Apollo and the Future of Humans in Space

Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice celebrate the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 by answering fan-submitted questions on the famous Moon landing and the future of space exploration. Also featuring a conversation with Alyssa Carson, the world’s youngest astronaut in training. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/apollo-and-the-future-of-humans-in-space/ Photo Credit: NASA.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, and I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. As always, you're a personal astrophysicist. And today is a Cosmic Queries special space edition. All space. Why? This is the 50th anniversary year of Apollo 11 launching from Earth and landing on the moon and returning safely to Earth. Not only that, we want to look at the future of space exploration. And I have a lot of expertise in that category, so it's just me in this episode. But I don't do this alone without a co-host. I got Chuck Nice. Chuck?

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Neil.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you do this with me? Can you hang with me?

• 1:03Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I got, you know, I've been, I got this. Normally, we have another expert, but I got this all on my own, I think.

• 1:11Chuck Nice?

  You are the expert on space.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think.

• 1:13Chuck Nice?

  Right. I'm the expert on space and out. So we good.

• 1:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're good. Totally good.

• 1:19Chuck Nice?

  Totally good.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So what do you have?

• 1:21Chuck Nice?

  Well, we have questions, as we always do.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Solicited from our...

• 1:25Chuck Nice?

  That we have gleaned from the internet.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fanbase.

• 1:27Chuck Nice?

  And our very many incarnations. And we always start with a Patreon patron because they give us money. That's right. Would you like to give us some money? You could give us some money. Read your question.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't have to give money to get your question asked. They just get their questions asked first.

• 1:48Chuck Nice?

  First.

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:49Chuck Nice?

  Priority, as we say. All right. So this is a...

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, let me just, as introduction to this.

• 1:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just as introduction.

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  Just as an introduction.

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've written two books on space as an exploratory endeavor, as distinct from astrophysics.

• 2:04Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, you've written more than two books on space.

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, yes. I'm talking about going to space.

• 2:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've got two books on that.

• 2:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So one of them...

• 2:11Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 2:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this one.

• 2:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Space Chronicles.

• 2:15Chuck Nice?

  Space Chronicles.

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Facing.

• 2:16Chuck Nice?

  Facing the ultimate frontier.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Frontier. It's now in paperback and it's more affordable than the hardcover. I just a quick story about this.

• 2:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is not the title that I submitted the manuscript with.

• 2:26Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 2:27Chuck Nice?

  Now, are you sure you wrote this book?

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I told you. A different book came out the other side.

• 2:32Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The title was, the title was Failure to Launch.

• 2:37Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Dreams and Delusions of Space Enthusiasts.

• 2:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, so encouraging.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So encouraging. You can't have a book with the word failure in it.

• 2:49Chuck Nice?

  In it.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they got all upset and they had meetings after meetings after meetings. And they came up with, I said, fine. So I said, Space Chronicles Facing the Ultimate Frontier. But this is an indictment of everyone who says, oh, yeah, we got to the moon in 1969. We should be in Mars by 1985.

• 3:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how come we're not? It's because we need, we need charisma. And there's a lot of misinformation and delusional thinking out there. This book is a full exploration of that.

• 3:18Chuck Nice?

  Of, of the fact that we have yet to progress beyond.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are reasons for that.

• 3:24Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are reasons. And the reasons people give, they're not the reasons. They think they're the reasons, they're not the reason. It's all in here.

• 3:30Chuck Nice?

  Well, what, okay, good.

• 3:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 3:32Chuck Nice?

  Well, give it a book. He's like, go buy it.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is every.

• 3:35Chuck Nice?

  You really are a good marketer. I'm like, let me see. You're like, no.

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is every thought I've ever had about our past, present, and future in space. Well, there are reasons. And it's not because we, we need another Kennedy to give a stirring speech. No, we were at war with the Russians.

• 3:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and, you know, they're the godless communists.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they had beaten us in practically every metric.

• 4:00Chuck Nice?

  They were winning.

• 4:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They were, thank you. Okay. They invented the rocket equation.

• 4:04Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. That was a hundred and something years ago. Rocket equation, that tells you how much fuel to put in your rocket to put a payload into some destination.

• 4:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know why that matters? Because the fuel you're burning. Has to lift the weight of the fuel you have.

• 4:19Chuck Nice?

  You need to get back.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of all the other fuel you have yet to burn.

• 4:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, every increment of poundage in your payload has tremendous consequences to how much extra fuel you have to carry. That's why the Saturn V rocket is mostly fuel.

• 4:38Chuck Nice?

  So, all the stages.

• 4:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the states, all fuel.

• 4:41Chuck Nice?

  It's all fuel.

• 4:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Astronauts in the little bitty section up at the top.

• 4:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, the little bitty section. So, that's the rocket equation manifest. A Russian came up with the rocket equation. The Russians had the first satellite named.

• 4:53Chuck Nice?

  Moose and squirrel.

• 4:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I forgot about. Rocky and Bullwinkle.

• 4:59Chuck Nice?

  No, Sputnik.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Boris and, and what's the.

• 5:02Chuck Nice?

  Boris and Natasha.

• 5:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Natasha.

• 5:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so Sputnik.

• 5:05Chuck Nice?

  Sputnik. Sputnik.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so it said the first satellite, they had the first non-human mammal that was a dog.

• 5:12Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 5:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laika.

• 5:14Chuck Nice?

  Right, I didn't know the dog's name was Laika.

• 5:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't know the dog's name?

• 5:16Chuck Nice?

  No, I didn't.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Whose show were you on?

• 5:18Chuck Nice?

  I did not know the dog's name was Laika.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and they had no plans to bring Laika back alive. Why you laughing?

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  I'm so sorry.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not funny.

• 5:26Chuck Nice?

  It just seems so cruel, like, you know.

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No plans.

• 5:29Chuck Nice?

  It's like man's best friend is just like, good boy.

