Cosmic Queries – Space Exploration

Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Eddie Brill answer fan-submitted questions on space exploration including asteroid defense, the Moon landing, the Space Race, Mars, the International Space Station, the boundary of space, Zeno’s paradox, and more. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/cosmic-queries-space-exploration/ Photo Credit: NASA

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, a special Cosmic Queries edition all about space exploration. And who do I have with me but the one, the only, the classic, Eddie Brill. Eddie, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  That's my pleasure.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not your first rodeo with us.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  No, no, no, this is...

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Literally your second rodeo.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Yes, I've done another rodeo.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One other rodeo.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Yes, and I'm looking, you know, I'm looking forward to it. I actually reached out and said I want more rodeo.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want some other rodeo in your...

• 1:02Speaker 01

  I'll ride bareback with you the whole time.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Cosmic Queries, you all know how this works. We solicit questions from our fanbase on all of our social media platforms. They're collected. Eddie's got them, right here. I haven't seen them. If I don't know the answer to something, I'll say, "I don't know." That's how this works. So Eddie, you... Did you like science as a kid? What was your science profile?

• 1:26Speaker 01

  In high school, math and science was my thing.

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You liked it?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  I liked it. I loved it. And I had great teachers along the way.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it, maybe that's it.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  And that was it. You know, there were just, you know... There was one guy who was so funny, very southern. I was born in New York, but I grew up in Hollywood, Florida. And we had an incredible high school with incredible math and science teachers. And this one guy was like, "You remember the elements, you know, of a... Your mouse dies, barium." You know, he would like do this.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Barium?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  He would do these kind of puns. And I still remembered all these years later.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  "Osceum" was the first part of it. Like, you see the mouse, you try to catch him, "Osceum," you know, or something like that.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so what do you have for me? Go, bring it on.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Okay, well, right away.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, just to be clear.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If this topic were on a subject that was not necessarily in the center of my expertise, we'd bring in a third person with that expertise. So, it's only you and me, because it's space exploration. I got this.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is you.

• 2:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got this.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  This is good. And, um, this is kind of, um, interesting to me. Do you think that, should there be an international organization of space exploration? I'm usually pretty good at reading, until just that moment. Uh, like a space agency without borders, as many smaller countries who can't afford an independent space organization could contribute to space exploration?

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that, do we have the name of that person? Who is that?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  That person is, uh, Sampon Gosol.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From where?

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Facebook.

• 2:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Facebook, okay. Uh, so, that's a really good question. So, what you're, what they're asking about is a kind of United Nations counterpart with regard to space. Now, it turns out, the United Nations has a space unit within it. They're the ones who came up with the seminal 1967 Treaty for Conduct in Outer Space. 1967, we were on our way to the moon, Russia was doing their thing, everyone's looking on, is it gonna weaponize? What's gonna happen? Space warfare? And they thought it was time to jump in and say, let's lay some groundwork here. So, it's a treaty on the peaceful uses of outer space. And it's got, it's very kumbaya, you know?

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a lot of, if you're in trouble, I'll come help, no matter what's happening on Earth. It's got some of that in it. Um, but, it also says that you have the right to protect yourself, in case a rogue element shows up. And in there, that's a huge, that's, that's, you know, what does it mean to protect yourself?

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you have a satellite that's inching towards me, and I'm afraid of it.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Right, you have to call them, uh, hello, am I able to destroy this?

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, yeah, what is, you know, so, there's slop in there for sort of militaristic interpretation, but basically, that was a first foray into this concept, that maybe space needs to be an international community. And more than a hundred countries signed that treaty, including the United States and Russia.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Did you think it was a good idea at the time?

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good idea at the time, I think it needs some, some freshening up. But, but still, that's just a treaty. That's not an organization. So, uh, what they're really asking for is what they did in Star Trek. You know, it's, there's the United, the Federation.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is all countries as one space agency. And the deck of Star Trek, it had, we got the, the, what do we have? The, the Scottish guy, we got the, the Japanese guy. Of, of course, the, the white male is the head of everything.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Right, of course. Yeah, the, the bad actor.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The worst actor of all of them.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 5:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, uh, William Shatner, he's, he's been a guest on the show and he's been a friend of the show, so, um, so I'm not gonna badmouth him.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, he's not a horrible actor. He's just a very deliberate actor.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, he was in two episodes of The Twilight Zone.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Yes, I remember the one, the, the one on the wing.

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, with, with the monsters outside the, the plane. But, uh, anyhow, it seems to me that if everyone wants to be a player, the only sensible way to do this is to have a united space agency. And then Earth can make decisions collectively in the interest of the future safety of the Earth. The best example of this is suppose an asteroid's coming. All right, now, uh, we don't know where it's gonna hit yet. Uh, okay, oh, it's aimed for the Indian Ocean. All right, well, does India have a manned space program? No, not today. So what are we gonna, let India flood from the, from a tsunami? No, you wanna, you wanna, you want a centralized way

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to protect everybody, no matter where the asteroid strikes.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Do you think everyone's on board? Do you think all these countries are?

