The Future of Humanity with Elon Musk

Neil deGrasse Tyson explores the future of humanity with one of the men forging that future: billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. Co-hosted by Chuck Nice and guest starring Bill Nye.

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.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I have with me Chuck Nice.

• 0:21Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey Chuck. Hey Neil. Tweeting at ChuckNiceComic. That is correct sir. As always. Good. Good to have you on the show. Good to be here. Do you know, you know what this topic is today? There's probably no more important topic we've ever addressed than this topic. Oh. The future of humanity. Oh, okay. That's what it is. The future of humanity. And we are featuring my interview with the one and the only Elon Musk. A man who is contributing to the future of humanity. He's not, he's not contributing to it. He is the. It's not something that everybody else is doing and then they come in on it. No, no, he's, he's, he's, he's making it. Okay. Okay.

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And sometimes he's referred to as the real life Iron Man, Tony Stark. I have to agree with that actually. And he's the founder of PayPal. It's an internet company. He's a founder of SpaceX, a rocket company. He's founder of Tesla Motors, an electric car company. And he's chairman of SolarCity, a solar energy company. He is the real Tony Stark. There you go. And I thought, I mean, I don't love you, but I thought I should bring in some help on this one. Okay. Is that okay? Another man who. Yeah, yeah. Someone else in my, in my life. Now, now this is awkward.

• 1:34Bill Nye?

  It's not that awkward.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, here he is. Bill Nice.

• 1:39Bill Nye?

  Biting my lip.

• 1:43Bill Nye?

  Is Dr. Tyson gonna introduce me or should I say anything?

• 1:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we'll just talk about you.

• 1:48Bill Nye?

  We're talking about Elon Musk, who is a heck of a guy.

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Good to have you here because you've got some serious engineering background. And so a lot of the show, we're going to talk about engineering, the future of our civilization. Yeah. And I could make stuff up, but I'd rather you say what real stuff. And plus you're writing a book on like sustainability.

• 2:08Bill Nye?

  Climate change and, and doing more with less.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know what it's going to be called?

• 2:13Bill Nye?

  Unbounded.

• 2:14Chuck Nice?

  Unbounded. Ooh.

• 2:17Bill Nye?

  And I want to cultivate.

• 2:18Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead. Subtitle, you're a frickin idiot if you don't believe in climate change.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what it is?

• 2:24Bill Nye?

  Well, that might as well be. So it is an extraordinary time. I mean, we're talking about Elon Musk and his vision for the future of humanity.

• 2:32Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 2:33Bill Nye?

  But it's an extraordinary time. As we record this, the state of Florida just forbade.

• 2:39Chuck Nice?

  Forbade?

• 2:40Bill Nye?

  Kept, would not allow state officials to use the phrase "climate change."

• 2:44Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 2:45Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 2:46Chuck Nice?

  Or, or a sea level rise.

• 2:48Bill Nye?

  Or sea level, and they're gonna, so what is, what's gonna happen? The states of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama are gonna build fences like we have in Texas.

• 2:56Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 2:56Bill Nye?

  The Floridians, both the Seminoles and the, uh...

• 3:00Chuck Nice?

  And no disrespect to anybody who lives in Florida, Georgia, or Alabama, but I got a feeling it's gonna be a chain link fence too.

• 3:09Bill Nye?

  Let's keep this water out!

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let's find out. So, let's, let's get, let's get to the bottom of what created Elon Musk. I, I wanted to find out, you know, where, where did he come from? Where, where did he grow up? I didn't know anything about the man. Let's find out.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Elon, what egg hatched you into this world? Where were you before you?

• 3:31Speaker 03

  Well, I was born in South Africa.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Born in South Africa, and you come to America and make a billion dollars?

• 3:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I didn't expect to make a billion dollars, I suppose. I mean, I grew up in South Africa, honestly, seeing a lot of the same TV and movies and reading comic books. And, and it really didn't feel all that different from, say, Southern California, honestly.

• 3:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you had a kind of baptism into American pop culture at the time?

• 3:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I ate a lot of hamburgers and went to steak houses and read like every comic book, you know. So my father brought me on a trip to the United States when I think I was about 10. I remember it was a really awesome experience because the hotels all had arcades. So my number one thing was when we went to a new hotel or motel, or whatever it is, go to the arcades and so the...

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forget any other services, forget whether they had bedbugs, you're looking for arcade games.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did video games do for you?

• 4:23Speaker 03

  And they're incredibly engaging and they made me want to learn how to program computers. Cause then I thought, well, I could make my own games and then I could also, I wanted to see how the games worked. Like, how did you create a video game? That's what led me to learn how to program computers.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you became a programmer?

• 4:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I had one of the first video game consoles. Didn't even have cartridges. You had like four games that you could play and you could like pick one to one of the four games you could play. That was it. And then it went from there to the original Atari and then in television. And then I was in a store and saw a Commodore Big 20. And I was like, holy crow, you can actually have a computer and make your own games. I thought this was just one of the most incredible things possible. Took all of my saved allowance and then hounded my father until we got the Commodore Big 20. And it came with this manual on how to program in BASIC. Which I sort of spent all night, several days in a row, just observing that and.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On your own? No one forced you?

• 5:16Speaker 03

  No.

• 5:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is self motivated, I gotta know this. This is good for me.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  I was spending like nine, nine or 10 or something.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you were fluent in BASIC at age nine or 10?

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. I kinda went, got OCD on the thing. Maybe it's not technically OCD, it's, but I suddenly got obsessive. Let me put that, at least the O pot.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So programming is power. You get to control something.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can construct a little universe. And when you first do it, you're like, wow, this is incredible. You can actually make things happen. Like you type these commands and then something happens on the screen. That's pretty amazing.

• 5:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there is hope for all the parents who have middle school children who are lost in their video game?

• 5:51Bill Nye?

  Absolutely.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They too can be a billionaire.

• 5:53Bill Nye?

  I'm sorry, what I was just playing.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, we're over here, put the video game down. Put your PS Vita down.

• 6:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you know, actually, that's, uh, my son is a video game craze ball.

• 6:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How old is he?

• 6:07Chuck Nice?

  He's nine.

• 6:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's nine, yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't get better.

• 6:09Chuck Nice?

  Doesn't get better. But his favorite game is something called Minecraft.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:14Chuck Nice?

  I know nothing about it. However, uh, I started watching him play this and I went, you know what? This isn't bad. This guy's learning how to create his own universe. It's very imagination driven. And now he wants to learn how to code.

