What's Exploration Worth?

When the economy takes a downturn, should we still go up into space? NASA missions aren’t cheap—sending astronauts into low Earth orbit or to the Moon, sending robotic spacecraft to explore the planets, and launching telescopes into space can cost millions or even billions of dollars. Lou Friedman, director of the Planetary Society, argues that even when the dollar is dear, the quest to explore our universe is priceless. NOTE: All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/whats-exploration-worth/?_sf_s=what%27s+exploration+worth

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

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Our universe is filled with secrets and mysteries, leaving us with many questions to be answered. Now, more than ever, we find ourselves searching for those answers as the very fabric of space, science, and society are converging. Here, for the first time, these worlds collide as we give you the knowledge that breaks the barrier between what is science and what is merely pop culture. This is StarTalk.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  Now, here's your hosts, astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Lynn Koplitz. StarTalk.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is indeed StarTalk. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Lynn Koplitz is in the field this week. Remember, she's a stand-up comedian and she's around town making people laugh. As a substitute co-host, who I had, what other choice did I have but to get my main man to join me as co-host of StarTalk Radio, Bill Nye the Science Guy. Bill, welcome as my co-host to StarTalk.

• 1:14Speaker 03

  Oh, it is so exciting to be here, Dr. Tyson. So exciting. Welcome to StarTalk, ladies and gentlemen. We're gonna talk about stars.

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the universe, really.

• 1:22Speaker 03

  The stars being a big, being a metaphor, being a shorthand.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shorthand, that's fine. And you know, Bill, I'm usually only accustomed to hearing a one-minute version of you as we slot into every show. It's great to get you here in person and see if you have more than one minute of content to deliver us today.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  Content. So, content, just if I speak to that briefly, content's what we used to call the point.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know what that means, Bill.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, yeah. So, it's great to be here, everybody. We have many things going on. We have asteroids coming our way.

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let me give, alert the audience of the subject of the day is, because I never cease to be impressed with the appetite that the public has for cosmic subjects. So, today's subject is gonna be sort of this space and the public appetite for it and the public interest for it. And I got you here because you are man in the public who knows the pulse of

• 2:14Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The nation's

• 2:16Speaker 03

  On the pulse of the nations of the world's interest in space.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pulse of the nation's interest in science and in space. And later on, we have a special guest, the one of the founding members of the Planetary Society out here in Los Angeles.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  And who on earth would that be?

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Who in the universe would that be?

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lou Friedman, the executive director of the Planetary Society. We'll be hearing from him a little later. So, Bill, you know, I feel like, you know, every time I have a guest host who's like a comedienne, they got the hots for you, you know, it's just

• 2:46Speaker 03

  Could be a lot worse. I don't know why we don't interact with these people a little more ourselves at NiLabs. That's very nice.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NiLabs? What are NiLabs? What do you do in NiLabs?

• 2:56Speaker 03

  NiLabs is my corporation. What is that?

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I picture you in a lab coat behind test tubes.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  Sometimes, sometimes we're at a workbench. We have soldering iron sometimes.

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's, is this "we" as you?

• 3:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, yes.

• 3:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is how you refer to you, is the "we"?

• 3:11Speaker 03

  Yes, we refer to us as "we."

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, I do some stargazing. I do some soldering. I do some

• 3:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, wait a minute, I can have the Tyson Labs, because I do that at home, too.

• 3:24Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. Knock yourself out.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right, just checking, just checking. So, Bill, Sir William, may I call you? That's my affectionate term for you.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  It is charming, yes.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sir William.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Roger Tyson.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've surely gotten this question. I get it all the time. People say, "Why are we spending money up in space when we have all these problems here on Earth?" And I try to give the answer, and I'm fatigued by it. And I'm wondering, what, I'll tell you what I give. You tell me if you've got something better, so that I can add it to my repertoire. What I say is that if you spend all your time looking down, you'll miss the asteroid that'll come, which comes from space.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, number one, okay? And number two, the two planets that flank Earth

• 4:10Speaker 03

  If we can say flank.

• 4:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flank. What's to our left is Venus, alright, and what's to our right is Mars. Each of them is a planet gone bad. Venus having this runaway greenhouse effect, 900 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface, carbon dioxide atmosphere, and I did the math, it'll cook a 16-inch pizza on the windowsill in nine seconds. That's how hot it is on Venus. Mars, once had running water, it is bone dry today with all this evidence of, of water having cut its surface with meandering riverbeds and flood plains and, and, and.

• 4:41Speaker 03

  So, so close.

• 4:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  River deltas.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  So similar.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are two planets to our left and our right that have gone bad. And here we are saying, "I don't need to worry about space, I'm just gonna worry about what's happening down here." And we're turning knobs here on Earth where we could learn about those knobs gone bad on other planets.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Now the knobs you're referred to are, these are climate knobs.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yeah, these are metaphorical knobs.

• 5:02Speaker 03

  Metaphorical knobs.

• 5:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are as though.

• 5:04Speaker 03

  Could be a touchscreen.

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Could be a touchscreen.

• 5:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The video game that we are playing with Earth's atmosphere.

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah, yeah, serious business. So this is, that's a fundamental justification is, we have climate change happening on our planet. A worthy thing indeed to study the climates of nearby planets that are in so many ways so similar. In size, in, uh.

• 5:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Venus is, is considered our twin, if not for the temperature difference. You'd weigh about the same on Venus as you would here, were it not for the fact that you would vaporize.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  Vaporize. And, and the rain, which really is sulfuric acid.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rain on Venus.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  Yes, doesn't hit the ground because it's, it's so hot, it, it evaporates before it gets to the surface.

• 5:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Evaporates the sulfuric acid.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Sulfuric acid rain. It, it reminds me very much of the game I hope all of us have played as young people, where you're in a room of your house and you can't touch it on the floor, you can't step on the floor because the floor.

• 6:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is lava.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Is like lava. And then.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just did that with my kids, like, two days ago. I had to, like, carry them, look, from the couch to the bed. And I'm thinking, aren't they too old for this?

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Were you in lava-proof shoes or something?

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grownups don't fall into the lava, apparently. That's my eight-year-old kid. He's like, he beat me in chess three times.

• 6:15Speaker 03

  Travis.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He beat me in chess three times a month ago and I gotta carry him over the lava floor.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Well, it's, it's dangerous. Now what about? What about monsters?

