Extended Classic: Space Chronicles (Part 1)

Why did the US really go into space? Why did the Apollo program end early? Neil deGrasse Tyson digs into the history of space exploration with Prof. John Logsdon and co-host Chuck Nice. Now extended with 13 minutes of fan-submitted Cosmic Queries! NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. Today, I'm joined by my co-host, comedian Chuck Nice. Hey Neil. Chuck, are you nice today? I am very nice today, my friend. Are you nice all the time? No, I'm not gonna go that far. Sometimes Chuck is naughty. Exactly. That's when we like him best. There you go. Chuck, I think you're the right age to be my co-host for this. I'm not saying how old I am, but I know how old you are. I'm a space baby. You're a space baby? I'm a space baby. Today, we're talking about the history of space exploration. Right on. And that has a birthday, like anybody does. What's the birthday?

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me think. Would that be July 21, 1969? No, that's the birth of when we stopped going to the moon.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love the way you say the birth of when we stopped. Yeah, the birth, that was the beginning of the end. The end of the end of the space program. It wasn't even the end of the beginning. It was the beginning of the end. So when is the actual birthday? Would that be, would that be Luna 2? No, no, Sputnik, for goodness sake. Okay, so it's Sputnik. Of course. Sputnik, if you want to say it right. Well, I have slotted today an interview with Professor John Logstine. He's Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. He's one of the founding, he's the founding director of the Space Policy Institute there. And he's one of the world's experts on the history of space exploration. So I just had to get, I just had to extract all I could out of him. Very distinguished.

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he came to my office for it, and let's get right to some of those clips. Sounds good. Then we can react when they return. So this first clip, I asked him about the origins of the space age. Let's see what he says.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  The origins of the space age go, I mean, there was a Russian, Silcoski, a German, Oberth. These are famous, these are key people. In the early 20th century. Early engineers. Yeah. Did we have one of those? And we had Robert Goddard. Robert Goddard, good. Alright, so, I mean, there were traditions of thinking about space in all of these countries, and then rocket clubs, space clubs, in all of these countries. So Russia, Germany, America. Yeah. Okay. World War II led to the development of a functioning rocket, the V2. The V2. But it was used as a missile, not a rocket. Right. And after World War II... Because missiles are the first things human beings think to do with rocket power. Right. Is blow somebody else up. It's long-range artillery. Okay.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Um, so, the Germans, obviously, were defeated. Von Braun and his team moved themselves, at the end of the war, from Prussia, northeastern Germany, to Bavaria, in order to surrender to the United States and not Russia. So had they surrendered to Russia, we would have had nobody. We would have had a few people. The people that started Jet Propulsion Lab were our rocket scientists. One of the NASA Centers, Jet Propulsion Lab, okay. Now, but not then. It was an Army Center, and they were doing rocketry. So Von Braun said to the US, "You will let me realize my dreams to go to the stars." So he didn't trust the Russians? No, he didn't trust the Russians. Why not? The Russians had a fine space program. But they were nasty people. (laughing)

• 3:42Speaker 01

  If you say so yourself. The aristocracy, and Von Braun was very much Prussian aristocracy, knew well what's happening to the German population. He had insider information in that relationship. Get out. Okay. So the Russians came in later. Even though we were sworn enemies with the Nazis, he still preferred us to surrender to, presuming that he wouldn't be put on trial. They didn't put him on trial in Nuremberg. No, there was a very special operation called Operation Paperclip, to move all these people, more or less illegally, into the US, give them special status. Bypassing all the war crime trials and all the rest of this. All of that. Operation Paperclip. Yep. Well, how quaint.

• 4:25Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 4:27Chuck Nice?

  Fascinating stuff.

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 4:28Chuck Nice?

  I have learned something.

• 4:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's what that's what we do. That's the motto of StarTalk. Learn something for a change.

• 4:35Chuck Nice?

  Learn something for a change. What I just learned there was it pays to be really smart to the point where you can get away with war crimes.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, basically, even your enemy wants a piece of your mind.

• 4:47Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because if you were that good, I mean, just think of the V two rocket in Nazi Germany. This rocket, I think, is remembered, it gets under remembered for what role it actually played in the history of of everything.

• 5:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, it turns out to have not been important strategically. I mean, it was sort of a terror weapon and it would come out of the sky. You wouldn't hear it, you wouldn't know where it was coming from and a whole block would be destroyed. It was hard to aim them because they went so far and they went out of Earth's atmosphere. And if you look at the total casualties from it versus other ways people were killing each other, it was small.

• 5:25Chuck Nice?

  Pretty ineffective.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, yeah, but it was an exploration in how to drop a bomb from something that was practically in Earth orbit.

• 5:32Chuck Nice?

  Ah, those Germans, I tell you, they are something else, aren't they?

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ain't they something? So, uh, so, yeah, as, as, as John Logsdon correctly noted, the V two was a, it was a missile, not a rocket. But the fact that it would leave Earth's atmosphere, travel most of its distance in the vacuum of space and then drop out of the atmosphere, told everybody, wait a minute, if we ever go into space, we better look closely at what's going on with this V two rocket. And that's why all rockets from science fiction movies from the 1950s, what they look like?

• 6:08Chuck Nice?

  They look like missiles.

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They know, yeah, yes, yes, they look like missiles and they looked specifically like the V two.

• 6:13Chuck Nice?

  The V two.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They had big fins.

• 6:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They look like bullets.

• 6:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was a ladder you climb up into them and that's the only way people could think about going into space because that was the only thing that had any chance of actually accomplishing that.

• 6:24Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here we are, humans with the whole universe to explore. And the first thing we think of doing with our possible ways of exploring is like, let's kill some people first.

