StarTalk Live at Town Hall with Buzz Aldrin (Part 1)

Join Commander Neil deGrasse Tyson, Co-Pilot Eugene Mirman and crew members Buzz Aldrin, John Oliver and Andrew Chaikin on StarTalk Live’s mission to explore Town Hall in NYC.

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.

• 0:21Eugene Mirman?

  We have a super wonderful show. It is my great pleasure to bring on the host, the Robert Plant of astrophysics. Ladies and gentlemen, Neil deGrasse Tyson!

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all of tonight is about the human exploration of space. So let's get to our guests. You do it, please.

• 0:48Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, I would like to bring out a very funny comic, someone who is sadly British. Ladies and gentlemen, the wonderful and very funny John Oliver!

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there's actually a good friend of mine, a journalist, he's actually a geologist by professional training. He wrote the book From Earth to the Moon, on which the 12-part TV series was based that came out about 10 or 15 years ago. He wrote a book on getting to Mars. The guy's all into this and he's been into it since he was a kid. Join me in giving a warm New York welcome to Andrew Chaikin. Andrew, come on out!

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Andrew, you've written about the moon almost like you were there.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I talked to all the guys who did go there.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you didn't actually go to the moon! I invited you on the show!

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Listen, I am a storyteller of space. So what I did was I went around and talked to all the guys who went to the moon for eight years, collected their experiences and wrote it down. By the way, the name of the book is A Man on the Moon.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me?

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Just tell you now. A man on the moon. But you know, like you-

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There were six men on the moon. You said a man on the moon.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Twelve.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to say that.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Twelve.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sorry. Six missions, twelve.

• 2:10Eugene Mirman?

  You're looking awesome!

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got me on that one!

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Twelve.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all you ever did was talk to these guys.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, but they said really cool stuff.

• 2:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is New York City, this is Town Hall, we are in Times Square.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  They said really cool stuff.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ladies and gentlemen, slide over.

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hit it!

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ladies and gentlemen!

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For those of you dragged here by your friend, he walked on the moon, okay?

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so you know!

• 3:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Buzz, you really need no introduction, except for the seven people who are dragged here. So Buzz, you were on Apollo 11, the first mission to land on the moon and walk. Your footsteps are there. And I'm told that all the pictures of single astronaut images on the moon are of you because Neil Armstrong took all those pictures, is that right?

• 3:53Speaker 03

  He wouldn't let go of the camera.

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Buzz, we might try to get you a handheld mic, because we can hear you a little better, let's see. I think it's out.

• 4:02Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, yeah, can you, is this, is this thing on?

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:06Eugene Mirman?

  Maybe not.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's coming.

• 4:07Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, it's coming.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A voice in my head told me it's coming in 20 seconds.

• 4:11Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I hear voices.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  Isn't that incredible? We can send a man to the moon, but we cannot amplify him to talk, frankly.

• 4:22Speaker 04

  Boy, we failed Buzz Aldrin in a big way.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Buzz, you were a fighter pilot in which war?

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Korean.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Korean War? So you must have been like fully aware that we're not just beating the Russians to the moon, we're beating the Russians flexing military muscle, right? I mean, wasn't that, does that pervade?

• 4:43Speaker 03

  We were catching up. You remember Sputnik?

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. I was born a year today after Sputnik launched. So I was like...

• 4:51Speaker 03

  Beep beep.

• 4:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, that's what it did. That's just imitation of Sputnik.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  That kind of shocked a number of people, because we didn't really think they were gonna be able to do that, even though they said they're gonna put up a satellite. Then the dog.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Laika. Laika didn't come back alive, yeah.

• 5:11Eugene Mirman?

  No?

• 5:12Speaker 03

  No.

• 5:13Eugene Mirman?

  Oh. The Russians killed a dog. Sorry, sorry.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eugene Mirman is part Russian, just so you know.

• 5:19Eugene Mirman?

  The part that's, I was born in Russia. I would even add all the parts.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Buzz, were any of you guys thinking we're doing this to explore, for science, for anything other than flexing muscle?

• 5:32Speaker 03

  Of course, yeah. We were doing it for that reason, but it was certainly a race. We were told that. I probably was more antagonistic than anybody else. There were a couple of, you know, real cozy people, let's buddy buddy. But those were our enemies, yeah.

• 5:50Eugene Mirman?

  Were you hoping you'd get to the moon and there'd be a Russian that you could punch there? We got little.