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I tell you you're gonna be knocked out by an asteroid and you wanna protect against that risk, sure. Plus, if I'm gonna provide you hurricane information from satellite images and there's a lot of space assets that serves our interest on Earth's surface internationally. Monitoring of climate, um, if a volcano erupts and there are gases that encircle the Earth. As Carl Sagan famously said, "Air molecules do not carry passports."

• 6:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They go where the hell they want, whenever they want. So if there's pollution here, either human caused or volcanic, you're gonna wanna know, uh, uh, uh, air currents and how that tracks. If something happens in the ocean, you wanna know how that tracks. And the best way to monitor this is from space. And, like I said, you don't wanna go extinct from an asteroid strike.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Right. It's like when you used to smoke on an airplane and they only had certain rows for it.

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was crazy! We had old to remember that? Right. I remember sitting there, "This is the smoking row. This is not the smoking row." Okay, well, I smell your cigarette, right?

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, the molecules are going to the exit row.

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, so yeah, I think you're gonna want that, and there's sensible ways to think about this. Everyone pays what they can afford and you, maybe you'll index it to their GDP, or whatever is the sensible economic measure. So everybody is a participant in this, and as a nation gets wealthier, their contribution gets higher. If they actually then have a space program of their own, they might specialize in some aspect of space exploration that other people don't. For example, the space station. And if you notice this, there's a robotic arm on the space station. Okay, that help retrieve satellites and do things. And, um, that robotic arm says "Canada" on it.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 7:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you got the little, the flag, and it's called "Candadarm." Candadarm, yeah, it's very cute. They're being a little cute there. And for some reason, the engineers figured out, no matter what angle this arm is, every photo of it says "Canada" in full view.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Well, that's why I asked you about, can everyone get involved? Cause the ego of like, well, here I am, Canada, and here's my little thing.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So they made a better arm than we did. We said, "Let's use it." And so I'm thinking, different countries would have different expertise. And then you have this sort of assembled, an assembled collection of the brilliance of all nations of the world in a common mission.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To explore the universe.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Sounds lovely. Wish we could do that with everything.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  With everything.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so, so, on that subject, um, my great skepticism with the kumbaya of the peaceful use of outer space is, cause it says, "In space, you cannot attack, you cannot do this, and we must all be peaceful." I'm saying, If you can get this to work in space, why can't you get it to work here on Earth?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if you want me to believe that this will work in space, do it here on Earth first.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  That's great. Well, if they do it in space first, then we can say, hey, look, it works there. Let's do it at home.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you know, that's another way to look at it. Oh, that's good.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that would be good. There was a, there's a question.

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In math, it's called an existence proof. Well, you don't know how to prove it exactly, but you know you have an example of it existing.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there must be some way to make that happen. All right, bring on another one.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  All right. Well, this is from Ronald Gamboa from Facebook as well. If China makes it first with people to Mars, are they allowed to build a wall to keep Americans out?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Though that was cute.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm reminded of some other comic, forgive me for not remembering who did it. The, um, first humans arrive on Mars.

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the Martian, a gathering of Martians show up at the landing site and they say,

• 9:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  colonists, go home.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Right. I don't know who does that. That's really funny.

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, I have two answers to that. First, if you're the first on Mars, you do what the hell you want.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, A. Second, walls worked when you only moved around on foot.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so a wall is not going to stop a spaceship from landing anywhere. That's the literal answer to that question.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, the more figurative reply is,

• 10:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  there've been attempts to establish whether you own what you land on. Because, you know, the Western way is just own stuff, right? And then you want, oh, no, I'll sell it to you because I own it. Now.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Like Columbus, where he said, I discovered America. And it's like, well, we live here. It's like if I went to your house and said, look, I know you live here and you have a lease, but I discovered your house. Now get out.

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, um, the.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the challenge is, what will it take to motivate people to explore space? And a successful formula, I don't know if there are other formulas that could work better, but we know a successful formula in the United States was the homesteading rules. Okay, holding aside that half the time they were homesteading on native land. Okay, back then, let's hold that detail aside, a very important detail. Hold that aside, just conceptually, the idea was, as I came to understand homesteading, is there's land out there, nobody knows what to do with it. Oh, you want to go to that land?

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, if you go to that land and build a home and make a farm, you own that land. You get to keep that land. It's still part of America, but you get to keep that land. So this is homesteading. Wow, I get to own land? Let me go. And so you end up settling land out there without anybody forcing you. Just the simple spirit of exploration and the spirit of of ownership ended up opening huge swaths of territory to quote settlements. And so, uh, maybe space would operate in that way. If you land on that asteroid, it's yours. Okay?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because because you paid to land on the asteroid.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, I didn't, you, it's your investment.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  And your responsibility.