• 6:33Chuck Nice?

  Well, of course, of course, I mean, that's human nature, isn't it? I mean, seriously, when we, when we discovered fire, it was discovered by a comedian, everybody knows that. And the first thing he did was set some other dude's foot on fire.

• 6:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's true. This is in the comedy journals. You read of this research, I'm sure. And, you know, most people think of NASA as a civilian agency because they, you know, they got a space station and they're doing science up there. But of course, it was born in wartime.

• 7:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Born in reaction to Sputnik. I mean, this is...

• 7:04Chuck Nice?

  It's kind of like a early version of the arms race.

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, essentially. Well, I mean, the arms race was going on at the time.

• 7:09Chuck Nice?

  The arms race was still going on, but a derivation of the arms race.

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an aspect of the arms race, and hence the space race. This is where you get the phrasing "space race" as a takeoff on arms race, right? And so, it's an extraordinary period. And what most people don't know is that the Air Force, the Air Force has their own budget for going into space. People said, "We don't want war in space." It's already, excuse me, it's like, been there, done that, and they don't tell you about it.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how that...

• 7:36Chuck Nice?

  There's a secret war in space.

• 7:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, well, in terms of what the Air Force sees as needs to protect us from enemies that might want to influence us on the ground, or our assets in space. That's the code word for our satellites. Chuck, we got to take a break. And when we come back, more of my interview with John Logstern, who is a professor of the History of the Space Program.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept. One we are unwilling to postpone. And one we intend to win.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kennedy. Ain't that something?

• 9:06Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a speech, that's a speech for you.

• 9:09Chuck Nice?

  That's very inspiring. You know what I like most about that speech?

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 9:12Chuck Nice?

  Uh, is that he said, "There is no strife, there is no prejudice in space, uh, as of yet." In other words, when we get there, buddy, we're gonna make sure all that crap is there.

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause we're gonna find the, the, the, some, some alien species that will be our slaves.

• 9:29Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was a speech given by John Kennedy in Rice Stadium in 1962. And many people remember him saying, "We'll put a man on the moon, return him safely to Earth." That was in a joint session of Congress a, a year earlier.

• 9:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This speech put it all together.

• 9:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I chatted with John Logstine about this and just, so the politics of the space race and Eisenhower, which preceded Kennedy.

• 9:54Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 9:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And transitioned to Kennedy, how did all that work? I asked him about it, let's check it out.

• 9:58Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Sputnik 1 had only one purpose, which was to be in space first. Apparently they knew that that would matter. Well, Khrushchev didn't. The Russian leadership was surprised by the world reaction. So was President Eisenhower. Eisenhower's reaction was, "It's no big deal." He's alone thinking that, apparently. Uh, well, he and his close advisors. What was Eisenhower's reaction to all this space stuff? His first instinct is that this shows we can launch satellites to spy on the Soviet Union. He's a military general, what else could he possibly be thinking? He's not thinking, "Oh, I can explore the universe." Well, more than that, he's a veteran of the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. And say, never again will we be surprised like that. By anything.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  If we have the capability to see what's on the other side, denied areas behind the iron curtain, let's do it. We had 13 failures of the first intelligence satellite before the first success. Couldn't do that today. Okay, so Eisenhower, it's a militaristic activity. What he wanted to do was military on one side and an open civilian program on the other side that the US could show to the world and cooperate with the world. So he had a very sophisticated. So the open side was geopolitical posturing, then? We have peaceful uses of space? Right. That phrase originated in his administration. Okay, so NASA gets founded under Eisenhower, 1958?

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, but Eisenhower said, let's do a modest, scientifically driven, open program. Put a person up to see what happens, but I, Eisenhower, don't think there's much value to human spaceflight. So at the end of his administration, December of 1960, what Kennedy would do was not at all clear as president. Right, because NASA gets founded and there's no real mission statement for it, right? It's just kind of there. Well, do everything. Explore space. Do whatever that is. Yeah, be a leading nation in the space. Okay. So Kennedy's up. And Kennedy's up. We're already supposed to lead the world. Why did his speeches have any value at all? We're supposed to do that anyway. Well, because he saw, within three months of taking office, that space was an area

• 12:04Speaker 01

  of visible achievement, which the Soviet Union. Right, because he takes office January 1961, and Yuri Gagarin goes up April. 12th, 61. Three months. Three months later. In his face. Before that, he was very uncertain about what his posture would be. You know, people talk about Sputnik moments. It was really a Gagarin moment that drove the US. Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. Right. And eight days later, April 20th, after the Bay of Pigs, which kind of reinforced the inclination to do something positive and dramatic, Kennedy wrote a memo and asked his advisors to find him a space program that promises dramatic results in which we could win. And the answer came back, moon. Go to the moon. Go to the moon.

• 12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was Garen in your face.

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  That's it. So basically, the United States was shamed into going into space.

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think, and in fact, we don't remember it that way, but that's exactly what it was. We reacted.

• 13:00Chuck Nice?

  We reacted.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To Russia. And, and I, I studied carefully, because I have a book recently, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. And in it, I, I try to put the stuff on the table and say, you want to remember America as pioneers in this, but in fact, almost every decision we made was reactive to what Russia did, or reactive to what Russia said they would do.

• 13:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so instead of space, the final frontier, these are the voyages of this, it wasn't that, it was, "Oh crap, oh, Jesus, the Russians are in space, what are we gonna do?" It was more that.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly, thank you for that. That's the history through the lens of Chuck Nice, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, no, but I have to say, literally, that's what, you know, there's the outward appearances, and then there's what's actually going on.

• 13:53Chuck Nice?