• 5:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I think Laika might have been a girl dog instead of a boy dog. It might have been, I don't remember. So anyhow, so, so people got all upset about that and I thought about it and I said, you know, okay, that's, that's really bad that they didn't bring Laika back alive. They knew Laika would not survive that, that wasn't the point of the experiment. But, I thought to myself, what was Laika before this?

• 5:55Chuck Nice?

  Alive. I'm gonna go with alive.

• 5:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, alive, but as I was, heard the story, wandering the streets of Moscow, homeless, stray dog, gets plucked from the streets of Moscow.

• 6:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And becomes as famous as Lassie overnight.

• 6:14Chuck Nice?

  But she had to die to do it.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm saying, sometimes to get famous, people die.

• 6:19Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if I had a choice of be dying homeless in the streets of Moscow, or dying being the first mammal in orbit and be remembered forever, except you didn't know the dog's name.

• 6:33Chuck Nice?

  It's better to burn out than to fade away, so Lika, Lika actually made a mark.

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be Neil Young of you.

• 6:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 6:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasn't that, that's one of his, lines in one of his songs.

• 6:41Chuck Nice?

  I feel, I believe it is.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:45Chuck Nice?

  I don't think it went like that.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So anyhow, so they got the first non-human, they, they had the first human, they had the first spaceship, uh, um, station.

• 6:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They had the first female, they had the first, um, they had the first black person in space.

• 7:03Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 7:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. It was, it was a Cuban, you know, a Cuban.

• 7:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A dark-skinned Cuban, but he went up on the, on the Russian spacecraft. So they did all of this. And we said, then we land on the moon and say, we win.

• 7:16Chuck Nice?

  Because we did.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we redefined the, the finish line.

• 7:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And said, we win.

• 7:24Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how that went down.

• 7:26Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so now if then, then we realized they're not really going to the moon and they, they couldn't do it. And so we just abandoned the whole thing. That, you know, that's it. We stopped going to the moon, 1972. And people say, oh, we just need a politician with charisma and political will. I ain't got nothing to do with that. It's we felt threatened.

• 7:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when you feel threatened, money flows like rivers.

• 7:47Chuck Nice?

  And it's so funny because in that speech, you talked about stirring speeches. In that speech, uh, JFK actually talked very much about money.

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but Annie, well, he had two big speeches, one to the joint session of Congress.

• 7:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have to show off now, April 25th, 1961.

• 8:01Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 8:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Six weeks after Yuri Gagarin had just come back from orbit alive.

• 8:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We didn't have a spaceship that could not blow up with carrying people yet. That's when Kennedy said, we'll put him on a moon, return him safely to earth. And that's, and we said, oh yeah, let's do it. You know what he said two paragraphs before that in that same speech?

• 8:20Chuck Nice?

  No, go ahead.

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If the events of recent weeks, he couldn't even utter the man's name.

• 8:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Couldn't, the events.

• 8:26Chuck Nice?

  Yuri Voldemort.

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If the events of recent weeks are any indication of the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, we need to show the path of freedom over the path of tyranny.

• 8:42Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The battle cry against communism.

• 8:44Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 8:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what that was. And then the money flowed like rivers.

• 8:48Chuck Nice?

  That's all you need to do is just, that's it. Bring up communism or socialism.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the "I don't want to die" driver. That's all I'm saying.

• 8:57Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Alright.

• 8:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's give, give me some.

• 9:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here we go.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  That was good, that was good stuff. Okay.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got more, but I'll save it.

• 9:04Chuck Nice?

  I save it, but that's good stuff.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Save for the next two segments.

• 9:07Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so this is Mateo Moon Slave. Oh, I'm sorry. Mateo Mansalde.

• 9:15Chuck Nice?

  It looked like Moon Slave for a second. I'm sorry.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mateo Mansalde.

• 9:20Chuck Nice?

  Mansalde.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:21Chuck Nice?

  And our Patreon patron who says this. "If we consider that the technology used in Apollo 11 is less than what our smartphones have now."

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The computer power.

• 9:32Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 9:33Chuck Nice?

  "Would not this mean that the price and facilities to reach the moon is within our reach at this time with no problem? If so, why has it cost so much to return?" In a way, I see what he's saying. It's like, if, if the power in the palm of our hands was the same computing power that sent Apollo 11, and they landed, why aren't we all just sending stuff to the moon ourselves right now?

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a great question. That's a great question. Because the cost of the computing power that was on Apollo 11 was small relative to the cost of the actual power of the rocket engines and everything else that went into the design, construction, and safety measures. So, if most of the cost of that mission was in fact computing costs, we can say, yeah, let's go this afternoon. I'll meet you on Klavius.

• 10:29Chuck Nice?

  What are you doing, right?

• 10:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a restaurant right on the corner.

• 10:33Chuck Nice?

  Meet me at the Big Crater.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Big Crater Restaurant.

• 10:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have good food on, on the moon, but they would have no atmosphere. What? Aren't I allowed? Can you allow me?

• 10:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got it. It was well placed. Okay, thank you. Thank you. This was astrophysic humor. So, so that's not the price that needed to drop. Gotcha. That's all. Well, that makes sense. It is true that we, you know, computing powers. So, in other words, the computing power didn't play as much of a role. Not in the cost. Not in the cost. Of getting, you have to build the thing. Right. You had to, you know, the vehicle assembly building. Uh, you know, all the, the infrastructure. Right. That, and this is, this is a big gap, I think, in our modern thinking of what civilization is and what it has become. We're all anticipating the next app. Okay? Right. We all love our next app. Everybody loves an app. But where, where are the inventions that give us transportation systems?

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Housing, climate control, um, uh, uh, energy? These things are not solved by just awaiting the next app. This is true. They require infrastructure, often government. That's what I was about to say. They require government political will. Yep, yes, exactly. And if, without that, you just fade relative to everybody else. I was in China. I was about to say. I was in Shanghai. You just explained why we are losing to China. I was in Shanghai. Yeah. In the airport. Right. Okay? And there's a sign up there. I took a picture of it. There's a sign, and it says, okay, men's room this way. Okay, it's in Chinese, but then there's a thing. Men's room this way, boutique shopping this way, maglev that way. The maglev. Okay. The magnetic train.