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your responsibility, exactly.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  All right, let's see, we have here, um, Oliver Gilchrist from Instagram has written, I mean, he's not from Instagram, I'm sure he's from another place, but he went through Instagram. He said, do you think there's any advantage in putting military in space?

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's probably inspired by the Trump Space Force comments. And let me just make it clear, I've said this many times, but I'll say it again. Just because something is spoken by President Trump doesn't mean it's crazy.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just make that clear. Okay? Just because he said it does not automatically mean it's a crazy.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Because out of the 8,000 lies of 2018, there is probably some truth.

• 13:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I didn't count, but I'm just saying, so in that particular case.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, we already have a space force. It is a branch of the Air Force. It's called the US Space Command. Hmm. They've been monitoring space for since we've been in space. Not only they, but many intelligence agencies. Cause space is a reconnaissance platform. Mm hmm. Above all else, no pun intended. Every pun intended. Every. And so we don't think of intelligence gathering as warfare as much as we think of weapons as warfare. But it is, it is a fundamental part of the planning, waging and of war and the maintenance of peace. So space is the ultimate high ground. We've had spy satellites in space from the beginning, from the 1960s.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Under the, under the auspices of the Air Force. So if we're gonna say, let's pull it out from under the Air Force and make it its own agency. I don't have a problem with that. We did that already with the, with the Air Force. During the entire Second World War, it was the US Army Air Force. It was a branch of the Army. Mm hmm. Late in 1940s, the war is over. We figure, you know, the, the command and control is different if you're in the air than if you're on the ground. This soldier is not a grunt wielding, weapons wielding person in the brush. It's you need pilots. The engineering of your tanks is different from the engineering of your airplane. Mm hmm. Everything is different. So let's make that its own thing. Nobody complained. No one today is saying we should have never made the Air Force. That was not a good idea. Hmm.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so as long as space is a frontier where we have untold assets in space. Forget the value of the satellite itself, the value of what it enables for being in space. There is no Uber without satellites. There is no business model for them without satellites. So there's the cost of the satellite and there's the commerce that it enables. UPS tracks their trucks. You want a date tonight on Tinder? Yeah. We are using satellites to find you. Your date tonight, okay? Did you swipe right? It goes up to a satellite, comes back. Is it a two mile radius, 100 meter radius? Uh, this is all calculated. So.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Military, you want them not only to protect your borders or other traditional ways a military would execute its mission, you also want it to protect your assets. So, we gotta wrap up this segment.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a great question, and when we come back, more with Eddie Brill on Cosmic Queries of Space Exploration.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. We're here in my office at the American Museum of Natural History, where I serve as Director of the Hayden Planetarium, and I've got Eddie Brill helping me out here. Eddie, thanks for being my co-host.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  It's my pleasure. It's also great to be in this building.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, if you give, yeah, yeah, this is...

• 16:42Speaker 01

  I spent a lot of my childhood here.

• 16:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm. So, questions on space exploration?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yes, okay. SM Bauer III from Instagram had written...

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The third or three?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's just three.

• 16:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No!

• 16:55Speaker 01

  I think SM Bauer I and II are dead, and this guy is the grandson of SM Bauer...

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would put a "the" in between the name and the numeral.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Right, he should have done that, or she. SM could be Sarah Marie Bauer. "We landed on the moon in the 60s with the technology of a basic calculator. With the amount of advanced technology crammed into our smartphones, why haven't we advanced beyond the moon in the 50 years?"

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, great question. Great, I've written so much on this topic. It just means SM Bauer III hasn't read anything I've ever written. That's what this means. That's my, oh, snap!

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Poor SM Bauer.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if you read the literature surrounding that moon shot, we're Americans, it's in our DNA, we're explorers, you can't keep us, we're humans, we've got to explore, and then we explore the moon. Everybody's saying, "We're on the moon by 1969, we'll be on Mars by 1980."

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We were not on Mars by 1980. By 1973, we had stopped going to the moon altogether. We have not been out of low Earth orbit since 1972.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? So, what's up with that?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Uh, it's because whatever you were thinking about why we went to the moon was not why we went to the moon. What did Kennedy say? We're going to moon up because it's easy, but because it's hard?

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Right. And because of the thing?

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the thing! And the other, we'll do the other thing.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  And the other thing.

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The thing, I don't know what the thing is. And we'll do these other things. We'll go to the moon and do the other thing.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's...

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Because there was no R in the word, because he, you know, ah...

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got that Brookline, Massachusetts accent. So, what he should have said was, "We're going to the moon because we have to beat the communists."