• 6:27Bill Nye?

  We love the guy.

• 6:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It could, it could go, it could go diabolical if he wants to create his own universe. I just want you to know.

• 6:33Bill Nye?

  It's not as easy as it sounds. On the radio, create your own universe, hey, great.

• 6:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just a quick resume of Elon Musk. So, you know, in 1999, he founded the company that would become PayPal and then sold it to eBay and he went off with $180 million and he was 32 years old. And so

• 6:56Bill Nye?

  How did he make a living between university and 32?

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, there's more of this interview that we will find out. But I don't know. He was like making companies and selling them and then

• 7:09Bill Nye?

  The way you do.

• 7:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, of course. That's how you do it. Let's find out.

• 7:13Bill Nye?

  That's hard.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what I wanted to know was while he was in college, what was he thinking about? You know, most of us in college, you want to major, get a job when you come out. Let's find out what he was thinking about.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  When I was in college, I sort of thought, well, what are the things that are most going to affect the future of humanity? And electric cars, solar power, essentially sustainable.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most people are thinking, I just want a job when I get out. And you're trying to reshape humanity as an undergraduate.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  I mean, it's pretty, in America, it's pretty easy to keep yourself alive. So I mean, my threshold for existing is pretty low. I mean, I figured I could like be in some dingy apartment with my computer and be okay and not stop. In fact, when I first came to North America, I was in Canada when I was 17, and just to sort of see what it takes to live, I'd try to live on $1 a day, which I was able to do. You sort of just buy food in bulk at the supermarket.

• 8:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rice and beans and the

• 8:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, I went more for the hot dogs. Hot dogs and oranges. But you do get really tired of hot dogs and oranges after a while. And we can also like, you know, pasta and a green pepper and a big thing of sauce and that can go pretty far, too. So I was like, oh, okay, you know, if I can live for a dollar a day, then at least from a food cost standpoint, well, it's pretty easy to earn like $30 in a month, you know?

• 8:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I would think.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  So probably be okay.

• 8:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that allowed you to not have to worry about money because you did the experiment.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I did the experiment. Exactly.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this was an important psychological, philosophical anchor for you. Not to put words in your mouth, but that's a starting point to launch anywhere you want to go.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so now you've got a baseline, a life baseline from which to go new places intellectually, psychologically, financially. So what came first? Thoughts of an electric car or thoughts of space?

• 9:02Speaker 03

  You know, when you're starting out in college, like in your freshman, sophomore year, like you have these sort of sophomoric philosophical wanderings. And I try to think of, okay, what are the things that will seem to me would most affect the future of humanity? There were really five things, three of which I thought would be interesting to be involved in. The three that I thought were definitely positive would be the internet, sustainable energy, both production and consumption, and space exploration, more specifically, the extension of life beyond Earth on a permanent basis. And then, although I never thought I'd actually be involved in that, that was simply something I thought that was important in the abstract, but not something I thought I would ever have an opportunity to be involved in. And then the fourth one was artificial intelligence, and the fifth one was rewriting human genetics. These were just the five things that I thought would most affect the future of humanity.

• 9:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, did you want to change humanity when you went to college? I didn't even want to change my underwear when I was in college. Are you kidding me? Bill, you're an engineer man, do you agree with this list?

• 9:57Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's a pretty cool list.

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a cool list.

• 9:59Bill Nye?

  I would have included educating women and girls, raising the standard of living of women and girls so that the human population of the world will slowly become more manageable.

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A greater tapping the lost intellectual capital.

• 10:13Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Among those who have been disenfranchised from it.

• 10:17Bill Nye?

  Or never franchised.

• 10:19Chuck Nice?

  Right. Never franchised in the first place.

• 10:21Bill Nye?

  Pre-franchised.

• 10:22Chuck Nice?

  Which is, I love when you say that because it's basically, when women are educated, they don't have as many babies.

• 10:32Bill Nye?

  That's it.

• 10:32Chuck Nice?

  That's all there is to it.

• 10:33Bill Nye?

  The babies they have are more loved and better cared for.

• 10:35Chuck Nice?

  And so that's where the burgeoning of society happens, with mom being a happier, healthier person, more educated, end up with better educated kids, end up with a better world.

• 10:48Bill Nye?

  Just like that.

• 10:50Chuck Nice?

  Just like that.

• 10:50Bill Nye?

  Furthermore, the woman has a higher quality of life. She has a better job, she's happier, which just makes everybody happy.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Elon, after he sold PayPal, he had a bajillion, zillion...

• 11:07Chuck Nice?

  See, now that's where I stop.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You be done.

• 11:10Bill Nye?

  That was a mistake you made.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, that's where I'm just done. You got a couple hundred million dollars.

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

  I've got a hundred and eighty million dollars.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're good, you're good. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:19Bill Nye?

  He's not that kind of guy, though.

• 11:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 11:21Bill Nye?

  Push, push, push.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so what he wanted to do, he wanted to go into space.

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out how that got started.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  When I started out, my goal was to do a philanthropic mission with the intent of increasing NASA's budget. That was my goal. I was confused as to why we'd not yet sent a person to Mars. It seemed like this was obviously the goal after the moon and we'd not made progress on that. And when it became clear like that PayPal was going to get sold, a friend of mine asked me what I'm going to do next. And I said, well, I mean, I don't know what I'm going to do next, but I'm always curious about what's going on with space and why haven't we made progress? I just wonder when we're going to send a person to Mars. So I went on NASA's website and I couldn't find a date. I was like, well, maybe it's here somewhere and I just can't find it.

• 12:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The date that NASA wants to land on Mars.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's got to be like some schedule or something.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're looking for that.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Or game plan or it's this date, even if it's far in the future and it was not to be found anywhere. And anyways, I started learning about that back history and I thought, well, okay, maybe there's something that I can do to send a small mission to the surface of Mars that would get the public excited. And as a result of that public excitement, NASA's budget will be increased and we could resume process of sending people to Mars. Essentially.

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you thought you can do that with your lousy billion dollars?

• 12:36Speaker 03

  No, I didn't have a billion dollars at that time. I had about a, well, 180 million is still a lot. And I figured, well, you know, maybe I could spend half of that on a mission to Mars. So I spent a fair bit of time investigating the space industry and eventually decided on this idea of sending a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars. It was called the Mars Oasis Mission. And so you have seeds in dehydrated gel that would land, you hydrate the gel upon landing and you have this great shot of green plants on a red background. And the public responds to precedence and support it. So this would be the first life on another planet, the furthest that life's ever traveled, as far as we know.