• 6:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I, I, I, I train them to not be afraid of monsters.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  The thing is that monsters do not like light. So if you turn on the lights, until you're under the covers, the covers, as you know, provide a force field.

• 6:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Very similar to a force field of gravity or a force field from static, a static electric charge, but this force field from bed covers repels monsters. That's very well documented, but that aside, we do not have anything like that on earth. We do not have covers we can slide under. We do not have a light we can turn on that will repel the monster that will be climate change. So in New York this summer, didn't get to be 90 degrees till day before yesterday.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Couple of days ago, yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Remarkable thing. Is that evidence of climate change? Probably not. Uh, that it's flooding in, in Thailand, eight feet of rain, feet being an old unit, uh, referring to length.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look, look, regular people use feet.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  Two and a half meters.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe not in N I labs, alright.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  Not everywhere on earth, except this one country. No, we're the last country. As a metric system's a big thing with me and Dr. Tyson has this old deal where he embraces Fahrenheit. It's crazy.

• 7:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's tradition, I, excuse me, there's enough, actually, America's almost entirely metric, if you hadn't noticed lately, because you, when was the last time you bought a quart of Pepsi? Never, sir.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  So that's the one industry, the beverage industry embraced it.

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only that, you're.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  Okay, I want to talk about climate change, but let me ask us this.

• 7:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You almost got me started there, because you knew you would have lost.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  Wherever there are four astrophysicists, there's, there's a fifth. Not funny unless you're of a certain age to remember liquor or spirits being sold by the fifth of a gallon. Now it's wherever there are four astrophysicists, there's 750 milliliters. Sure. Okay, not quite as funny. So.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neither was.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  Well, the first one was hilarious if you're of a certain age. So, uh, the, um, the problem we have with climate change is it's, it doesn't happen very fast. And there's so many variables in the earth's weather.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, but we're trying to decide whether we spend money in space. You're making the argument to spend money on earth.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  No, stay tuned. To observe, to have so-called comparative planetology, which I believe you started in on, that is to compare one planet to another.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  A very, very worthy endeavor.

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're there.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  Furthermore, I defy anybody, and this person may exist, I have never met her or him, who can look at the moon, the earth's moon, through a telescope, or through, if I may, a pair of binoculars.

• 8:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You may.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  And not be just plain astonished.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At how pockmarked it is.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what? What does that have to do with why people should spend money?

• 9:08Speaker 03

  First of all, that's remarkable. And it's the kind of thing you want to know about as a human.

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That a nearby thing in space looks like it's got, its face riddled with bullets.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that, if you stop and think about it, is worth, is worth a pause for thought.

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure, but we've known that we have this blanket of atmosphere to protect us, and so why, nobody's worried about asteroids at the level that you'd have to worry about it if you were on the moon, that has no atmosphere to protect you.

• 9:31Speaker 03

  That's a, oh, here, I want to address a larger point.

• 9:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 9:35Speaker 03

  It's not just the asteroids in the cometary impacts, the impactors.

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  Or impactrices. Should there be impactrixes?

• 9:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Should there be female impactors, yes, okay.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  Very reasonable. I don't know how many women you've, never mind, we won't go too far there, but it's just something that is remarkable, that you can start wondering about your place in the universe by looking at the moon. And I know this, that you preach this, you're being devil's advocate.

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm still waiting for the money part of this, by the way. By the way, let me remind the listener, you're listening to StarTalk Radio, and I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and my guest co-host this week is the one, the only, Sir William, Bill Nye the Science Guy, who's right now pontificating on how and why it is we can and should spend money in space when people might otherwise think to spend that same money here on earth.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  A very, an ancient question among humans, or at least humans with governments.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, ancient in the era of space exploration.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, just so.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Sumerians were not worried about spending money in space.

• 10:33Speaker 03

  It's funny you should bring up the Sumerians, funny to me.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  No doubt the Sumerians had some pretty good astronomy.

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  Didn't they?

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They all did, because what else are you doing at night?

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Well, not just that, your life depended on it.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure, and not only that, what else were you doing at night?

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, your life depended on it in the sense that you wanted to raise crops, you wanted to have food, you wanted to eat.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You raised children, you grow crops, but go on.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a point.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  I'll claim that you haven't done a lot of farming. Yeah, it's not, it doesn't take care of itself.

• 11:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  So, uh, so in other words, I claim that the modern interest in asteroids uh, that came to be, the interest came to be on account of looking at dinosaur fossils, uh, is akin, is relevant to our survival in the same way that knowing the motions of the planets and the moons was relevant to survival of people in, uh, in, uh...

• 11:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In prehistoric, I mean, ancient times.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  Well, I didn't, I was reluctant to say ancient, let's say a few thousands of years ago.

• 11:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, alright.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  That your life depended on it, and so it very well may, very well may be that the asteroids could take us out if we're not vigilant. And this comes back to this thing, you just want to know what's out there. This is what you preach. I know you're playing devil's advocate, but this is what you preach. You just want to know what's out there, so it is reasonable for any society that wants to know its place in the universe to ask the two fundamental questions of all humans, where do we come from, are we alone?

• 12:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but I, but I agree with that.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  You spend a little money.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm after you to find reasons beyond the ones I gave you six minutes ago, what...

• 12:15Speaker 03

  Is this another invoice I'm gonna get?

• 12:18Speaker 03

  You gave me reasons and I owe you now.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I invoice you, you owe me reasons beyond the ones I gave for why we should spend money in space and not on Earth, and the ones you've given me...

• 12:26Speaker 03

  Hold on, all the money that's spent in space is spent on Earth.

• 12:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure, on space-related things.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you want to know your place in the universe, you want to know if you're alone, and then now we have what may be a life and death question associated with an impactor or impactrix.

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would claim that the people who are at war, and the people who can't pay their next month's rent, and the people who can't find food are not worried about our place in the universe when they're faced with those problems.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  I'll bet you they are, and if you say to them, would you be willing to buy one extra cup of coffee a year to know this stuff? Almost, no, no, everyone you meet will say sure. And if, I don't like coffee. Pick your beverage. One extra luxury beverage a year, would you do it? And people say yes.

• 13:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. All right. So it's a money, it's how much money is not being spent that they don't know about that allows them to say yes to that question.