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he kinda did say that in one of his speeches to the joint session of Congress. Where he said, "We're gonna go to the moon and return, uh, put a man on the moon, return safely to Earth." A few paragraphs before that, in that same speech, he says, "If the events of recent weeks," this is 1961, Yuri Gagarin had just come out of orbit. "We didn't have a rocket that wouldn't blow up on the launch pad that could carry people, yet." Okay? "So, if the events of recent weeks," he would not even utter the man's name, "are any indication of the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, "that we must show the world the path of freedom over the path of tyranny." That was the battle cry against communism.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you window dress it with, "Oh, we're explorers." But who's writing the checks? The people who are scared witless about being overrun by communists. That's why we went to the moon. Once we saw that the Russians didn't have a spacecraft and they were not going to the moon, we were done. Mars was not, Mars is not even a thing. I can tell you this today. If China says, "We're gonna put human beings," no, "We're gonna put a military base on Mars." We'll be on Mars in 10 months, okay? One month to design, fund, and build the next spaceship. Nine months to take the trip there, and we will, and that'll be our motivation. And we might window dress it again and say, "We're going because we're explorers."

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Because the other thing.

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the other thing, the war thing.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, war is one of the greatest drivers of the expenditure of financial and human capital there ever was.

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Name three of the most expensive things humans have ever done. Just pull, just name one, name one.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Um, I would say the technology of smartphones. Or am I answering it, not understanding the question?

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm talking about the projects.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Oh, projects.

• 20:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes. In the history of civilization.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Um, I would say man on the moon.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man on the moon, okay, yeah. We went there because the Russians threatened us.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, uh, Great Wall of China, very expensive. It's military. Keep out the Mongols. Do you know that the turrets in, on the Great Wall of China are separated at the exact distance that is twice an archer's killing distance?

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Wow. How intelligent.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so an archer here will kill you, and an archer there will kill you.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're not coming up that wall. Okay?

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Very nice.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a military project. Uh, the great, the voyages, oh, also economics will do it. The, all the period of great voyages of Columbus and Magellan, these were all economic projects.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wasn't just.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Bring back gold.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, Queen Isabella didn't say, oh, Chris, uh, bring back a slideshow of the plants and people that you met, which we so love to see. Your, your, your trip log. No, it is, here's a satchel of flags. Wherever you land, plant one for Spain in the name of the crown. There it is. Hegemony, economics, and war. So that's why we haven't been back.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  I got you.

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Okay, this is from Jonathan Gerac, G E R A C, from Facebook. Sorry, Jonathan, I got your last name mispronounced. But Mars is the hot topic these days, and I think eventually we will get there. What do you think will be the next big prize in the sky after Mars?

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think that way.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think in terms of prizes. I think in terms of capability. Capability.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do I mean by that? I mean, if you build.

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A warehouse of space launch vehicles. Okay?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you, you're Eddie, you say, "Hey, I wanna mine an asteroid." And you go into the, into the rocket box store, okay?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  I have one in my neighborhood.

• 22:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you go in with your, with your shopping cart. "I need three boosters to get me to orbit, two boosters to get to the asteroid, two other boosters to come back. I need these tools, and I'm off."

• 22:48Speaker 01

  And a Starbucks coffee. Cause I need a booster for myself.

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, there, that's your trip to an asteroid. Okay, I'm a scientist, I wanna look for life on, on Mars. Okay, I need a rocket that'll do that, I get a robot, I get a this, I get a that, and that's my configuration, and then I go there. Uh, oh, military has some issues, they need to, they need to check out the backside of the moon in case there's a thing hiding there. That's a different configuration. I see space not as, what is the next moonshot? What is the next prize in the sky? I wanna think of space as our backyard. When you go out your back door to your backyard, you're not predestined where you're gonna go. You wanna run anywhere your urges take you.

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, a little-known fact, the cost to going to the moon is about the same, if you adjust dollars for inflation. It's about the same as the total cost of the US interstate system.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Well, there you go.

• 23:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, so, so where am I gonna go with that? It's, alright, the interstate, did we just build a road from New York to Chicago? You could do that, but that's kinda restrictive. Suppose you like farmland? Suppose you, and you wanna go there, well, so you build a road there. So the interstate connects more than just the major cities. It connects little cities too. It enables the creativity of people with vision and dreams to build a nation as the collective expression of our...

• 24:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of our urge to dream.

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For me, that's what space is. Let it, let it, let it, let all of space be the target of all of our dreams.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  That's fantastic. I had a dream that one day space would be explored.

• 24:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a dream speech?

• 24:54Speaker 01

  I have a nightmare that no one's gonna build a road.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  You know, what's interesting about that question is people always want more. They wanna know what's more instead of savoring what we have and enjoying what we have.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I think we need a little bit of both.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if you only savor what you have, because there are the people who say, "Why are you going into space? We have all these problems on Earth." Okay, let's fix the problems on Earth. So, let's go back 10,000 years. You're in the cave. Okay, I wanna explore across the valley. No, we have cave problems. Let's solve the cave problems first. And then, we don't have the luxury to go out to cross the brook, or go over the mountain, or cross the valley.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  The grandmother's house.