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The magnetically levitated train to get you, that's from the airport back into Shanghai. Cool. Okay, going hundreds of miles an hour, not touching the track itself. And I'm thinking, they're just so casual about it. You can choose to go to the bathroom or on the maglev. And I'm looking here, just bowing at the maglev, because that's something we've only ever dreamt of here.

• 12:36Chuck Nice?

  It's over, people.

• 12:39Chuck Nice?

  Game over, people.

• 12:42Chuck Nice?

  Maglev next to a bathroom sign, that's the end. That's end game, right there. That's end game, man. I always wanted to get robbed in Shanghai.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright. That became a verb to get Shanghai.

• 12:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. That's why I wanted to get robbed in Shanghai, so I could say I was Shanghai. Okay, here we go. Uh, let's go to Andy Bracken from Facebook, who says, "What lessons from going to the moon can we apply to putting people on Mars?" Looking forward, this young man is.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a big difference between land on moon and landing on Mars, other than distance.

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  Well, true.

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that is, the moon, as I described in the restaurants there, has no atmosphere. So, it means you can't exploit the friction between your craft and the air to slow you down.

• 13:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To slow you down.

• 13:34Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you have to bring fuel with you to fire in a retro way.

• 13:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, fire the retro rockets!

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fire the retro rockets, so that you slow down and have a soft landing.

• 13:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, and whereas Mars, though the atmosphere be thin, it's like 1% the thickness of our own atmosphere, which is why that scene in the movie The Martian, where they're in the space and they're trying to launch, and there's a windstorm that kicks up.

• 14:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, they're rocked around.

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rocking the thing, and it'll be like, it'll be like, it'll be like,

• 14:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "Oh my god, that's refreshing." It'd be like someone just blowing gentle air on you.

• 14:09Chuck Nice?

  "Is that a Martian breeze? Oh my. Does anyone have any Sarsaparilla?"

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I got all up-

• 14:14Chuck Nice?

  "I would love to take advantage of this Martian breeze."

• 14:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I go, oh, he's the author of it. He's got engineering background, turned novelist, got all up in his face. I said, "What are you doing, dude?" And he said, "Well, he needed some ruse to make, you know, just to, to give the excuse to launch."

• 14:28Chuck Nice?

  Well, what else could he have used?

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I don't know. I gave it to him, because everything else was good.

• 14:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay, alright.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, he handed me a very high compliment. He said when he's calculating all the other stuff in the movie,

• 14:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in his story, he, imagine I was looking over his shoulder.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he's saying, will New York tweet about this if I publish this?

• 14:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god, he turns you into like a cosmic boogeyman.

• 14:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Boogeyman, exactly. Some lurch over his shoulder.

• 14:51Chuck Nice?

  That's

• 14:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was a high compliment.

• 14:53Chuck Nice?

  That's a very high compliment.

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little creepy, a little creepy.

• 14:55Chuck Nice?

  No, but that's very cool, actually.

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He didn't want to make, he didn't want to tweet about his ass afterwards.

• 14:59Chuck Nice?

  I wish more people did that in movies.

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's one thing, you'd have to bring extra fuel to land on the moon relative to landing on Mars. That's all, because you need fuel to land, otherwise you just use air braking and parachutes and this sort of thing.

• 15:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's one important thing you learn. Another thing is both of them are far away from Earth and you're not near any plant life or uh, you probably don't have a factory yet. So you have to figure out how to live on your own. Not, instead of living off the land, because there's no, that doesn't exist.

• 15:29Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The settlers, the early settlers, they live off the land.

• 15:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, plus from Europe, they came here, there were people to greet them.

• 15:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they breathe the same air as they did for long.

• 15:41Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good, that was good.

• 15:43Chuck Nice?

  Not for long.

• 15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Took a couple of centuries, but yeah, we did a number on the air. So, so, and if the ship broke, the, the trees in the new world were made of wood, like the old trees.

• 15:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the old, in the mother country, so, so it's not entirely analogous to say the pilgrims of tomorrow will be the settlers of Mars. It's not really the right way to think about it.

• 16:04Chuck Nice?

  Makes sense, yeah. It's gonna take a heck of a lot more to settle Mars.

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gonna take a heck of a lot more, so you'd have to, in both places, you'd have to set up factories to extract mineral resources or natural resources. You'd have to set up hab modules, unless you terraform them in advance. Hab modules so that you can breathe the air without always having on a spacesuit. So you'd have to do the same in both places. So to learn something, no. Although you can test a lot of things out on the moon, which is much closer, three days away, instead of nine months. So, I, I, so I'm a fan of going back to the moon just to get our mojo back.

• 16:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, without that, you go to Mars and something goes wrong, I will, will save you in nine months. Right, that's how that.

• 16:46Chuck Nice?

  In other words, it was nice knowing. That's how the NASA mission control.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, guys, you had a good run. All right, next question.

• 16:58Chuck Nice?

  All right, next question. Here we go. This is James Thompson from Twitter. He says, "Would it be going against scientific principle to have a flat-Earther come along for the ride on a future mission if for nothing else but to squash the notion that the Earth is flat being a myth?"

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so I would say on the very first mission,

• 17:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the one where you have like enough capacity to take like a busload of people.

• 17:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gather all the world's flat-Earthers and stick them on that first.

• 17:32Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you say yes?

• 17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. Just send them all and then, yeah, just put them all in orbit. They'll shut them up forever.

• 17:39Chuck Nice?

  But here's the real question.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 17:41Chuck Nice?

  Do you bring them back?

• 17:44Chuck Nice?

  See, that's the question. I'm all about putting them up there. I'm just saying.

• 17:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry, Houston.

• 17:51Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We run out of money to bring you back.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm an educator, so I try to, I'll do whatever I can in order to get someone to understand objective truths in the world. And what do I do? I get one of them who they elect to be their representative. And you give them a free ride. I don't have a problem with that.