  And there's really the underlying motivation.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because, so I had not appreciated how big a role the Yuri Gagarin step into space was, because we all remember Sputnik as the birth of anything going into orbit at all. And so, you remember the moon landing, right?

• 14:10Chuck Nice?

  Of course, yeah, I mean.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you were a babe.

• 14:12Chuck Nice?

  I was a kid at that time, I was, I was a kid, but, uh, I, I do remember it being a big deal, because, let me see, what grade was I in? I was young enough where they, I believe they bought in either a television or a radio, I'm not sure.

• 14:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they had TVs, man.

• 14:28Chuck Nice?

  They did have TVs, I do know that.

• 14:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, actually, it was a big deal to have a TV that was on wheels.

• 14:33Chuck Nice?

  Right, and that's what it was, it was on a, it was on a cart or something.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, that was the thing, you had, there was one cart in the whole school, and you had, you had to do it. So it's interesting that the space race would begin in this hysterical reactive way, but then we kind of aligned our ducks, and said, "Let's actually go to the moon."

• 14:51Chuck Nice?

  So, so do you think that the lack of competition, as it were, right now, to do something big in space is really what the problem is with America, or is it more political?

• 15:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, it's all of the above, but let's find out what role Kennedy played in this now, because Kennedy was not president when Sputnik was launched.

• 15:10Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 15:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, like I said, Sputnik?

• 15:12Chuck Nice?

  Sputnik.

• 15:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Let's go to my, my next clip with John Locke, and see what he says.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  So Kennedy's assassinated, we go to Johnson. What guarantee does anybody have that this epic adventure is going to continue under different leadership? Well, the first thing to know is that Kennedy wasn't sure what he wanted to do right at the end of his life. People totally forget, he went to the UN, September 20th, 63, and said, "Why not do it together?" Really? Formal proposal to the Soviet Union, and he was serious. So seeing whether there's a possibility of turn Apollo into a cooperative undertaking, was worried about the money, lot of reasons. By his death, though, Apollo became a memorial to a fallen president. And that was the one space priority of Lyndon Johnson, was to finish Apollo.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Alright, so that actually constrained then, what might have been a broader space program? Indeed. Overwhelmingly, the focus was only moon by end of the decade. And there was very little planning, and certainly no money for future programs. Anything after or even beside that? No.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it became a one-trick pony, really.

• 16:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so they basically wanted to just go like, "Ay, man, it's kind of like a swan song, let's shoot something up there for Kennedy." You know, like the way they pour something out for the brothers who ain't here.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, yeah, yeah, usually alcohol, yeah.

• 16:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's never milk.

• 16:37Chuck Nice?

  Right, "Let's shoot a rocket up there for the president."

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, let's do one, like, do one for the gipper, right?

• 16:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so that's interesting. I don't, I don't believe, I mean, I, you know, Lockston is the historian, not I, and, but, doesn't mean I can't have an opinion. I don't think Kennedy believed that Russia would join us in going into space. And knowing that he didn't believe it, he still goes on record for the olive branch offering. Then they say, "No," and he say, "Well, F y'all, we're going in, you know, we're gonna go our own route." And that, that's a way to politically set yourself up.

• 17:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For reacting to something without looking like the bad guy.

• 17:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, because you know your opponent's gonna say, "Screw you."

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're the commies, for goodness sake!

• 17:18Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, this is after the dude hit his shoe on the podium, you know, so...

• 17:24Chuck Nice?

  "Out good we partner with you capitalist running dog bastards."

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, so I, maybe for the appearances, it looked honest, but I think politically, it was actually a pretty clever move on his part.

• 17:35Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty brilliant, actually.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you know, there's, you know, after that, there was Johnson, and then of course Nixon comes along, and then we stopped going to the moon. And, you know, all the Kennedy supporters like to blame Nixon for that. But no, it's more, it's more interestingly subtle and complex than that. I love the moon. He made the first really expensive phone call to outer space. He called these dudes at, you know, AT&T set up the phone call. And there's the gap, you know, it takes light time to, you know, radio waves, time to get to the moon and come back. But we'll talk more about that after this break. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. We'll be right back.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I've got nice Chuck Nice here. That's right. He's being nice today, as he is most of the time. I don't want to see him when he's not nice. No, no one does, to be honest. I even cover the mirrors. That's good.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, today we're featuring my interview clips with John Logstine. John Logstine's an old friend of mine, and he's, he's professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. That's not why we have him on StarTalk. We have him on StarTalk because he's former director of their space, he's founding director of their Space Policy Institute. He's a space historian extraordinaire. Cool. And I write about a little bit of the history of space, but more as an observer, not as the, you know, the academic professor. Historian. I'm not the historian. I just observe it and just riff on it. And so, you know, we, we were talking about the Apollo program as a focus of the American space program, and it's what drove everybody. It drove the spending.

• 19:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It said, anything NASA did, it was to get to the moon. Every next dollar they were handed in their budget, it was to get to the moon. We need hookers to get to the moon.

• 19:45Chuck Nice?

  If I don't spend a night with a hooker, I can't think clearly. If I can't think clearly, we can't get to the moon.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you know, so we can ask, well, was it worth it? What are the benefits? Now, people like talking about spinoffs and, you know, I, who doesn't love a good spinoff?

• 20:01Chuck Nice?

  Everybody loves a good spinoff.

• 20:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, they've got astronaut ice cream.

• 20:04Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I prefer mine cold, but if I'm in space, uh, you know, you know what they, they should do? Cause space is cold.

• 20:10Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you're not facing the sun, add some milk back to it or water and put it out in space and stir it. Get me some, get my ice cream cone again.

• 20:17Chuck Nice?

  Real ice cream.

