Cosmic Queries: Human Endurance in Space

What challenges await humanity on our journey into space, and will we be up to the task? Explore the dangers of space with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. And in studio with me is my co-host, Chuck Nice Comic. Hey Neil. Chuck, when did the word "comic" apply to human beings, rather than what you see in the Sunday paper? Uh, you know, I'm not sure. I think once I put it on my Twitter handle. Chuck Nice Comic plugs his Twitter handle.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good plug. That was really, that was smooth. That was smoother than usual.

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk after hours. It's the Cosmic Queries part. Many StarTalk episodes. What we do is we collect questions on a specific topic from all of our media outlets, and we're almost everywhere. Google+, where else are we? Look over to my... Facebook? Yeah, definitely. Facebook, you can like us there and... StarTalk, I mean Twitter? Twitter. Yeah, StarTalk Radio is our Twitter handle, and just Google "StarTalk" and find the medium you like the best, and there we are. There's a veritable cornucopia of StarTalk for you to avail yourself of. That had way more syllables than necessary.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's just showing off your eight vocabulary words you picked up this past weekend. What are you talking about, eight? I got those this morning from a calendar.

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, these are questions. I haven't seen these before, but the theme today is "human performance", and it's with emphasis on space, what your body would do in space, and can it work, does it work? And so, you got them, and hand them over to me. And I haven't seen them before, so some numbers I might have to, you know, pull out of the ether, but we'll check them over the breaks. And if I don't know an answer, I'll just say, you know, Chuck, I don't have a clue. Go to the next one.

• 2:14Chuck Nice?

  We know that's not gonna happen, but that's cool. And I must say, I am impressed with the fact that you sit there, you you have a computer in front of you. But I noticed that you always make sure that you close it before we start this. And I think that's your way of saying, that's right. That's right. The computer up here is where this is coming from.

• 2:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring it on.

• 2:40Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so let's uh, let's go to Facebook first. I mean, we got some Google Plus and we got some Twitter here, but let's go to Facebook first. I'm gonna start off on a fun, on a fun note. And this is from Matthew Vixell, okay? What could the future of sports look like in space? Will Harry Potter fans get a chance to see a version of Quidditch implemented in microgravity? What effects would increased or decreased gravity have on water sports? So two, three real questions there. I'm more, I'm more concerned about the Quidditch, but.

• 3:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait. Last I checked, in Quidditch, they fly, right?

• 3:21Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 3:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so one of the advantages of flying is that you're you're not so much thinking about gravity. Cause you can go anywhere in the three dimensions that space gives. It's we people who can't fly who are limited to the two dimensions of Earth's surface. So, the broom, which they steer by leaning, left or right, and has natural lift to it. If you were in the vacuum of space, eh eh or free falling anywhere, then there is no sort of net gravity force on you. The buoyant force of the broom would be unnecessary. In fact, if it still had a buoyant force, it wouldn't know where to buoyant you towards.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? If if if you're, eh eh if it wants to lift you up. And in space, there is no up. Up, right. You'd have brooms going every which direction, not knowing. So basically, quidditch would look like a Chinese fire drill. Yeah, it would be quite a random looking. So you'd have, you'd need, surely the wizards, so they would specially design a broom for the specific purposes of space quidditch, that's first of all. Now, if, now, there are two kinds of space quidditch you might imagine. One that's in the vacuum of space and they're wearing space helmets. Mm-hmm. Or one that's on a planet that has an atmosphere and it just has a slightly different gravity. Alright, so if it's a slightly different gravity, it's the same game. It's the same game. Same game, so that's not even interesting.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you're in the vacuum of space, uh, then, uh, let me see, so, so there'd be no atmospheric drag on, uh, on anything you throw. Mm-hmm. And the, what do you call the little birdie thingy with the flappy wings? Um, um, oh, God. Oh, now it's killing me. Oh. You know, we now have a zillion Harry Potter fans saying, oh, my gosh. Right, how could you not know that? I think it's the snitch. It is the snitch. Yes. Nice job. That was impressive. I got the, all from my kids. Yeah. So the snitch, of course, we presume is, uh, it doesn't have broom powers, but is actually aerodynamically supporting itself with flapping wings. Oh, yes. Like hum, uh, like. Like a hummingbird.