• 5:55Speaker 03

  No.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so you guys collected rocks. I mean, Andy here is a geologist, so he must have like been really tickled that you would, guys would collect rocks and bring them back to Earth.

• 6:09Speaker 03

  I thought he was an astronomer. You're telling me he looks down and...

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Planetary geologist, so I look up at the rocks. How's that? But that's the reason why, and I was 13 when Buzz and Neil walked on the moon, the fact that that was going on, that's the reason why me and a lot of other people and probably you got into astronomy and space science. That was our inspiration.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wasn't true for me, but it's okay if it's true for you.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Okay, okay. Well, it was, it was that and then the exploration of Mars by the robotic...

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so exploration, so the exploration of the solar system.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  That's also the reason why Eugene and I have underachieved so much. That's the key reason.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Buzz, you're on the moon. You're collecting rocks, so there's a little bit of science that comes out of that. You lay down the corner reflectors, right? Those are cool.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Corner reflectors.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was Neil's experiment. It was pretty easy.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  You just put it down.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all he had to do, put it down like that.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  The seismometer was a hell of a lot more complicated.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you deployed the seismometer?

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. There was a leveling device that consisted of kind of a round dish, and they had a BB in there. Okay? Now with the low lunar gravity, guess what that BB was doing?

• 7:33Speaker 03

  Come back an hour later, and it's right in the center. That's not a bubble.

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's like- It sounds like a child's toy.

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Buzz, today's dollar's like a hundred billion dollars to put you on the moon. You and eleven others. That's often criticized. You know, the excitement wears off eventually, and then they say, "Why did we do this?" What's your answer when people ask you that?

• 8:13Speaker 03

  They told us to do it, so we did it.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a really clean answer.

• 8:19Speaker 03

  The most important thing is how many people reached the moon.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would include, I guess, Apollo eight? Which orbit-

• 8:26Speaker 03

  The answer is twenty-four.

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Twenty-four.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Now, you could almost say that the Saturn rocket got three people up in top. Nine rockets went to the moon. Little mathematics tells you nine times three.

• 8:45Eugene Mirman?

  Not thirty, but so close.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  But it isn't twenty-four.

• 8:51Eugene Mirman?

  It's twenty-seven.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's twenty-seven. Is it possible?

• 8:53Speaker 03

  Yes. Okay.

• 9:02Eugene Mirman?

  Sorry, Sid.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so Buzz.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  The answer is three Navy guys got to fly twice.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 9:11Speaker 03

  Why?

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Now it comes out.

• 9:13Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Guess which branch of the service Buzz was in? Not the Navy. And there was a little bit of Air Force-Navy rivalry in the astronaut corps, you know? But, uh, that's gonna happen in any group of competitive people, right?

• 9:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but the Navy is the one that really jabs and means it.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the Navy fished you out of the ocean, so somebody's gotta like, give them props for that. Right? What aircraft carrier picked you up?

• 9:39Speaker 03

  Wasp, Hornet the first time, then the Hornet, second time.

• 9:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, okay. Because we've got the Intrepid here.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we've got the Intrepid Air and Space Museum, right? They're parked walking distance from here.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  You know what?

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 9:53Speaker 02

  People still, you know, it's a very small minority of people, but there are some people who don't believe Buzz and the other guys went to the moon. Now, if somebody really doesn't believe that, there's no way you're gonna convince them, but one really neat piece of evidence is to look at the video of Buzz running on the moon, and the video from the later flights and the movies, and watch the way the dust moves. It's not like anything you've seen on Earth because...

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the moon.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  It doesn't, well, no. But why? Why? Why is it different? And the reason is, it's in a vacuum, there's no atmosphere, and it's in one sixth gravity, so instead of billowing up in a cloud, each particle of dust is like a tiny little cannonball, and you get a spray of particles that goes out like an umbrella.

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is that on Earth...

• 10:42Speaker 02

  And that's impossible to fake. And certainly was impossible to fake in the 1960s and 70s.

• 10:47Eugene Mirman?

  And a lot of people don't think that Avatar happened, but it did.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. So, so on Earth, the dust would receive, would have air resistance?

• 10:57Speaker 02

  It would have air resistance and it would travel at a different speed.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  You put your foot down, kick your foot, and here on Earth it just kinda moves stuff out in front. But on the moon, you do that, and it goes out, and it all forms in a semicircle. Different. It really is different.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Minus the noise.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  Because there's no air.