• 18:12Chuck Nice?

  All right. That's kind of cool.

• 18:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a quick break?

• 18:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, it is the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 and humans' future in space when StarTalk returns.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, walking on the moon. Michael Collins, not walking on the moon. If you go on the moon, just say, "Okay, you guys go down, go down to the playground. I'll wait for you."

• 19:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, yes.

• 19:13Chuck Nice?

  I want, no, I'm there by myself. I'm trying to figure out like if, um, how they got to choose.

• 19:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Choose, right, right, no, that's a complicated thing.

• 19:22Chuck Nice?

  That's it, I mean, because that's a-

• 19:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a complicated algorithm. Yeah, so we can talk about the 50th anniversary of Apollo, plus our future in space. We solicited questions. This is Cosmic Queries. And I'm the in-house expert for this.

• 19:33Chuck Nice?

  There you are.

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, I had a second book on space. So, uh, this is my second book, but it came out last year. Uh, it came in 2000, um, uh, no, yeah, 2018. Uh, "Accessory to War."

• 19:44Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military."

• 19:49Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we all know-

• 19:51Chuck Nice?

  Pretty much, there is no military without astrophysics.

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there is, there is no history on any of that.

• 19:55Chuck Nice?

  You guys don't get to, they don't get to do anything without you guys.

• 19:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, basically.

• 19:59Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's unspoken because you think we're just on mountain tops waiting for the photons of light to come from stars to grace our detectors. And that is most of what we do. However, we have a lot of common thematic overlap. Things we care about, the military also cares about. Like detecting dim things that are moving in the sky.

• 20:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like multi-spectral imaging-

• 20:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of things that might otherwise be hard to detect.

• 20:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 20:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the timings, precision timing of phenomenon in the universe. So, so, in fact, this, uh, sextant right behind you, just reach up and grab it, pull it down.

• 20:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get it? It's an authentic sextant from centuries past. So, so Chuck, you're a young tyke here. So, this is an early GPS. People figured out where the hell on earth they were with a sextant. There's an authentic sextant which has got the filters because you can use it in the daytime with the sun.

• 20:56Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 20:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Solar filters. But anyhow, my point is, time, location, coordinates, monitoring things in the sky.

• 21:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That for us, they're harmless unless it's an asteroid, but for the military could be lethal.

• 21:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is an entire exploration of that. And this is for, this is basically astrophysics if you're not in a hurry.

• 21:18Chuck Nice?

  Right, so a little bit more.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, a little bit more.

• 21:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you need a little more.

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little bit more. And so, I have a co-author, Avic Lang, longtime editor of mine from Natural History Magazine. I couldn't finish this in any sense. I figured it would take me several life expectancies to finish this.

• 21:34Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 21:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I needed a co-author, so a very hard-working co-author, Avic Lang.

• 21:37Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's very magnanimous of you, because I would have been like, I wrote this book.

• 21:43Chuck Nice?

  That's the end of it.

• 21:45Chuck Nice?

  But it says, y'all know what it says? All right, here we go, here we go. John Laird from Twitter wants to know this. How do you see humanity dealing with the concept of ownership in space? An American flag sits on the moon, but we came in peace for all mankind. What happens when US astronauts and Chinese taikonauts land at the same spot with potentially, here's the real point, highly valuable assets? See, there is nothing on the moon worth anything.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, there is actually. There is helium 3.

• 22:19Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, this is an isotope of helium, which is a key ingredient in thermonuclear fusion.

• 22:26Chuck Nice?

  Correct. It's what's created when, in fusion, in the sun. Well, our sun.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, sun does that in every moment of its life.

• 22:33Chuck Nice?

  It pushes out helium, right?

• 22:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, helium is a byproduct of it, but you need helium 3 as an intermediate product before you get helium 4. And helium 4 is the final byproduct.

• 22:42Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, so, and helium 3, our particles that come from the sun, get lodged in the... In the, the quote soils of the moon. So you need some factory device, some plowing device to sift through.

• 22:56Chuck Nice?

  So you could actually, you could mine the moon for helium three.

• 23:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wouldn't be mining, you'd be bulldozing.

• 23:02Chuck Nice?

  Bulldozing. What do they call it? Uh, what do they do? Strip mining. Where you're gonna shave off the top of mountains?

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shave down the mountain. Shave down the mountain. First it is a mountain, then it is no mountain.

• 23:13Chuck Nice?

  How did that moon end up completely smooth?

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A cue ball.

• 23:18Chuck Nice?

  What happened, Craig? Once again, we see the effects of humankind. Like, the moon, a cue ball. But go ahead. So, anyway. But, his point being, if there's a highly valuable asset.

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So watch. So, um, I don't have a good answer to this. But I can tell you that if humans go into space in a big way, it's not just the astronauts and engineers participating. It's the artists who want new vistas. It's the lawyers who have new frontiers of legal precedent. Alright, if, if, let's say you meet an intelligent alien and kill it, is that murder? Well, our laws don't talk about space aliens, okay? So, if you, what do you?

• 24:02Chuck Nice?

  It's not murder.

• 24:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it's an alien.

• 24:05Chuck Nice?

  If it's an alien.

• 24:09Chuck Nice?

  I couldn't.

• 24:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 24:10Chuck Nice?

  But go ahead.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so there's an entire legal frontier. And we've already made some inroads in that. I think something that was successful in the United States was homesteading. In homesteading, if you have enough money, time, and resources to go to some unquote developed spot. And cultivate the land and turn it into some crop or whatever, then you keep the land.

• 24:35Chuck Nice?

  You got to keep it.

• 24:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got to keep it.

• 24:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let's not talk about the surface of the moon, let's talk about an asteroid.

• 24:39Chuck Nice?

  I was about to say.

• 24:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which we know has natural resources.

• 24:41Chuck Nice?

  Lots of it, too.

• 24:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we got a zillion asteroids.