• 20:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, hand me this room temperature stuff that my saliva reconstitutes. But, um, no, but what it did was it forced us to think about, uh, food, food preservation.

• 20:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, life support systems. I mean, there's a whole, all the surrounding thought that had to go in. Astronauts, uh, mental, mental health. What's it like to be cooped up in a, in a tiny little capsule for days and days and days with one other person or two other people? Are you friends? Are you, do you have attitude?

• 20:45Chuck Nice?

  I call that marriage. Truthfully.

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you get the marriage dudes to tell you, to, to, to help you out. Things like filtering air with carbon dioxide poison, you know, you can be carbon dioxide poisoned if you don't do that right. And so a lot of this was how to make use of materials that you have that you can't swap out. So recycling becomes a big issue in space exploration. If you're not otherwise gonna go someplace and, and hew out of the mountainside, uh, materials that you had just consumed on route there. So there's a huge side of this that, that matters.

• 21:21Chuck Nice?

  So astronauts are like the first hippies.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah.

• 21:24Chuck Nice?

  Basically.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Except they had crew cuts instead of long hair. Uh, but I, there's a whole other side of the spinoff that I don't think people talk about, and I've been talking about it lately.

• 21:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, I was in front of the House of Representatives, members of the House of Representatives recently talking about this very thing. Did you know that here we are in the 1960s, a turbulent decade, it was bloody. Kids were getting shot on campuses. It was the Cold War in the, in, in Southeast Asia. And I, I mean, Cold War in the world.

• 21:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a hot war in Southeast Asia, Vietnam.

• 21:54Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We were losing a hundred servicemen a week, yet we found time to go to the moon.

• 21:58Chuck Nice?

  Man, you know what's funny is that nothing has changed with what you just said, except that we don't go to the moon anymore.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything you described is happening right now. So that's bad. So that's, so that's bad. So what I found was not only did, is that just a crowning achievement technologically, scientifically, emotionally, but in those years that we went to the moon, you know what happened? And the year plus one year, so from 1968 to 1973, that five, six year period, we created the Environmental Protection Agency. That happened after we saw the picture of Earth rise over the lunar landscape. We went to the moon looking to discover it and we looked back and we discovered Earth for the first time. Yeah, much to the chagrin of Rick Perry.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And all of a sudden, the modern day environmental movement began. Let's find out what, I got another clip with John Lockston, just to see what, did Russia try to go there too? Let's find out.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Russia decided in August of 64 to go to the moon, built moon rockets, built a lander, trained a crew.

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And wasn't their moon rocket more powerful than ours?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  It's just about the same.

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Except it didn't work and ours did.

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Small detail.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  There were four launches of the N1 rocket, four failures.

• 23:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  And we had been to the moon. So the program got canceled, but there was a very real Russian program.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When did it get canceled?

• 23:24Speaker 01

  In 72, I think.

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so we kept going through 72.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apollo 17, they canceled their moon effort.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  72, 73.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then we're done.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're done. We don't even do Apollo 18.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, we had canceled, there were supposed to be 20 Apollos.

• 23:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  20 Apollos.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  And we stopped at 17.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The enemy was defeated.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Well, the problem is, the problem, but the reality is, if you make something a race and you win it, there's no reason to run it over.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, yeah.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  There wasn't a strong scientific rationale. You've won.

• 23:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're done.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  A lot of people in NASA were scared to death of the risks of the program and Apollo 13 showed that.

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We won.

• 24:04Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 24:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Chuck Nice?

  Who knew?

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So had they still been at it, we probably would have had Apollo 18, Apollo 19, Apollo 20.

• 24:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And maybe beyond. So, once again, we were reactive and not proactive. So there is no accounting of the history of this that says, "We are explorers, we are discoverers, that's why we went to the moon."

• 24:21Chuck Nice?

  We're reactors.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're reactors.

• 24:23Chuck Nice?

  That's what we are.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are emotional reactors. More when StarTalk Radio continues with my interview with John Logstern, and I got in studio. Chuck Nice, see you in a moment.

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. Chuck Nice.

• 24:57Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 24:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My co-host, comedian co-host, and you're tweeting at Chuck Nice.

• 25:01Chuck Nice?

  Comic.

• 25:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Comic.

• 25:02Chuck Nice?

  Funny. I'm a comedian.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You came from a comic strip.

• 25:06Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. Chuck Nice Comic.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Uh, I think, I follow you.

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  It's me and Doomsberry.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 25:13Chuck Nice?

  Chuck Nice Comic.

• 25:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've been talking about the space program, the space race, and how we won getting to the moon, but we'd actually had lost almost every other metric of space exploration. Russia had the first satellite, the first living anything, which was a dog, Lika.

• 25:29Chuck Nice?

  I didn't know that. Now, see, you know, the popular, uh, convention is that it was a chimpanzee.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no. First thing was a dog.

• 25:35Chuck Nice?

  Dog.

• 25:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That dog was a mutt running around the streets of Moscow, and they put his behind up there in space with no plans of bringing him down alive. And so all the animal rights says, "That's not right. He didn't have choice and he didn't..." I said, "Look."

• 25:47Chuck Nice?

  He's alive.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look, I said, "Look, all right, this, this dude died in space. He is the most famous dog since Lassie."

• 25:55Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right? And if you got, they're gonna die anyway, and you're gonna die in space? That's how, instead of hungry on the streets of Moscow? Excuse me?

• 26:04Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how I'm going.

• 26:06Chuck Nice?

  I'd rather die in space than just be in Moscow. I'm sorry.