• 5:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like a hummingbird style. Yeah, so, uh, it, wings are useless in zero G. That was the odd thing about naming the lunar module, the eagle. That kinda worried me a bit. In 1969, Apollo 11, the lunar module, uh, what does Neil Armstrong say when he lands? Houston, tranquility base here, the eagle has landed. And their patch was an eagle extending out its wings. This, because every mission has a, a uniquely designed mission patch. This one had wings extended outward and it was hovering over the lunar surface. No, that doesn't work. That just wasn't right. Okay, a bird on an airless planet is a brick.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So yeah, the snitch, they'd have to redesign the snitch for that one. So it could be fun, but yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. No, a swimming pool. All right, if you brought a swimming pool to Mars. Okay. The atmospheric conditions of Mars, it is very low temperature, very low atmospheric pressure. Okay. Right. Now, do you remember what happens if you go to mountain tops? What happens to the boiling point of your cooking, uh, if your pot of water? It, uh, it, it, it takes less time. No, it takes less time to bring it to a boil. But it takes longer to cook it because now it's cooking at a lower temperature. It'll boil like 180 degrees, 170, when it should be 212. Right. The higher you go in altitude, the thinner is the air, the lower the temperature of your water.

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, the lower is the temperature that water boils, right? If you keep dropping the air pressure, the boiling temperature continues to drop. There isn't a pressure at which the boiling point equals the freezing point. And that is the condition on the surface of Mars. Get out of here. It is the triple point of water where water coexists as water, liquid, and gas. Dude, get out of here. And so if you had a swimming pool, it would be evaporating and there'd be ice chunks in it and you'd be swimming in the water surrounding the ice. So it'd be really different. You'd need, uh, swimming events where you navigate the icebergs that are in your pool.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the water would just be smiling, happy, and would stay that way. Yo. It's called the triple point. That's awesome. You got it. When we come back, more of StarTalk After Hours Cosmic Query Edition.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are back. StarTalk Radio, after-hours edition, the Cosmic Queries. And today, we're through questions called from the internet. Listener queries, all about human performance in space or anywhere else.

• 8:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But space is cool, so we can focus on that. I got Chuck Nice in here with me. Chuck, just briefly, you got a, you're on a TV show now, and I laugh every time I read the description.

• 8:44Chuck Nice?

  It's great.

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You go into people's homes and do what?

• 8:47Chuck Nice?

  I go into people's homes.

• 8:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, let me see, people let you in their homes and you do what?

• 8:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, that's a different show where I'm just going in. Uh, people take me on a tour of their homes. They live in very weird, strange, or unconventional dwellings. And I show up at the door, and they're like, "Come on in," and I kinda hang out.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're with a camera.

• 9:05Chuck Nice?

  I'm with the whole crew.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is like 60 Minutes with a camera at the door.

• 9:08Chuck Nice?

  It's very cool. It's a very cool thing. I just pop in on them, and it's a home invasion show, basically.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Home invasion.

• 9:14Chuck Nice?

  It's a home invasion show.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Home Strange Home.

• 9:16Chuck Nice?

  Home Strange Home on HGTV.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crazy stuff.

• 9:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good luck with that. Yeah, and they got another season, you said.

• 9:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man, so we're in hiatus right now, but we'll be back.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent.

• 9:25Chuck Nice?

  It's gonna be great, season two coming up.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You said you were high? Oh, hiatus, I'm sorry.

• 9:29Chuck Nice?

  That's always the case. I am still reeling from the triple point of water that you bought up. I, you know, I learn, I learn a lot when I'm here.

• 9:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You left off the last segment with this, yeah.

• 9:40Chuck Nice?