• 24:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna launch a mission to an asteroid. And it's got these minerals, I go there, it's my asteroid.

• 24:48Chuck Nice?

  So who does that first? A government or a, or a private person? A private company? Who gets there first?

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Generally, governments do expensive things that have no return first. And then when you figure out how to make a buck on it, then private enterprise comes afterwards. That's why the first Europeans to the New World. We're not the Dutch East India Trading Company. It was Columbus.

• 25:10Chuck Nice?

  Right, who was sent.

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sent by a country, by Spain. Not even by Italy, which was busy doing other things.

• 25:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Italy should have been his thing. But it wasn't, it was Spain. So that gets me angry. On a Columbus Day?

• 25:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, with Columbus Day parades? Who comes out for the Columbus Day parades?

• 25:26Chuck Nice?

  A bunch of Italians.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Italian, Italian Americans.

• 25:28Chuck Nice?

  It should be Spaniards.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It should be the Spaniards!

• 25:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm like climbing the flagpole saying, "Go home! You didn't pay for this man's voyage! You had nothing to do with his voyage! Sit your ass back down and let the Spaniards cheer this man!" And then, how do we know that that mattered? Because Queen Isabella, King Ferdinand said, "Here's a satchel of Spanish flags."

• 25:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "Take them and put them wherever you find land."

• 25:54Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's why most of the New World speak Spanish and not Italian.

• 26:01Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you have it.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know who speaks Italian in the world?

• 26:04Chuck Nice?

  Italians.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Italians! Italians, Turchina? I think.

• 26:09Chuck Nice?

  I don't know what Turchina is.

• 26:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's part of the issue here, okay? And Vatican City.

• 26:14Chuck Nice?

  Vatican City, right.

• 26:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And maybe one other place in the world, Italian is one of the multiple official languages. That's it. And we cannot list how many places speak Spanish. It's because Queen Isabella said, "We're going around the world and we're gonna get people who do this, and they're gonna carry flags with them."

• 26:31Chuck Nice?

  So in space.

• 26:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the exploration attitude that they had.

• 26:35Chuck Nice?

  Right. So when you're in space.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, it's not always good for who gets explored, right?

• 26:40Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you explore a place where no one is there, fine, but when people are there to greet you, and then you plant a flag saying, "The Queen now owns this."

• 26:48Chuck Nice?

  It's like, "Wait a minute, man, I'm already here."

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm already here.

• 26:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you didn't discover nothing.

• 26:51Chuck Nice?

  How did you plant a flag in my bedroom?

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me try to kick your ass, although you can't, because now they got bigger guns and bigger everything.

• 27:01Chuck Nice?

  That reminds me of, very quickly, I once found $20 in a couch cushion in my home as a kid. And I went and I held it up and I said, "Dad, I found $20." He said, "Give me that." You can't find in my house.

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good.

• 27:20Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was not some treasure hunt.

• 27:24Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of uncharted land?

• 27:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:28Chuck Nice?

  So, yeah, okay.

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so the question was, wow, so homesteading is a model that has worked.

• 27:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think the, the best plan there is not to imagine China going to the same asteroid we go and plant the flag and then we fight about it. I think the best plan is to come to peace on Earth before this exercise begins.

• 27:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's a good one.

• 27:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then we see this exploration as something that is a sort of an Earth activity.

• 27:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the service of the future of the Earth, not for the betterment of one nation relative to others. Boy, I sounded very kumbaya.

• 28:03Chuck Nice?

  That really did, I like it. Yes. I, I actually am.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think I still had that in me.

• 28:07Chuck Nice?

  I'm, I'm all about it, man. That, that's beautiful. That's, that was very Gene Roddenberry. I like it.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 28:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. All right.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek.

• 28:17Chuck Nice?

  Yes. I should have, just for the non-geeks out there. Okay, so, um, here we go. Matt Quick wants to know this.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Matt Quick?

• 28:28Chuck Nice?

  Matt Quick. Good name.

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:30Chuck Nice?

  Matt Quick.

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Know what quick means in the Bible?

• 28:33Chuck Nice?

  Alive.

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it just means alive. That's right.

• 28:35Chuck Nice?

  The quick and the dead.

• 28:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just the, the alive and the dead.

• 28:39Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yeah.

• 28:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in the Old West, it was, you know, can you shoot fast? And if you can't, you get shot and you're dead.

• 28:45Chuck Nice?

  Well, if you were quick, you were alive. And if you weren't, you were dead.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has the same. It's the same.

• 28:56Chuck Nice?

  That's funny. All right, here we go. We know the first destination of humans off-planet was the moon, and we know the next is likely Mars. But after we've landed on Mars, where would you like to see humans set foot next? Interesting question.

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's an old quote from the space community?

• 29:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 29:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If God wanted us to have a space program, he would have given us a moon.

• 29:20Chuck Nice?

  That's crazy. That's a good one.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good one.

• 29:24Chuck Nice?

  That's a good one. I like that saying.

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, there it is.

• 29:27Chuck Nice?

  There, there you have it.

• 29:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you have it. So, I, I'm not into sequencing destinations.

• 29:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a, a more unorthodox perspective. I wanna have a suite of launch vehicles that can take me anywhere I want, whatever my needs happen to be.

• 29:41Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wanna go mine asteroids, that's a certain combination of rockets.

• 29:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wanna look for life, you're a scientist, you wanna look for life on Mars, different combination. You wanna have a tourist jaunt on the moon, that's a different combination. You wanna sail the back of a comet, that's a different combination. You wanna visit, uh, no, you don't wanna visit Venus, um, it's 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

• 30:03Chuck Nice?

  Sweet. You, I don't have to cook anything.

• 30:09Chuck Nice?

  Great.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just put it out on the windowsill.

• 30:11Chuck Nice?

  Pull a chicken out my pocket, mm, lunch.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just consider that you get cooked at the same rate the chicken does.

• 30:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, damn.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's part of the problem.

• 30:19Chuck Nice?

  That's ugly.