• 13:16Speaker 03

  Whoa. Whoa.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're saying they'll agree, once they learn how cheap it is, not if it was expensive as they thought it was, that that would still work?

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Yes. Let's say, let's say I agree with that.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sir William.

• 13:34Speaker 03

  Can I ask you this?

• 13:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe, go.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Isn't it break time? Yeah. Didn't I?

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna take a break in a minute.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  Didn't I kinda sowed at break time?

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 13:43Speaker 03

  Sorry about that, everybody. I was trying to give a dramatic flair.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill Nye the Science Guy.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  Bill Nye the Science Guy, reminding you that space exploration is not only fascinating, but may also save your life.

• 13:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll find out more about that after the break. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. See you in a moment.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  Whether you're a space cadet or a rocket scientist.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  We want to hear from you. The phone lines are open. Call now. This is StarTalk.

• 14:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist. Lynn Koplitz, my usual co-host, stand-up comedian and actress, is in the field, doing what she does best, and that's making people laugh. In her stead, I yanked from the ether, the one, the only Sir William I call him, Bill Nye the Science Guy. Bill, welcome as my co-host to StarTalk Radio.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  It is an honor to, I'll do what I can to fill Lynn's shoes, and I mean that only figuratively.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw some shoes she was wearing recently.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  It would be very challenging.

• 14:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very interesting, if in fact you coveted those shoes.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Well, I'll tell you, as a human, as a result of evolution here on Earth, I am a huge fan of women's shoes.

• 15:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's a different show.

• 15:06Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't wear them. But I'm kooky for him.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll come back to that one in another show, Bill.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  Well, it's evolution.

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, you can track us on the internet at StarTalkRadio.net.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  It's your homepage. I'm sure it's your homepage, ladies and gentlemen, so just turn it up loud during this segment.

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Lou, I want to bring in, we got a special guest today, because right now-

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Notice that Dr. Tyson just called me Lou, which I-

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I call it?

• 15:34Speaker 03

  I find thoroughly charming, and there's a reason he called me Lou.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, we have a special guest today. We have Dr. Louis Friedman. Dr. Lou Friedman, welcome to StarTalk Radio.

• 15:44Speaker 04

  Well, it's a delight to be here, and I've got to say, I'm enjoying it very much.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lou Friedman is one of the three founders of the Planetary Society, based in Pasadena, California. The other two co-founders include the then-head of the Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena, it's a branch of NASA, responsible for seeing, building, conceiving, and designing, and tracking missions to the planets. His name's Bruce Murray. And also, the third member of that Trinity was the one and the only Carl Sagan, the late Carl Sagan. So Lou, you founded the Planetary Society. Why?

• 16:20Speaker 04

  Well, the idea was that the public was fascinated by this exploration, the adventure of going to other worlds and discovering things there, and at the same time, the federal government was cancelling the planetary program. So they had this great dichotomy, public interest and political killing the program.

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the government, when you say the government, what do you mean? They were withdrawing money from NASA to send probes to the planets?

• 16:42Speaker 04

  They were actually going to cancel all planetary missions in the 1980s and eliminate planetary science as a discipline in NASA.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you said enough is enough?

• 16:52Speaker 04

  And Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray said, enough is enough. We're out there every day, finding all this public interest, let's do what you do with public interest, form a public interest group. And they said, Lou Friedman, what are you doing these days? Not much, so they brought me in, and-

• 17:06Speaker 03

  This is in 1979, 1980, that winter?

• 17:09Speaker 04

  That's right, yeah, exactly. And I had just come from a stint working as a Congressional Science Fellow in the US Congress, and I saw the same political dichotomy- me there and so I was very anxious to work with them on this problem.

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, how do you know that the interest wasn't genuinely there and it wasn't just because Carl Sagan was just this amazing popularizer who got people interested who would not have otherwise have been? Because Bill, you spent time at Cornell while Carl Sagan was a professor there. Did you not take courses with the guy?

• 17:35Speaker 03

  I did, yes.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you not like the courses he gave?

• 17:37Speaker 03

  I was kooky for him.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kooky for him or them?

• 17:39Speaker 03

  For both.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All of the above?

• 17:40Speaker 03

  For M apostrophe EM. And he was a riveting lecturer and I'll say this, you meet these people from time to time. He was another guy at the top of his game. He went on to win a Pulitzer Prize, but he insisted on teaching Astronomy 101. He wanted to get the peeps from the get-go.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 18:02Speaker 03

  And let me say to the radio audience, so does Dr. Tyson. I have seen him teach Astronomy 101 at a school back east someplace. Princeton, wasn't it Princeton?

• 18:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was Princeton, yeah.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, so this passion is shared by all these guys, these three people that started the Planetary Society and the other people who work there, Charlene and on like that, they're all passionate about space exploration. And I just want to throw this credential in about Dr. Bruce Murray. He was called the Admiral of the Solar System.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the third in the triumvirate there.

• 18:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, and so we have here today our guest, Lou Friedman. I read, just to talk some more about me, I read Dr. Friedman's book about solar sailing. And it was written in 1975, I believe. And so the solar sail is still a dream.

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the concept of Admiral of the Solar System and sailing the

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Sailing.

• 18:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sailing the space, this is an old metaphor now applied to the universe.

• 19:00Speaker 04

  Go to planetary.org and you'll see our logo has a sailing ship, not a spacecraft.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which gives the misleading impression that there's like wind in space.

• 19:09Speaker 04

  There is a solar wind, but it is not what is used for the force for solar sailing.

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's certainly not what's used for that Spanish galleon that you have. In the iconic image for the Planetary Society.

• 19:21Speaker 03

  Very small, that sore wind on the sea surface.

• 19:23Speaker 04

  It's evocative, Neil.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 19:25Speaker 04

  It's evocative. All right. Look at it with your left, with your right brain.

• 19:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the website is planetary.org.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Planetary.org. All right, so look at it with your left, your right brain, people, not your left brain. So Lou, the, so you took it upon yourselves to, to, to capture this public sentiment in favor of space exploration and shove it in the face of the government.

• 19:47Speaker 04

  Absolutely right. It worked. Planetary exploration wasn't canceled. We've had a great influence on increased Mars funding, increased near earth object funding.

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What a polite way to say asteroid that might hit Earth when you say near earth object.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  That's true. Yeah, fair enough. Absolutely.