  And, and, and, and, this is something I've never even heard of, but it makes perfect sense, the way you say it, that as the atmospheric pressure is less and less, then water now can reach an equilibrium point where it can boil, be liquid.

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And freeze.

• 10:00Chuck Nice?

  And freeze.

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the same time.

• 10:01Chuck Nice?

  All at the same time.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 10:03Chuck Nice?

  Blown away.

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and it's, it's well-known in physics, and it's called the triple point.

• 10:07Chuck Nice?

  The triple.

• 10:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's a combination of pressure and temperature. And you adjust one and the other, and you can find out where all three forms of matter are just happy coexisting. So, in fact, it's not simply water that happens to be evaporating, it is boiling water.

• 10:25Chuck Nice?

  Boiling water.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With ice cubes in it, and you have steam, water, and ice. All in one, in one stable form. And not every place on the Martian surface does this.

• 10:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there are many places that do. It's very near the triple point of water. And so if you're gonna have a swimming contest in a place that's near the triple point of water, you just have to rethink how you navigate the icebergs.

• 10:48Chuck Nice?

  Kinda like swimming in the East River at one point. You would have to navigate the bodies that are floating. You gotta get around them.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. Plus, if it's boiling, remember, you remember the scene in, in Lion King, uh, One and a Half. Where Puma's in the-

• 11:06Chuck Nice?

  He's in this, in this hot tub.

• 11:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the hot tub, yes. And, and it's bubbling. And then Puma gets out.

• 11:11Chuck Nice?

  And it stops bubbling.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stops bubbling.

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Simba says, "I'm outta here, we're good." So, uh, yeah, so it's basically a jacuzzi, simply by exploiting the laws of physics.

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Yeah, that's pretty cool, man.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, next.

• 11:27Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's move on, let's move on. All right, this is from, um-

• 11:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, during the Olympics, I was constantly tweeting what all these events would look like in space and on the moon and on Mars, and it was a fun. Uh, if you, if you're into mining archival tweets, you go to my Twitter stream, Neil Tyson. I think the cleanest way to do is just go to, uh, the Twitter page.

• 11:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? And then you find me and just scroll down, take a while, but just the dates are there. Go to when the Olympics were and you'll see a whole bunch of tweets about swimming and, and gymnastics and, you know. I was worried that if the gravity were low enough that, that if you jump on the springboard, uh, you'll just go in orbit.

• 12:04Chuck Nice?

  Never come back.

• 12:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Never come back.

• 12:05Chuck Nice?

  Never come back. God, that's my dream. All right.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 12:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's, uh, let's go to Jeffrey Runyon, okay? Jeffrey Runyon is coming to us through Google Plus. He says, "If humans are ever going to travel to Mars, what are we going to eat along the way? Food has a major psychological aspect to it. If people are going to be under enormous stress in close quarters for two years or plus, two plus years, uh, they're going to need more than astronaut ice cream to keep them going."

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course. And there, there's a whole, this psychol- there's an entire- A branch of psychologists that are in the employ of NASA at Houston, uh, yes, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, whose sole job is to worry about the mental health of astronauts. Let's just get that up front. Really? Yes, there is. Okay, that's number one. Number two, the, uh, about the food, I actually visited the kitchen, the, the cosmic kitchen at NASA at Johnson, and you meet the chef who's making food that can last 10 years without refrigeration. Wow. I had a steak that had been in a, in a packet on the shelf for five years, unrefrigerated. What, so some foods, they just irradiated.

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you, you know, why does food decompose? Because there are microbes in it eating it before you have a chance to get there. Right. That's why, it's not a natural thing in the universe for something to decompose. That only happens on Earth, where there are microbes everywhere, smaller than your eye can see. But if you leave out a slab of meat, they'll start chowing down on it. Okay? So, make sure you take this trip and there's no microbes on your food, so you're irradiated. So there you have it. All right, now there are other problems. The molecular structure can break down, so the meat or whatever other food can start tasting mealy. So there's not only the taste of the food, but there's texture. Right. So you gotta, you wanna worry about that. Uh, all astronauts take comfort food with them. There is meatloaf.