• 13:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's how you get a headline.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's got to be something new or something superlative. And I thought, well, and that would maybe reinvigorate excitement and the result would be NASA's budget gets increased. So the whole goal in the beginning was just how do we get more money for NASA? But after spending a fair bit of time on this, I came to the conclusion that I was actually incorrect. My initial assumption was wrong because I thought that where there's a will, there's a way. And that we just sort of lost our will. That was, that's false. There's plenty of will. People needed to believe that there was a way and a way that would not. bankrupt the country or mean that they'd have to sacrifice something of critical importance like healthcare. So it became clear that the space transport problem had to be solved. Unless there was a dramatic improvement in the cost of space transport, then none of

• 13:57Speaker 03

  it would matter.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in your first successful launch, what was the cost per pound to orbit?

• 14:02Speaker 03

  Uh, about $6,000.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  $6,000. Okay, that's an improvement.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, not bad.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not $100 a pound?

• 14:09Speaker 03

  No. To get to $100 a pound, you need a big rocket that's fully reusable.

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you there yet?

• 14:14Speaker 03

  No. We're making progress, though. It's been 12 years. So far, we've not recovered a stage. But I think we'll recover a stage within the next year and be able to refly.

• 14:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there a date on your website where someone can say, oh, he's gonna land on Mars?

• 14:30Speaker 03

  Tchay. Good point.

• 14:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sounds like a no.

• 14:33Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, I've said it publicly many times, although maybe we should put something on the website, which is that I think we've got a decent shot of being able to send a person to Mars in about 11 or 12 years.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Bill, what, uh, is he gonna do this?

• 14:48Bill Nye?

  To reuse a stage?

• 14:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, and then get the cost down and...

• 14:52Bill Nye?

  Yeah, well, the cost down to a...

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, who's gonna get us to Mars? Elon Musk or NASA?

• 14:57Bill Nye?

  So let us keep in mind

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Please.

• 15:00Bill Nye?

  that NASA pays SpaceX.

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:03Bill Nye?

  About 2 billion bucks so far.

• 15:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:06Bill Nye?

  So SpaceX is now a contractor for NASA.

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so our tax money is going to SpaceX. Okay, so what is this vehicle that's gonna get us to Mars?

• 15:14Bill Nye?

  So there's a couple of innovations, just, uh, let's say three innovations that I've seen with my own eyes, which must hide another 100,000 innovations that are very, much more subtle. First thing is, all the same engines. First stage, second stage, how many stages? It's the same engine.

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:34Bill Nye?

  So why didn't somebody else do that? That's a good question.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything was a one-off in the past, yeah.

• 15:39Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, well, or a five-off, Saturn five-off.

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 15:42Bill Nye?

  And so then, uh, um, the other thing is, let's see if we can reuse a stage.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm, right.

• 15:50Bill Nye?

  And this is his thing. It almost worked the other day. Tried to, he, the company tried to land on a barge. Just east of Cape Canaveral. And it landed on the barge just a little faster than anybody want because it ran out of fuel to slow itself down.

• 16:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Any fuel that gets faster and if you're going fast, you generally need fuel to slow down.

• 16:10Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless you're going to aero brake or something.

• 16:11Bill Nye?

  Yeah, well, we're coming through the atmosphere after it launched. It's uh, and the thing is not shaped for aero braking really, but it is shaped for retro rocketing. If I can coin the verb.

• 16:21Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 16:22Bill Nye?

  But then the other, the fundamental thing, you guys, when you, just um, when NASA was created, I believe, uh, Dr. Tyson, on the year of your birth, just within a week or so, yeah.

• 16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Same week.

• 16:33Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Same damn week. I come out of my mother, NASA comes out of,

• 16:36Bill Nye?

  Coincidence?

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Out of Congress.

• 16:38Bill Nye?

  Perhaps. Anyway, the idea was to keep the thing. I feel NASA's pain.

• 16:45Bill Nye?

  They put NASA centers all over the US. So when they went to manufacture rockets, they put pieces of the rocket all over the US. Solid things are made over here, the liquid things are made over here, they're tested over there. They get on train cars and go down there, just right there, just the expression, Houston, we have a problem. Why isn't it Florida, we have a prob- Cape Canaveral, we have a problem.

• 17:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, did you know?

• 17:08Bill Nye?

  Orlando, we have a problem.

• 17:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The instant the spacecraft clears the gantry, in that instant, full control transfers to Houston.

• 17:17Bill Nye?

  I mean.

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If there's a human being onboard.

• 17:19Bill Nye?

  Thousand article miles away.

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. All, all, the whole countdown and everything, uh, uh, go to launch, go to, all of that is Cape Canaveral.

• 17:28Bill Nye?

  But it's SpaceX.

• 17:29Chuck Nice?

  Moment it takes, moment it passes the thing, then it's like, alright guys, we'll take it from here.

• 17:33Bill Nye?

  That's right, that's right. That's exactly.

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks a lot, guys, for your work.

• 17:37Bill Nye?

  But anyway, it's SpaceX. It's just south of, uh, Los Angeles International Airport. Train car drives up, full of stainless steel, full of titanium, full of, let's make rocket anium parts. And it comes off the train car and they shape it a bit and do their own thing.

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want rocket anium. I want some of that.

• 17:53Bill Nye?

  Yeah, uh, well, you can get it. 6061 T6 aluminum, T7 sometime tempered 7 aluminum. So then it comes down, they make the, they make the tank, they make, they attach the plumbing. It comes over here, there's a bunch of electronics, they attach that. They vacuum test it over here, blah, blah, blah. Then it goes back on the train car to either Cape Canaveral, close to the equator as the US can get, or up to Vandenberg Air Force Base, which is north of there.

• 18:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a continental US, because Hawaii is closer.

• 18:19Bill Nye?

  Yeah, Hawaii's closer, but that's not on a train car.

• 18:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's not on a train.

• 18:23Bill Nye?

  Extraordinary train car.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:24Bill Nye?

  And so, uh...

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hover train.

• 18:27Bill Nye?

  The Aqua Train. But the, uh...

• 18:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, Bill, so I, I get that.

• 18:31Bill Nye?

  Well, this is a fundamental lowering of cost. Huge, huge reduction of cost.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that low enough to like go to Mars like everybody says? He wants to go to Mars. He still wants to go to Mars.

• 18:39Bill Nye?

  Well, I, I would like to go to Mars, but I want to come back. And I don't want to go to Mars to live. I think that is not all the way thought through, in my opinion.