• 26:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have said that. It was wrong. So here's what happens. So we get to the moon and we discover Earth for the first time. And in a short period of years, even while there was turbulence, the most, the most violent decade of American history since the Civil War, 100 years earlier, we take the time and the interest after we see Earth, Spaceship Earth, aloft there in the darkness of space. We found the Environmental Protection Agency. We banned DDT. We banned, uh, we set in regulation to get rid of leaded gas. The catalytic converter gets introduced. The whole Earth catalog gets formulated. We saw Earth not as the schoolroom globe would reveal it with color-coded

• 26:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  countries. We saw Earth as nature intended it to be viewed with oceans, land, clouds. On HDTV. That was later, later in nature. Okay, then we stopped going to the moon because the Russians stopped going to the moon. So that's the evidence that we were not explorers. We were just reactors. I like that. We're hu- human reactors. And then, you know, NASA needed another thing to do. And so what do we do next? Uh, let me go with Space Shuttle. Space Shuttle it was. And let's go back to my interview with John Logstern, just to get a sense of that transition and why we did it and what its point was. Check it out.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Nixon made the decision that characterized the program for 40 years, which is to build the shuttle.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  And the shuttle decision also meant we were going to build a space station.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That gave the shuttle something to do.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  They were kind of joined at the hip from the get-go.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And so then the shuttle gets launched and the space station gets initiated under Reagan.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Under Reagan, 1984.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  And basically, that's all we've done in human spaceflight from 1981 through 2011 is fly the shuttle, build the station.

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many shuttle launches were we supposed to have a year?

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Uh, when, when the...

• 28:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, when it was proposed.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  30 to 50.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So one every week and a half?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it became how many a year?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  The most ever was nine.

• 28:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't even know it was even that many.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did it average out about?

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Well, there were 135 flights over 30 years, so...

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, do the math.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. What's that?

• 28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's three to four a year? Three to four a year, yeah.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  It proved to be an experimental craft, a remarkable technical achievement, but an experimental, very touchy, very difficult.

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember in the first launch, the news announced, "America has now launched the most complex vehicle ever to go into space." And they said it with bravado, and I said, "Is that really what you want?"

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Complexity?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  I mean, we on the board said, "Too complex. Replace it with something simpler," which is what's happening.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something blunter, something simpler, something like the Russian, the Soyuz, in spite of the early failures.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  It's been remarkably reliable for a long time.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it has three moving parts or something. What's with the Soyuz?

• 29:02Speaker 01

  They're all built out of cast iron, I think.

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Iron?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Well, and it's an exaggeration, but it's a very sturdy, robust spacecraft, not a temperamental, pre-modonic.

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like a Lamborghini. You know, when it's working, it's great, but when it's not working, it's in the garage.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so the Russians, it works. That's all. It doesn't look good, it doesn't, it works.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Looks like a bunch of oil drums welded together with a rocket strapped to its back. So, but it works.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It worked. And so, that's what's fascinating to me is the space age gets born in 1957, and we land on the moon, how many years later? 12 years later. We go from no space anything to footprints on the moon in 12 years, and from 1981 to now, what we've been doing is driving around the block.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  [laughing]

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? Just, just, there it is. And so, people complain that, "Well, there's not much interest and demand, space, well, they're not actually going anywhere."

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they were the ones going to Mars instead of robots, then you know we'd be talking about them. What, you know, what music are they listening to along the way?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in the interim, we wanted to advance at least the science frontier, we sent robots. Let's find out more about robots when we get back to StarTalk Radio.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio and we're talking about the history of the space program. Chuck, you're a space baby, right?

• 30:49Chuck Nice?

  I am a space baby.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:50Chuck Nice?

  This whole thing started kinda like when I was born. Well, it didn't start when I was born, it ended when I was born, apparently.

• 30:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, there are chapters. There's we're going to the moon and then we're gonna drive around the block.

• 31:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in all fairness to the shuttle era, it showed that we can like build huge structures in zero G. The space station is the size of a football field. I mean, it's huge.

• 31:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we can live and work in space, not quite to the numbers originally imagined. In fact, there was a prediction in the 1980s, by the year 2000, 50,000 people will be living and working in space.

• 31:22Chuck Nice?

  Wow, they were just a little bit off.

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Three orders of magnitude off.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There were three on the space station at the time. So there's some failed dreams there, but you can't fault people for wanting to try. And remember, of course, there were two tragic shuttle disasters. We lost Challenger on the way up.

• 31:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We lost Columbia on the way down. Right? These are the two tricky parts of any mission. And same with flying an airplane.

• 31:47Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, it's the same thing when you get on a jet.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take off or land.

• 31:49Chuck Nice?

  Take off and land, that's where all the problems are.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Going 600 miles an hour at 41,000 feet never hurt anybody.

• 31:54Chuck Nice?

  Nope. Not a problem, you don't even know you're doing it.

• 31:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't even know you're doing it. So, by the way, all the while, the scientific community is conducting science. There's always been a fraction, emphasis on fraction, of the NASA budget given to science. The long-term average is about 20 to 30% of its budget has gone to science missions. So in fact, we had, they were like landers on the moon before humans went there. Did you hear about it? No, because we were sending people. See, when people go, you don't pay attention to the robots.

• 32:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause nobody gives ticker-tape parades to robots.

• 32:28Chuck Nice?

  And you know, I hear the robots are a little upset about that.

• 32:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact... They might ta- you know, what's the the net in in in the Terminator? Skynet. Skynet might. Skynet might take over, baby. They've been notified, has been duly notified. Rise of the machines, watch out, people. Uh, but there's a long string of missions. We we sent missions to through the 1960s and into the 70s. We sent, um, Explorer 1 was the first US satellite, but we had Mariner, right? And we had, you know, there was a Russians went to Venus, uh, and and they were called the Venere spacecrafts. That sounds good. Oh, by the way, the genitive form, the the genitive form of if you're of Venus is venereal. Venereal. Yeah, and but we we said, we're not going there. So we invented like. You keep my shuttle away from your venereal. That's all I'm saying.