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In space...

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Right. No one can hear you.

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  How do you know there's no...

• 11:20Eugene Mirman?

  The dust...

• 11:20Speaker 03

  How do you know there's no noise? Were you there?

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good point. Alright, um...

• 11:27Speaker 03

  I said it went boop.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  I'm trying to help you Neil, but here, but I'm, there's only so much I can do.

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I've not been to space, but I've done physics experiments that simulate the conditions of space, which tell me that in fact, in space, no one can hear you go scream. Right? But they can hear the dust part.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Can I, can I bring up one other extremely cool thing that Buzz talked about when he came back from the moon? The moon is one quarter the size of the earth. It's about 2,100 miles across. And you want to talk about the fact that you could, when you stood on the moon, you could tell that you were standing on...

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A smaller body.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  A sphere. You could see it curve.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, there's no atmosphere, so it's crystal clear, and you can see, and see, and see. And we were in a pretty flat area. It was the dullest area they could find. And that's where you're gonna land.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Because it was the safest, yeah.

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The safest land.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  But you could see, essentially, the moon curving away from you, as you looked at it. There was no doubt you were on a sphere.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if civilization had started on the moon, you would never have had the flat-earthers, right? I mean, you would just... Yeah, they would be truly ridiculous.

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where here, it's like, no, you never know.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But on the moon, wackos! Buzz, what inspired you to become an astronaut?

• 13:01Speaker 03

  MIT.

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Massachusetts? To get away from it, because it's like, ah! Yeah. What?

• 13:06Speaker 04

  How do I put the most distance between myself and this academic institution? I'll go that way.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  The real answer is Buck Rogers.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 13:16Speaker 03

  Really, really. Wilma?

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Sexy Babe? Dr. Hewer? Remember that?

• 13:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the women in science fiction are good-looking. It's, it's what makes...

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Not gravel goodie.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. Almost all. Alright, so it was, it was science fiction that did this?

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, well...

• 13:38Speaker 04

  It was science fiction and a hatred of Russia.

• 13:42Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. Book Rogers plus chess equals let's go to the moon.

• 13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so Buzz, back in your day, in the right stuff day, your preparation to go into space, I think, is very different from today. Today, you know, anybody can go into space. Back in your day, like, they left in the desert for a month to see if you... I mean, but...

• 14:05Speaker 03

  Well, in between being on alert in Germany, Life magazine came out, and you open it up, and you see this, this little capsule thing that these guys are gonna go in. The escape tower, and Mercury, and they're gonna pick some people, and...

• 14:24Speaker 03

  They're not poets, they're not philosophers. Eisenhower said, "We want success. We're gonna get test pilots." Okay, I read this, and I, I didn't get trained as a test pilot. I wasn't that good, okay?

• 14:43Speaker 03

  No, I didn't want the rest of my life.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is only just coming out now?

• 14:48Eugene Mirman?

  But you did something between "I'm not that good" and "I think I'll walk on the moon." So, what was that?

• 14:55Speaker 03

  I told you, it was MIT.

• 14:57Eugene Mirman?

  You went to MIT and then were like...

• 14:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then I had to write a thesis.

• 15:01Eugene Mirman?

  About how you'd like to go to the moon?

• 15:03Speaker 03

  No, about, about something that you're gonna become sort of an expert in. What you don't realize... So I knew how to intercept airplanes. Shot down a couple of them in Korea, see?

• 15:15Eugene Mirman?

  Thank you.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  So, maybe in this space business, they're gonna have something up there, and maybe you wanna get launched, and you wanna go catch it. The French word is rendezvous.

• 15:32Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, don't use the French word.

• 15:38Speaker 04

  Unless you must.

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you majored in aeronautical engineering?

• 15:43Speaker 03

  Astronaut.

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Astronautical, that must have been brand new.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  It was.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you wrote a thesis on how to dock spaceship?

• 15:50Speaker 03

  No, no, rendezvous, intercept.

• 15:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Orbital mechanics. Okay, so you wrote this thesis and then, since the department is new and it's MIT, you are the only person in the world, possibly the universe, who figured out how to do this. So now, even though you were not a test pilot, you had value to these future activities. Is that correct?

