Live at the Bell House, The Astronaut Session (Part 1)

At the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY on 12/18/2011 for our second show in front of a live audience. Co-host Eugene Mirman was joined by fellow comedians Kristen Schaal and John Hodgman, while Neil brought along his NASA astronaut buddy, Mike Massimino.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:23Eugene Mirman?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome to an awesome evening of StarTalk Live.

• 0:33Eugene Mirman?

  It is my great pleasure to bring out the host from the planetarium.

• 0:40Eugene Mirman?

  A fan of asteroids and dismissor of Pluto. Ladies and gentlemen, Neil Tyson.

• 0:56Eugene Mirman?

  And now...

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, wait. It's "and now."

• 1:00Eugene Mirman?

  I thought you might want to say hello. I guess not. Ladies and gentlemen, you know her from the television and bit parts in films. Kristen Schaal.

• 1:17Eugene Mirman?

  And he was once known as that guy from "The Thing." But now, he is just himself the writer. This is a terrible intro. But it was fun to do. Ladies and gentlemen, the amazing John Hodgman.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's one empty seat.

• 1:38Eugene Mirman?

  There is.

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  May I bring my guest out on stage?

• 1:42Eugene Mirman?

  From outer space. Literally.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, he's from Long Island, but works in outer space.

• 1:48Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ladies and gentlemen, two-time Shuttle astronaut and hometowner Mike Massimino.

• 2:05Eugene Mirman?

  Welcome.

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Brooklyn in the house. This is our second

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  live taping of StarTalk Radio. And thank you Eugene Mirman for the space, for your audience.

• 2:18Eugene Mirman?

  Sure.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We want to bring the universe down to Earth. And we've got an astronaut in the house. I said, "Where's your astronaut outfit? You can't wear that for us?"

• 2:26Mike Massimino?

  It's hard to get around on Earth. Only wear it in space.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe have like a NASA hat or something. I do have my flight watch. That's been in space.

• 2:37Mike Massimino?

  That's been in space.

• 2:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Been in space.

• 2:38Mike Massimino?

  My wedding ring's been in space.

• 2:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wedding... Okay, your wife is actually in there. She's out there somewhere. Okay.

• 2:43Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, so no flirting, Mike.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you about to show me something on your back. I do have an aviation-related shirt. Okay, so...

• 2:52Eugene Mirman?

  I thought you were gonna have like a shuttle, like weird slutty tattoo on your butt.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no!

• 2:59Eugene Mirman?

  Like you're gonna have like Saturn and it's like, "Um, sexy Saturn."

• 3:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Mike Massimino's back. But don't stick your butt out, just stand up.

• 3:09Mike Massimino?

  I'm not, this is the way it is.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love the smell of jet fuel in the morning, alright.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this is StarTalk Radio. You can find us on the web at StarTalkRadio.net. Starting with the Hubble Space Telescope. I'd love me some Hubble. Because Hubble actually was a man before it was a telescope. Right. Just so you know. He discovered... He was transformed into a telescope. His spirit, energy, became the telescope.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  Well, he's just like a nosey guy.

• 3:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not why we named it after him. A notorious peeping tom. Yes, the peeping.

• 3:49Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, he wanted to see people doing it in outer space.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he discovered that the Milky Way is not the only galaxy in the universe. That we are just one island universe among many, swimming in the cosmos. One. Two, he discovered that the universe was expanding. When this telescope was designed, conceived, and built, we knew that it would give us the data to tell us exactly at what rate the universe would be expanding. And that was the very first scientific experiment that it conducted. But there was a problem.

• 4:23Eugene Mirman?

  Uh huh.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The telescope got launched, and it had a bad mirror. In fact, it was a good mirror, it was just the wrong mirror. It had a perfect shape, it was just the wrong shape.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  That's like the mirror in my bedroom.

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, is that right? Wrong, what is?

• 4:41Eugene Mirman?

  Like a funhouse mirror?

• 4:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, when you set up a $2 billion telescope, and it has the wrong mirror, every sentence in the paper that talked about Hubble mentioned its price. All right, when stuff goes bad at NASA, they remind you how much it cost. The $2 billion Hubble telescope. And at that point, we said, we gotta put in some corrective optics. But we need the right stuff. In comes Mike Massimino. All right.

• 5:14Eugene Mirman?

  So you strap like a two-way police mirror onto your back and you just went up there with some duct tape?

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's like a space optometrist. Duct tape, yeah, we'll get to that in a minute. But let me just remind you, just some of the things Hubble discovered. So it confirmed what we'd known all along, that there's supermassive black holes lurking in the centers of galaxies. It could find this out, because it could measure the speed of stars deep within, near the centers of the galaxies. And they were going really fast, and you look at something that's tugging on them, and you don't see anything. And you infer how much mass must be there, in that small volume, you get a black hole. We have a black hole in our center. Six hundred thousand or so times the mass of our sun. Other galaxies have like bigger black holes. Some have a million times the mass of our sun.

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Others have like a billion. And so I wanted a bigger black hole. I mean, I had like-

• 6:11Eugene Mirman?

  You have black hole envy.

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black hole envy is what really I've always had for our galaxy.

• 6:15Eugene Mirman?

  How powerful is the one here?

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, it's, I, I forgot the exact number.

• 6:19Eugene Mirman?

  In horsepower.

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's about several hundred, you don't want to go near it no matter what. But the Hubble confirmed that. And also it looked deep inside of gas clouds and confirmed that these are the locations where stars are being born. Where they live out their lives and they scatter the gas into the rest of the galaxy. Revealing their families of planets. So these are stellar-

• 6:41Eugene Mirman?

  Are you flirting with the universe?

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not funny. Plus, Hubble nearby discovered extra moons orbiting Pluto. We thought Pluto had one moon. It's got two or three other moons going around it. And then that resurrected the Pluto people.

• 6:56Speaker 04

  Right. He put the end to Pluto, basically, right?

• 6:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't do it. I just, I had the hammer and the nails for the coffin.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  But how did the moons affect our appreciation or depreciation of Pluto?

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not in the slightest.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Oh, okay, very well.