• 30:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, uh, so there aren't that many nearby destinations with a surface upon which to walk.

• 30:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Mars, the moon and Mars are kinda it nearby, and Mercury's too hot, and...

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  Well, how about, how about a moon of another planet?

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some of the moons of the other planet would be the, that's where I would go next.

• 30:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need a little more life support, but definitely, definitely. Or, maybe the goal is not to land and walk around on a surface, maybe it's to hang out in space itself. One of the things we learned is we know how to build stuff in space.

• 30:49Chuck Nice?

  Right. We have a space station.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that sitting on a surface or anything? No.

• 30:53Chuck Nice?

  We have the ISS, there was Mir before that.

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, Mir, the Russian one, which, um, and so, so maybe we're not looking for surface, we're looking for habitats that are free-floating in space.

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, I like that idea. That's kinda cool, actually.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why not? Yeah. Who need, who needs a planetary surface?

• 31:08Chuck Nice?

  And plus, we had the twin brother who just spent a year in space, we know it can be done.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know that what can be done? Well, spend that much time in space.

• 31:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's my guy's name, um?

• 31:16Chuck Nice?

  I forgot his name. What's his name? Scott?

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, Scott Kelly.

• 31:19Chuck Nice?

  Scott Kelly?

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The handsome of the two went into space. That's what he told me.

• 31:23Chuck Nice?

  That is messed up.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're twins, right?

• 31:27Chuck Nice?

  It's funny, I have a, I have a friend...

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm, I'm the bald handsome one. That's not the bald.

• 31:30Chuck Nice?

  I have a friend, I have a friend, Brian Scott McFadden, he's a comedian, he does a joke and he says, um, "I have a twin brother, but my parents said they love him more."

• 31:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so great. All right, here we go. Ooh, look at this. Hash Factory wants to know this.

• 31:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's her name?

• 31:47Chuck Nice?

  Hash Factory from YouTube.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hash Factory? Like Hashish?

• 31:50Chuck Nice?

  Like Hashish, maybe. Okay. Exactly. Now I'm thinking about Hashish.

• 31:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now I'm wondering what was Elon.

• 31:58Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  While the question came out, what's the question?

• 32:01Chuck Nice?

  ArrowGreen426 from YouTube says, "What do you think changed our society when we landed on the moon? Psychologically, what did it do to us?" That's a great question.

• 32:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My answer will come in a moment. We take this final break of our three-part StarTalk Cosmic Queries on our future in space when we return.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Unlocking the secrets of your world and everything orbiting around it. This is StarTalk.

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk, we're back. Chuck Nice.

• 32:55Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tweeting at ChuckNiceConic.

• 32:57Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, sir, yes.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good, I follow you.

• 32:59Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I follow you too.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't follow that many people.

• 33:01Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So keep it going.

• 33:02Chuck Nice?

  I am honored.

• 33:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good.

• 33:04Chuck Nice?

  I am honored.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we're talking about the 50th anniversary of Apollo. We're talking about the future of space exploration. And we figured this show would not be complete.

• 33:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without a one-on-one exclusive interview with Alyssa Carson.

• 33:19Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 33:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know Alyssa Carson?

• 33:21Chuck Nice?

  She is the future.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She is, it's not just thinking about, she is the future.

• 33:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 33:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eighteen-year-old.

• 33:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who everybody thinks is gonna be the first next person to walk on Mars.

• 33:33Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 33:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, do we get Alyssa online? Alyssa? Hello? Thank you for Skyping in. You're in Germany right now?

• 33:41Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm currently in Berlin. So, kind of been traveling during the summer.

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And where do you call home?

• 33:49Speaker 03

  Uh, home is Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Baton Rouge. Soon Florida, kind of all over the place right now with transitioning to college and all, so bit of a mess.

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, okay, you're just graduating high school. Ooh. So, I got on you here, so, so you're starting college soon. What will you be studying?

• 34:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I am planning on studying astrobiology.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beautiful.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  And with that, it's super similar to astrophysics, just a bit of a mix of all different sciences. Um, and super excited to be doing that and definitely exciting to just kind of get out like that high school phase and actually have like space-related classes and lectures. So, I'm really looking forward to that.

• 34:28Chuck Nice?

  Isn't astrobiology harder than astrophysics?

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that should figure that out. Even if it's harder, does it matter to her? She wants to take, let the woman take what she wants.

• 34:41Chuck Nice?

  I'm just teasing Neil. I'm teasing Neil a little, so that's all.

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you are, you're not thinking about the moon. We're about to have a 50th anniversary of the moon landing, and you ain't even that. You're like the self-proclaimed Mars generation. Tell us what, old fogies, what that is?

• 35:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, definitely, you know, definitely with the 50th happening and all right now, uh, it's super great to be looking at everything that we've accomplished so far, uh, within the space program. And I definitely think, you know, depending on, you know, what our ideas are, you know, we may, may, may go back to the moon, it has kind of the idea. Um, but I think going back to the moon will kind of start possibly rolling on to Mars. Um, but I think if we are going back to the moon, it should be kind of... In the very soon future, whereas Mars, we still have, you know, several years in getting there, but I definitely think that this generation, in terms of the Mars generation, this generation is the people who will be either working towards a mission to Mars,

• 35:45Speaker 03

  witnessing a mission on Mars, or being part of that mission on Mars, because we will actually see first-person set foot on Mars, and that's the goal that we're reaching for.

• 35:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you were, I have in our notes here, you were one of the ambassadors for the Mars One plan. We had the founder of Mars One on StarTalk, and what was your role in that whole exercise?

• 36:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Mars One was based out of the Netherlands, and they also had their idea of wanting to go to Mars. They had the idea of colonizing Mars. So, we had met with them, actually, in the Netherlands, and, you know, I eventually became an ambassador, because at the time, when we went over there, you know, I was super big, especially in just promoting the idea of going to Mars in general, because, you know, it was kind of an idea, but a lot of the general public didn't really have that idea that we were planning on going to Mars, that there was an idea of going to Mars. And so, I think that was a huge part of it, helping them advocate for their mission, also helping advocate for going to Mars in general, and starting to open up the idea of possibly colonizing Mars in the future.