• 18:48Chuck Nice?

  We choose to go to Mars.

• 18:49Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 18:50Chuck Nice?

  Because it's not easy.

• 18:52Bill Nye?

  Well, that's right.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, he was choosing Mars because it will kill you.

• 18:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's so, yeah, I mean, it's really...

• 18:58Bill Nye?

  Well, it's just really hostile place. And also, for your consideration, I do love the Mars bar. For your consideration, uh, we can talk about this after the break, but Elon Musk is a native of South Africa. South Africa colonized by Dutch people. Uh, I am a descendant from people from northern and central Europe. Uh, you guys are much more recently descended from Africa, but we have this human tradition of just spreading out. We don't like it here, we're gonna go over there, we'll just keep spreading.

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which means, of course, you're a descendant of Africans as well.

• 19:35Bill Nye?

  Oh, yes, we're all descended African.

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have arbitrarily selected...

• 19:38Bill Nye?

  Yeah, I say more recent descent.

• 19:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that was arbitrary. Let the record show that was a completely arbitrary line that you drew.

• 19:44Bill Nye?

  Uh, but arbitrary, but historically not insignificant.

• 19:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 19:48Bill Nye?

  So...

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just, I'm just...

• 19:49Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, anyway, human pride has spread, has spread into Mesopotamia. Across Eurasia. The Ice Age has the snow froze up. Just keep going in North America.

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 20:02Bill Nye?

  Spearing mammals, partying.

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's what we do.

• 20:05Bill Nye?

  And so, it's not clear that you'll be able to leave the earth and go live on Mars.

• 20:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you are skeptical of this, but you would not interfere with the dream state.

• 20:17Bill Nye?

  However, we do not want to violate in Star Trekian terms.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The prime directive?

• 20:22Bill Nye?

  Just so, Doc.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is?

• 20:24Bill Nye?

  Uh, we don't want to mess up the ecosystem on Mars.

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, excuse me. We have no qualms messing up our own damn ecosystem.

• 20:32Bill Nye?

  Well, that doesn't make it a good thing. I mean, and after-

• 20:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why should Mars be the sacred place and not our own-

• 20:38Bill Nye?

  There's a, it's a rule.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're pooping in our own backyard.

• 20:40Bill Nye?

  It's an arbitrary, but it's not arbitrary. It's a reasonable rule.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:44Bill Nye?

  We can poop there after we determine whether or not there's something alive.

• 20:48Chuck Nice?

  Mars. It's nothing more than Earth's toilet.

• 20:53Bill Nye?

  And with that, we'll be back after this.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On that brilliant note from Chuck Nice, you're listening to StarTalk, the future of humanity edition. We'll be right back.

• 21:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. I got Chuck Nice, right across the table from me.

• 21:26Chuck Nice?

  Yes, sir, yes, sir.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

• 21:28Bill Nye?

  So good to be here.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And since we're radio, I must alert people that even in studio, you are in bowtie at the record show.

• 21:37Bill Nye?

  Yeah, uh, well, what you see is what you get.

• 21:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe he's like the guy in Terminator 2, where the-

• 21:42Bill Nye?

  Just a polymetal?

• 21:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, no, for the polymetal, but no, but his, his, his police uniform-

• 21:48Bill Nye?

  Yes, right.

• 21:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was part of-

• 21:50Bill Nye?

  It was polymetal.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the metal.

• 21:52Bill Nye?

  That's how I roll.

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So maybe Bill and the bowtie-

• 21:55Bill Nye?

  But watch out, I can turn-

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are polymetal.

• 21:56Bill Nye?

  I can turn my arm into a giant saber sword, wacky thing of death thing, which is shiny.

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're, we're talking about the future of humanity. We're featuring my interview with Elon Musk.

• 22:07Bill Nye?

  And that does not feature, uh, polymetal.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it does not yet. Not yet, yet. And I snared that interview when I visited him at SpaceX headquarters, which is, what's the name of that town that he's in?

• 22:18Bill Nye?

  Uh, Crenshaw, Hawthorne.

• 22:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hawthorne, California, near, uh, Los Angeles.

• 22:24Bill Nye?

  Okay, New Yorker. Where is it? Hawthorne.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hawthorne.

• 22:30Bill Nye?

  Oh, by the stars.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fine, so, so Bill, if we're gonna go to Mars, uh, do you, do you see engineering challenges to that?

• 22:39Bill Nye?

  Oh, no.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or is it only, no, no, wait, wait, wait, no, I'm gonna, this is a very serious question. Engineers love a challenge, so don't tell me, don't, don't play that with me, A, B.

• 22:49Bill Nye?

  Bring it on.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't, don't, don't, don't even.

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my question is, is it just a matter of money? Or, or even if I gave you as much money as you want, you might not be able to solve some of the engineering problems.

• 23:02Bill Nye?

  Oh, we can solve the problems.

• 23:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Snap, that's.

• 23:04Bill Nye?

  No, we can solve, yeah, because we landed a rover from a freaking rocket crane.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 23:09Bill Nye?

  We can solve the problems, but as far as this colony idea, everybody.

• 23:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Mm-hmm.

• 23:15Bill Nye?

  It's, I mean, there's no liquid water as such.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:19Bill Nye?

  Oh, well, Mars was once very wet and we found evidence of ice, all good. But it's not like there's a river there.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 23:25Bill Nye?

  Okay, then.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If there is, it's underground and no one has found it yet.

• 23:29Bill Nye?

  Okay, and let me go on to say, it's, on a summer day at the equator, it's twenty below. Okay, yeah, you can get, what is it everybody wearing this year? Uh, Canada Arctic crew, that was a goose down, Canada goose down brand jacket.

• 23:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:45Bill Nye?

  All very good. That's dead, that's when things are really good, that's all you got on.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's mid, that's midsummer, midsummer attire.

• 23:52Bill Nye?

  But the main thing I think you would pick up on right away, there's no air. You would suffocate in a second.

• 24:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, there's air, but there's no oxygen in the air. Well, so you, you just have to make all that stuff once you get there. Thank you, Chuck.

• 24:06Bill Nye?

  But Neil.

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At least somebody's thinking about the future here.

• 24:08Bill Nye?

  I gotta stop you there.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, quiet for a minute.

• 24:10Bill Nye?

  There is oxygen in the air. But it's carbon dioxide, you have to separate it from the carbon.

• 24:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Carbon, carbon dioxide, CO2, is one of the most tightly bound molecules ever made.