• 7:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People want to invoke the moon clause for resurrecting Pluto's planet status?

• 7:14Speaker 04

  Right.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Problem is, they're asteroids, very rocky looking, that they themselves have moons. So moon is not the prerequisite. Venus, the size of Earth, our twin planet itself, has no moon. You can't invoke moon status? For a planet?

• 7:34Eugene Mirman?

  I don't know, not convinced.

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Mike, they strap you on to the space shuttle. Okay? On the outside?

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry, they strap you in to the space shuttle. Thank you, thanks for that.

• 7:53Mike Massimino?

  Thanks for keeping it honest.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  Look, geez, cold.

• 7:56Mike Massimino?

  I was gonna go along with it, it sounded okay to me.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so you go up there, space telescope needs help. Were you on the first servicing mission?

• 8:04Mike Massimino?

  No, no, the first servicing mission was back in 1993.

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you were just a babe?

• 8:10Mike Massimino?

  I was just a babe, other guys went up there and did that.

• 8:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so... And gals.

• 8:14Speaker 04

  I'm sorry, what was the problem with the mirror?

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It had a beautifully...

• 8:16Speaker 04

  It didn't reflect anything?

• 8:19Speaker 04

  It was actually a piece of black velvet?

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was the wrong shape.

• 8:25Eugene Mirman?

  Like, what, it was a rambus?

• 8:27Speaker 04

  What was the shape?

• 8:28Speaker 03

  What was it like, a spoon, was it like the spoons, everything was coming in upside down?

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's...

• 8:33Speaker 04

  I remember, I remember when that thing went up there, and everyone in the news saying, "Those idiots did it again, they threw some junk up there, they can't reflect the thing."

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it was...

• 8:41Speaker 04

  But what was the problem exactly? What was the wrong shape?

• 8:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a shape for the optics of the telescope.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  To work.

• 8:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To work, and then they...

• 8:50Speaker 04

  You seem to be dodging my question.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They had a perfect shape, but it was the wrong shape.

• 8:56Speaker 04

  What made it wrong?

• 8:57Eugene Mirman?

  You're using the word "perfect."

• 8:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, a mistake! PerkinElmer messed up.

• 9:02Mike Massimino?

  It was the problem with the grinding of it.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  First of all, let me just say, thank you for answering my question.

• 9:06Mike Massimino?

  It was like an aberration, they call it, it was a slight aberration, it was slightly off.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  So the curvature of the mirror itself was wrong?

• 9:13Mike Massimino?

  Just by a little bit.

• 9:14Speaker 04

  But that's enough, right?

• 9:15Mike Massimino?

  It was enough to screw up the optics of it, so like, the visual spectrum, what you would see, what you were hoping to see, was cloudy.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Did that scraper guy get fired?

• 9:24Mike Massimino?

  I don't know, it's a government operation, it's very hard to fire people, thank goodness.

• 9:27Eugene Mirman?

  But they had you fix it, you went up and repaired it.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, so wait...

• 9:31Speaker 04

  So they flew a $10 billion toilet up there to polish a mirror?

• 9:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so, no, here's the thing, in all defense of Hubble, just to put this in context, Hubble was ready to fly in the mid-1980s, okay? But then we had the Challenger disaster, so that put a delay. By the time it did fly, it had computer chips from three generations earlier. So, not only did it have a bad mirror, it had computers from a generation you didn't even want, it was like...

• 9:58Eugene Mirman?

  It was like an Atari.

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 10:00Eugene Mirman?

  It was still Pong, and we already had Nintendo.

• 10:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, exactly.

• 10:05Eugene Mirman?

  I get it, I get it, Neil.

• 10:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so...

• 10:08Speaker 04

  So no one ever thought in 1988, should we check the mirrors?

• 10:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in the first servicing mission, they not only put in corrective optics, they swapped out the computer chips and put in, back then-

• 10:20Speaker 04

  They put it in television.

• 10:23Eugene Mirman?

  Let's boost this up a little bit. By they, we mean Mike.

• 10:25Speaker 04

  Let's make it a scene.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, so Mike-

• 10:27Speaker 03

  This is 93, this is 90.

• 10:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so now Mike came in later-

• 10:30Eugene Mirman?

  He was eight years old.

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hubble was designed to be serviced by the shuttle.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 10:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because when new technologies, detectors, something goes wrong, you send up the right stuff. So, one of these five servicing missions was his first. And tell me what you had to do.

• 10:47Mike Massimino?

  Well, my first one, we replaced the solar arrays, we replaced a power control unit, we put a new instrument in there that-

• 10:54Speaker 04

  You mean a PCU?

• 10:55Eugene Mirman?

  You sound like a guy ripping, like a car salesman ripping people up.

• 10:58Mike Massimino?

  Really?

• 10:59Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, we had to fix the space belts and uh- and there was this weird thing with the shipping-

• 11:05Mike Massimino?

  We checked the oil, yeah, something like that.

• 11:07Speaker 04

  I really advise it-

• 11:08Eugene Mirman?

  It cost you around 800 billion dollars.

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They needed new brake pads.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  But this tru coat, this tru coat's gonna protect it very well.

• 11:17Mike Massimino?

  And we added rust proofing. We got Congress to sign off on the rust-

• 11:21Speaker 04

  What year, alright, what year did you go up, may I ask?

• 11:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your first year.

• 11:24Mike Massimino?

  It was 2002. Years earlier when they fixed the-

• 11:28Speaker 04

  You mean this thing wasn't fixed yet?

• 11:29Mike Massimino?

  No, it was fixed. They fixed it in 93. And one thing about this mirror, Neil, is that even though they had this little problem with it, so it was kinda screwed up when they got the images back, oh man, this is terrible. They were able to measure how bad it was. Now, even if, it would never actually been perfect, no matter how hard you try-

• 11:45Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 11:45Mike Massimino?

  It wouldn't have been exactly perfect. But now they knew how bad it was, so when they made the correction, the correction was pretty close to perfect. So if you wanna be an optimist about it, because they were able to get this opportunity to fix it, they were able to make it better than it really ever could have been.

• 11:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 11:59Mike Massimino?