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you left out the part where you go to Mars and don't come back. You left that out of that explanation. So, would you have considered going to Mars on a one-way trip? Because that's part of what Mars One meant, wasn't it?

• 37:06Speaker 03

  Right, right, yeah. Definitely, the idea of Mars One was, you know, a one-way trip, because they wanted that colonizing, you know, you go, you live there, you learn everything. And so, yeah, it was definitely all for, you know, talking about getting to Mars one way or another, and I thought that, you know, so many benefits would come from a mission to Mars, and that, you know, if that was the route, that was the plan that would end up happening, and that was my only option, then I guess I'd be stuck living on Mars.

• 37:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why, why, why are you so desperate to go to Mars as a young person? I'm interested, I mean, why do you hate us so much?

• 37:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, are you running away from Earth? Or it just said Mars beckons? Cause, or both?

• 37:54Speaker 03

  Right, I mean definitely when I was little, um, I was always just curious about Mars and about space and, um, you know, I was just curious, you know, knowing I've been there before, I had this interest, what could be there? I think as I've gotten older, I've learned more about the importance of going to Mars and all the benefits that we can get in terms of, you know, building the technologies to actually get to Mars and those helping everyone else here on Earth. Or the idea of starting to learn more things on Mars, seeing if, uh, you know, developing the technologies to travel there, travel further and continuing on that route. Uh, and so I definitely, the more I've learned about all that and the more important I've realized it is, you know, there, there's gotta be that crew.

• 38:34Speaker 03

  So I've always been interested in going to space, of course, um, just like so many people. And so Mars is kind of that next place that we are planning on going. So, um, you know, I'd be happy to be on it.

• 38:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, what I like the fact is, in your sort of recitation there, you're including the fact that you, there's like not only the astronauts, but there's the engineering that goes in. There's a lot of pieces that have to come together and not many people think about it in that context. A more sort of, uh, holistically STEM, uh, construction there. But let me ask you, I'm old enough to remember all of the lore, most of it true, about the original set of astronauts being the right stuff. So, in, for the Mars generation, are you the right stuff? And what does that even mean today?

• 39:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, that was definitely super big. And I definitely think in terms of becoming an astronaut, a lot of things have changed since those first seven astronauts. You know, we went from just military guys to so many more people now, uh, taking part in the space program. And I definitely think as we continue, we're gonna have even more of a variety of people in the space program. And as term, in terms of, I guess, me having the right stuff and being selected, that's just really what I'm working on and trying to do. I don't necessarily think I'd be ready to do everything perfectly on a mission to Mars now, but definitely just doing, uh, the best I can and almost building a resume to eventually apply, uh, and really hope for the best to be able to, uh, translate everything I've studied and learned here on Earth and translate that into a mission to Mars.

• 40:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For me, the right stuff is, did you barf in the centrifuge? That, that's a good, yeah. If you don't bar for this interview, that's the right stuff, as far as I'm concerned.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's your relationship to NASA? Does NASA know you exist? And are you on their radar, literally and figuratively, to be the first, to be plucked, to put on that first mission to Mars?

• 40:30Speaker 03

  I definitely, like, I've met people who work at NASA, and I mean, going through Space Camp, I've also met many people who work at NASA. A lot of the, I guess, more so-called, like, trainings that I've done, recently, starting since I was 15, has been through a citizen science organization called Project Possam. And so, they are, their main study is clouds in the upper atmosphere. However, their ultimate goal as a program is to do a suborbital flight to collect a sample of this cloud. And so with them, I do suborbital spaceflight training, such as water survival training, G-force training, decompression, all kinds of different things that actually are very similar

• 41:14Speaker 03

  to things that will eventually help and apply towards going to space.

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every 18-year-old has G-force training.

• 41:21Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:24Chuck Nice?

  I had a G-G-G unit training.

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, do you get frustrated? I mean, I do, I was wondering, by how much attention, backwards attention, space is getting? Oh, look at what we used to do. Isn't that great? The Saturn V and the Apollo. Does that frustrate you? Or are you saying, well, that's okay? What I'm trying to ask is, how do you, what is your confidence that we will all make this happen, according to your dreams? Rather than just reminisce about the old days on the front porch in a rocking chair?

• 41:59Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, I definitely think that, you know, definitely the 50th is a time to celebrate what we have done. But I definitely think things such as the SLS and the mission to Mars, I definitely can use a bit more attention as far as, you know, if you walk up to someone on the street and you ask them about it, they wouldn't really have too much of an idea as to what is going on, or what the plan is, when, you know, what timeframe they would be looking at. I do think it is interesting, you know, the amount of media and...

• 42:31Speaker 03

  You know, like movies, TV shows, all that, but now, you know, surfacing about Mars, something to do with Mars, commercials, whatever it might be. And that's kind of, I think, that buildup towards that. Uh, you know, adjusting everyone like, oh, you know, Matt Damon went to Mars, so we can send astronauts to Mars.

• 42:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. It must be possible.

• 42:50Chuck Nice?

  Must be possible.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To grow poop potatoes on Mars.

• 42:53Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. Thinking about opening a restaurant.

• 43:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Special recipe potato.

• 43:02Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 43:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we only have two minutes left. Is there something you want to, you know, we have some reach in this show, uh, but not that you'd need it, cause like, you're all over the internet, uh, with your ambitions, but is there some message you want us to carry forward? That, uh, we can, uh, try to make your dream and the dream of so many, myself included, more real?

• 43:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, something that I think is super important is getting kids to realize that they can start working towards their dream or their goal or their passion, uh, at an earlier age. You know, you don't have to wait until you get to college to start researching what you want to do. Uh, you know, if there's something that you're interested in, something that you're passionate about, you can definitely start researching it, going to, you know, a science museum or going to whatever it is, start asking, maybe find someone in your area that has that career, ask them what they did and kind of get a little bit of that jump start because, uh, you know, if you know you're interested and if that changes after that, then that's fine too, and you can continue working and pursuing your dream and never give up and really never let anyone take your dream away from you.