• 25:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've gotta solve the cave problems, or that's what you sound like to me. If you say, "Let's savor this and not continue to explore."

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right. I think that, to me, the combination, it's just like, like when you're eating, you just wanna savor the food that's in your mouth instead of just going for the next bite. But at the same time, prepare yourself for the next bite to be.

• 26:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's both. It's both.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got more, give it to me.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  We do. This is Alexis from Hong Kong, and she went through Instagram.

• 26:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Amazon's thing, Alexa? Oh, Alexa.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Alexa, Alexa, Alexa, play the hits of Hong Kong.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  When do you think we will start sending the world leaders into space? If we could do that now, who would you send?

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, no, no. See, you don't send one at a time, just send them all.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Tell them it's a meeting. We're having a meeting and there's gonna be a lot of money there.

• 26:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, my favorite quote ever from Apollo 14 astronaut.

• 26:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Edgar Mitchell.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Okay. Okay.

• 26:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he, he was changed going to the moon. Okay. He, he was a different person.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Do you think they all were changed?

• 26:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most were. I don't think Neil Armstrong was.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Hmm, right.

• 26:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These, these were steady folks. Uh, I mean, why wouldn't you be changed?

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, of course, but I mean deeply emotionally, like you're a different person. There are few of them that got really different afterwards. But, um, people like Jim Lovell, um, and Gene Cernan, the last man on the moon, Apollo seventeen. Uh, I got to be friends with them and they, they seemed like pretty regular folk.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Do you think anyone got changed for the worse? Any of these in, in many of your study?

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, a few went to alcohol. I mean, there is, yeah, I mean, if we count that as being worse.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So here's, here is Edgar Mitchell.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  From Apollo fourteen.

• 27:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apollo fourteen.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch."

• 28:01Speaker 01

  All right. That's wonderful.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so take all the politicians out.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Right. Put them all on the, put them all on the plane. Okay, this is from Bunders85 from Instagram.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  "Do you think NASA should keep funding the ISS until it's retired? Because I sure as hell do. LOL." Bunders laughs.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so International Space Station.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, it's the largest

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  sort of engineering project, like, ever. Okay, in terms of cost and, uh, more important than that is

• 28:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  it is hugely international. As we were discussing before, di- different countries contribute different bits and pieces to that. It is the greatest collaboration of nations.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Outside of the waging of war.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so for me, it's more than just what science are you doing? It's a symbol of hope for cooperation, international cooperation among us. So there was a, I haven't checked the latest on this, but there was a caucus in Congress that wanted to turn the space station into a national lab.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What that would mean is there are funds available to keep it going and you want to do an experiment? Then you don't have to pay for the launch vehicle to get the experiment up there. It's built into the cost of running the lab. You get to do your science. There. I haven't, I haven't, forgive me, I haven't checked on the latest

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  planning on that, but the space station is not going to be up there forever. One day they're gonna, we're gonna dump it into the Pacific Ocean, the great toilet bowl.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. It'll get wrapped in all the plastic.

• 29:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plastic shrink wrap.

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be funny if it hit the plastic mat.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  And then it would furrow all the plastic and would solve all of that issue all at once.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause the Pacific Ocean is, is like a third of all longitude on Earth is the Pacific Ocean. So if you're gonna drop something and you don't have much precision doing it because it tumbles out of space, that would be where to do it. I don't have a strong opinion on sustaining the space station or not. Um, it would be unfortunate if to sustain it meant you couldn't then explore other things.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, but the fact that we built something the size of a football field in zero G.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, somebody should be taking a bow.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  That's pretty good. Do you think there should be a new, uh, different, better space station once this one is.

• 30:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I don't, I, I'm not a should person.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Right, okay.

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm, I'm just not. I don't, because that means I'm telling people what they should do and I, it's not.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, even, even if I sound like I'm doing that.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm actually hardly ever mostly never do it. I just want to alert you of the benefits or, or drawbacks of a decision that you might make. I'm saying the space station is the greatest collaboration of nations outside of the waging of war. Next would be like the Olympics and maybe the World Cup. But this is the top.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  But what happens at the Olympics, after they leave the country, what's left of these empty stadiums that end up rotting and going away.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, this is, could be a problem with the space station as well. So. Remember, the space station was conceived in the Cold War. Alright, this is how we, how that happened. It became the International Space Station when the Soviet Union dismantled. And then you have these brilliant Russian scientists. "Oh my gosh, we can't let them go to our enemy, we gotta get them."

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So hey, you wanna join us and be scientist and put this together? And so, so, United States and Russia as the two flagship countries, made that the International Space Station.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Do you think there are like, good guys and bad guys? In this kind of thing, in this kind of war?