  And what they did, that instrument, what they did, they took one of the instruments out, about the size of a refrigerator. Have I lost you yet, or what's the-

• 12:04Speaker 04

  That's not an instrument.

• 12:05Mike Massimino?

  Oh, refrigerator! So yeah, so we pulled this thing, we pulled a-

• 12:08Eugene Mirman?

  We put the refrigerator out of the mirror, we get it.

• 12:11Mike Massimino?

  I'm not selling the refrigerator.

• 12:12Speaker 04

  There are a lot of things the size of a refrigerator. Was this the PCU, was this the power?

• 12:15Mike Massimino?

  No, that's something else. You like that acronym, though, don't you?

• 12:17Speaker 04

  I do, I do. What was this?

• 12:19Mike Massimino?

  This was, the instrument they pulled out was, I can't remember the name of it.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a refrigerator.

• 12:24Mike Massimino?

  It was a refrigerator.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Establish that already.

• 12:25Speaker 04

  Oh, you know what it was? It was the TCB.

• 12:27Mike Massimino?

  Good enough. But then when they put in was something called CoStar, which had corrective optics.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  OnStar?

• 12:34Mike Massimino?

  Just a second. CoStar. And what it did, it put a bunch of lenses in the light path and corrected, just like those glasses you're wearing now, corrects the light that goes inside, you know, your eyes to your brain right now.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  What, are you a witch?

• 12:46Mike Massimino?

  That's right. So that corrects the light coming into your head. And that's what we did with CoStar, corrected the light going into the telescope.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  So they sent up a refrigerator called CoStar that shot a bunch of contact lenses in front of this thing?

• 12:56Mike Massimino?

  Yes. Perfect.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  All right. That's all I wanted to know.

• 13:02Mike Massimino?

  We gotta bring this segment to a close. You are listening to StarTalk Radio, live at the Bell House in Brooklyn.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're continuing the broadcast of our second live show, recorded at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York, on December 18th, 2011. Joining me that night were my co-host, the comedian Eugene Mirman, the comedians Kristen Schaal and John Hodgman, and Mike Massimino, a NASA astronaut who flew on two space shuttle missions to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  2002, a young man named Mike Astronaut.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Did you walk to the spaceship in slow motion before you got on it?

• 13:56Mike Massimino?

  Yes, because it was very scary.

• 13:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:58Mike Massimino?

  And then you came out of the hangar, like, the right stuff. That's it. Yeah, you try to look cool. Because they're gonna take your picture, but you're actually shaking in your boots. But you wanna try to look cool.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  So which shuttle were you in?

• 14:11Mike Massimino?

  The first one I flew on was Columbia before the accident. That's the one we lost. We lost that one. That was the next time it flew, we lost it, right? Right. Yeah. So the mission after ours, it didn't come back, unfortunately. The second mission I had was on spatial Atlantis.

• 14:24Speaker 04

  So let's talk about the first one, if you don't mind. I just wanna know, your mission, what was your role on the shuttle?

• 14:30Mike Massimino?

  I was a spacewalker.

• 14:31Speaker 04

  Star captain?

• 14:32Mike Massimino?

  Star captain. Yes, I was a star captain. Why didn't you? I liked star captain better. I wish I would've heard what he said. Why don't they call you Skywalker? I was the star captain. Why don't they call you Skywalker? They could, they could call you, yeah.

• 14:42Speaker 04

  You were a spacewalker that was on your business card that year?

• 14:45Mike Massimino?

  No, it wasn't. You have all these great ideas now. Where were you years ago?

• 14:51Mike Massimino?

  This is a good idea. I never, I never even thought of it.

• 14:53Speaker 04

  But your role and the mission was to walk in space?

• 14:55Mike Massimino?

  That's right, yes.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  And otherwise you just sat back and read a book? Like, I can't help you with any of this stuff.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Let me know when it's time to walk in space.

• 15:02Mike Massimino?

  Everyone has their job, you don't want to intrude on...

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're an astronaut. Why do they call it walking in sp- you're floating. Why don't they call it space floating?

• 15:10Speaker 04

  Because that sounds a little gross.

• 15:11Mike Massimino?

  I think, it doesn't sound as cool as... What do you think sounds cooler? Space walking or space floating?

• 15:17Eugene Mirman?

  Space floating sounds a lack of control.

• 15:19Mike Massimino?

  Right.

• 15:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:20Mike Massimino?

  We really don't walk.

• 15:22Eugene Mirman?

  It's not dignified.

• 15:22Mike Massimino?

  The guys on the moon got to walk.

• 15:24Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They did the moon walk.

• 15:26Mike Massimino?

  But we don't really walk. But you're absolutely, we don't really walk.

• 15:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The moon walk.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  You're like, you're treading space?

• 15:29Mike Massimino?

  No, you, no, you move around with your hand when you're floating. You're not... You could try, that won't work so well. You gotta grab stuff.

• 15:34Speaker 04

  Right, you use your hands more than your feet.

• 15:36Mike Massimino?

  Right, yeah, gravity's not working.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  Space grabbing.

• 15:38Mike Massimino?

  Space grabbing. See, but again, that doesn't sound as good as space walking.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  Cosmo grabber.

• 15:43Mike Massimino?

  Cosmo gra- so, so you- What was the first thing you said? You said, "Star captain", you should have stopped then.

• 15:47Speaker 04

  Star captain.

• 15:47Mike Massimino?

  Because the rest of this stuff now, now, you know, it's not working.

• 15:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so you train, I understand, you train in a huge swimming pool in Houston?

• 15:57Mike Massimino?

  Yes.

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that's your kind of buoyant, neutrally buoyant, as they say.

• 16:01Mike Massimino?

  Right, right, and you learn how to, you know, to, to kind of move around. You're not, you're floating, but not really, you're neutrally buoyant, so...

• 16:07Speaker 04

  I've been in a swimming pool before.

• 16:08Mike Massimino?

  You got the idea?

• 16:08Speaker 04

  I know what it's like.

• 16:09Mike Massimino?

  Okay.

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:10Mike Massimino?

  Alright.

• 16:12Mike Massimino?

  So you know what that's like?