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, there's, you know, rice and beans, there's, you know, there's tortillas. Tortilla's great, because it doesn't make crumbs when you eat it. Okay. Regular bread you eat, it makes crumbs, and the crumbs are floating around the space station, could end up in a duct somewhere. Right. All right? Uh, tortilla doesn't make crumbs. So there are a lot of foods, international foods at that, and especially evident in the International Space Station. You start comparing food from different nationalities, and you know, yo, what's cooking over there? And who's got a better smelling, uh, uh, dinner for the evening? So, uh, the point is, they do think about what food to bring, and you want, uh, you want enough of a diversity of food that you can, um, you can spread the, spread the love to different kinds of food groups and different, um, uh, nationalities.

• 14:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the bottom line is... You don't need more variation of food than most people would ever have in their own lives.

• 15:01Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I bet you there's no more than two or three kinds of breakfast cereals you ever eat. Is that correct?

• 15:06Chuck Nice?

  You are correct.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's correct. And the, think about that. You know, there's not that many different things. And how many times do I eat a pizza and love it? You know, at least 20 times a month practically.

• 15:16Chuck Nice?

  It is the perfect food.

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is the perfect food, exactly. So, and I will still eat me some astronaut ice cream. So, oh, by the way, the trip there would take about nine months. The alignment of Earth and Mars, that alignment happens about once every two and a half years. Where you minimize the energy to get there.

• 15:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when you launch, it takes about nine months. But Earth and Mars are not still lined up for you to come back. You have to wait a few more years for that, that next alignment to help you come back. So a total round trip Mars mission is going to be three or four years.

• 15:46Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you really want is like gardens on Mars. Could create a habit, a hab module, then, and you can grow pigs and cows if you're carnivorous.

• 15:54Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or celery and carrots if you're a veggie. And, you know, go to town.

• 15:58Chuck Nice?

  By the way, one of my favorite bands ever, Gardens on Mars.

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. Excellent. Excellent. So what else you got?

• 16:05Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Uh, Brian Lefkowitz. Neil, your favorite platter, patter, planet is Saturn.

• 16:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Favorite planner.

• 16:13Chuck Nice?

  Your platter, your favorite planet is Saturn. How would the rings look from the surface? Weird.

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. From what surface?

• 16:22Chuck Nice?

  From the surface of Saturn.

• 16:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the surface of the rings.

• 16:24Chuck Nice?

  When we see, well, when we see Saturn, we see those rings.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 16:28Chuck Nice?

  If you're on Saturn, what are you seeing?

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so first of all, I have to confess, my favorite planet is Earth. But after Earth, it's Saturn, alright? And of course, Saturn being a gas giant, has no surface. So if I dropped you on Saturn, and you want to look at the rings, you will descend down to the center of the planet through the clouds with no rings in sight.

• 16:52Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, actually, what will happen is you'll reach a point where the gas is under so much pressure, it is the same density as your body.

• 16:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God, I've reached that point myself.

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you'll bob up and down like a cork at that location. But there's probably a very solid center, but is probably farther in than where you would. You so you need a way to sort of float. Uh, you get it like a balloon or something and float on in those outer regions of Saturn. Once there, the rings are awesome. How do I know? Because we have the Cassini spacecraft and Carolyn Porco, who has a Twitter handle. I think it's Carolyn Porco, actually. How strange. What a concept. Uh, I call her Madden Sat- Madame Saturn, and she is, she is the keeper and the taker of these images that the Cassini spacecraft has, uh, produced of the Saturnian system. And you look at those images in super duper high res.