• 24:21Bill Nye?

  I mean, you can do it, but you gotta put in the energy.

• 24:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta put in the energy.

• 24:24Bill Nye?

  And then you're gonna be living, everybody, you're gonna be living in a submarine.

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, so you have to get that energy from somewhere. Right. Right, so just, just, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

• 24:35Bill Nye?

  And you're one and a half times the distance that we are from the sun, so your, uh, solar energy, if you just wanna run, if you wanted to run solar panels, uh, was fifteen squared, so it's a one and a quarter.

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two, two and a quarter times more.

• 24:48Bill Nye?

  Less.

• 24:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Less sunlight. No, you need two and a quarter times more solar panels to equal that. In light of this conversation. Why do we want to go there?

• 24:57Bill Nye?

  Well, because, I'll tell you why I would go there. Well, it is the next logical place to look for things.

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like Chuck getting high pitched on us. Give me that again Chuck.

• 25:07Bill Nye?

  Chuck, Chuck, the reason you want to go there is because you're going to explore. And when you explore, two things happen. Those two things, Doc? Chuck? One? You will make, you will make discoveries. Okay. You will find something you never found before. Alright. But the other thing is you will have an adventure. You will have an adventure. It will engage you like nothing else. Whether it's your backyard, the video game, or the surface of Mars.

• 25:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You might die, but it'll be an adventure.

• 25:34Bill Nye?

  Well, but what we want to do as an engineer, and this is what astronauts say, part of their pride as being astronauts is coming back. That's like, landing the airplane is part of a pilot's pride. I mean, ejecting and letting the $350 million fighter plane explode is kind of cool on video. Yeah. But it's not really your goal as a pilot or an astronaut. So, if we were to go there with a human, we would be able to make discoveries at an extraordinary rate. It's estimated 10,000 times faster than our best robot spacecraft.

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right now, but if the day comes when we have a 10,000 times better robot, you'd still probably want to explore.

• 26:13Bill Nye?

  Still want to send a human there.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so then...

• 26:16Bill Nye?

  And so here's the thing, if we found evidence of life, fossilized bacterial mats, or cooler yet, something still alive, some Mars probe, then the question would be, and I want to know, do those Mars probes have DNA like you and I do? Or are they a whole nuther, nuther of nuther-ness?

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mars probe?

• 26:37Bill Nye?

  That's a Martian microbe.

• 26:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know.

• 26:40Bill Nye?

  Martian microbe.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mars probe.

• 26:42Bill Nye?

  And then, if they have DNA, and they're so much like us, does that mean Mars was hit by an impactor, whoo, whoo, whoo, went off into space and you and I are descendants of Martians?

• 26:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then we'd all be Martians.

• 26:52Bill Nye?

  Do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

• 26:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you know, he's trying to change humanity by reinventing space exploration.

• 26:58Bill Nye?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I get that, I get that. But, he's also worried about problems on Earth. Okay? That's okay. Is he allowed?

• 27:05Bill Nye?

  Well, us, the astronauts are.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is he allowed?

• 27:07Bill Nye?

  I have no, I say bring it on.

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you know, he's co-founder of Tesla.

• 27:09Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The electric car company.

• 27:11Bill Nye?

  The car is just sex with wheels on it.

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool, he's also... Sex with wheels on it.

• 27:16Bill Nye?

  It's fantastic.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, he's also chairman of Solar City. Let's see how he just got into this.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  From a terrestrial standpoint, the biggest problem we need to solve on Earth this century is sustainable production and consumption of energy. This really is quite a serious problem. People really should take this quite seriously. Even if you put the environmental consequences of dramatically changing the chemical composition of the oceans and atmosphere aside, we will eventually run out of oil.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Holding that aside.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  Well, if we don't find a solution to burning oil for transport and we then run out of oil, the economy will collapse and civilization will come to an end, or as we know it.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With or without global warming.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, with or without, exactly. I mean, and so if we know that we have to ultimately get off oil no matter what, we know that that is an inescapable outcome. It's simply a question of when, not if. Then why would you run this crazy experiment of changing the chemical composition of the atmospheric oceans by adding enormous amounts of CO2 that have been buried since the pre-Cambrian era? That's crazy. That is the dumbest experiment in history by far.

• 28:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, promise, it's not even a-

• 28:26Speaker 03

  Can you think of a dumber experiment? I honestly cannot.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  What good could possibly come of it?

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So therefore, we need another solution here. But of course, electric cars still uses coal.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  That's why you need sustainable power production, like solar and wind.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which can still charge your car.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill.

• 28:46Bill Nye?

  Neil.

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you still have your house in California?

• 28:48Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Studio City?

• 28:49Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've been there.

• 28:50Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you're like a native, you're a New Yorker now, not native, but you would live in New York.

• 28:54Bill Nye?

  Yes, I'm loving it.

• 28:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somebody else is living in your house.

• 28:55Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a crazy house that you live at that day.

• 28:57Bill Nye?

  It's cool.

• 28:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's completely alive with self-generated electricity.

• 29:02Bill Nye?

  Well, it's got four kilowatts of solar. That's great. Which is more than enough for, uh, well, well, 10 months of the year, maybe 10 and a half months of the year. And I would have more, but my neighbor's house- Shadows, my panels.

• 29:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I thought you were gonna say your neighbor's stealing your electricity.

• 29:20Bill Nye?

  Well, she's stealing sunlight.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's the same thing.

• 29:23Chuck Nice?

  That is the same thing.

• 29:24Bill Nye?

  She travels a lot, and I thought maybe while she was out of town, I could just cut off this, like, this one part of the second story.

• 29:32Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:32Bill Nye?

  Easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Bill, but we-

• 29:35Bill Nye?

  Oh, yeah, sorry.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's tons of oil still in reserve-

• 29:38Bill Nye?

  Ah.

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is yet to be drilled, or is-

• 29:40Bill Nye?

  Here's the bad news-

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:42Bill Nye?

  We'll never run out of fossil fuels.

• 29:44Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 29:45Bill Nye?

  That is the bad news.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  That's terrible.

• 29:47Bill Nye?

  It really is, because burning it and burning it is just the worst thing for all of us-

• 29:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, do you have a plan? What's your plan?

• 29:54Bill Nye?

  So, the plan is to-

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because as long as oil is cheap, and it's cheaper than my solar panels, how do you expect people to-

• 30:00Bill Nye?

  So-

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if you're rich, you can, you can buy the car that saves gas.

• 30:05Bill Nye?