• 16:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. I don't want to brag, but I've gone snorkeling before.

• 16:15Mike Massimino?

  Right, yeah, alright. Alright. But we're in a big space suit. You've never been in a swimming pool in a space suit, probably, have you?

• 16:21Speaker 04

  I don't want to brag, but I've gone snorkeling in a space suit.

• 16:24Mike Massimino?

  Have you really? Okay, alright, so... So kind of like what he did. That's what we do.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what you did.

• 16:29Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  But at the point-

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so I just understand, it's not just to hang out in the swimming pool, there's a mock-up of the shuttle and the Hubble telescope submerged in this pool?

• 16:40Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, but he knows that, he did that too. That's why he went snorkeling in his-

• 16:43Speaker 04

  No, I didn't, but I didn't know that there was a phony shuttle down there.

• 16:47Mike Massimino?

  So if they have a-

• 16:48Speaker 04

  A phony shuttle and a phony, there's got to be a big pool.

• 16:50Mike Massimino?

  It's big, it's big. It's 200 feet long.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, it's the largest pool in the world.

• 16:54Mike Massimino?

  Longest pool in the world. 200 feet long, 100 feet wide, and 40 feet deep.

• 16:56Speaker 04

  So what's the name of the shuttle that's on the floor of the pool?

• 17:00Mike Massimino?

  The Nautilus.

• 17:01Speaker 04

  Is it?

• 17:04Mike Massimino?

  We don't have a name, we're looking for one though. You come up with so many good names, what would you call it?

• 17:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good name for the shuttle!

• 17:09Speaker 04

  That's fantastic.

• 17:10Eugene Mirman?

  Sally?

• 17:14Eugene Mirman?

  Space Shuttle Sally.

• 17:16Speaker 04

  But you're, but see, here's, here's the thing that-

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Davy Jones.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  I got, here's the thing I have to speak to, and then I'll let other, other humans speak. You're trying to spin this like, "I went swimming in a giant space pool with the nautilus."

• 17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I ever say that?

• 17:29Speaker 04

  No, sorry. You guys are spinning like they have a huge swimming pool, as though that's exciting. You went into space!

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 17:36Speaker 04

  That's more exciting and terrifying to me. So, as someone who-

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I was getting there, I was just trying to find out how he figured out what to do in space.

• 17:43Speaker 04

  No, I understand.

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  Go ahead.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so now, so now you're in space.

• 17:48Mike Massimino?

  Right.

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, there's your task at hand, but meanwhile, Earth is floating by.

• 17:55Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was not happening in the swimming pool.

• 17:57Mike Massimino?

  No.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay, so, there's Earth. How do you concentrate on fixing the Hubble when Earth is going by? When at 17,200 miles an hour sideways, you get how many sunrises in a day?

• 18:11Mike Massimino?

  16.

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So- Yay! Six-

• 18:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sunrise, sunset, light, dark- Sounds very romantic. Heat, cold, and you have to be the repairman. How does that work?

• 18:30Mike Massimino?

  You really have to try to focus, and not, not look around like, "Oh geez, look, there goes Madagascar, and there goes the telescope, you know, there goes your tool."

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not allowed to look?

• 18:38Mike Massimino?

  No, you are, but you have to pick your moments. So, my first spacewalk, I didn't look around very much, but my second spacewalk, I did. And, looking at the planet is what you really remember. But you have to also get your job done, so, you know, you have to pick your moments.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it beautiful, or what?

• 18:52Mike Massimino?

  It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

• 18:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the stupidest question I have ever heard in my life!

• 19:02Eugene Mirman?

  Wow.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How was he gonna answer that? "Oh, it was ugly, my gosh, Earth from-"

• 19:07Eugene Mirman?

  He might have said, "It's the second most beautiful thing." Maybe he has children, he'd be like, "It's the fourth most beautiful thing."

• 19:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, baby Venus is awesome! Okay. What, Mike, I happen to know that Hubble is higher than the space station.

• 19:18Mike Massimino?

  That's right.

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like 300, how many am I?

• 19:21Mike Massimino?

  It's 350 up. It's 100 miles higher than where the space station flies.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, space station, they got nothing.

• 19:25Mike Massimino?

  No, it's like an airplane.

• 19:28Mike Massimino?

  They're down there low, they can hit clouds, no, they can't really, they're above the air. But, no, we, but we can see at the Hubble altitude, you can see the curvature of the Earth. You can see it in its entirety. It takes up your whole field of view, you're not that far away from it, but you can still see the curvature of it. It looks like a gigantic planet, and that's pretty overwhelming.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good thing.

• 19:45Speaker 04

  Wow, yeah.

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That it's round and looks like a planet.

• 19:48Mike Massimino?

  Right.

• 19:48Speaker 04

  It sounds to me like you were skeptical until that moment.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apparently, obviously.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  I guess they were right.

• 19:54Mike Massimino?

  I was. That whole flat versus round thing? You know, I was a little skeptical, but it is round, it is a planet.

• 20:01Eugene Mirman?

  So, just to summarize, from space, Earth looks like a planet?

• 20:04Mike Massimino?

  It does. And it's beautiful, bruh! You know, my, my buddy-

• 20:10Speaker 04

  But do they factor in, because I would imagine your mission is timed down to the minute?

• 20:15Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Do they factor in gawking time? Like, we know this guy's gonna goof off for probably about 10 minutes.

• 20:21Mike Massimino?

  They do add about 20%.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  Do they?

• 20:23Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, you're gonna be a little slower, you're gonna be looking around. But when I did, after my first spacewalk, my buddy, the pilot on the flight, his name is Digger, we were classmates together, we trained together as astronauts, but he was a pilot, so he wasn't gonna get the spacewalk, and he asked me, "When you come in, I want you to tell me exactly what it's like." So, he came running in the airlock, he took my helmet off, and he looked at me, he goes, "What was it like out there?" And I go, "Digger, you never imagined, the Earth is a planet." That's what I said to him. But what I really meant, everyone knows it's round, but what I found that day was that my relationship with the Earth had changed. Because normally what I had done, just like we did today, we drove here to Brooklyn, or took the subway, or walked, whatever you do to come here, it's kind of like a two-dimensional relationship with the Earth. You know, go to a ballgame, watch TV, whatever, you know.