• 20:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very euphemistic there. Maybe you'd get even more money if you said species killing rock.

• 20:08Speaker 04

  Exactly right. Exactly right.

• 20:10Speaker 03

  Death to all rock. No, it's what it is, everybody. It's really these, these objects which are very hard to detect could...

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they're little and dark.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  Little and dark, but big enough.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Big enough.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  And especially going fast enough.

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're little enough so that Earth will just shake it off, but our ecosystem wouldn't.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, just so.

• 20:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Right, so go on, go on Lou.

• 20:31Speaker 04

  So we became the fastest growing public membership organization of any kind in the country during those years.

• 20:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I have a vague memory of receiving a letter in the mail back then that said, "Dear citizen of planet Earth."

• 20:44Speaker 04

  You were, right?

• 20:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I didn't, I didn't feel that that was a very personal letter when I received it.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  I did, I joined. I joined in the spring of 1980.

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't say, "Who's this to?" I mean, is this, I didn't feel like it was to me.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  You know, one of these things that happens when you build a large organization, a public interest group, you have to, you, you make these things. Carl Sagan used to be criticized for going on the Johnny Carson Show because that was popularization. I know a fellow named Neil deGrasse Tyson who's criticized for going on the Stephen Colbert Show because it's popularization. It reaches out to people who are not necessarily in our discipline. One of the things we had to do as an organization is say we weren't writing to our colleagues. We're writing to everybody and we needed to have these mass mailing techniques, underlined sentences. Short paragraphs, "Reply now," and that's not all, folks, do more.

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are tactics, you use mass mailing tactics to drum up interest in the cosmos.

• 21:38Speaker 04

  That's right, and not to drum up interest, but to appeal to people who had that interest and wanted to join something. Now in the 80s and the 70s, we joined something.

• 21:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to Dr. Lou Friedman, the Executive Director of the Planetary Society, talking about the birth of the Planetary Society, now going on 30 years, almost a 30-year anniversary.

• 21:58Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Having been founded back in 1979, 1980. And I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson on StarTalk, joined by my one-day co-host, Sir William, Bill Nye the Science Guy.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  Who's Vice President of the Planetary Society.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I assure you, that's a coincidence of this show, right, at this moment that I have.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  If a bomb went off here, boy.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Lou Friedman, so now you've got this interest, you get the government to reinstate the monies for the...

• 22:26Speaker 03

  Exploration of Mars.

• 22:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exploration of Mars and the like. So can you declare that you have a finger on the pulse of public sentiment for space?

• 22:35Speaker 04

  Like, I can declare it, whether I can prove it is a much harder question, of course. You have, a lot of things have to come together in public interest. You have to have the right time, you have to have the right excitement. It's really an easy argument to make. People have wondered since the beginning of time about their place in the universe, about...

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I claim if they're hungry, they're not wondering that. And so we're in a serious economic strife right now.

• 22:59Speaker 04

  Because just the metaphor of the family is what works here. No matter how poor you are, you have to worry about food, clothing, and shelter first, but you still want to educate your kids. You still want a little money to go to a book, even in a poor home. And that's what we do as a society. Even though we have to worry about the basics, we have to worry about all the crises of healthcare and agriculture.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what it says.

• 23:23Speaker 04

  And global warming.

• 23:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lou, I agree.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  We still have one desire to know more about our place.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I agree, but it's, by the very way you gave that explanation, you've prioritized it to come after the family solves the food shelter.

• 23:37Speaker 04

  Of course it comes after, of course I want to build my home before I want to get a book for my children, but that doesn't stop me from working on it all.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  That's right, you have to do everything all at once, including buy the book for your family even though you're hungry.

• 23:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's the status of now? How's it going now?

• 23:53Speaker 04

  It's going pretty good. NASA has brought us incredible results from all over the universe. And what the missing part of it all is-

• 24:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a great sentence, by the way. They say, "Look what mommy and daddy got me from all over town." NASA's brought it in from all over the universe.

• 24:08Speaker 04

  It's just so remarkable to think what we're learning about hydrocarbon lakes on Titan and these channels on Mars and the evolution of Mars and Venus that you pointed out earlier.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hydrocarbon, these are methane lakes on Mars. Methane like the gas that comes out of your stove if you live in the city.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars.

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it's all there.

• 24:27Speaker 04

  So, but what's missing is the human element. We don't know what to do with humans in space and we haven't known what to do with them since the Apollo days. And right now, that's the big issue gripping NASA, is should humans just-

• 24:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So where are you gonna land there? What are you gonna do?

• 24:42Speaker 03

  I'll tell ya.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The reason why I ask is because if your original point of advocacy was to get us back to explore the planet, we're doing it. So you've succeeded.

• 24:51Speaker 04

  We're doing it with robots.

• 24:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So close up shop.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  We're doing it with robots. We have bigger visions. We have bigger visions. It's not just sending machines to other worlds. In some way, we're projecting ourselves and we have to go.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  We have to go. So here's a technical argument or a scientific argument.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, just to back up, Bill Nye the Science Guy, if you didn't otherwise know, has a professional background as an engineer. So the guy is, when he speaks and he says first some tech background, it's time to listen. Go.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Sure it is, because I was the best engineer ever. No, I've given it a lot of thought. I understand the technical problems associated with putting people in space. It's an expensive business because people have to eat and so on.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  Breathe.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  Breathe, that's another thing, and so on. So, you, studies have been done, they're very reasonable. A human does in a minute what a robot does. Our very best robots, built by the very best people we can find. They, those robots do in a day what a human does in a minute. So if we have a very cool thing to go study, for example, an oncoming asteroid, be very reasonable to send people there and chip around, chip around with rockhammers.

• 26:07Speaker 04

  If that's correct, Bill, and I think it is, that means a human is 1,440 times better than the robot, and so we should be willing to pay 1,440 times the cost.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  In astronomical terms, it's around 100,000. It's a factor of 100,000.

• 26:24Speaker 04

  So we should actually, well, I was thinking we'd be willing to pay 1,440 times more for a human mission than a robot mission.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to confirm, Lou, 1,440 minutes per day?

• 26:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to confirm, okay. So that would be a ratio of effectiveness of the human brain versus the best human robot, human brain designs and bills. So Lou, I gotta change subjects because we got a lot to still do in this hour. You, what is your next project to get people interested?