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is as though you are there. Nice. And one, the coolest thing is these rings are stunning, but edge on they disappear. That's how thin they are compared to their width. Wow. Yeah, they essentially disappear. Galileo first saw this in his telescope because he's looking at Saturn and he thought Saturn had these big ears. I mean, he playfully called them ears. Saturn went edge on. It depends on the orientation between Saturn in its orbit and Earth. But he observed it long enough so that in the cycle of that relationship, Saturn went edge on and then the rings disappeared to him. disappeared. And he said, could Saturn have eaten his children? Hmm. If you remember your mythology, that's exactly what the god Saturn did. What a literate reaction to a cosmic phenomenon. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Back after the break.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are back on StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm your personal and private astrophysicist.

• 18:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, why are you laughing Chuck?

• 19:03Chuck Nice?

  No, because it just sounds so dirty.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sorry. Okay.

• 19:08Chuck Nice?

  It's like, wow, I never had my own.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the show has developed this huge listener base and I, I feel like, you know, we're, we belong to one another.

• 19:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's cool. I know what you're saying.

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I feel a relationship.

• 19:20Chuck Nice?

  I love it.

• 19:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got Chuck Nice here. Chuck, you, you collected questions from the internet?

• 19:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're all about, uh, human performance in space and anywhere else.

• 19:31Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yes. And, uh, pretty, gotta give it to these, uh, these listeners, man. Some, uh, very inventive and, uh, thought provoking questions.

• 19:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. So you mean there are no crazy people?

• 19:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, they're still them.

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're editing them out.

• 19:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, I'm gonna bring you those too.

• 19:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 19:46Chuck Nice?

  Uh, they're gonna bring you those too. Okay.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go for it.

• 19:48Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. How will science attempt, this is from Heather, I'm sorry, Michelle Webb. How will science attempt to prevent the founder effect on isolated populations of humans? If we travel to and or colonize another planet?

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not completely sure what she means by founder effect, but I can imagine. There's this, there's one of, one of the great episodes of Twilight Zone showed this colony that had, uh, landed on a planet and colonized the planet. On a level where they're having children, you know, and, and, and everyone's getting older and the, the goal is to sort of reproduce themselves. And the person who was sort of the leader of the pack upon landing, ended up with a bizarre, ended up assuming a bizarre and, and perverse level of control over that colony.

• 20:43Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in other words, why do we say that some people who are our leaders are just crazy?

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we have examples of other leaders who are not crazy. Right. All right, and you can say, no, I don't want that, I want this other one. So then you leave this leader and go vote for the next one, or you you you do something to change it. If you have only one leader, a founder of a colony, and you know of no other kind of society, and you're born into it, it can lead to psychologically, it can lead to some disturbing and distorted understandings of what human interaction would or should be. Mm hmm. Now, what I'm not sure about is this founder effect that we imagine that could happen on planets. Why wouldn't that have happened in tribal societies long ago?

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're a tribe and you're distant from other tribes because you migrated there or emigrated there, or you you you wandered there, and you're all, you know, you got a tribe of, let's say, thirty people, that can get weird, I suppose. And so I don't know what checks and balances might have existed in early man, you know, early, early troglodytes. Probably a big club to the head. Club.

• 21:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't like this founder. I forgot about the club. Yeah. The club is the great equalizer. That's right. How to handle idiot leaders. So, um, yeah, so I I think the solution is you send more than one charismatic person, and then no one takes over, and you don't end up being completely lost under the control of that leader. You know, here's a good example, Jonestown. Right. Jonestown, who's old, who's a listener's old enough to remember Jonestown. Jonestown Guyana. Guyana, nineteen seventy. Jim Jones. Nineteen seventy eight, Jim Jones, Jonestown, named it after himself. That's that's the first, first.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  First sign there's gonna be a problem. Submitted evidence A, you know? Let's all go to Chuckville. We know we're in trouble now. We're going to Chuckville. Exhibit A. And so you create a community, and you're the only, this man, I mean, and you're charismatic, and other people have are prone to be followers. Right. Oh, my gosh, no telling what'll happen. So we already did the experiment, you know, it's there in Jonestown. It's there in Jonestown. So my hope is that you'd set up more than one colony so that they could fight each other. Right. And now you've created Earth. Look at that.