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so we had, so we had sort of missions that went to Mars, robotic missions that were flybys, a couple of landers and Viking, and we have reconnaissance orbiters that photographed the Martian surface. Good stuff, and we continue, not only with rovers, but with telescopes launched into orbit by NASA. And the top of that list would be. Hubble. Hubble, of course. And so what's interesting is, in the face of these disasters, you always ask, oh, that'll end the program because we have seven dead astronauts. But each time that happened, it didn't. Right. The widows and the widowers of the spouses of those who died would stand up one by one in front of a microphone

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and said, "It is a reminder that the frontier is a risk, and often you put your life at risk." Right. But if the act of losing a life meant you should never go further, we would still be in the cave. Exactly. So, I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what every one of them says to a person. It's like you're allowing me to die in vain now. Exactly. That's basically what it comes down to. Exactly, Chuck. That was the perfect, uh, analysis of how all that happened. And so, so basically, the space program not only serves a geopolitical purpose, an emotional purpose, a technological purpose, a scientific purpose. Uh, there's also a symbol. It serves as a symbol for who and what we are and who and what we can be.

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out John Logsdon, who studies this professionally. Let's get his reaction to this notion. Cool. All things considered, when you add up all the disasters versus the achievements, how do you view that?

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Oh, I think on net, the space program has had multiple great benefits for this country. It's been a symbol, remains a symbol of something we do well. And so when we don't do well, we're surprised and disappointed. I think it is a symbol-

• 35:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a performance standard for us.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, of American excellence. You think, what are our symbols of American patriot? As in the flag, the bald eagle, and some sort of space image. Human on the moon, shuttle launch, Hubble image. Those are the things that make us feel good about being American.

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm, yeah, symbols. So let me ask you, what of the whole space program, what rises up in your heart and mind?

• 35:36Chuck Nice?

  I think I'm most astounded by-

• 35:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just realized, I'm asking a comedian this, so maybe you could be finding the most comedic moment, like when the astronauts, when they tripped on the moon or something.

• 35:45Chuck Nice?

  I wish I could. No, for me, it's Hubble.

• 35:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 35:49Chuck Nice?

  To see in such clarity, the places that are unimaginable.

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The universe was brought into our backyard.

• 35:55Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. And I'm still astounded by the pictures that I can see.

• 36:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love you for it. You know something? The Hubble images are so extraordinary, even as scientific record of our exploration of the universe, it was so extraordinary that they did not require captions in order for you to embrace all their majesty.

• 36:13Chuck Nice?

  I know, but I took the liberty of writing some anyway.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you wrote the captions, okay. For me, it was Apollo 8. It was an uncelebrated mission. No, yes, it was celebrated, but it was the first time we ever left Earth en route to anyplace else in the universe. They're the, they went to the moon, went around it, photographed Earthrise.

• 36:32Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's what birthed our entire environmental movement. It enables humans to care about who we are and what our relationship is to this universe.

• 36:40Chuck Nice?

  Nicely done. Hey, Chuck Nice here. You're listening to StarTalk. And when we come back, Neil and I return for our final segment to answer your cosmic queries about the universe. See ya in a minute.

• 37:02Chuck Nice?

  We are going to get questions once people get online, once they know that we're here and they pop online. Ask me queries, this is a normal thing we do on StarTalk Radio. Absolutely. Questions from people, so people typing in right now? People are typing in right now and they'll just, they'll make their little replies and their comments and as they come through, I will give them to you. Okay. And you can add- In the meantime, I just talk smack? Right, in the meantime, and normally, you know, normally what happens is we, we, we filter these questions. Yeah. So, or I filter them, uh, the cool thing about this is, I have no idea what anybody's going to ask and, uh, whatever comes through, so whatever you want to know- Bring it on. Just bring it on. Go ahead, make my day.

• 37:45Chuck Nice?

  So, and, and before we do that, I should also let you know that, um, for those of you who are interested, uh, you know, everything that we do, no matter what it is, we have now a site called StarTalkAllAccess.com, which is a subscription site where you can subscribe. Everything we do, you'll receive commercial free. In addition to that, you'll receive videos of all the podcasts that we do. In addition to that, there are interviews that you do, Neil, with very famous people that never make it to anywhere- Yeah, they're on the cutting room floor or otherwise. On the cutting room floor, and we'll have those there, and in addition to that,

• 38:24Chuck Nice?

  if that is not enough, you, we also have exclusive, original content that can only be found on All Access and when you subscribe. If that is not enough, you can watch us on Apple TV, Amazon Fire, and Roku. And you get, uh, a Ginsu knife. But wait, if you ask now. Alright, so what do you have, are they coming in yet? Sir, uh, I'm not even gonna pronounce your name, uh- I did that on purpose. Yashavantha Tamamakuru says, uh, "Any advances in the field of interstellar travel as we have discovered seven new exoplanets?" Yeah, so he want, you, what, you want to leave Earth? He wants to get out of here. He's like, "I gotta get out of here now."

• 39:07Chuck Nice?

  I heard Goldilocks Zone and I, I'm like, I'm ready to go.

• 39:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so the problem is, the fastest spaceship we've ever launched, the fastest thing, if you aimed it for the closest exoplanet, forget the other seven. Let's go to Proxima Centauri. It's called Proxima because it's close.

• 39:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The closest is why we gave it that name.

• 39:28Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 39:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is four light years away.