• 21:07Mike Massimino?

  And then when I got to space, and I looked, and I could see the Earth like that, and I could turn my head, and sometimes if you're lucky, you'd see the moon, you'd see the stars, see all this other chaos, the sun, you can feel the heat, as you talked about, the heat, the cold, all these changes. You realize the Earth, we're not in this safe little haven that we think we're in. We're really out there in the middle of all this chaos. And so, for me, that was proof that, wow, we really are out in the middle of space, traveling around with all this other stuff, and Earth really is a planet to me.

• 21:35Speaker 04

  And so, they pump THC into the atmosphere?

• 21:39Eugene Mirman?

  I was waiting for you going, "That proved to me that the one true God is Allah."

• 21:45Mike Massimino?

  I don't know, I don't know, what is he talking about?

• 21:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tetrahydrocannabinol, yeah, yeah.

• 21:51Eugene Mirman?

  Are you allowed to have wine in space? Are you allowed to drink in space?

• 21:54Mike Massimino?

  No, it's a dry ship.

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can tell us, you can tell us what you smell up there.

• 21:58Speaker 04

  I feel bad because I made a joke about your beautiful statement, I think that's incredible, so.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks, Mike.

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Mike, Mike, Mike.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  It must be astonishing to feel that you are a part of a very small community of people who have seen the Hubble telescope in person, who have seen the planet from that distance. I mean, I went to Yale, you know what I mean?

• 22:19Mike Massimino?

  Wow.

• 22:21Mike Massimino?

  And you snorkel.

• 22:22Speaker 04

  So I know what it's like, and I was a member of the Yale spacesuit snorkeling team. So I know what it's like to belong to an elite community. But that must be very strange to know that there are only a very few people alive who have ever seen what you have seen.

• 22:35Mike Massimino?

  Well, we feel very fortunate.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 22:37Mike Massimino?

  And we really am, because there are a lot of people that would be very happy to go and qualified to go, but we're the ones that won the lottery. You guys included.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's not like you guys worked that hard for it either.

• 22:47Mike Massimino?

  No, we got lucky.

• 22:49Eugene Mirman?

  Do you ever argue with someone and just like when you're frustrated, just go like, "I've been to space."

• 22:56Mike Massimino?

  Doesn't work.

• 22:58Eugene Mirman?

  It would on me. If I ever disagree with you, feel free to yell, "I've been to space." And I'll be like, "You win."

• 23:06Mike Massimino?

  It won't work, and you'll just say, "And I've been snorkeling," or whatever you come up with. It won't work.

• 23:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so Mike, so apparently you're not allowed to bring alcohol legally into space, but I have it on good authority that you smuggled your mom's biscotti.

• 23:17Mike Massimino?

  No, I got it from Michael's Bakery right here in Brooklyn. Michael's Restaurant and Bakery.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you took biscotti up into orbit?

• 23:25Mike Massimino?

  I did.

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And did you bring it back, or did you eat it?

• 23:28Mike Massimino?

  We ate most of it and we brought some of it back.

• 23:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then what did you do with the, is it in a display at the deli now, or what?

• 23:35Mike Massimino?

  Actually, I'm gonna hopefully see Michael from Michael's Bakery while we're here in town. I'm gonna give him a piece from SCS 125.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's been in space.

• 23:42Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, that's been in space.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Space biscotti.

• 23:44Speaker 04

  Sure. Everyone applaud until two weeks from now, when that guy becomes an alien.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When StarTalk Radio comes back, we'll have more of our live show at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York with the comedians Eugene Mirman, Kristen Schaal, John Hodgman, and NASA astronaut Mike Massimino.

• 24:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio Live at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York.

• 24:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm here with my co-host Eugene Mirman. Eugene, thanks for again being on StarTalk Radio.

• 24:33Eugene Mirman?

  Sure, you're very welcome.

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you introduce your guest?

• 24:34Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, and we're here with Kristen Schaal.

• 24:39Eugene Mirman?

  And the delightfully mustachio John Hodgman.

• 24:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So John, that's a real mustache?

• 24:47Speaker 04

  It is.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't just rip it off your nose?

• 24:49Speaker 04

  Well, you could probably find a way to do it.

• 24:53Speaker 04

  Since you look like a bouncer from the movie Roadhouse tonight, you could probably...

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just trying to...

• 24:58Speaker 04

  You could probably tear off my mustache if you wished to.

• 25:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I won't. And my guest, Mike Massimino, two-time shuttle astronaut.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Mike, your space suit, if you gotta go to potty, do you have diapers?

• 25:16Mike Massimino?

  Diaper, yeah.

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Diapers?

• 25:18Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Diaper, we wear diapers when we watch.

• 25:21Mike Massimino?

  I was just waiting for them to say something.

• 25:23Eugene Mirman?

  I'm waiting for you to clarify whether it's a diaper or it's like part of the suit. Because right now, I'm like, really? It's not like a...

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we don't pee our pants. We wear diapers.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  You don't get a catheter?

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  Because that's the least they can do.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 25:35Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, you know, seven of you go up and one person is like, no, that's horrible.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because you're walking out of the panger in slow-mo and say, wait, let me change my diaper. It's not, it doesn't go with the...

• 25:47Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, you have like a table and then you cry, like the astronaut.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You change each other's diapers?

• 25:54Eugene Mirman?

  That sounds fun. That sounds like a weird naughty space party.

• 26:00Eugene Mirman?

  This went like from like we fix telescopes to like, yeah, we do some shit.

• 26:09Speaker 04

  Systematically. You get a call from front of the shuttle saying, "Okay, it's time for you to go walk in space." I think they both...

• 26:17Mike Massimino?

  Is that the way it works? "Time to walk in space." I thought you were gonna say, "Time to wet your diaper." That's what I thought you were gonna say.

• 26:25Speaker 04

  So you have to change from your jumpsuit, or whatever, your speed suit, into a...

• 26:31Mike Massimino?

  This is good.

• 26:31Speaker 04

  How long does it take you to go to your outfit?