• 44:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I can tell you this, that whether or not the next mission is to Mars, whatever next mission where we're sending humans to a destination, I want Alyssa on that mission.

• 44:17Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. Alyssa definitely should be, yes.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. So, uh, so anyhow, Alyssa, we gotta, we gotta call it quits there, but thank you for being on StarTalk. And we'll hope to like, reach for you again. If we do another space show, just to find out what's the latest

• 44:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in the Mars generation.

• 44:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we're the Apollo generation.

• 44:39Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. The next time we talk to you, you'll probably be on Mars.

• 44:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be great.

• 44:43Chuck Nice?

  You know, and because I think you're gonna get there much sooner than you think. I really do. You seem like such a driven young woman and it's wonderful.

• 44:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it gives us all hope.

• 44:53Chuck Nice?

  It does.

• 44:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in the next generation.

• 44:55Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 44:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not like, oh, the next generation is gonna ruin everything. No, the next generation is gonna fix everything.

• 44:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And take us to, take civilization to the next.

• 45:02Chuck Nice?

  You've restored my faith in people your age. I may actually start liking my children again.

• 45:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all right, Alyssa, thanks for checking in. We'll find you again. Okay. Thanks. Take care. So Chuck, that last question, I think, did we get that answered in this interview?

• 45:21Chuck Nice?

  We did not.

• 45:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was it?

• 45:23Chuck Nice?

  And it was, what do you think changed for our society when we landed on the moon from Arrow Green 426? And one of the things probably would be someone like Alyssa.

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll tell you what happened when we landed on the moon. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs witnessed it in their early to mid teens. And they transformed the world in which we now live.

• 45:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the, the power of space exploration isn't just Teflon or Velcro or whatever. There's the stereotype.

• 45:52Chuck Nice?

  All the other great Tang.

• 45:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tang, whatever. That's the big trinity.

• 45:56Chuck Nice?

  Teflon, Velcro and Tang.

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think not all of them are space derived, but that's, that's the, that's the trope.

• 46:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think its impact on a civilization goes beyond just what is the economic return.

• 46:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is how do you feel? How do you think? And the fact that when we went to the moon to explore the moon and we discovered Earth for the first time.

• 46:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The modern conservation movement.

• 46:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Began while we were on the moon.

• 46:27Chuck Nice?

  Very, very, yes.

• 46:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Environmental Protection Agency, founded in nineteen seventy.

• 46:32Chuck Nice?

  That's right, by Republicans, by the way.

• 46:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Signed into law, but Congress was Democrat, but Republican president. And you just look at this list, the, you know, leaded gas was banned, lead was banned in paint.

• 46:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A Comprehensive Clean Air Act, a Comprehensive Clean Water Act.

• 46:47Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 46:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There were earlier versions, but they weren't fully incorporating everything in the needs of the day.

• 46:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was a, um, DDT was banned. All of that occurred between nineteen sixty-nine and nineteen seventy-three.

• 47:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And are we gonna say, oh, we just figured out that's what we should do? No, we were still at war, in a cold war with Russia, in a hot war in Southeast Asia.

• 47:08Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 47:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just all of a sudden, we're gonna say, let's clean up the earth? I claim, I assert that we did that because we saw Earth floating, adrift, in space, Spaceship Earth.

• 47:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And said, oh, my gosh, no one is gonna come save us. We have to save ourselves. And thus began a modern understanding of our relationship to nature. That's the kind of stuff space gives you.

• 47:32Chuck Nice?

  And now we're like, yo, we gotta move to Mars, cuz we done really messed this place up.

• 47:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But my last point on that, and then we gotta, then we gotta call it, my last point there is, if we're all gonna ship a billion people to Mars.

• 47:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so that's Plan B, right? In case, in case something bad happens on Earth.

• 47:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some humans will survive, the species continues.

• 47:53Chuck Nice?

  Right, the remnant.

• 47:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's a nice idea, it makes a good headline, and Elon Musk was a fan of that, as was Stephen Hawking, but I think it's, it's, it's not how it's gonna go down. Because to do that, you wanna terraform Mars.

• 48:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, I have a coffee mug from SpaceX headquarters.

• 48:11Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 48:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and it's Mars, but you put hot liquid in it, it becomes a terraformed Mars. It's really cool.

• 48:18Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 48:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's green and blue. It's really cool.

• 48:22Chuck Nice?

  You know, it's one of those coffee-

• 48:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for making me jealous. You don't have one of these?

• 48:26Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 48:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. It's a terraforming coffee mug.

• 48:29Chuck Nice?

  That's cool.

• 48:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anyhow, I got it on property at SpaceX. So, if you have another planet and you terraform it from the current state of Mars to some Earth-like planet, and you do that to save us from Earth because we're destroying the environment, I'm just simply saying, whatever it takes to terraform Mars and ship a billion people there, it's gotta be more effort than fixing Earth's problems. If you could terraform Mars into Earth, you could terraform Earth back into Earth.

• 48:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you not?

• 48:59Chuck Nice?

  That's so true.

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 49:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying. I'm just a realist here.

• 49:02Chuck Nice?

  No, that's true.

• 49:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta call it quits.

• 49:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 49:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right there. Chuck, any final word?

• 49:07Chuck Nice?

  Um, Mars.

• 49:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, Chuck.

• 49:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck at his most articulate.

• 49:13Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 49:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've been and will continue to be Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. This has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. The 50th anniversary of Apollo.

• 49:26Chuck Nice?

  Yay.

• 49:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember. I was there. I'm not there, but I was somewhere.

• 49:30Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say. When did that happen? One small step for man. Hey, is that Neil deGrasse Tyson over there?

• 49:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry.

• 49:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was on Earth at the time. Anyhow, we gotta call it quits there. Uh, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.