moon zero One one do you know which mission?
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No, the last 17.
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So we had the astronauts do science experiments.
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It's not that no science happened.
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No, but don't fool yourself into thinking that This was all for exploration.
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It was muscle flexing on the geopolitical sphere during a Cold War, when we're fighting a hot war in Southeast Asia against that enemy.
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We don't go back to the moon, not in the '70s, Not in the 80s, not in the 90s.
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Wait a minute, in the 20 teens, let's go back to the moon.
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What a great idea.
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We're long overdue.
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It's been half a century.
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I wonder how the moon is doing.
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Why did we have these thoughts?
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Let's park the curtains.
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What else happened in the 20 teens?
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China says they wanna put taikonauts on the moon.
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- Oh.
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- Taikonaut.
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Their version of a cosmonaut, our version of an astronaut.
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- Right.
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Oh my gosh.
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China's going to the moon
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if there's ever a reason for Congress to reinvigorate the funding to go back to the moon It was
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that and have so we announced program to return to the moon.
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We go to the moon Not because it's easy, but because it's I don't know is there money there?
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And so this happens under the Trump administration.
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Yeah, okay, so Trump says let's go back to the moon.
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Yeah, and And the program to return to the moon has one of the best names ever.
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Space Force.
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No. No, what is it?
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Artemis!
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Artemis!
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Yes!
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So who is Artemis in Greek mythology?
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Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo!
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Look at that!
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You can't get more woke than that.
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That's uh, which is why I would change the name.
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To get rid of this D -E -I Artemis chick.
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And so right now, there are like three, four, five such missions planned.
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Okay.
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But each one, just as the original Apollo mission, - Each mission was a little more ambitious than the next.
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- Okay.
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- Right?
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As you heard, Apollo 10, they went halfway down, came back up.
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- I love the incremental approach.
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- It's incremental.
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- I love it.
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- And the press can talk about each increment, 'cause each increment is more than what happened before.
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- Yeah, I know.
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- Each thing is a progress wheel.
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- Absolutely.
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- So, remember the Saturn V?
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- Yeah.
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- That's it.
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- That's it.
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- That guy right here.
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- It's all rocket.
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- It's all rocket.
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- It's just all rocket.
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- It's all rocket.
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- Right on up to here, and then, right up to here, and then you get the astronauts.
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- Right.
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- There's three of them.
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We had, Mercury had one astronaut, Gemini, how many do they have?
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- Maybe two.
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- Yeah.
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- Apollo three.
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- All increment up to landing on the moon.
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So they're up here in the little capsule right here.
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- Exactly.
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- And this is the Cape?
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that if something bad happens, this launches and carries the capsule and its residents away from this bomb.
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- Yeah, exactly.
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- Okay.
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So, we got one of those as well, but it's specially designed for the future.
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It's called the Space Launch System, SLS.
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So it has not only a big old giant rocket, it's got what we're familiar with now with the Space Shuttle, it's got two solid rocket boosters.
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on the side the value of that is you use up their fuel and
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when they're done you just drop them away there you go
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you don't want to carry empty empty tanks empty tanks
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and then the main rocket will also have multiple stages as
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well this was the brainchild of warner von braun multi -stage
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rockets right without him we'd all have these bullet -shaped v2 looking rockets right that are to do this.
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You drop away things you don't need anymore, and that way the remaining thrust is pushing on a lower mass object.
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Right.
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So the SLS with the capsule included is about the same size as the Saturn V.
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But here's a good way to think about how big it is.
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Let's compare it to the Statue of Liberty.
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Except that's not the right comparison.
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Let's make the Statue of Liberty its actual size relative to the SLS.
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So it's about the same size of the Saturn V.
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Okay But it has the help from these Okay, all right point is the capsule is which is containing and protecting the life forms,
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there are things like the original capsule, was not expressly designed to protect you from radiation.
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- Right.
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It might incidentally do so because it's made of metal and whatever, but this is radiation insulated.
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It has other life support systems to protect The occupants, as you would want.
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- Okay.
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- Okay?
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The original Apollo capsule could seat three astronauts.
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The Lockheed Martin one can seat four.
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We add another one to the mix.
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And of course it is also once again connected to a rocket tower
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That will if something goes wrong in an instant it'll rapidly take the capsule away from this
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Rocket bomb right that's detonating in ways that you don't want yes exactly So it's good.
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It's nice have a little ejector button ejector exactly exactly in a way the most important part of the whole rocket
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- That's where the people are.
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- That's where the people are.
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So, Artemis won.
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flew the entire kit and the caboodle to the moon, and it landed in the ocean just like the old days.
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Yeah, with blast down.
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With three parachutes, and there was the capsule, and landed right near a—there was an aircraft carrier, just one of the ships that would collect it out of the water, and it was great.
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Uncrewed, just to test the system.
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Next, Artemis II goes with crew.
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- To the moon, but doesn't land, and then comes back.
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- Okay.
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- Okay?
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That's a very Apollo 80 of them.
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- Right.
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- Eight, eight, eight, yeah.
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- To go to the moon and then come back.
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That's the first time we've sent astronauts off of the Earth to a destination since 1972, since Apollo 17.
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- Damn.
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- Four years.
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- I'm gonna say that's tragic.
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- What year was 54 years before we landed on the moon?
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It was 1914.
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So you see how far we went from 1914 to 1969.
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- That's terrible.