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You happy now?

• 23:20Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, one more before the break.

• 23:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here's one. I would like to know what Neil thinks about the Mars One project and if it can really be successful. And this is from Jonathan Partita. Can it really be successful Mars One, or is it a pipe dream?

• 23:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you need people who invent projects like that in our midst. Otherwise, we'll never go anywhere. So this is, there's an entrepreneur from the Netherlands who has it in mind to, to first send some reconnaissance spacecraft to Mars, and then every two years, two and a half years, when our position with Earth and Mars line up for a minimum energy transfer of the craft, to send astronauts there and build a colony. And so it's ambitious. I think it's a little too ambitious. I don't think, I mean, somebody's got to do it, and there's always someone who says you're too ambitious. So I don't want to be one of the ones that said, "See, told you so," as they were drinking martinis on the, you know, on Valles Marineris there. But, so, I think it's great that we have people thinking this way.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My worry is that they might be over dreaming, and, and there might be some investors who think the real, the, the destination is closer than it actually is. So my hope is that it's all transparent, and the risks, and the timetables, and the costs are all made open, and the more of this, the better.

• 24:42Chuck Nice?

  So there you have it. Invest your money, but just know you'll never see a return.

• 24:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, when we come back, more of StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. This is StarTalk After Hours, the Cosmic Queries portion of the show.

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are back. StarTalk Radio, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Chuck Nice, team studio with me.

• 25:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes, sir.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From New York City. Chuck, love having you on the show.

• 25:29Chuck Nice?

  Love being here, man.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for doing this. You've been reading questions to me called from the Internet on space exploration and human endurance and human performance and broadly, just what's up with that?

• 25:41Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly. So, you know, here's what's funny, because you were talking about Mars One and...

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just before the break.

• 25:49Chuck Nice?

  Just before the break.

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Jonathan asked about whether it would be a pipe dream. Okay. But now Heather comes behind Jonathan and says, Heather Laird, says, "Can we bring our cats to Mars? Because I'll go if I can bring my cat." Okay, so a couple of things. Getting to Mars is not simply can you create a spacecraft that'll accomplish it. If you want to set up a colony, you need to create sustainable resources there. The entire history of the space program is one where you're packing your bag with everything you're going to need and use while you're there, including the water, the food, everything. And you leave this trail of garbage along the way and you come back with nothing. All right? That's how that works.

• 26:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're going to sustain a colony, you need sustainable food sources, you need sustainable energy sources. All the things that we take for granted here on Earth because it's beneath our feet or coming out of a faucet in the wall.

• 26:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Needs to be configured in your colony on Mars. And I don't know that we're there yet. I bet it's easier to get there technologically than it is to figure out how to stay there.

• 26:54Chuck Nice?

  How to stay there.

• 26:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's a whole other, whole other need and requirement of that colony. Then the people have to be able to get along.

• 27:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and by the way... Pets, getting back to the cat question, bring a certain level of tranquility to many people.

• 27:10Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 27:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They form an important psychological support for them

• 27:15Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in ways that other humans don't. So perhaps, one of these Mars missions should bring the dog and the cat and the chinchilla, whatever it is, whatever it is you pet. Maybe there's the, the ark, you know, the animal ark that brings over all the, the pets that we know and love. Or, or maybe we'll just have a mechanical stuffed animal, you know?

• 27:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To make that work. So there, so there you go.

• 27:39Chuck Nice?

  So there's your answer Heather. You can bring your cat, but you're going to have to eat it.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eventually.

• 27:47Chuck Nice?

  From what I hear, they're delicious. Okay.

• 27:52Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's move on. Let's go to Facebook again.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:57Chuck Nice?

  And this is Torin Eldoro.

• 28:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 28:01Chuck Nice?

  Torin Eldoro.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the most interesting man in the world, if you got a name like that.

• 28:06Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. I don't always drink Dos Sakis, but when I do, I drink it with a straw. Okay, so, um, what sort of dangers, short and long term, do people face when spending time in space? I guess he means short and long term, physical dangers.