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Well, I think all projects in space exploration somehow relate to this key question about what is life?

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Where did it start, was it origination?

• 26:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Life as we know it, life as we know it.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Where did we come from?

• 27:02Speaker 04

  And what we're doing at the Planetary Society...

• 27:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that case, you mean everyone, Lou, I mean, Bill, not just you.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  I got you doing it.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  What we're doing, what we're doing at the Planetary Society is we're actually sending life for the first time on a purposeful experiment out from Earth into interplanetary space. We're gonna bring it back, these microorganisms, and see, how do they survive the journey? Can life go between the planets? Did it originate someplace else and come here? These are really great questions.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the pan-spermia concept, right?

• 27:30Speaker 03

  It's not crazy. That life started on Mars, there was an impactor, or impactrix there, 3 billion years ago, and that thing got in so-called complementary orbit and found its way to Earth, and we are all actually Martians.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Descendants of Martian.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  That is not a crazy thing.

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Lou, you're trying to test this idea in reverse, taking Earth life...

• 27:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's called LIFE, the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, and we're putting it on a round trip.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What a cute acronym. Give you applause for that acronym. The LIFE, interplanetary...

• 28:00Speaker 04

  Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  All the kids are doing it.

• 28:04Speaker 04

  And, and what we're gonna do is put it on a Russian mission, which is going to a moon of Mars, sampling that moon of Mars and coming back.

• 28:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sampling means reaching down, grabbing a piece of it and bringing it back.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  And, and they're going to, uh, take a round trip, uh, which is very rare in interplanetary space and bring it back here.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you're gonna see if that trip had any odd effects on the bugs.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  Or could they even survive? There's the cold and there's the radiation.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you getting the hardy bugs or are you getting ones that?

• 28:31Speaker 03

  We'll see.

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no. Which one? We know there are ones that will survive.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  We are picking ones that we think have a chance to make it. Yes, we are picking ones that, uh, should be radiation resistant.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta give them a running chance.

• 28:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, we have to give them a running chance because, uh, any life that makes it is really inter, is, is really the first, uh, demonstration of that.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So could the high energy rays in space deform the DNA of these bugs so that it comes back as some super virus? Or some super bacteria? You know, are you worried about this?

• 28:59Speaker 04

  No, I'm not worried about it. Could it happen? Anything can happen, but am I worried about it?

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Lou is not worried about this. We will have to wait until this break to find out why Lou is not worried about a bug being altered in space with genetic identity altered in space and coming back destroying life on Earth as it did in the movie, The Andromeda Strain, which we all seen.

• 29:19Speaker 03

  That was a different form. That wasn't a life from Earth coming and going. We'll talk about that when we get back.

• 29:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why we'll be safe. Okay, we'll see you in a minute. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Welcome back to StarTalk. This is StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, with my guest co-host, one day only. That's the only get them for one day, Sir William, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Bill. We're back on StarTalk.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Neil, it's exciting to be back and we're here also with, uh, Dr. Lou Friedman, who's the Executive Director of the Planetary Society. And if you just joined us, we were discussing the life mission, the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment from the Planetary Society. Full disclosure, I'm the Vice President of Planetary Society. Dr. Tyson is on the board of the Planetary Society. But here's the thing, we're gonna send living things from Earth. These are bacteria and a piece of the tundra. Uh, two phobos.

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Piece of the Russian tundra?

• 30:17Speaker 04

  Uh, no, actually, it turns out we're sending all three life forms, not just bacteria, but also, uh, the, uh, the archaea and the, uh,

• 30:26Speaker 03

  And the eukaryotes?

• 30:27Speaker 04

  Uh, as well, as well as a colony of, uh, tundra. But it turns out we got our co- tundra from the Negev Desert.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, what does a colony of tundra mean?

• 30:36Speaker 04

  Well, it just means that you've ta- you've taken a soil sample and you have different microbes in them.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So whatever's-

• 30:42Speaker 04

  Isolating each one of them in addition to the individual isolating.

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So whatever's native to that scoop of soil is what's going.

• 30:47Speaker 04

  Exactly. Cause you wanna see interactions as well.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  The ecosystem, yeah. So then the question came up right before break, uh, Dr. Friedman. What if one of these, uh, organisms mutates and comes back able to kill us all?

• 31:02Speaker 04

  Well, uh, in, in point of fact, they'll be handled very, very carefully in, in laboratories.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lou, that doesn't sound convincing enough. I need more-

• 31:10Speaker 03

  People handle smallpox, they handle bubonic plague, uh, without killing us all.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  And, and in science, you can never say it cannot happen.

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so.

• 31:18Speaker 04

  You can't just go and, so I can't tell you, no, that won't happen. I can tell you that we know these, uh, characterized all these, uh, microorganisms very, very carefully. We know what they are, uh, we think we know, uh, what, uh, that this kind of genetic engineering along the way won't happen, uh, and if it does happen-

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But even if it does, that's something to be-

• 31:36Speaker 04

  It won't be dangerous.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even if it does happen, that's something to study.

• 31:38Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. Exactly. And it's, and it's the reason that we're actually conducting this, uh, activity to see if there's any, uh, effect in, and, on, on the survival and the growth or development of these things.

• 31:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is an unshielded spacecraft, so that general cosmic radiation can hit it as it would any bacteria that stows away on a rock that was flung from the surface of the planet.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  Well, that's the key, you, you said the key point, inside a rock. So in general, bacteria, even when it's, uh, coming from another planet, is shielded. It's inside the rock and we sort of have an artificial rock by having it in a capsule inside the spacecraft. So it's sort of simulating the idea of being, of, uh, how you'd make the journey. They don't make it-

• 32:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not encased in lead, but it's encased in something permeable?

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Well, it's encased in the fabulous aerospace-

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yeah, but not enough to block.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  That's right. And there'll be radiation environment and they're in case and it's a vacuum and it's all.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, this sounds, this sounds very cool. And is this drumming up public interest and public?

• 32:34Speaker 04

  Well, it's the first time it's ever been done. And we've been a little cautious about how we advertise this so far because it's on a Russian mission and the Russian mission hasn't launched yet. And until it launches and until we can be sure that we're keeping the schedule and all the different engineering constraints are met, then we'll probably publicize it a lot more.