• 39:30Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 39:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the other one is, what is it, forty, fifty light years? I forgot the number, but it's tens of light years. Proxima Centauri, right there.

• 39:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aim your fastest thing we have ever launched, take you seventy thousand years.

• 39:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, let's go tomorrow.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you gotta figure out how to defy your biology.

• 39:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or invent a wormhole. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet on the wormhole.

• 39:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Not cryostasis? No?

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, and then make a movie and wake up.

• 39:53Chuck Nice?

  Right, we wake up seventy thousand years later, right? And, you know, of course, here's the thing, you only have a five o'clock shadow. Some reason in the movies. Go to sleep for seventy thousand, wake up, oh, I might need to.

• 40:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not the only issue in the movie. They never pee or poop in movies.

• 40:07Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, right.

• 40:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are other issues.

• 40:09Chuck Nice?

  There are other issues, right.

• 40:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, what else you got?

• 40:12Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here we go. Let's, uh, let's move down and see what we got interesting here. Hello, Dr. Tyson. This is, uh, Dihri Inswig Kaya. Uh, hello, Dr. Ty- I'm so sorry for butchering your name. I know I did. Uh, hello, Dr. Tyson.

• 40:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna bring in a name reader, and then you pick up the question after, okay?

• 40:30Chuck Nice?

  Lord and lady, fun- okay.

• 40:35Chuck Nice?

  Dr. Tyson, can you talk about the articles you've written that have appeared in any peer-reviewed review, uh, journals, uh, along those lines?

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, sure.

• 40:46Chuck Nice?

  You have, yeah.

• 40:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I have, uh, not as many as many of my colleagues who do that exclusively.

• 40:51Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, but, uh, I had a prediction some years ago, uh, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

• 40:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, which are shorter, faster communication that might have impact to affect the work of others.

• 41:02Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 41:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where I made a prediction that there might be ten times as many galaxies out there.

• 41:06Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Than what our then catalogs would show.

• 41:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, at the time, some better telescopes were brought to bear on it, and they found like, three or four times as many galaxies.

• 41:16Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 41:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not the full up ten.

• 41:17Chuck Nice?

  Not the full ten.

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It still felt good. It prompted some searches and, and, and a way to find them there. And, recent evidence actually comes much closer to my original prediction. So, so I feel pretty good about that.

• 41:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's one example of stuff that I done, but it's, it's not secret. Publications, there's something called Google Scholar.

• 41:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not your normal Google search engine, but just type in Google Scholar, go there and type in my name and you'll see all my-

• 41:41Chuck Nice?

  You'll see all this stuff. Oh, that's very cool. There you have it. Alright.

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I also studied the structure of the Milky Way galaxy.

• 41:47Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 41:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the core and the center and things like that. So it's in there, if you're interested.

• 41:50Chuck Nice?

  The core, the center of the Milky Way, if I'm not mistaken-

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a black hole lurking there, yes.

• 41:54Chuck Nice?

  Oh no, I thought it was caramel and creamy nougat.

• 41:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Next.

• 42:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:04Chuck Nice?

  I couldn't help it, man, I'm sorry. Here you go. Uh-

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go lightning round, because we don't have much time.

• 42:08Chuck Nice?

  We don't have a lot of time. Uh, Dr. Tyson, I want to do exactly what you do. What did you study, uh, to be where you are right now?

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I studied physics and math, both of which constitute the language of the universe.

• 42:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the same way, you want, if you go to China, you learn Mandarin, you speak to people there.

• 42:25Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You learn Spanish to go to Spain, you speak to people there.

• 42:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want to speak to the universe and understand what it's telling you.

• 42:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta speak its language.

• 42:34Chuck Nice?

  And that's math.

• 42:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's ma- math and physics, basically, the foundations of, of, of the sciences. And so, um, that's what I did. So I majored in physics.

• 42:42Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 42:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In college, and then got a PhD in astrophysics. And then you are conversant. Then, but I do these other things, I write books and this sort of thing. So I think a lot about how people learn.

• 42:52Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how they pay attention. And so I fold in what I know with what it is to share that love. Then I'm just doing what Carl Sagan said, you do when you're in love, you want to tell the world.

• 43:02Chuck Nice?

  Oh, how romantic.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next, go.

• 43:05Chuck Nice?

  Alright, hey Chauncey, Heath Chauncey, uh, first of all, what's up? And secondly, uh, he says, Dr. Tyson, moon or Mars?

• 43:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, uh, I mean, that's, I, I love that, because the whole question is implicit in those two.

• 43:18Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 43:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where you want to go first.

• 43:19Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 43:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Moon, the margin, go back to the moon, go to Mars, what is harder? And do you have the money? Can you do it yet? Can we do the moon first? And you can do that in a news cycle, because it only takes three days to go to the moon, you hang out, come back, you're back in a week. Mars is years. So I'm saying, I'm, I'm a contrarian here, not a contrarian, I have a, I'm driving in a different lane.

• 43:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My lane is, we should turn the whole solar system- Into our backyard.

• 43:42Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a lineup of booster rockets.

• 43:45Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take two from here, three from there, that gets you to Mars.

• 43:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One from there, two from there, that gets you to an asteroid.

• 43:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, we should not be thinking of destinations, we should be thinking of capabilities.

• 43:56Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you think of capabilities as a goal.

• 43:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then the entire solar system becomes your backyard and nothing sits out of reach.

• 44:05Chuck Nice?

  Hot damn, that was good.

• 44:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got it.

• 44:07Chuck Nice?

  Ah, uh. Mic drop.

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pen drop.

• 44:12Chuck Nice?

  Pen drop. Alright, let's move on.

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 44:16Chuck Nice?