• 26:34Mike Massimino?

  This is pretty good.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  Layer by layer, what do you put on first? You put on your diaper.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  And then like, what, a cotton t-shirt? What else do you put on?

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Like, what's on underneath that thing?

• 26:46Mike Massimino?

  I'd rather you describe it, I think it'll be more entertaining.

• 26:48Speaker 04

  No, I'm actually curious, you think I'm making fun, but I wanna know.

• 26:50Mike Massimino?

  No, no.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Diaper first.

• 26:52Mike Massimino?

  The diaper goes first, that would make sense.

• 26:54Speaker 04

  I presume...

• 26:54Mike Massimino?

  I think everyone would agree to that. If the diaper went last, it would be a little silly. The diaper goes first. But adorable.

• 27:02Speaker 04

  And then do you wear...

• 27:03Mike Massimino?

  It wouldn't be as effective.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  You wear some sort of jumpsuit or something underneath, or an undergarment sometimes?

• 27:07Mike Massimino?

  When we go spacewalk, you're asking?

• 27:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:09Mike Massimino?

  We put the diaper, then we put a pair of polypropylene underwear, you know, like you wear maybe when you're... Yeah, hiking and stuff.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  Sure, okay. Bike shorts.

• 27:17Mike Massimino?

  Undergarment.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm, okay, gotcha.

• 27:18Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, very, you know, very thin, but that's gonna absorb the sweat from your body. Keep you warm.

• 27:23Speaker 04

  And it was the early 2000s, so you could still get away with that.

• 27:25Mike Massimino?

  Okay. And then, you also put on some biomed detectors, which is, you know, to know what your heart rate is doing.

• 27:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 27:33Mike Massimino?

  So we have holes, it's very specifically cut inside of that polypropylene.

• 27:36Speaker 04

  And are you doing this yourself in a changing room, or is this like Tony Stark in Iron Man? Yeah, do you have a dresser? You got people walking all around you, getting all this stuff ready?

• 27:43Mike Massimino?

  I wish I was...

• 27:44Speaker 04

  Or not walking, obviously, but floating all around you.

• 27:46Mike Massimino?

  For the diaper, you're pretty much gonna do that, you're on your own.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  And do you call it a diaper, or is there a euphemism?

• 27:50Mike Massimino?

  We...

• 27:51Speaker 04

  Is there a techni...

• 27:52Mike Massimino?

  No, there actually is, it's, you know, it's the MAG, a maximum absorbency garment.

• 27:59Mike Massimino?

  See? That's a good question. Those who thought Hudson was... Because just about everything we have has a special name. We're getting somewhere now. Let's quantify that. So if the diaper weighs a half a pound...

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much, uh, blue liquid can it hold? Yes.

• 28:14Mike Massimino?

  It can hold a lot. A lot of liquid. That's very technical for you, I don't know.

• 28:18Eugene Mirman?

  We're definitely making it sound like he's going to spacewalk to go to the bathroom, which is not the case.

• 28:25Mike Massimino?

  Well, before you put the diaper on, the first thing you do when you wake up on the day you're gonna space... and you know, you don't get an announcement, you know this is coming, it's planned out what day you're gonna go.

• 28:32Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, Mike, what are you doing back there? Can we, uh, we're gonna pull over and...

• 28:37Eugene Mirman?

  How long are you out there? Like, when you're out there, like, when you did the...

• 28:40Speaker 03

  Like, four hours, right?

• 28:41Mike Massimino?

  The spacewalks themselves, the ones I were on, were a bit longer, because we were kinda slow, apparently, about eight hours or so.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  Do you get snacks in your suit then?

• 28:49Mike Massimino?

  No, we get a drink bag. We get to drink water.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  You're on a juice diet while you're on a spacewalk?

• 28:53Mike Massimino?

  Not even just water.

• 28:54Eugene Mirman?

  Like a master cleanse, I get it.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I've been doing the math, I've just been doing the math, so the eight, eight hours, so that's six sunrises?

• 29:05Speaker 04

  That's the funny thing, Neil, no one knows. Five, five or six. It's impossible to figure it out.

• 29:11Mike Massimino?

  No, you can figure it out.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Math!

• 29:14Speaker 04

  Nothing. There are no calculations that can do it. You know when you're going, so morning of the spacewalk, you first use the facilities.

• 29:21Mike Massimino?

  You use the potty. Eat a good breakfast, because you're not gonna be able to eat anything when you get out in your space suit.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  We have a good breakfast up there?

• 29:26Speaker 04

  Freeze-dried ice cream, right?

• 29:27Mike Massimino?

  No, that's a...

• 29:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Tang?

• 29:29Mike Massimino?

  You wanna try that stuff?

• 29:30Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 29:30Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, you know why? Because we won't eat it. That stuff's terrible.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why it's all for sale down here.

• 29:35Mike Massimino?

  That's why we sell it, that stuff's terrible.

• 29:36Eugene Mirman?

  I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but mostly it's dim sum.

• 29:40Mike Massimino?

  Now it is. We're an international program now.

• 29:43Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, exactly, so it's...

• 29:44Mike Massimino?

  And we have food from all over the world.

• 29:45Eugene Mirman?

  Mostly like, uh, the juicy bun with the soup, and you're like, oh!

• 29:48Mike Massimino?

  That's right.

• 29:48Eugene Mirman?

  Gotta get the vinegar on it.

• 29:49Mike Massimino?

  Chopsticks, it gets a little messy.

• 29:51Speaker 04

  What's a breakfast for a spacewalk, though, seriously?

• 29:53Mike Massimino?

  For a spacewalk, I like eating peanut butter. Peanut butter on a tortilla, we don't have regular bread. Because it makes crumbs. You know, crumbs aren't such a good thing.

• 30:01Speaker 04

  That'll punch through your chest.

• 30:03Mike Massimino?

  It'll... Close, you can inhale them.

• 30:05Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, really?

• 30:06Mike Massimino?

  Or it can get in your eyeball, or crumbs are no good.

• 30:08Speaker 04

  If you ask for a crumb, that could be it for you, right?

• 30:09Mike Massimino?