• 16:12Speaker 03

  That's what I thought. I got a letter from Ed White, good friend of mine. He'd left our fighter squadron in Germany, went back to Michigan, got a master's degree, went through the test pilot school. He writes me a letter, calls me up, whatever. He says, "1962, they're looking for some more astronauts." They picked up seven of them, the Mercury Seven, in 1959. He says, "Buzz, I'm gonna apply for this." And I said, "Shoot, Ed, I can shoot gunnery better than you can. If you're gonna apply, I will too."

• 16:52Speaker 03

  Wrong. Ed was picked, I was not.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Butt.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Butt, next year.

• 16:58Speaker 04

  Definitely a butt.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Next year.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As Pee-Wee Herman would say, "Everyone's got a big butt," okay? So, your butt is, yes?

• 17:07Speaker 03

  They changed the requirements.

• 17:10Speaker 04

  A few sites.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Somebody must have known that I was doing something of interest at MIT.

• 17:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you became an astronaut on a fluke?

• 17:19Speaker 03

  On a fluke, right.

• 17:21Speaker 04

  On a fluke that you wanted to do that, though. You wanted to be an astronaut.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  You give me something bigger, higher, faster, further, go do it.

• 17:31Speaker 04

  So you just wanted, you wanted to push a boundary, whatever that boundary was? If it was going higher than anywhere else, that's one thing. If it's landing on that thing...

• 17:38Speaker 03

  No, I wanted to be a part of that group of guys that were gonna do something.

• 17:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  Pretty fascinating, pretty different.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you also one of the first people to walk in space.

• 17:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, but that was...

• 17:50Eugene Mirman?

  Anybody can walk in space, Neil.

• 17:53Eugene Mirman?

  What Buzz did is truly impressive.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  You know Buzz was the guy that applied a training method that solved the problems of floating in space, EVA, extravehicular activity. They were in these suits that were pressurized and they were so difficult to operate in zero gravity where you're basically on a three-dimensional ice skating rink, I mean, action and reaction, and Buzz was the first guy to say, "Let's train in a swimming pool." So they...

• 18:39Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  I've been a scuba diver since 1957, and so when these two engineers from Baltimore decided that maybe this stuff in space could be done in another medium like underwater, neutrally buoyant, where the body weighs about, you know, how much percentage are we? 90% water?

• 19:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, hi, well you get your, the same density as water and you're bubbling.

• 19:09Speaker 03

  So anyway, it sounded pretty good to me. Some of the other astronauts were, "No, no, that's just not gonna work." But it did.

• 19:16Speaker 04

  So Buzz, you've been a scuba diver and an astronaut. Do you just hate the surface of the Earth?

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  John, but there's more. Not only does he hate the surface, even when he's on the surface of the Earth, back in his day, he was a pole vaulter. Do I not have this right?

• 19:35Speaker 03

  God, I would get away from the ground.

• 19:36Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. So you started with pole vaulting and then were like, "I should probably try spaceship."

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Well, I got tired of eating sawdust. When you come down, you land in a pile of sawdust.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  I identify with you so much, Buzz.

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wes, do you ever dream about going back to the moon?

• 19:58Speaker 03

  Back to the moon?

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not as a nation, but as a human being.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Why would anyone do that?

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know, it sounds fun.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  Richard Branson's guy said, "How'd you like to fly in our little thing?" Suborbital.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not what he calls it.

• 20:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to clarify the physics of this. NASA goes into orbit, and then perhaps, at one time, forty years ago, went out of Earth orbit to other destinations. Branson is imagining a spaceship, what he calls a spaceship, which goes up, and then comes back down. Never achieves orbit. There's no heat shields, are you up there for like five minutes, at most?

• 20:41Speaker 03

  Sixty-two miles. Well, they're engineers, see, they wanted me to support their program, lend a little flavor to it. So he said, "What would you think about if we gave you a flight in our Virgin Galactic Spaceship Two?"

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which other people are paying $200,000 a seat to get.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. I said, "If I did that, you would consider that you just gave me $200,000, right? I don't see it in my bank account."

• 21:14Speaker 03

  Now, who's gonna get the publicity out of me flying in your machine?

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Branson.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  No, not me. This is peanuts.

• 21:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Branson.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  And, who's taking the risk? Me or you?

• 21:35Speaker 04

  I think they should have let you do the commercial campaign for that, and that should have been the slogan.

• 21:41Speaker 04

  Come fly Virgin... Well, it's peanuts.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  You know, I happen to be an Axe ambassador. You know what that is?

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A-X-E.

• 21:54Speaker 03

  A-X-E.

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The stuff they spray on your body?