  Um, okay, so Ali Yaya, Yaya, wants to know this, can humans develop to be higher and smarter creatures? Can we develop that?

• 44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I don't see why not, in principle. It's just that the brain remains such a mystery to us. We don't really have a good explanation for consciousness, much less what's going on in your brain for it to become intelligent.

• 44:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We know what can make you really not intelligent, okay?

• 44:42Chuck Nice?

  So true.

• 44:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because almost any chemical influence on the brain makes you sort of less capable than other, than no influence on the brain. Okay? When you do things like alcohol and drugs and things that people, people do. Under those influences, that's not when you want to write down the rocket formula, right? So, so in this, um, I would say there could be a day where we find out that these neuro synapses are your analytic center and this is where your math center is, and this is where your artistic center is, and I want to be a better artist, well stimulate that or rebuild this.

• 45:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I s- I don't see anything in principle from standing in the way of that ultimately being discovered one day. Unless intelligence is so complex, so, is so distributed in all the neuro synapses that it's hard to just point to it.

• 45:32Chuck Nice?

  We can't, can't locate.

• 45:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Locate.

• 45:34Chuck Nice?

  Localize it.

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Localize it. It could be something much more intricate than how I'm making it sound at this moment. But sure, you'd want it, you'd want that to happen.

• 45:44Chuck Nice?

  And then there's also.

• 45:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can become better shepherds of our own fate.

• 45:46Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, there's also the integration of technology into the human brain that may be the next evolution of who we become.

• 45:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or, why do you have to put it in the brain? Just leave it out here.

• 45:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? No, no, you ain't cutting open my brain.

• 45:59Chuck Nice?

  That's right, you're right. Stop messing with my brain. Stay on the phone, damn it.

• 46:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People say on the phone. People say, "One day, we'll plug the USB into your neck." And I'm saying, "This is kinda already that."

• 46:08Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 46:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's not plugged into my neck.

• 46:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And get knowledge from the world.

• 46:13Chuck Nice?

  Right, here, right here in the palm of your hand.

• 46:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Leave my neck alone.

• 46:17Chuck Nice?

  One last question from, uh, Yasha, uh, Vanta, Yashavanta, uh, who says, "Hey, Dr. Tyson, I'm from India. Please, will you run for president?" From India?

• 46:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know.

• 46:34Chuck Nice?

  I mean, I'm pretty sure he means here. But that'd be pretty funny. It's just like, "Will you run for president of India?"

• 46:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a he or a she?

• 46:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, uh, I don't know.

• 46:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The first name?

• 46:43Chuck Nice?

  Yashavanta.

• 46:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yashavanta?

• 46:45Chuck Nice?

  Yashavanta.

• 46:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The thas, I think, are female. I don't know.

• 46:47Chuck Nice?

  I don't know.

• 46:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but, so, uh, no, I actually, on my website, I have, uh, I was asked by the, I was asked by the New York Times, back when Congress was at an impasse, and they said, "Let's ask people who are not politicians if they have solutions to this." Clearly, the politicians don't.

• 47:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 47:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they asked like a musician, and this, and I asked, I'm like the scientist they asked. And I, and so, the question is, "What would you do if you were president?" And my answer was, and is, and still is, posted on my website, not my Facebook page, I actually have a website. That's how old fashioned I am. It said, "What, if I were president, this is what things would be." And in there, it says, "If I were president, I would not be president."

• 47:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have, I don't have interest in leading people. My interest as an educator, and especially as a scientist, is educating people.

• 47:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that they can make as an informed decision as they can, when they elect who they want to represent them.

• 47:45Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 47:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you just went around swapping leaders back and forth, you haven't solved the electorate problem.

• 47:50Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 47:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 47:51Chuck Nice?

  So the real problem with America is we are too dumb to pick good leaders.

• 47:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, well, no, it's, no, no.

• 47:58Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 47:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me say it differently, okay? The problem is, if we have dis, if we have dysfunctional politicians.

• 48:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's because we have a dysfunctional electorate.

• 48:11Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 48:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the electorate puts them in office.

• 48:13Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you say, "I hate this guy," then vote him out.

• 48:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? You vote for these people in a democracy, in India, the world's largest democracy. All right?

• 48:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 48:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can control this stuff. It's not some king brought down from the ages where you can't get rid of him. And in the old days, the only way they got rid of him was how?

• 48:31Chuck Nice?

  Off with your head.

• 48:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Off with your head, okay? Uh, so, so, so I'm just saying, I would rather, I would rather disseminate knowledge, wisdom, and insight to all who I can, so that when they make their political decision, whoever they vote for, it's as informed a decision as they possibly can make.

• 48:53Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that is good, good stuff. Uh, we are out of time and, and, and hey, Joel and, uh, Gabriel and Ali and, uh, Nimral and...

• 49:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I must have known that we couldn't have gotten all the questions.

• 49:06Chuck Nice?

  Leonard and Carol and Josh, and you guys have some great questions, but they're very involved and, you know, I'm sure that...

• 49:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This was live, and so, sorry to bust into your day this way.

• 49:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um...

• 49:16Chuck Nice?

  But you know what? We're gonna get all this stuff on a regular StarTalk, because this, we're gonna keep these questions.

• 49:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And those questions.

• 49:22Chuck Nice?

  We're gonna keep this, we're gonna keep those questions.

• 49:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do a whole StarTalk.

• 49:25Chuck Nice?

  We'll do a StarTalk just off the questions that you guys have here. That's great for new cosmic queries. And of course, everything that we do can be found, uh, commercial-free, along with, um, exclusive, original content on StarTalkAllAccess.com.

• 49:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for listening to StarTalk Radio. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Many thanks to our comedian, our guest, our experts, and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.