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why is it on a Russian mission and not an American mission?

• 32:57Speaker 04

  Because there's no American, you know, the only country that's ever done a sample return from another planetary body is the Soviet Union.

• 33:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's Americans because the astronauts brought moon rocks back from the moon.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Did I say automated sample?

• 33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you didn't.

• 33:10Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 33:11Speaker 03

  It's automated.

• 33:12Speaker 04

  I should have said automated.

• 33:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 33:14Speaker 03

  First soft landing, first pictures of the far side.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  And so the Russians are the only ones that now planning a sample return mission. The Japanese are doing one, it's a very interesting one, to an asteroid and it's a Hayabusa mission. We should have gotten on that. It was a mistake by us not to think of this.

• 33:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We, the planetary society.

• 33:32Speaker 04

  We, the planetary society. But we didn't think of this experiment in time. We're hoping to do it with the Japanese later.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But let me just clarify, the planetary society is not some renegade space nuts. There's a premise that-

• 33:43Speaker 03

  Are you saying that there are renegade space nuts?

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are plenty.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  A non-governmental organization who gets along with all governments.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  Largest non-governmental space interest organization in the world.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but the point I'm making is you're not just a bunch of space nuts inventing stuff to do.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  Insisting that we, it's our manifest destiny to live on Mars.

• 34:02Speaker 04

  These are things that would not have made peer review science activity. We do them because they're publicly interesting and engaging, and yet they're well conceived scientifically.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so they wouldn't have made peer review because they're not advancing a science frontier as much as they're in the interest of the planetary society, advancing a public-

• 34:21Speaker 03

  Interest.

• 34:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A public interest frontier.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  Right, exactly.

• 34:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  And another example of that.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would this be like, Bill, didn't you have, you put, you put something on a Mars rover, if I remember correctly?

• 34:30Speaker 03

  Uh, there's two things and the.

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You did this.

• 34:33Speaker 03

  And you say, Bill and I did, it's a little bit of an exaggeration. I, uh, there are two sundials on Mars, on Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The two rovers that are there now, they've been there.

• 34:43Speaker 03

  And they are casting shadows. And, uh, as we sit here, uh, in this meeting, uh, this, uh, radio show, I want to remind everybody that sundials should have a motto. Our motto on two, two sundials on Mars is two worlds, one sun.

• 34:57Speaker 04

  That works.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  And the man who created that motto is Dr. Lou Friedman, sitting right here with us.

• 35:02Speaker 04

  But Bill and I is the one who answered the question. Bill, we know how to tell time. Why did we put sundials on a, on this spacecraft?

• 35:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this would be an experiment that would not survive a peer reviewed.

• 35:14Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yeah. Why did we put sundials on Mars, anyway?

• 35:17Speaker 03

  First of all, we need to have a shadow casting feature on the photometric calibration target. That is to say, you cast a shadow on another world so that you can look at the light that comes into the shadow from that planet's sky. If you've never done it on Earth, look at something very white and cast a shadow and you will see a little bit of light blue on a sunny day.

• 35:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause that's the blue that's not the sun.

• 35:41Speaker 03

  That's the blue that's not the sun.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The blue sky.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  If you do a little thought experiment, if you're on the moon and you look away from the sun, the sky is absolutely black, jet black. Uh, then if you do that on Earth, you look away from the sun, the sky is a beautiful blue, azure. So on Mars, it's this orange or taupe or salmon or moka or something. And so, uh, we're gonna have a shadow.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not moka.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  So you can get in a fist.

• 36:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop it, taupe. Stop it, taupe.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  You can get in a fistfight in the planetary sky coloring bar over that. So, uh, we're gonna have this shadow casting feature anyway. And I said, this is a wonderful opportunity to reckon time on another world. And it has, it had great public interest at first. We had a lot of sundial pictures. And it still has a background. And then we set up the Earth Dial Project where we had about 50 10 times size sundials around the world with webcams on them. And we could then compare the length and direction of shadows around the world on a single website.

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This became a human participation activity.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  And it led to another thing called Voices, which was what people sound like around the world who built these sundials. It was these Earth dials. It was big fun. And the sundials are needed for calibrating the cameras.

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's Bill Nye the Science Guy talking to you right now. And you're listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. And our guest on this program, Bill Nye is my guest co-host. But our guest in this program is Dr. Lou Friedman, Executive Director of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group.

• 37:16Speaker 03

  Non-governmental.

• 37:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Non-governmental. He's been telling us about what activities they've been involved in to drum up community, public, national, international interest in space activities. And so, so Bill, so you've got these sundials on Mars, and they would bring a level of public interest that the normal experiments on these rovers would not have. That's the point.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  That's right. Furthermore, there's one more detail, which is, I think is important to realize. We put an inscription on there, on both of these Mars dials, as they came to be called. And they are a message to the future. And they are inherently optimistic.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do they say?

• 37:50Speaker 03

  Among other things, we people of Earth built these in our year 2003. It says "our year" to get around who's in charge of calendar reckoning.

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Our year 2003 arrived here in 2004. We built these instruments to study the Martian environment, learn about Mars' past, and prepare for our future. And then it says...

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not a very pithy statement.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Then it says, well, it goes around four edges of this thing that would fit in the palm of your hand. And then the last panel says, "To those who visit here..." We wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery. And that is the essence of this enterprise.

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wouldn't you also wish them a safe return home?

• 38:26Speaker 03

  Well, I don't, I hope, I hope they thought of that.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  By the time those are found, it may not be an important thing to have a safe return home.

• 38:33Speaker 03

  It may be.

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not for you, because like you're, you know, how old are you now?

• 38:37Speaker 03

  So, Dr. Tyson, are we supposed to include?

• 38:40Speaker 04

  Relatively young.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  We're supposed to include, we hope you brought your favorite candy, and we're supposed to like, we hope you're not hungry.

• 38:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we hope you're running a fuel to get your butt home, yeah.

• 38:50Speaker 04

  And this whole idea of sending messages to other worlds, by the way, you can go to planetary.org and read messages from Earth.

• 38:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Planetary.org, the website of the Planetary Society.

• 38:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, you have messages from Earth. It's a wonderful way to get people involved, and we're doing it at the moon, we're doing it at Mars, we did it at Titan and Saturn, we're doing it at Pluto, you do it throughout the universe.