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are always bad guys.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  That's what they say. But do you think that, you think?

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grow up!

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that'll never happen.

• 31:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a break. When we come back, more on the exploration of space in our Cosmic Queries edition. And StarTalk returns.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  The future of space and the secrets of our planet revealed.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  This is StarTalk.

• 32:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk is back.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Yay.

• 32:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's keep doing this, Eddie Brill.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Stenhouse94 says, "Do you think we will send another Voyager-type mission when the planets line up perfectly again? Also, with the newer technology, could it enter interstellar space quicker and overtake Voyager 1?"

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, okay, so Voyager 1 and 2 were given enough energy to leave the solar system entirely. Others don't travel fast enough and so they're forever bound to the sun. Not that that's a problem, it's just a fact. And those spacecraft that have enough energy to leave, you may remember, affixed to the side of them were messages for aliens. Because if these are never coming back to the solar system, maybe they'll be picked up by alien civilizations. And of course, they wrote it in English because aliens speak.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Shop at Sears.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we used scientific pictograms to represent some of our basic knowledge and understanding of the physical world. So those got out there with those extra speeds because they got what's called a gravity assist by falling in behind Jupiter. And you can do this for any planet, any object, actually. You fall in behind it, it picks up the orbital speed of that object and it slingshots out the other side with extra energy. Because these are small craft, they're not launched with enough fuel to do that, they gain the energy by slingshoting around these planets. So Voyager was good because we hadn't really gone to any planets before.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it was a grand tour, all the planets lined up. Brilliant, there was a multi-cushion pool shot. Okay, you slingshot here, you slingshot there. And so when we say they're lined up, they're lined up orbital dynamically, not that they're just in a straight line. It wouldn't be good if they're in a straight line because by the time you got to one, they've moved. Okay? You get to this one, they've moved again.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  It's like playing the theater in the round. It's like, hey, what happened?

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, exactly. What was I looking at a moment ago? So if we go to Mars, we don't go to where Mars is, we go to where Mars will be nine months from now when we arrive.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 34:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have very smart people calculating how to make that happen.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Right, it's like a quarterback who throws the ball.

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To where the runner's gonna be, exactly. Otherwise, you're not a good quarterback, right? It's like turn around on the 10-yard line and the ball will be in your arms.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Which is amazing.

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's amazing, completely amazing. So, right now, we have enough reconnaissance data on the planets to no longer just do a flyby. Because those grand tours were flybys. You wait years and it's been three hours going by your planet. Now we go to the planet and stay. The Cassini mission was ten years in orbit around Saturn. Ten to twelve years. That's good, that's, well, you wanna do that. You don't wanna just fly by.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, all that work for three hours.

• 35:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All that work for a few hours, no, no, no. So, no, we're not in flyby mode now. We're in, let's go there and hang out mode. And that's what we're doing. So that, that grand tour was in the early days of our exploration of the solar system. And generally, you wanna do recon, recon on a place before you land.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Pretty cool.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before you hang out, and that's what it is.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Correct. Okay, and here's from Woody from Patreon.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Patreon, these are our supporters.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and so, you were actually supposed to read that question first.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Oh, is that how that works? I'm sorry, Woody, I apologize. I know.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're so crass, we say, if you're becoming Patreon member, we will answer your questions on the air.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  See, Woody, I didn't know that. Now, Woody is funny because he said he's from Adelaide, and in parentheses, he wrote Radelade. So, you know, Woody should've gone first.

• 36:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, totally.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry, Woody, um, but thank you for being a Patreon member. And here's his question.

• 36:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good.

• 36:25Speaker 01

  Uh, what is the goal line for scoring in the new space race? And which event in the Space Olympics will likely have the most benefits to keep our planet livable and further mankind?

• 36:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, let me give a biased answer there.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, uh, I would say asteroid defense. You wanna know what the next high bar is? Not only for us as Americans, but for we as citizens of planet Earth. We don't wanna go by way of the dinosaurs. They were unlucky. By the way, they were around for three hundred million years, that whole line. And that is way more than the time that has elapsed since they've been extinct.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  Mmm, wow.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if an asteroid didn't take them out, there's no reason to think they wouldn't still be here? That we'd be dinosaurs and our, our human mammal ancestors are tiny rodents running underfoot, trying to avoid being hors d'oeuvres for T-Rex? They would've still been there.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No reason to think that, any different from that. So, you know, if the dinosaurs had a space program, they would've swatted that asteroid out of the way. Okay, to protect their three hundred million year legacy. So, I'm just saying, uh, you wanna know the next high bar or the next goal line? Asteroid defense. You know how I think we can do it? Full business interests in it. Because asteroids have minerals, minable minerals. So you have mining rights to asteroids. They say, "Oh, by the way, while you're up there, could you deflect it over a few inches so that later on it doesn't hit Earth? Or there's another one coming that's got good gold and minerals on it that's headed towards it, go mine it until there's nothing left."