• 28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so space, you could get hit by a micro meteoroid and it would blast a hole through you. And you can be hit by a, a smaller, slower moving particle and it will just create a hole in your pressurized suit. And you will depressurize and it'll boil your blood. You could run out of oxygen and suffocate. You can get to your destination and if there's no food, then you starve. You can, if you're heating, uh, materials within your suit are not working. The side of you facing the sun will rise to 200 degrees and the side of you facing away will drop to 200 degrees below zero.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And unless you set up a rotisserie, you will simultaneously burn and freeze one half of you versus the other. What else might happen?

• 29:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's kinda cool.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:16Chuck Nice?

  So you would, you would actually become a bomb pop. Like, that's cool.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you, if you happen to go when the sun belches, the sun burps up plasma pies into space, and if that happens to be headed your way, you will be exposed to ionizing radiation that will alter your DNA in ways we cannot predict.

• 29:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, let's just hope it's the way that turns me into the Hulk.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except that most ways will kill you.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 29:47Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, I know. And so, uh, yeah, but, you know, have a nice day.

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could burn up re-entering the atmosphere, your engine could explode coming back. So, space is supremely hazardous to human biology, and in fact, all biology.

• 30:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all I'm saying, that I'm just saying.

• 30:12Chuck Nice?

  So, so that begs the question, do we really belong there?

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are people who want to genetically engineer a human that is just hap- happy in space. I just don't know how you're gonna do that, because all life, that space is hostile to essentially all life. So you can genetically engineer it into some other life form, but it's still life.

• 30:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? It's not, it's not, you know, uh, Megatron, it's life.

• 30:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it's, it's, it's soft tissue life. We're running out of time, in this segment alone. When we come back, more Cosmic Queries, the after-hours edition.

• 31:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Radio, the after-hours edition, Cosmic Queries. Chuck Nice Comic, you come in and you help me get through these.

• 31:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes, sir.

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Questions from our listeners.

• 31:17Chuck Nice?

  My pleasure to do so, and, uh, we got a bunch of questions left, and...

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are questions you pick, I've never... I haven't even seen them.

• 31:24Chuck Nice?

  No idea what I'm going to ask you and I got a bunch of them left, so I think we should move to our lightning round. Cause I got a lot of, I got a lot of questions here, but not a lot of time.

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, go for it.

• 31:35Chuck Nice?

  Ready? Here we go. Richard Branson. Oh no, it's Brandon Richardson. I'm joking. If I could comprise a team to build a spaceship to go to the moon, would there be any government agency that could stop us? So if you were able to actually have the resources to build a spaceship to go to the moon, can the government say, no, you can't go?

• 31:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can probably find some country that'll let you do it. I don't think, well, you would need a local municipality to let you launch. And there's safety regulations and there are rules about what gets sent up into the atmosphere. You have to know that there aren't any satellites. You gotta know stuff. Alright, and it's not clear that America would let you do that just yet. There had to be some version of the FAA. The FSA, Federal Space Administration, as opposed to the Federal Aviation Administration. That would be cool. New agency, I'd love it. I think the trend now is to promote commercial access to space. So I think all looks good, but if you want to do that now, because you've got something you're gonna roll out of your garage. I don't think you can do that in America. Go find some other country to do it.

• 32:39Chuck Nice?

  So there you go, buddy. Your answer is Australia. Okay, moving on. Wayne Ellyers says, why does a person need a pressure suit to stay alive during a spacewalk? Why isn't something like Scooba gear sufficient?

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well, in space, if you're not facing the sun, it is so cold that every rubber part of your space suit will get so cold that it will become brittle. And if you move within it, it will shatter like glass.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's where it begins.

• 33:14Chuck Nice?

  It just gets worse from there, Wayne.

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just gets worse. Uh, but most, most of the reason why you have the pressurized suit is so you can maintain a temperature, a constant temperature.

• 33:23Chuck Nice?