• 21:57Speaker 03

  The stuff to make...

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And all the women come chasing after you?

• 22:00Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 22:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See Buzz, I would have thought, at the bar, telling the lady, "I went to the moon", that that would be enough!

• 22:10Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know? You don't need something to smell.

• 22:12Eugene Mirman?

  You are the one man who does not need Axe body spray, Buzz.

• 22:17Eugene Mirman?

  We need that, to smell like our concept of what you smell like.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  But, they gave away 22 rides. Internationally, thousands of people applied for the possibility. And this was exactly what I was trying to do with the lottery that I thought about 20 years ago.

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought that was a brilliant... Tell people. I thought that was a brilliant idea.

• 22:42Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't my idea, but I thought the way to get thousands of people excited about it...

• 22:46Speaker 02

  What was the share-space idea? What was the plan?

• 22:48Speaker 03

  To share space among...

• 22:50Speaker 02

  How?

• 22:51Speaker 03

  Lots of people.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  How do you do it?

• 22:53Speaker 03

  You buy a share of space.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  And if you win...

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think we won it a little more.

• 23:00Eugene Mirman?

  I know. Talking to comics, the professors are all, "Mere, mere, mere."

• 23:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Come over to this side, these two are idiots. We get it, we get it.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  Anyway, to try and get a lottery done, which was my objective, all of a sudden, I get a call, go to New York and start advertising this new product and they're gonna give away 22 rides.

• 23:26Eugene Mirman?

  In space?

• 23:27Speaker 03

  No.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  In sub-orbit.

• 23:29Eugene Mirman?

  Sub-orbit, near-space.

• 23:30Speaker 03

  No!

• 23:31Eugene Mirman?

  Sort of near-space? Space-adjacent, how is it put? Are you describing airplane flights in a way... No, it's more than an airplane but less than a spaceship, is that its tagline?

• 23:45Speaker 03

  It's a rocket that somehow goes over 100 kilometers.

• 23:50Eugene Mirman?

  Sounds pretty good.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then falls back down.

• 23:53Eugene Mirman?

  Sounds not as good now.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  It's a good thing they...

• 23:56Speaker 03

  It's a good thing they didn't use 100 miles.

• 23:59Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, she'll raise.

• 24:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a little higher.

• 24:03Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  And when they come down...

• 24:05Eugene Mirman?

  "Mometer Oliver", they call him.

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what...

• 24:08Speaker 03

  I don't think anybody's learned in this.

• 24:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, right.

• 24:13Eugene Mirman?

  It's so close to learning that it's fine.

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Buzz, you went to the moon, came back, was there like a week?

• 24:38Speaker 03

  Eight days.

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eight days. So, were there any like, health effects, or long-term psychological effects? Not to get personal, I'm just asking, that's gotta mess with your head.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  You gotta give a lot of speeches, you gotta travel around the world. Do all that, yeah, it does something to your head.

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Answer that one, okay?

• 25:02Eugene Mirman?

  You had a lot of memorization to do in a lot of talks. That was the psychological effect of walking on the moon.

• 25:07Speaker 03

  And we got to see which motorcycle was the best in all these places we visited for parades.

• 25:18Speaker 03

  Triumph.

• 25:20Eugene Mirman?

  Triumph was the best motorcycle.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  But, more important than that, this is 1969. Where were the miniskirts the shortest?

• 25:35Eugene Mirman?

  So you did meet Jim?

• 25:36Speaker 03

  Heard Australia.

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heard Australia, okay.

• 25:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, is that a scientific? A new data point.

• 25:44Speaker 04

  I've often wondered Buzz, how, how, returning from the moon, you navigate the concept of enthusiasm. Because do you look at like a motorbike and think, yeah, that's a great motorbike, but it's not as good as going to the moon? How do you enjoy anything fully, ever again?

• 26:03Speaker 04

  Oh, this is, this is a delicious chicken cutlet, but it's not as good as going to the moon.

• 26:09Speaker 04

  Can you please take that back?

• 26:13Eugene Mirman?

  And add the moon to it.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  You must think that that's a real pleasant place to go to.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  But just in terms of the specter of what you saw in your mind, how does anything match up to that? How do you go and enjoy a movie? Think, "Oh, I liked Alvin and the Chipmunks, but..."

• 26:32Speaker 04

  That moon thing kind of spoilt it for me.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wasn't as fun as we think it might be?

• 26:40Speaker 03

  Well, I called it desolate, all right? Magnificent desolation.