  The biscotti was very hazardous. Although it was good, it was very hazardous.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are food hazards in space?

• 30:14Mike Massimino?

  Food hazards.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With biscotti in the eyeball?

• 30:16Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, anything that can... a little particle in space can...

• 30:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so when you said tortilla, you mean soft tortilla?

• 30:21Mike Massimino?

  Soft tortilla.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Soft tortilla and peanut butter, so the peanut butter sticks the tortilla, there are no crumbs, and it all goes down your throat.

• 30:26Mike Massimino?

  Right.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  And it's still real food, though, it's not food from a tube.

• 30:30Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, no, I had yogurt, you know, it's in a bag, but it was yogurt.

• 30:34Eugene Mirman?

  Has anyone ever had Pop Rocks, or is it too dangerous?

• 30:37Mike Massimino?

  Pop Rocks are too dangerous. We have M&Ms. I've never thought about the Pop Rocks.

• 30:43Eugene Mirman?

  That would kill you. I mean, a Pop Rock popping in your eye, you can't get it out. And you have the big clumsy gloves and you're poking it.

• 30:50Mike Massimino?

  It'd be terrible.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an extra kind of propulsion.

• 30:53Mike Massimino?

  It's like a sabotage thing.

• 30:55Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, that's how we'll get the Russians. One bag of Pop Rocks in a space shuttle. Spill, spill, spill, goodbye program.

• 31:03Speaker 04

  You just go to the International Space, International Space Station. You do your whole tour of duty with the Russians as you're leaving. See ya, suckers.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to clarify, Eugene Mirman is Russian, okay?

• 31:15Eugene Mirman?

  Yes. Oh yeah, if you're listening to this, I'm not a terrible racist person. Sorry.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you're not getting back into Russia.

• 31:25Eugene Mirman?

  Not with my Pop Rocks joke. That will be Putin's last straw.

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Mike, so they dress you. You put on your own panties, right? Mike.

• 31:39Speaker 04

  M A G, M A G.

• 31:42Eugene Mirman?

  I like that you've like walked in space and we're like, but do your nipples get cold? Like, we're asking you questions.

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so you're in space. You got your spacesuit on.

• 31:50Mike Massimino?

  Right.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you do if your nose itches?

• 31:53Mike Massimino?

  With my nose, it's a problem. I've got a, you know, I got a big nose, so it can be a real problem.

• 31:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, you can't see this on the radio, but this guy.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  It's like Cyrano de Bergerac.

• 32:07Mike Massimino?

  The scratching of the nose is, once they put your helmet on, you don't have access to your face. And so any itch or anything like that is problematic. We do have a Valsalva device because you have to be able to clear your ears, right? And you can't get to your nose to clear your ears when you're snorkeling and scuba diving. You know about that, right?

• 32:23Speaker 04

  Sure, no, I understand.

• 32:24Mike Massimino?

  Okay, so, okay. So you can't clear your ears because you can't get normally, like you would do to squeeze your nose. So we have a device where you can actually ram your nostrils into this pad and create a seal and.

• 32:36Speaker 04

  Oh, so it's built into the, it's.

• 32:37Mike Massimino?

  Yes, like a little pad that you put at the right place where you want it.

• 32:40Speaker 04

  So you have a built-in nostril pad in your helmet.

• 32:42Mike Massimino?

  It's a built-in nostril pad to help you Valsalva.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  A B I N P.

• 32:46Speaker 03

  That's great. So when you look at the earth and it's so beautiful and you start crying.

• 32:52Mike Massimino?

  Right.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  And it can soak up your snot.

• 32:55Mike Massimino?

  You gotta be careful with that, too. But yes.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Do you wanna go to the moon, Mike? And are you sad that you can't?

• 33:04Mike Massimino?

  Well, I, you know, I...

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Feel like I'm in therapy. No, let's leapfrog that. Do you wanna be on the first mission to Mars?

• 33:12Eugene Mirman?

  No! Do you wanna go to Mars?

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was I asking you?

• 33:15Eugene Mirman?

  Leonard!

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've been to the moon! Eugene, we've been to the moon!

• 33:20Eugene Mirman?

  You and I have, but Mike hasn't.

• 33:27Eugene Mirman?

  You know what, Neil? A lot of people have been to Costa Rica, but maybe he wants to go too.

• 33:32Mike Massimino?

  I haven't been there.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Mike, you take, answer however you want, however.

• 33:37Eugene Mirman?

  Someone's been to Japan, why send a second guy?

• 33:43Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, you're right, so do you want to know?

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mike, go where you gotta go. Where, so tell us. Tell us.

• 33:48Mike Massimino?

  Uh, okay.

• 33:50Eugene Mirman?

  Be quick so we can talk about Mars.

• 33:52Mike Massimino?

  Where we going, to the moon or Mars? Yeah, I'd love to go to any of those places. That would be, that'd be really cool. But it's probably not gonna happen for me, but, you know, I would like to see someone go. I think we should go back to the moon and onward to Mars and... Yeah. And I think we will, actually. I don't think it's gonna be me, but I would love to go.

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Radio, live at the Bell House in Brooklyn.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This evening's topic has been all about space, about Hubble. To my right is Mike Massimino, two-time shuttle astronaut, at Hubble repairman, and Eugene Mirman, my co-host. Tell us who you've got here.

• 34:30Eugene Mirman?

  And Kristin Schaal and John Hodgman.

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right!

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're continuing the broadcast of our second live show, recorded at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York, on December 18th, 2011. Joining me that night were my co-host, the comedian Eugene Mirman, the comedians Kristin Schaal and John Hodgman, and Mike Massimino, a NASA astronaut who flew on two space shuttle missions to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're done servicing the Hubble. You gave it a new lease on life, it's got about five more years, and... No warranties, by the way, on the labor. No more warranties on the labor.

• 35:15Eugene Mirman?

  You didn't get the Best Buy thing for like ninety bucks, we'll replace your Hubble.

• 35:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's where the sales pitch stopped. Alright, but we've got another telescope, ready to fly. It's the James Webb Space Telescope. It is bigger, it is better, it will go farther. The Hubble was three hundred and fifty miles up, James Webb is gonna be a million miles on the other side of the moon. In one of the Lagrangian points.