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Speaking of the moon, why not, there's a lot of talk about going back to the moon as the next step. You got issues with that?

• 39:15Speaker 04

  I have a lot of issues with that.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  I have an issue.

• 39:18Speaker 04

  First of all, we did, we should go to the moon first, and we have, we did it 40 years ago.

• 39:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying, let's go to the moon first. Hey, wait a minute, we already have, let's go somewhere else now.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  And, and the whole idea of the moon hasn't caught on, and it's not inspiring people because they know it's not the next step, it's the last step we did. And the second part of it is...

• 39:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is Congress listening to you?

• 39:37Speaker 04

  I think so. I actually think it is true.

• 39:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Weren't you just in the White House a couple of weeks ago?

• 39:41Speaker 04

  And the whole thing, yes, I was, but I was a tourist.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  I was, I was a tourist at the White House, but I did see the President, he got into the helicopter while we were there, and he...

• 39:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's fun when they take off on that thing, yeah.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, really, it was great. But, and the other aspect is, Mars is the only world we can reach. Sorry. Mars is the only world, the only accessible world, that has oxygen, water, atmosphere, it's a place for humans.

• 40:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, it's oxygen bound with other atoms, so you have to extract it.

• 40:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's in the carbon dioxide, it's in the, it's in the underground ice and so forth, but the fact is, it's the only world we can reach, where we have those things. And so it's the only world that humans...

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And not get vaporized on landing, as you will on Venus.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  Yes, right.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  And my friends, there is water there. If we go to the right place, it is reasonable that there are some sort of, there is some sort of evidence of life. Maybe there are even Martian microbes, Mars microbes, and maybe we're even descendant from them. That, my friends, is worthy of knowing.

• 40:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, you're spooky excited at that possibility.

• 40:45Speaker 04

  Well, if we find life on Mars, it's a big upper about the whole idea of the universe being full of life. And if we don't find it, it's a big downer.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But why isn't that also interesting?

• 40:56Speaker 04

  It's interesting. It's fascinating. But you make it, it makes it sound like we're alone.

• 41:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You sound upset about that possibility.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  I, I don't know. I've pondered this for a long time, whether or not we're alone is a, is a kind of a downer, or, but it does.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  Are we unique?

• 41:13Speaker 04

  To me, it feels a little negative.

• 41:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're going to take a break in a few minutes. But when we come back, what I want to ask the both of you is, what, what is the top 10 list of things that must happen for, to create and sustain public interest in space exploration, lest the entire program get canceled, and everyone just goes back to worrying about where they get their next meal? You're listening to StarTalk Radio. We'll see you in a moment. Welcome back to StarTalk, StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, with a substitute, one-time-only co-host, Sir William, I call him affectionately, he's Bill Nye, the Science Guide Bill.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  Neil.

• 41:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome again to StarTalk Radio.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  It's so good to be here.

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we have as our special guest, the Executive Director of the Planetary Society, based in Pasadena, California, founded nearly 30 years ago, with Carl Sagan as one of the Trinity of founders. Another is Dr. Bruce Murray, then head of the Jet Propulsion Labs, and Dr. Louis Friedman, engineer, and I happen to know, a big fan of something called solar sailing, a way to sort of... Fly without fuel, I guess. Is that right, Lou?

• 42:22Speaker 04

  Yes, it is. And the lure of solar sailing is because it's the only known technology that can take us to the stars, because you don't have to carry the fuel. Everything else, you have to carry something along.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you have to carry it provided there's no filling station along the way. You're assuming there's no filling station.

• 42:36Speaker 04

  That's right. I'm assuming there's no filling.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As there are as you drive across the country. You don't have to bring all the gas you need to drive from LA to New York. But somebody has. Somebody did it before you.

• 42:45Speaker 04

  With solar sailing, actually, it would be light sailing to go interstellar distances, because you'd have to use laser light powering you.

• 42:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the sun gets too weak as you get too far away. And all the starlight is just too weak. So you get so you get.

• 42:59Speaker 04

  So solar sailing is the way that we're going to someday go to the stars, and we're trying to take the first steps in that by just demonstrating how it works here in Earth orbit, and then moving out into interplanetary space.

• 43:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is not metaphor for some new way to propel yourself. It's act it's an actual sail.

• 43:16Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A surface that's receiving the the pressure from light from some source, if not the sun, then some laser that you've set up either in deep space or from Earth's surface.

• 43:26Speaker 04

  It looks like a giant kite or a sail, and that and you use sunlight pressure, not the solar wind, reflecting off the solar sail, and transferring your momentum from light energy into spacecraft energy, which then picks up speed and goes through.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This sounds like it would be very slow.

• 43:44Speaker 04

  It is. It's very slow acceleration, but it moves, but it's continuously acting. So every day, every second, you're picking up speed. And so by the time you start getting out to the distance of Mars and Jupiter, you're going hundreds of thousands of miles per hour, and you're starting to get out of the solar system really quick.

• 44:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good point, because what most people don't know is that our spacecraft we send to the moon and to Mars or anywhere, they're basically coasting the whole way. They're not actually firing their engines.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  You go on what's called a ballistic path. You're coasting in under the force of centrifugal and gravity.

• 44:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So before we went into break, I wanted to know from the both of you what you felt were the 10 hottest public interest things to do in space that might stand a chance of guaranteeing either good funding for NASA or space commercialization, or whatever it would take to make sure that to ensure that we are a spacefaring nature in our nation in our future. So.

• 44:38Speaker 04

  Two things, not 10 things, two things.

• 44:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I was gonna ask you, 10's a lot.

• 44:41Speaker 04

  Adventure and discovery. We have to keep up the

• 44:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, that's like mom and apple pie. Give me, I need details.

• 44:47Speaker 04

  We have to do adventures and we have to do, we have to send humans where they haven't gone before.

• 44:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lou, everyone agrees.

• 44:53Speaker 04

  We have to do solar sailing technology. We have to discover things that have never been discovered.

• 44:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lou, this is, everybody agrees. Give me, that's not specific enough. You can't go into Congress and say, "Discover and explore," and then they write your check.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  All right, what do we want to do?

• 45:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lou, I mean.

• 45:07Speaker 03

  Bill, Steve, Henrietta.