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd make a good title.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Most lifeless thing you could imagine. You can't find a place here on earth that's more lifeless.

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Iowa.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, Black Sky.

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Buzz, there are people who have a little bit of nationalism within them here in America, and they don't want to see some other country stepping on your boot prints on the moon.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Good, good. Except the boot prints that were on the wrong side of the sun. The guy said, "Don't walk in front of the photo collectors." But I did. And it's there for a million years. And now I want somebody to go up there and brush away the footprints.

• 27:30Eugene Mirman?

  Did you go to the moon and did like, you were just like, "Fuck it, I'm gonna do whatever I want."

• 27:38Eugene Mirman?

  "I'm gonna walk wherever."

• 27:40Speaker 03

  Mine as well.

• 27:40Eugene Mirman?

  "Try to stop me."

• 27:45Eugene Mirman?

  "Stop me, LBJ."

• 27:49Speaker 04

  I hear you, Mission Control, but I have the high ground here and I think I'm going to...

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Presumably the moon has a special place in your heart and mind and soul. So, there's no talk today about moon bases. You're okay with that?

• 28:05Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm talking about moon bases.

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are?

• 28:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want moon bases?

• 28:10Speaker 03

  No, yeah, but they're for international people, not the US.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  We'll build them.

• 28:19Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, sure.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  Russia.

• 28:21Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 04

  He's a Ruski.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:23Eugene Mirman?

  Not anymore.

• 28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so you've got...

• 28:25Eugene Mirman?

  Not anymore.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  No, it's not gonna happen.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, moon bases for international science research, such as what hap- what goes on in Antarctica, I guess. Is that an international base there?

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Takonoids, Chinese Takonoids.

• 28:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  German astronauts.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Indian, Japanese.

• 28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't that kinda what the space station...

• 28:45Speaker 03

  But, but they're doing things for prestige in their country.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In their country, that's for sure?

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All of them?

• 28:52Speaker 03

  We've done that.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what should we do for prestige, once again?

• 28:56Speaker 03

  Lead what happens at the moon without wasting money.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so...

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasting money.

• 29:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. When you could use it, better go on elsewhere.

• 29:16Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, like?

• 29:18Eugene Mirman?

  Ooh, like San Francisco.

• 29:22Eugene Mirman?

  You have to go. It's wonderful.

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Buzz, if we're gonna go to Mars and hang out, shouldn't we, like, practice hanging out on the moon?

• 29:29Speaker 03

  No.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 29:32Speaker 03

  Well, 'cause the gravity's different.

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So?

• 29:35Speaker 03

  So.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's got gravity at all?

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, but... You don't practice at one place to then go somewhere else and do it.

• 29:43Eugene Mirman?

  Oh yeah, Mr. Swimming?

• 29:44Speaker 03

  Hell, we didn't do that. We...

• 29:49Eugene Mirman?

  Sorry.

• 29:56Eugene Mirman?

  Please don't fly a jet into me. You're probably right. Just an not about example.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  So Dennis Tito, who is a gazillionaire in California, who was the first base tourist, he flew to the...

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bought a seat on the Russian soldiers.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Right, in 2001.

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how do the old timers feel about people just buying a seat? When you guys were like starving in the desert, becoming the right stuff to earn that seat. You got people who just pull out a billfold and plunk it down. You okay with that?

• 30:40Speaker 03

  No, I'm looking at how much I got paid for going to the...

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much?

• 30:46Speaker 03

  I filed a travel voucher when I came back.

• 30:51Eugene Mirman?

  You had to expense going to the...

• 30:55Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 30:56Eugene Mirman?

  Is that really true? In the heart of the Cold War. Is that true?

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Most of the meals were government meals.

• 31:04Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Most of the transportation was government.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  You know, the rocket?

• 31:11Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, government rocket.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  He's been able to take a mile...

• 31:14Speaker 03

  The parachute, the aircraft carrier.

• 31:17Eugene Mirman?

  Oh my god.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  I did need to rent a car.

• 31:24Eugene Mirman?

  And you had to cover that?

• 31:25Speaker 03

  To get from the airport in Florida to the crew quarters.

• 31:29Eugene Mirman?

  Did the government cover that? Or were they like, "Sorry, you have to get there somehow, and then we'll bring you to the moot part"?

• 31:37Speaker 03

  Look, I have a damn official government travel voucher. Thirty-three dollars and thirty-one cents.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  That was a lot more in 1969.