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Like Afghanistan. Very similar.

• 38:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why is that similar?

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Because in Afghanistan, there's so many minerals and...

• 38:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I didn't know that about Afghanistan.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and also heroin, which makes...

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a mineral source.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's... There's a lot of money to be made there, and it seems that's why, I believe, we're over there and destroying it, yet saving the precious mineral.

• 38:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but the difference is, that's a sovereign country. Whereas an asteroid, nobody's living, that we know of, is living on an asteroid.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  There's one guy named Joey. He's like, "I'm the king, I'm the king of this asteroid. Kiss my asteroid."

• 38:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Okay?

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Well, thank you, Woody, and again, I apologize for not putting you first, but I gave you extra time in the hello. Okay, this is from CP Monster from Instagram. "I often lie awake at night," and that's all he says. No, no. "I often lie awake at night thinking about the boundary of space. Where does it end, if at all? Seems to be something I cannot wrap my head around." Very poetic, this CP Monster.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's something he doesn't even think he needs to wrap his head around.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I ask the question, "Where is the boundary of Earth's surface?"

• 39:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is he losing sleep on this? Is he saying, "If I keep walking, I might hit an edge. Where is that edge? I don't know about it. I have existential angst thinking about it." No, he doesn't question it at all.

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He already knows you can have a

• 39:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  a thing that has no edge.

• 39:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, and that's Earth's surface. So, there's, it's not a prerequisite that a thing has to have an edge.

• 39:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He just wants it to have an edge so he can lose sleep on it. But, uh, so, not only that,

• 39:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the universe might be infinite. We don't know. Infinite doesn't have edge either. Just keeps going.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  And that's edgy.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  That's where that is.

• 40:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a dad joke right there.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's okay. I'm a dad.

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's okay. That's legit. A legit dad joke. So, um, by the way, there's a broader issue here. What is the human brain's capacity to contemplate infinity? We had no need to develop that in the plains of the Serengeti, trying to not get eaten by a lion. Okay, in our evolutionary past, there's no need to understand infinities. So, the discovery of infinities and what it means mathematically, what it means in a calculation, it's very hard for us. My first concept of infinity was being told that the flame at John Kennedy's funeral was an eternal flame. I said, eternal? What, what do you mean? It will burn forever. And I'm thinking,

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm a little kid at this point. I'm thinking, isn't there fuel that runs out?

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 41:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, the point is, it doesn't, it's not on a schedule where they light it and don't light. That's really what they meant. But that was my first encounter with eternity.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Right. Well, here we are many years later, talking about it, which keeps that flame alive, in a sense.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, very good. Very good. Also, there's, uh, in the last movement of Handel's Messiah, it's forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, that's a long time.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  That's, yeah. We've got things to do, Handel.

• 41:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they had infinity, they would have said for infinity, get on with the next verse, you know?

• 41:34Speaker 01

  That's right. And when you were learning about infinity in math,

• 41:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In calculus typically.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  In calculus, yeah. How, how did that affect the math of that time? You know, not you, but when people are looking at infinity, how did that affect?

• 41:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get to solve Zeno's paradox.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 41:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know Zeno's paradox?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta get out more, dude.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  I do. I've been here the whole week. I don't go anywhere.

• 41:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's say you're here and the wall is over there. Okay, you'll walk towards the wall. And so I say, well, you have to cover half that distance, right?

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, once you're there, you have to cover half that distance. And then, half the remaining distance. And half the remaining distance, and you keep doing this forever. Therefore, you will never reach the wall.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is Zeno's paradox. But you do reach the wall. So how do you reconcile these two? You need to understand that on the flip side of the word infinity is the is infinitesimal. You can have an infinite number of these steps. That all converge in a finite amount of time. So.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, because they become infinitesimally small. So what happens is even if you don't love thinking about it, you learn to grow accustomed to it. And that's what happens in math class. What is an integral? What is a different? What is it? Well, you use it enough. You know, that's how it works. I see how and why it works, but I don't feel it in my heart. You just grow accustomed to it.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, because there's all these theories in math and, you know, in geometry, algebra, theories. And, you know, some people.

• 43:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Theorems.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Theorems, the theorems, and they were, some were proven wrong and some were proven right, or maybe looked at and improved over time.

• 43:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some, yeah, but math is very cut and dried. It's it's it's either works or it doesn't.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's either proven or it doesn't, and you discard it. So a theorem generally, to earn the name theorem, it works.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  I got you.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're good to go.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  That's why I became a comedian and dropped math and science. Okay.

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Were you the class clown where the teacher said, what are you, a comedian?

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, as a matter of fact, I am. All right, but no funny stuff. What? I don't get it. I, yeah, I, I, that was the problem, because I was really good in school, but I had more fun getting laughs.