  So, bear in mind, the rea- the reason-

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That costs you more than the car that doesn't save gas.

• 30:08Bill Nye?

  Well, but the reason-

• 30:09Chuck Nice?

  The sex on wheels.

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The sex on wheels car.

• 30:10Bill Nye?

  The reason you want a sex on wheels electric car is because-

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Costing how much?

• 30:14Bill Nye?

  Uh, a hundred thousand.

• 30:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A hundred thousand, yeah.

• 30:16Bill Nye?

  Right now.

• 30:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody's got a hundred thousand, yeah.

• 30:18Bill Nye?

  Well, deep breath.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:18Bill Nye?

  Deep breath.

• 30:19Chuck Nice?

  Let me get to my mattress.

• 30:20Bill Nye?

  Deep breath. Uh, it's ninety-five percent efficient, or ninety-three percent efficient, whereas a gas-powered car, constrained by the second law of thermodynamics, is at best twenty-eight percent, thirty percent. So, you're squandering energy you just can't get back when you try to get it out of heat at low-temperature differences. So, with that said, there is, uh, it's been estimated that we could save about thirty percent of the energy we use through conservation. We can have electric cars, we can improve transportation systems, to be sure. But the big thing, you guys, I just, if, as we say about climate change, if you are opposed

• 31:03Bill Nye?

  to government regulation now, you don't like governments now, just wait till stuff gets bad. Just wait till Floridians have to abandon their homes, and Miami's half underwater, and then there's gonna be regulations.

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But really, at the bottom of this-

• 31:17Bill Nye?

  And I'll give you an example of this: World War II. Regulation happened like crazy and everybody was very proud of it. Want to create the next great generation.

• 31:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, what I neglected to mention here, and I think you should have mentioned too, was if you can start out with a hundred thousand dollar car because it's a test of concept. People like it, wealthy can buy it. But the real test is can you make an electric car that's competitive in price to

• 31:42Bill Nye?

  Absolutely.

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm told there's a Tesla Model 3 expected to come out and that's a priced at thirty five thousand.

• 31:48Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so I drove a Nissan Leaf for three years.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:51Bill Nye?

  It was about that same price.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About that same price, so that's that, there you have.

• 31:55Bill Nye?

  I mean, I, I, you know, I did other stuff. I, I went to sleep, I had meals, I didn't just drive for three years.

• 32:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I really want is the flying car.

• 32:04Bill Nye?

  The flying car is a real tough problem.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is, but I think Elon, Elon cured me of my urges to find a flying car.

• 32:13Bill Nye?

  Oh, well, just wait till everybody's in traffic flying cars.

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, no, no. He, he told me what the deal is with flying cars.

• 32:20Bill Nye?

  Wing loading?

• 32:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out.

• 32:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, what we all really want are flying cars.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  Do you?

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 03

  Actually, let me ask you, so are you sure you want a flying car?

• 32:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but it looks cool.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  It does look cool. I mean, you know, whenever you see sort of cities in like some futuristic concept, they always throw the flying car in there and.

• 32:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't tell me you never thought of it.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  No, I thought a lot about it.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 32:42Speaker 03

  And there's some people I know that are working on flying cars or flying personal transport devices, if you will.

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hoverboards.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Uh, there are people who work on hoverboards, but I mean, I sort of wonder.

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After the interview, you can show me your hoverboard room, okay?

• 32:54Speaker 03

  I know some people who work on a hoverboard.

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I won't tell anybody. The microphone is on mute now, so you can.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Just between, just between us. It's awesome.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  I, I'm debating like, should there be flying cars or shouldn't there be flying cars? I'm of two minds on that, you know, because if there are flying cars, then well, obviously, you have added this additional dimension where now a car could potentially fall on your head and will be susceptible to weather. And of course, you'd have to have a flying car where it would be like an autopilot. Because I mean, otherwise, forget it.

• 33:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want people navigating.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's got to be, it's got to be autopilot. But even in autopilot scenario, this, and even if you've got redundant motors and blades, you've still gone from near zero chance of something falling on your head to something greater than that. And there's also a noise challenge. So I sort of.

• 33:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't know how to fly quietly.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  Right.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I'll wait it out some longer.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  Something that I do think would definitely help a lot in cities is more tunnels. Essentially with flying car, you're talking about going 3D. And there's a fundamental flaw with cities where you've got dense office buildings and apartment buildings and duplexes, and they're operating on three dimensions, but then you go to the street and suddenly you're two dimensional.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's a flat, it's a surface.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is how New York City solved this with the subway, going underneath multiple layers of subway.

• 34:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we are actually traveling in three dimensions, but below the ground rather than in the air.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  But I think if you were to extrapolate that to cars and have more car tunnels, then you would alleviate congestion completely.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you wouldn't need the flying car.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  You would not need a flying car in that case. And it would always work even if the weather's bad.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would never ice up.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  It would never ice up and it would not fall on your head. So.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna get started on that right away.

• 34:39Chuck Nice?

  I think those sound like the words of a man who owns a car company. That's all I'm saying.

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A non-flying car company.

• 34:46Chuck Nice?

  If I, if I had a company that made non-flying cars, I probably wouldn't want to have a flying car.

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would say, build more roads.

• 34:53Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 34:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, he's got a point. You don't want a car falling on your head. Plus, a point that came out in my conversation with it, but we didn't make, it didn't make the clip, was we have flying cars today, they're called helicopters.

• 35:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're really noisy.

• 35:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in fact, if you want something as heavy as a car to levitate, you're gonna, it's gonna be making some noise.

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  Well, it's also gonna use a lot of energy.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a lot of energy.

• 35:16Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's because in the word of a, a, a, another physicist I know who flies his own plane, he said helicopters don't fly as much as they beat the air into submission.

• 35:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who, who, who said this? Who said that? It's true.

• 35:32Bill Nye?

  It's true.

• 35:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's all, it's completely there.

• 35:33Bill Nye?

  Well, the air doesn't submit. It just flows down having enough momentum to hold the helicopter up. And now, he also, Elon Musk brings up another good point.

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 35:42Bill Nye?

  When we have humans operating the Tysonic flying car, which competes with Chuck Nice's subterranean vehicle. Pete, who's gonna drive the thing without all kinds of trouble? And so, you know, it always fascinates me when you look at highways from the air when you're in an airplane or a helicopter, it looks so orderly.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 36:05Bill Nye?