  So it's your, it's your, it's your own body heat. Okay, here's Alex Bass.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pressurized suit around your body, around your face, you need the pressurized air, otherwise you suffocate. Next.

• 33:32Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. Ding, Alex Bass. So on other planets where life presumably exists, would the skies be blue like on Earth? Or would there be different colors?

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, nice.

• 33:43Chuck Nice?

  Isn't that a good question?

• 33:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, for for most kinds of atmospheres we can dream up. The sun's light, which is all Roy G. Biv, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. The whole spectrum is coming from the sun.

• 33:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We get a blue sky because the blue section of that spectrum gets scattered by particles in the atmosphere and doesn't come straight through. If you take blue light out of Roy G. Biv, what's left? Red, orange, yellow. And so sunsets are, the sun is red, red, yellow, and the sky is deep blue. So that is such a common phenomenon that you'd expect nice, beautiful red sunsets and blue skies. You could probably, for a science experiment, create an atmosphere that would invert that. That would be cool.

• 34:24Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A blue sun and red sky.

• 34:26Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, but particles that we know of don't, that's not really what dust and other things that are natural to kick up in the in the sky. Next.

• 34:33Chuck Nice?

  Very quickly, a follow up question from Chuck Nice wants to know.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice.

• 34:39Chuck Nice?

  If there were particles in the air like a firmament of water vapor, could you have a sky that would be a constant rainbow?

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 34:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay, next question.

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question. No, the good thing about it is you can get rainbows that circle the the sources of light in the sky.

• 34:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, uh, the thing about rain is that it's not up there in the uh, in the high elevations, it's down where you are because it's raining.

• 35:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? But if you get a high up enough, you get things like uh, sun star bows, you get moon bows and sun bows, you get rainbows and other kinds of configurations.

• 35:13Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next.

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  Sarah Harper wants to know, is there a scientific reason for us to return to the moon now?

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, we we landed in six spots. Imagine you're an explorer, imagine if you will, you're an explorer and you land in six random spots on Earth and you then declare, "I know all there is to know about Earth." First of all, all six of your locations would have been in the ocean.

• 35:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, maybe five out of the six, if you landed randomly, and so you'd say, "Earth is mostly water," and you'd be right.

• 35:49Chuck Nice?

  But that's all you'd know.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all you'd know.

• 35:51Chuck Nice?

  Worst explorer ever.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ever, ever, so, I'm, I'm partial to Mars, because it once had running water and might have life, but there are moon people out there that so desperately want to go back and I'm not going to stand in their way, next.

• 36:05Chuck Nice?

  Good, so, speaking of Mars, Ian Stewart McPherson wants to know, "If Mars had standing water in the past, how would the tide..."

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's now sitting.

• 36:13Chuck Nice?

  It's...

• 36:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's corny, sorry, go, we gotta go quick, we're running out of time.

• 36:18Chuck Nice?

  If it had standing water in the past, how would the tides have worked with two moons?

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Mars' moons are so wimpy, oh my gosh, they're like 10 miles across, oh yeah, oh my gosh, no.

• 36:31Chuck Nice?

  So basically, their moon, two of their moons doesn't equal one of ours.

• 36:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bob, no, well, our moon is thousands of miles, it's 2,000 miles across, and you got 10, they're like little, little, oh.

• 36:41Chuck Nice?

  Look at you with your gally moons.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gally moons. Yeah, no, there ain't no significant tides on Mars, give that one up, but two tides, but, by the way, Earth has two tides, one from the Sun and one from the Moon, that's why during full moon, the tides are higher, because the tides line up, and the high tide from the Moon and the high tide from the Sun add together and you get your super high tides.

• 37:05Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, we're out of time.

• 37:07Chuck Nice?

  We are out of time.

• 37:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotta run, StarTalk Radio, the after-hours Cosmic Queries Edition, you've been listening to StarTalk Radio, brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. As always, I am Neil deGrasse Tyson, bidding you to keep looking up.