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  Because once you get a laugh, it's, it's so addictive that you chase that laugh for the rest of your life. And everyone in my family, especially my mom, just a very funny group. So, you know, and I liked math and I loved math and science, loved. But when it came down to it, I thought, you know, laugh, getting laughter was.

• 44:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, there's science jokes out there, just so you know.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  There are.

• 44:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know. A photon checks into a hotel.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bellhop says, "You have any luggage?" And the phone that says, "No, I'm traveling light."

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Ah, that's good, that's good. I never heard of that.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time for one more question.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Okay. All right, let's make sure we find someone who I haven't said before. Okay, we did that one, that one, and here on this last page, okay.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  This is from Cooper Holland. What a great name, Cooper Holland, on Instagram. Advice and/or motivation for an undergrad STEM major?

• 44:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I would say physics or engineering. There are no unemployed physicists, first of all.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, just think about it. If you're walking the street, there's the musician, there's the artist, there's like the, there's like the people you see trying to get your money, they're never physicists or engineers, okay? They're also not attorneys either, they're playing professions. Where generally, you're almost always gainfully employed, but industry and the moving frontier of civilization will always need the efforts of a physicist and especially engineers. Because physicists understand how nature works, engineers build stuff. So, and then you can choose electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, civil engineering, all manner of engineering.

• 45:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so that will guarantee a job, a stable employment, two-car garage.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  You know, and it's interesting, when you do comedy, or when you're learning comedy, I, you know, I went to Emerson, which was phenomenal, now has a comedy program when you can graduate. Not only do you, I mean, you can't teach stand-up, but you can also learn movement and to be a better performer. You can learn voice and articulation to be able to do different things. What in the sort of STEM program or the science programs can someone do in addition to just the regular course structure?

• 46:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the thing, if you major in physics and/or engineering, people think when you major in something, you're learning about a subject. A history, and I learn about Roman history, or African history, or Asian history. And that's a body of knowledge I have gathered over my four years of college. It's not what physics and engineering is about. Physics and engineering is you learn how the world works.

• 46:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that when you face a problem you've never seen before, you say, "I have methods and tools to attack that problem I have never seen before, and I've never been taught it. Because I know the underlying principles that make that happen." So, think of it as a utility belt that you walk around with. Badass at the "okay, Cora, I'm ready here." "You got a problem? I can solve it. I can apply this kind of a calculus, or this kind of math, or other kind of math, or this kind of engineering insights." So it is not a body of knowledge. It is a toolkit to access the operations of nature.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  And that answers my question.

• 47:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Eddie, you got projects now?

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm working on many, many things. My stand-up is constant, you know, I'm doing it all over the world, which, you know, makes me happy. Just in Bangladesh doing stand-up.

• 47:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you serious?

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were wonderful. It was an interesting combination of, it's like America where 1% of the people have all the money, and they're the people who hired me. And they do, you know, they travel around the world and speak other languages. And then you see the gross 99% of the people who are struggling, and it's hard to watch. But it was a great education for me, as well as great...

• 47:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But to do comedy in a completely, in a culturally different place, and to succeed at that, is that because you're tapping something that is common among all humans?

• 48:05Speaker 01

  That's the answer.

• 48:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or is it because American culture is everywhere?

• 48:10Speaker 01

  That's another good point, you know, like, I will get... Well, first of all, what you said is...

• 48:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because science is everywhere.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Because in 1980, it is, it is. And the same thing with humanity. It's like, in 1989, I first went to Europe to start working. And what I learned was if you write for humans, as opposed to writing for an area, you know, in addition, you can write for the area, but if you write for humans, everyone has dreams, so if you do jokes about dreams, that works out okay.

• 48:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or love, or hate, or...

• 48:37Speaker 01

  And those are, those you can tap into. But one thing I've learned is the difference in education around the world. Where I have a joke where I talk about something that, Old MacDonald had a farm, and do it in different languages, and talk about... And I'm not gonna do the joke, but when I'm halfway through it in England, they'll laugh because their education system, they understand that joke. Where, not always, but in the United States, people have to hear the whole joke. Get it and then the laugh.

• 49:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  It's a big difference, so I, I, I've got...

• 49:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've got to know your audience.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, you, you do, and you, I go to each town, I try to do some research. And it's good, and at the same time, I'm still producing, I'm putting together a project called The Art of Comedy. I'm working also with someone famous, I won't say their name yet, on, on their book and a book of my own. I've written 320 short stories so far.

• 49:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, beautiful, okay, excellent.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's, it's a good time.

• 49:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll come back when, when it's all right, we'll, you'll come back.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  I appreciate that.

• 49:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To talk about. Eddie, always good to have you, man.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  My, my pleasure, always a pleasure.

• 49:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With your second rodeo.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Yes, yay!

• 49:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, this has been StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Space Exploration Edition. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.