• 45:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lou, you got a demerit. Bill, give, tell me.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  So, we're gonna go.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  When we get arguing, I notice everybody calls everybody by the end of the day.

• 45:18Speaker 03

  So, what we're gonna do, Dr. Tyson.

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  We're gonna go, and my fellow viewers, listeners, we're gonna go to Mars with people, and we're gonna go to a place that is very exciting in terms of life.

• 45:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you think you can just up and do that and then say that that's an exciting thing to do, when that itself might cost a hundred billion dollars?

• 45:38Speaker 03

  Stand by. So, what we're gonna do first is go to someplace where no one has gone before, and let's start with the Lagrange points. Now, you have probably loyal viewers, and this is a guy.

• 45:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This would be listeners, yeah. This is radio, Bill.

• 45:49Speaker 03

  Viewers, listeners.

• 45:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know you're a TV man.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  Well, it's the most visual.

• 45:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No one can see you now.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  It's the most visual medium. So, we would go to the Lagrange points, and Lagrange did this fabulous analysis where you don't have to do the equations of motion, you just have to do the total energy, kinetic and potential energy, and so these are places where the gravity is in balance. The gravity of the sun, the earth, the moon, and the spacecraft are very nearly in balance.

• 46:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is in a point in empty space where everything balances, all right?

• 46:15Speaker 03

  The middle of Nowheresville, except it's not quite. So, we would go up there and see if we can get there and back easily. Park some stuff there, maybe some fuel, and then we go from there to an asteroid, and we will make the same discoveries on the same level that the humans made walking around on the moon compared to the robots made on the moon. That is to say, the discoveries will be made, but the adventure will be there.

• 46:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Lou, this, what, what Bill just said seems, at least as a first step, a little more affordable than what you're.

• 46:42Speaker 04

  Absolut, and that's quite right. You, I, I use the example is, if you have to get to New York in the old days, not, not now, you go to Cleveland first because it's on the way.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  What? Wait, what?

• 46:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're talking about stagecoach?

• 46:56Speaker 04

  I am, I'm talking about stagecoaches. You don't go to Cleveland. And we're at the stagecoach stage of exploring the solar system. So we have to have interim milestones. Sorry, I didn't work that analogy into good.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  You go to Philadelphia on the way to New York from Washington.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  So you do need milestones. And Bill's quite right. You gotta have those interim steps to make it on the way to Mars.

• 47:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  San Diego to San Francisco, you go through LA.

• 47:19Speaker 04

  You never lose sight of the destination. Mars is the exciting place where the whole future of the human species, as far as an extraterrestrial species, as far as a multi-planet species, as far as life on other worlds is going to be determined.

• 47:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what I worry about? If Mars is a destination and then we land there, then no one thought about going anyplace else and that would end the program.

• 47:38Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 47:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what happened in the Apollo program.

• 47:40Speaker 04

  Yes, but that's because the moon is basically uninteresting. Mars will never be uninteresting.

• 47:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean you go to the moon?

• 47:47Speaker 04

  It's like building New York, it's like building Paris. You don't stop because you got one building up, you'll keep working on it.

• 47:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lou, you're saying that we land six places on the surface of the moon and you're done?

• 47:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. We couldn't reason. The United States and the Soviet Union spent $200 billion on today's terms to prove that there was nothing of significance on the moon.

• 48:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk Radio. That was the voice of Dr. Lou Friedman, Executive Director of the Planetary Society, based in Pasadena, California. My co-host for this show only, in lieu of my other favorite co-host Lynn Koplitz, the comedian, we've got Bill Nye the Science Guy. Bill, what do you say about what Lou just said?

• 48:28Speaker 03

  Well, bear in mind that we continue to explore the nearby planets and distant stars with our spacecraft. We continue exploring with our telescopes. And people say, what are you gonna find there? We don't know, that's why we're exploring. So what we will do is explore a place on Mars that looks very reasonable to have liquid water extent in early times, or maybe even liquid water there right now.

• 48:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As there's some evidence to show.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  There's a lot of evidence.

• 48:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So some seepage on the sides of ravines.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  It's an evidence farm down there, yes. And then we will go there with sophisticated spacecraft and we'll go there eventually with people to see. See what's going on and we may be discovering our origin. This is not something we're going to spend billions and billions of dollars to compete with another Cold War government. It's what we're going to do for the sake of all humankind.

• 49:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I would maintain, but I would maintain that that's a naive outlook. It's, it's a, I want to feel what you feel, but we all know, we went to the moon because we had to beat the communists. Okay. It was like kill the commie land back then. And so that's what wrote the checks. That's what signed the checks. Kennedy says, oh, we're discoverers and I'm a leader and let's go to the moon. But the other part of that same speech is the commies are bad. Free world is good. We got to do this to show them up. Without anybody to show up, what incentive can you possibly imagine to drive this? Because I can tell you it's not simply to explore. It's never been a good enough driver in the history of human species.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  But the idea of nations doing great exploration has been very important. It was important throughout the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th century.

• 50:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 50:06Speaker 04

  Because it was a sign of national leadership of Britain, of Holland, of Spain.

• 50:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasn't just leadership. It's because now half of, half of the Western hemisphere speaks Spanish because Columbus couldn't get Italy to pay for his voyages.

• 50:17Speaker 04

  But the idea that the United States would quit exploration while China, India, and Japan and other Asian countries are coming up that will be the Portugal of the future if we quit exploration while they're coming into the future.

• 50:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. So, so what you're saying is you agree that it's not a good enough driver to do it because it's fun or interesting or enlightening to do. You're saying we should do it so that we don't come in last.

• 50:40Speaker 04

  I say because we want to do the best. We want to be the best of what we do.

• 50:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just said China, everybody else is doing it and we don't want to be left behind. You don't want to be last.

• 50:49Speaker 04

  We want to do our best.

• 50:51Speaker 03

  I don't fully agree. And the time will.

• 50:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't agree fast because we've got like a minute left.

• 50:56Speaker 03

  I know. Well, so we'll see what comes up in the last, with the next few years, but exploration of other worlds could change this one.

• 51:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You sure about that?

• 51:05Speaker 03

  Certain.

• 51:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lou, you sure about that too?

• 51:07Speaker 04

  I absolutely agree with that.

• 51:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. All right. We're running out of time here. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your host. StarTalk Radio is funded by the National