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- That's how I think about where we should be in space.
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- That's terrible.
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- Okay.
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So, Artemis IV, scheduled, for the future will take the crew
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and they will land on the moon targeting the south pole
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okay south pole we have crater rims where the sun
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which never gets very high in the sky that's happens when the sun is in the sky when you're near the poles.
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- Right.
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- And there are craters that are so deep with rims so high, the sun never reaches the bottom of the plane.
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So when comets hit and they, deposit water molecules on the surface.
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If it's where the sun hits, it evaporates.
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If it goes in the middle of the crater, it's there.
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It's a coal trap.
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And we got it for water.
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Forever.
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And so you can quote mine those molecules out for water, You can turn it into rocket fuel, separating the hydrogen and oxygen.
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- I'm starting to see the motivation here.
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China is going to go.
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We're like, "That water's ours, China." - So the South Pole is the object of affection.
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- Yeah.
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- Not only China sent, a rover is there, Russia sent a rover, one of them crashed, I think.
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We've sent a spacecraft to the South Pole.
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So that's where everybody's sort of gathering right now.
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And if it's gonna be a turf war, it's gonna be there.
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And we didn't want to be left out.
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- There it is.
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- There it is.
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Once again, it comes down to the fact that we don't want to get beat.
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- We have a real or perceived threat from an adversary that we are reacting to.
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But that's not going to be in the top cover.
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- What does our treaty say about like water is now commodity on the moon?
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So what does our treaty say?
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- There's the outer space treaty, which was modified, updated to become the Artemis treaty.
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Oh!
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Signed by 50 60 countries.
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Okay, not China not Russia.
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Oh, they came up with their own treaty that they signed among themselves Okay, so they got a treaty we got a treaty treaty means
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you help each other need you don't hide secrets what a perfect opportunity to showcase cooperation
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Like we're we're not on earth anymore like you we can't even go to the damn moon and work together
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We can all get this water because guess what you know, right whoever gets it we needed to get to Mars or wherever else It's the old watering hole problem with tribes.
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Yep all over
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So I just want to sort of celebrate the fact that we are going back even though it's 50 years later, right?
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I'm happy.
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We're going back right I understand the motive.
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I'm not delusional about that that crew going to the moon looks more like America than the
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- Trump puts it in and who follows Trump as president?
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- Biden.
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- Biden.
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He doesn't cancel it.
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- Nope.
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- He keeps it.
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- He was asleep, that's why.
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Anyway.
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- So everybody keeps the space?
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- Right.
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- Because it transcends politics.
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- It does.
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- And you realize, NASA has 10 centers in eight states.
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And those eight states, variously at the general election, vote four red, four blue, three red, five blue.
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Five red, three blue?
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It is embedded in the political spectrum of the country.
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So if someone does not like NASA, that is insufficient information for you to know what party they vote for.
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- There you go.
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- That's how you embed it in.
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- See?
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Kind of how I see it.
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- There it is, congratulations NASA.
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The only thing about America that doesn't suck.
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On that note, this has been yet another StarTalk explainer.
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The Artemis mission, following on, "The Legacy of Apollo." Tuck, good to have you, man.
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- Always a pleasure.
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- Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist,
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as always, bidding you, to keep looking up.
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Context & Background
In the video titled "The Missions Bringing Us Back to the Moon," an engaging dialogue unfolds between two speakers discussing NASA's plans to return to the moon. The conversation delves into past Apollo missions, highlighting significant events and astronaut experiences. Through their light-hearted banter, the speakers provide insightful context about the history of lunar exploration, with a focus on the memorable Apollo missions. For learners, this video not only offers comprehension practice but also introduces a range of vocabulary and phrases related to space exploration, making it an excellent resource for enhancing your English skills.
Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication
- "We're going back to the moon." - This phrase can be used to indicate the return to a place or situation.
- "I didn’t know I’d been in the first place." - A useful expression for someone who is surprised by a situation.
- "It’s in the plan." - This phrase can help convey that a specific action or outcome has already been considered.
- "They left me up there." - A common way to express feeling left out or abandoned in any scenario.
- "You’re gonna make me the moon chauffeur." - A humorous way to refer to taking on a supportive or secondary role.
Step-by-step Shadowing Guide
To effectively utilize the shadowing technique with this video, follow these steps:
- Select a Short Segment: Start by choosing a brief portion of the dialogue, ideally one that includes rich vocabulary and expressive phrases. Aim for 30-60 seconds at a time.
- Listen Actively: Play the segment and listen carefully to the pronunciation, intonation, and rhythm of the speakers. Try to understand the emotions behind their words.
- Repeat Out Loud: Apply the shadow speech method by repeating what you hear immediately after the speakers. Focus on mimicking their tone and pace to improve your spoken English.
- Practice with Pauses: If you struggle to keep up, pause the video frequently. Repeat small phrases or sentences, gradually working up to longer sections.
- Record Yourself: Using your smartphone or a computer, record your shadowing practice. Listen to your recordings to assess your pronunciation and areas for improvement.
This structured approach not only supports IELTS speaking practice but also enhances your overall fluency. By shadowing the speakers closely, you’ll develop a more natural speaking style and confidence in your English conversations. Remember, the more you engage with the content, the stronger your language skills will become. So, get ready to learn English with YouTube and embark on your journey to mastering conversational skills through engaging content!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are told · is established · were written |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've been · have not been · we've sent |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.