• 31:50Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, but not that much.

• 31:53Speaker 04

  It's a fair point. You did alright.

• 31:55Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  You're welcome.

• 31:57Eugene Mirman?

  You could buy the Rolling Stones' catalog at the time.

• 32:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I keep thinking of Buzz Lightyear's, you know, phrase, "To infinity and beyond". The dude's name is Buzz. Did you get, again, any kickback from that?

• 32:10Speaker 03

  You know what the name was initially?

• 32:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 32:14Speaker 03

  Lunar Larry.

• 32:18Eugene Mirman?

  That does not sound like a hit to me.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  No, he said, "We gotta do better than that."

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  So we went to the list of guys, and they liked Buzz.

• 32:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that is your official name? That's not just a nickname?

• 32:33Speaker 03

  Well, no, it's legal now.

• 32:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Legal now.

• 32:36Eugene Mirman?

  At the time, it was illegal.

• 32:38Speaker 04

  It was illegal.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  I had to sneak around.

• 32:42Eugene Mirman?

  It was a tax dodge because he knew he owed the government so much for going to the moon.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  Especially the mileage charge was a killer.

• 32:55Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. They'll rent a moon vehicle from Avis.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The problem is, you can get to the moon in three days, it's a news cycle, people will think about you the whole way there. And Mars takes nine months. And then you're there for years, and then you get to come back three years later, four years later.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  They're not coming back.

• 33:16Eugene Mirman?

  So you can't come back, or you'd have to mind stuff.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  Let me ask you a question.

• 33:20Eugene Mirman?

  Sure.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  You know history?

• 33:21Eugene Mirman?

  Barely.

• 33:23Eugene Mirman?

  But, but a little.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  You ever heard of Christopher Columbus?

• 33:26Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 33:27Speaker 03

  He came and he went back.

• 33:29Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah. He's a sissy. Or not.

• 33:32Speaker 03

  How about the pilgrims? The Mayflower?

• 33:36Eugene Mirman?

  They did a great job.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  They came over, they landed at Plymouth Rock. Did they hang around waiting for the return trip?

• 33:42Eugene Mirman?

  No, no, no.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  No, they came here to settle.

• 33:44Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah. So, let's go to Mars and definitely also maybe bring some smallpox blankets.

• 33:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just in case.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Colonize Mars with a colony that has no intent on returning.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. The people that go there, train them, and they volunteer.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they need to be a fertile community of people.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  What's the point of sending six people there? Then bringing them back? What are they gonna do when they get back here?

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go on parades, like you did.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  That's a good national effort. That's worth expending that money. You know, it costs four times as much to bring them back as it does to send them there.

• 34:31Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, but they would be so promiscuous when they got back, it would be pretty fun for them.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but here's a serious question, and it's a real problem. Because, once you go beyond the Earth's magnetic field, you're getting zapped by radiation.

• 34:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Constantly. And even when you're on Mars, if you have your habitat and you put a bunch of dirt and rock over it, you're fine when you're in the habitat, but when you're outside in your space suit, you're still getting zapped. So, you know, to me, the moon is kind of the Rodney Dangerfield of the solar system. It doesn't get enough respect. And, let me just give you my three reasons why the moon deserves to be considered the jewel and the crown of the solar system, besides the Earth. Number one, the moon is the cosmic library where we can read the earliest history of the solar system most clearly.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it preserves its crater record.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Right. And they even have pieces of the early Earth at the time life formed that were kicked there by meteorite impacts. That's number one. Number two, it's an outward-bound school that's only three days from home where you can learn to deal with these problems. And number three, it's the only place in the solar system where you can stand on another world and see the beauty of the Earth as a planet, as the oasis in the blackness of space. That consciousness-raising sight that we got when we went to the moon. From Mars, the Earth is like a little star in the sky. So I think the moon deserves a lot more respect than we've been giving it. Does anybody agree with me? I mean, come on!

• 36:00Speaker 03

  Were you ever... Were you ever in the military?

• 36:04Speaker 02

  No.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  Don't you realize what leadership means?

• 36:08Speaker 02

  I agree with you about that.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  We led the world when we went to the moon.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  I'm part of...

• 36:14Speaker 03

  You think we're gonna lead when we get there and are greeted by Chinese?

• 36:18Speaker 02

  I don't think it's any either or.

• 36:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On that note,

• 36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  we have StarTalk Live at Town Hall.