  It really does. Cars all emerge, they go along, it's very cool, but you're using a human brain. This thing is capable of art and radio shows and rocket companies. You're using this brain to do nothing but operate this car on this right of way. Stay in a straight line, stay in a straight line, stay in a straight line. Change lanes, look over your shoulder, we'll go head check, head check, head check. Whoa, whoa, head check. And so, this is why, uh, this seems like a real opportunity to improve things.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My favorite bumper stickers ever, caution driver applying makeup.

• 36:35Bill Nye?

  I've seen it.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see you've driven behind me.

• 36:37Bill Nye?

  No, is that right Chuck? That's a lot of info Chuck.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you don't want, you don't want drivers. You don't, you don't want humans driving cars. You want driverless cars.

• 36:45Bill Nye?

  Yeah. At a very high level reliability. Now, you know, I used to work at Boeing and you get a triple.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You worked on the 747?

• 36:53Bill Nye?

  747, a little bit 727, 3757, but.

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 36:57Bill Nye?

  What you want is.

• 36:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the lingo Chuck.

• 36:58Bill Nye?

  I know. Well, that's how you.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's showing that off now.

• 37:01Bill Nye?

  Sounds like you were giving me your number.

• 37:04Bill Nye?

  These are all planes.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everyone from Boeing has a 7, 7 something 7 in their.

• 37:08Bill Nye?

  Well, yeah, but the interesting point of interest, the 727, the 737, 757 have the same tube. A 717, which was, uh, the 707 KC135 have the same tube. Uh, and so, where was I going? When it's triple redundant autopilot, you can count on it. It's gonna land the plane. Gotcha. Uh, but the problem with cars is not, you don't have nearly the traffic control that you, um, that you have in a airplane.

• 37:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so who, who do you think's gonna win this? Tesla and with a, uh, a driverless car perhaps coming out of their shop? Or Google?

• 37:48Bill Nye?

  Well, Tesla makes cars.

• 37:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 37:50Bill Nye?

  Google makes software. You can't have one without the other to be driver.

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is like a chocolate and peanut butter thing.

• 37:55Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 37:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 37:57Chuck Nice?

  You got your car and my software.

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got your software in my car.

• 38:01Bill Nye?

  But, wait, you're both right.

• 38:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, I love setting you up.

• 38:06Bill Nye?

  But wait, but wait, there's more.

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Bill Nye?

  When you think about the automotive industry writ large, everybody uses the same parts.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:15Bill Nye?

  Uh, what the gas gauge, sensor, the speedometer, the tires, the nuts, all the bolts, all the same standard. There's little competition, but you can get a lot of commonality. And so we will see what happens in the near future.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, we're going to find out what Elon Musk is really worried about. You know, should I give you a hint?

• 38:36Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 38:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no, I'm not. When we come back, find out what keeps Elon Musk awake at night on StarTalk.

• 39:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-host Chuck Nice in the house.

• 39:06Chuck Nice?

  Hey, hey.

• 39:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the house, and I got Bill Nye in the house.

• 39:10Bill Nye?

  I am co-housing.

• 39:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Co-housing, donning a bowtie as usual. In the earlier segment, we were sure that it is surgically attached. Polymetal. Polymetal surgically attached to him. We're featuring my interview with Elon Musk. And just before the break, I teased you to tell you that we would be saving for this final segment.

• 39:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 39:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What he fears the most.

• 39:31Bill Nye?

  Fears.

• 39:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, if you're, it's.

• 39:33Bill Nye?

  He's a confident guy.

• 39:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a confident guy. And to quote Bill, if you've been scoring along with us, you may remember in our first segment, we listed the things he wanted to introduce to change humanity.

• 39:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One thing he does not want to touch. Let's check it out.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm quite worried about artificial superintelligence these days. I think, and I've said this publicly, I think it's maybe something more dangerous than nuclear weapons. So, we should be really careful about that. If there was a very deep, super-digital, superintelligence that was created that could go into rapid recursive self-improvement in a non-Logarithmic way, then, you know, that was...

• 40:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's self-learning?

• 40:10Speaker 03

  Yes. So like, it just could reprogram itself to be smarter and iterate very quickly and do that 24 hours a day on millions of computers. Well...

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then that's all she wrote.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  That's all she wrote. I mean, we will be like a pet Labrador if we're lucky.

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A pet Labrador?

• 40:27Speaker 03

  I have a pet Labrador, by the way.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll be their pets.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  It's like the friendliest creature.

• 40:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they'll domesticate us, so that we will be lap pets to them.

• 40:37Speaker 03

  Yes. I mean, or something strange is gonna happen.

• 40:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'll keep the docile humans and get rid of the violent ones, and then breed the docile humans.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the utility function of the digital superintelligence is of stupendous importance. What does it try to optimize? And we need to be really careful with saying, "Oh, how about human happiness?" Because it, you know, may conclude that all unhappy humans should be terminated, and, you know, that we should all be just be captured and with dopamine and serotonin directly injected into our brains to maximize...

• 41:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Happiness.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  Happiness, because it's concluded that dopamine and serotonin are what cause happiness.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Therefore...

• 41:14Speaker 03

  Therefore maximize.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  I'm just saying, I'm just saying we should exercise caution.

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you think of that? Wow. So, so just to be clear, he's not talking about artificial intelligence, right? He's talking about artificial superintelligence. The kind that can self-learn.

• 41:31Bill Nye?

  Okay, so 20% of the world's population of people does not have electricity. They've never made a phone call, not a cellphone call, they've never made a phone call. So when the superintelligence takes over Chicago or whatever, what are people in East Africa gonna give a rip about? Okay, so you guys have managed to kill yourselves. Way to go. We're looking for some corn here. So, I get it. But I think people have to keep in mind, we all take, computers are so reliable, and they're so much part of our everyday life now, we take them for granted. But somebody is in a, literally, or in a sense, shoveling the coal.

• 42:13Bill Nye?

  What happens if you unplug the supercomputer intelligence thing?

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It will, uh... Find a new source of energy. No, no, no, no, no. Because it has its own nuclear reactor. The failure of that logic is the assumption that it would let you unplug it.

• 42:28Bill Nye?

  Right. Yeah, okay, but how did it create that thing to keep it from...

• 42:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, I don't, I don't, you know, I'm with you here.

• 42:34Bill Nye?

  Seems like a solvable problem.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I'm looking at here, we have three, three levels of intelligence. Artificial narrow intelligence, so it's a computer doing one thing better than anything, it's not getting anybody's way. A calculator. Calculate, let it do it.

• 42:46Bill Nye?

  One wins the jeopardy.