• 35:38Speaker 04

  Wait a minute, say that again. How far is the Hubble, how many miles?

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Three hundred and fifty miles up.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Three hundred and fifty miles up. A short walk, a short spacewalk.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could drive that in six hours.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  This other one's gonna be on the other side of the moon?

• 35:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, so, James Webb Space Telescope, we found a spot. A nice cozy spot. It's in one of the Lagrangian points of the Earth-Moon-Sun system. A Lagrangian point. These are the places. What is it, yeah, what is it?

• 36:04Eugene Mirman?

  It's true, what does that mean?

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm building to say what that is.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  Alright, everyone.

• 36:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you feel it coming out? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's coming out of me, okay?

• 36:12Speaker 04

  Everyone relax, he's flexing his biceps, it's gonna happen.

• 36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Lagrangian point. Okay. So, consider the Earth-Moon system. If you travel to the moon, you feel Earth's gravity for a while, but there's a point where you begin to primarily feel the moon's gravity, and you fall towards the moon. There's a point exactly between the middle. That's Lagrange Point One. Who's it named after?

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lagrange. Okay, so, so... Who is that guy? Okay, so now you have to...

• 36:49Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, that's the only part we knew, Neil.

• 36:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a French mathematician. So, the Earth and the Moon both revolve around a common center of gravity, which happens to be about a thousand miles inside Earth's surface in the line connecting the center of the Earth to the Moon. So, it's not that the Moon goes around Earth, it's that both the Earth and the Moon go around their common center of gravity. And so... I'm just saying, I'm just saying how this goes. So now, since they both orbit, there are places which will wanna fall towards the moon and wanna fall towards Earth, but because the system is rotating, there's an extra sort of centrifugal force out there pushing it out. So, when you wanna fall this way and that way, there's another balance point.

• 37:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Lagrange did the equations for all, he found five balance points. Lagrange, one, two, three, four, five.

• 37:47Eugene Mirman?

  So wanted the last one to be six.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry.

• 37:50Eugene Mirman?

  It would be a mystery.

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all orbiting pairs of objects have five Lagrangian points. So there's the Earth-Moon system of Lagrangian points, there's the Earth-Sun system of Lagrangian points. One is exactly in between, one is on the far side, one is at a 60-degree angle, leading and trailing the orbit that you're in. These are cool spots. What's good about them is that all the forces of gravity balance. So you can build structures there that can be stable on huge scales without gravity destroying its...

• 38:24Eugene Mirman?

  How does gravity work again?

• 38:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the James Webb Space Telescope is at the Sun-Earth L2 point, which is a million miles on the other side of the moon. And there, it is tuned to see light emanated from the birth of galaxies in the early universe. That light, when emitted, was visible to the human eye. But since then, the universe has expanded, stretched the wavelength of visible light so that it is now out of the range of the visible and deep in the infrared. So, this telescope is tuned to the infrared so that it can see objects being born at a time when it was emitting visible light. There it is.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I figured.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  So Neil, you're telling me that it was visible to humans like back in caveman days? And they like drew it on the wall? And that's how you know?

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so no, cavemen was like 30,000 years ago or so? It was about 4,000, but whatever. We differ. Depends on what book you read, yes. The King James Bible.

• 39:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no, cavemen was not long enough ago for any of this to be relevant. They were just 30,000 years ago. That's nothing. That's a trillion seconds ago.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  Okay, so there wasn't humans that saw it, but there...

• 39:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh no. If humans were around at the beginning of the universe, you would see these bright, beautiful, visible light galaxies being born. But over the 13.7 billion years that have elapsed since then, that light has been red-shifted from the expansion of the universe. And if you want to see what's going on there, you need a telescope tuned to look where the action is. And that's what the James Webb Space Telescope will be designed to do.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  And is it named for the Senator Jim Webb from Virginia? Because he made it himself? Who's it named for?

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it's a little odd. James Webb was the head of NASA during most of the Apollo era back in the 1960s. So it's an homage to when we actually used to leave low earth orbit.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Right. I'm glad we're done with that. What?

• 40:43Speaker 04

  Come on.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  You missing?

• 40:45Speaker 04

  We saw what's out there, it's boring.

• 40:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Mike, let me end with this. Mike, if it's a million miles out, you ain't going to repair that.

• 40:53Eugene Mirman?

  No.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I don't think.

• 40:56Eugene Mirman?

  No.

• 40:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The million mile, we never sent anybody... How long would it take to run that far?

• 41:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a spaceship?

• 41:03Speaker 04

  Do you have to send out a generation ship? Like astronauts raised on a ship?

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  Ooh!

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For those kinds of things, you need really fertile people, you know, so that they can produce generations...

• 41:13Speaker 04

  I'm ready.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That will follow.

• 41:17Speaker 04

  It's not really that far.

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, actually, you get there in a couple of weeks.

• 41:20Speaker 04

  It's not far at all.

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were saying to Mike that he would never fly out to the James Webb Telescope. It being a million miles beyond the moon. So explain why not. Well, because we're not equipped to send astronauts that far. First of all, we don't have a spaceship that can leave low Earth orbit, and we haven't had one since 1972. That is 40 years ago.

• 41:43Eugene Mirman?

  That we know of.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And another problem is, the telescope costs some X number of dollars. Sure, we'll just say X. X. It may cost more than that to send a human being to fix it. So you might as well just build another one and send it out there, too. This is the economy of space travel at the moment. So forgive me, but how are we getting the James Webb Telescope up there? The telescope is not carrying a human being. We easily get other things out of low Earth orbit. We have a mission going to Pluto right now. Why? Yeah, why?

• 42:16Eugene Mirman?

  I'd make fun of it.

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Makes fun of it.

• 42:18Eugene Mirman?

  To just tell it it's not a planet.

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 42:22Eugene Mirman?

  Be like, "Yeah."

• 42:23Speaker 04

  Commence mocking sequence, go.

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Radio, brought to you in part by the National Science Foundation. Tune in next week for the second half of our live show, recorded December 2011 at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Until then, as always, keep looking up.