• 42:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, no, no, that'd be artificial general intelligence, which would be general intelligence, but it's not, uh, it, it's not hell-bent on taking over the world. It's that IBM computer, right?

• 42:57Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, it goes across, yeah, yeah, which one was that? Watson? Watson, it's Watson.

• 43:02Bill Nye?

  Okay.

• 43:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Watson, so it's this superintelligence that scares him. And, again, I, I kinda agree with you, Bill, you could, at some point, you just unplug the dude. And, and...

• 43:12Bill Nye?

  Well, I just think about, uh, the Colossus Project, Forbin, the Colossus Project.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 43:17Bill Nye?

  Uh, and so, uh, this is where these, the two superpowers on Earth have, uh, nuclear arsenals, they're controlled by computers, so they connect the two computers. And, you know, trouble ensues, okay? And so, you try to unplug it, but they have their own nuclear reactors that run them.

• 43:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the movie War Games, like, all over again.

• 43:38Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, it was before War Games.

• 43:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:40Bill Nye?

  And so, and then a movie. But the deal is... That running a nuclear power plant is not straightforward. It takes some, somebody shoveling the coal or rate, moving the stuff around in the waste.

• 43:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the pile.

• 43:53Bill Nye?

  Ponds, yeah.

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so there's also much, much ado about the singularity. Ray Kurzweil said, you know, I gotta get him on StarTalk because I don't, I'm just not with him on this. But I don't want to badmouth him unless he's sitting in front of me.

• 44:06Bill Nye?

  This is everybody, when I do a college talk.

• 44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does this happen to you, Neil?

• 44:09Bill Nye?

  When I do a college talk, somebody asks me about the singularity.

• 44:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, and people all freak out.

• 44:14Bill Nye?

  The computer is as smart as a human.

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, this would be.

• 44:17Bill Nye?

  And it's always plugged in and has no arms or legs and does something.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, somehow, what is it gonna do? It's gonna chase you down the street? Like, what's it gonna do?

• 44:24Bill Nye?

  Well, no, it's going to actually get the machines to do its bidding for it.

• 44:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it'll control your thermostat.

• 44:32Bill Nye?

  It will control your thermostat and your self-driving car.

• 44:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm cool with that. But this notion that somehow the world is fundamentally different before and after this singularity.

• 44:41Bill Nye?

  But from a historical standpoint, I could buy it.

• 44:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, we'll be different, but we're not gonna be, it's not, we're gonna be running out of the, screaming out of the, out of the apartment. No, when, when machines took over our physical labor, did we say, oh my gosh, this is the crazy day? No, no, it happened slowly and we're fine.

• 44:57Bill Nye?

  Right.

• 44:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now we got people repairing machines. I don't have, you know, so.

• 45:00Bill Nye?

  And there's still artisans carving the thing.

• 45:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta get him on the show. I'm gonna get him on the show and then we'll give him a piece of our mind.

• 45:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we can't leave people freaked out over the fate of the machines that we create and their capacity to turn us into domesticated pets. Let's find out if Elon has any positive thoughts about the future at all.

• 45:24Bill Nye?

  Thank God.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  I'm quite optimistic about the future. I mean, I don't think we're about to enter a dark age. It could happen, but it's not, I think, not likely anytime soon.

• 45:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not before you get to Mars.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Hopefully not before we get to Mars. But bear in mind that.

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And part of the act of trying to get to Mars is a force to keep us out of the dark ages.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  I mean, there's always a chance that something calamitous could happen to Earth, either a natural or man-made catastrophe. Certainly, we see that in the fossil record. And we've invented all sorts of ways of doing ourselves in that the dinosaurs didn't have. And we haven't managed to solve the asteroid problem. So therefore, our risk is higher. Okay? Should people realize this? If you haven't solved the problems that have caused the prior extinctions, and you've added new ones, you've not improved the situation. And that's sort of where we are right now. And, you know, there are people, there are some really smart people that are a lot more pessimistic than I am, like, you know, the Stephen Hawking's of the world and the Martin Rees, the Royal Astronomers, they're all quite pessimistic. I'm a naturally optimistic person, but I do think that there's value

• 46:30Speaker 03

  in establishing life insurance, which if life as we know it is on more than one planet, then the light of consciousness as we know it is likely preserved into the future for much longer.

• 46:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If consciousness is preserved? No, it's a beautiful talk. That was his optimism? What, what? That was optimistic?

• 46:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you know, the thing that took out the dinosaurs, that's still a thing. It's still a thing. It's still a thing. And by the way, we'll probably take ourselves out before that.

• 46:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's a still a thing, too.

• 46:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 46:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you know what? I'm pretty optimistic. No, no.

• 47:02Bill Nye?

  But you guys, back in the day, there were no humans when the ancient dinosaurs were taken out.

• 47:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 47:08Bill Nye?

  There's no evidence that the ancient dinosaurs had a space program.

• 47:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At all. They didn't even have opposable thumbs, much less.

• 47:13Bill Nye?

  It doesn't seem like they did. And so we have that leg up. Also, they're going on nine billion people. If you kill almost everybody through extraordinary means, somebody's gonna leak through. Much more easy to leak through here on Earth than on Mars.

• 47:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's what I'm saying. You want to become a multi-planet species, whatever effort that takes, I've said this before, it seems that it would be less effort to deflect the asteroid.

• 47:36Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 47:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Than to terraform Mars and ship a billion people there.

• 47:39Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Chuck Nice?

  I'm with you on that.

• 47:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Deflect the damn asteroid. Get on with life. If you have the power to terraform Mars, you have the power to fix Earth.

• 47:45Bill Nye?

  Yeah. Martian atmosphere is getting scraped off all the time.

• 47:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 47:50Bill Nye?

  So, everybody, this is where...

• 47:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What fears you the most? What fears you the most? We gotta, we gotta wrap it up. What fears you the most?

• 47:54Bill Nye?

  The dark.

• 47:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The dark. Sorry, I go with the simple stuff. It's the truth. The monster under your bed. All right. Bill, what fears you the most? Climate change, then asteroids. You know what I fear the most? What? That we lack the wisdom to understand our own fate, so that we then become victims of it, rather than conquerors.

• 48:16Bill Nye?

  This sounds like those who do not know the past are condemned to repeat it.

• 48:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a version of that, I think. We gotta call it quits there. Bill Knight, thanks for being on the show. Chuck Nice, as always. Always a pleasure. My co-host, you've been listening to StarTalk Radio, and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal angel physicist. And as always, I'd be with you to keep looking up.