Colonizing Mars with Bas Lansdorp

Can Mars One succeed? Neil Tyson gets a mission briefing from CEO Bas Lansdorp. In studio, Mike Massimino and Eugene Mirman are skeptical, candidate Ryan MacDonald calls in, and Bill Nye explains why he wants to send real astronauts.

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.

• 0:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to the hall of the universe. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And tonight, we're featuring my interview with Bas Landsdorff. He's the guy who wants to take people to Mars and leave them there. Is that even possible? Should he be doing that? We're gonna have the answer to that and more on StarTalk. Let's do this.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I need some help talking about that topic. First, one of my favorite comedians here is Eugene Mirman. Eugene, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 1:07Eugene Mirman?

  Great to be here.

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Eugene is a professional comedian and he's a regular on StarTalk. And among other things, he's like the voice of the kid in Bob's Burgers on Fox. So can I hear some of that voice just for a second?

• 1:23Eugene Mirman?

  Sure, it sounds a lot like this, but a little yelly.

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little yelly, okay.

• 1:27Eugene Mirman?

  A little yelly.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Mike, you have a different talent set here?

• 1:32Mike Massimino?

  I think so, yes. Hopefully. My voice, I don't have a cartoon character voice.

• 1:38Eugene Mirman?

  I think my voice is a human voice, but go on.

• 1:42Mike Massimino?

  I didn't mean it that way. You play a cartoon character.

• 1:44Eugene Mirman?

  That's true, that's accurate.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so Mike is a former astronaut. And he's not just any astronaut. He's one of the astronauts that repaired the Hubble telescope. So he's a very special place in mine. In my heart. So, you know, I had, Bas Landsdorf came through town. He's the CEO of an organization called Mars One.

• 2:06Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I've seen a lot of criticism of his work. I've seen, I've seen him praised as an entrepreneur.

• 2:13Eugene Mirman?

  Is it because he's in a boy band?

• 2:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, I don't, the praise part or the criticism?

• 2:17Eugene Mirman?

  Both?

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I just thought, I can't let him pass through town unless I nab him, put him in my office, and just find out, like, where he's coming from, where he's going, and what he's all about. And he was okay with that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:31Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. He was okay with that.

• 2:34Eugene Mirman?

  This isn't one of those forced interviews.

• 2:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, no, right, right, where it tell-all kind of thing. No, he was very eager to share what he, all that he wanted me to know about this project. And he's the CEO of an organization called Mars One.

• 2:52Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And people have signed up for this. And he wants to go to Mars. Who doesn't want to go to Mars, okay?

• 3:00Eugene Mirman?

  Well, he doesn't want to come back.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, there's something different about his plan to send people to Mars. Let's check it out.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  The difference between Mars One and a lot of other ideas is that we are proposing a mission of permanent settlement, a one-way trip, which takes away the biggest complexity of the more standard mission, which is, in my opinion, the return trip.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, it's hard to get back, that's true.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  It's hard to launch rockets from Earth.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  With a hundred engineers checking the rocket at the last moment, all the conditions are controlled, let alone launching a rocket from Earth to depart from Mars, flying through space, waiting on Mars for two or four years, and then launching without any supervision or checks. And from my point of view, that's practically impossible. And that's why I came up with the idea of permanent settlement.

• 3:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, if you have such ideas, presumably you have a rocket.

• 3:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or some way to get to Mars.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  We're not an aerospace company, so we're not going to build the rocket. We're actually not going to build any system. We try to source them from established aerospace suppliers all around the world, mostly in the US.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you don't have to invent something to do this?

• 4:11Speaker 03

  No, because it is permanent settlement, there's no new inventions needed. Of course, a lot of design, a lot of testing, a lot of building before we can actually do it. But no new inventions are needed to get humans to Mars and to keep them alive there.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Mike.

• 4:27Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, where do we start with this?

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, why? He says no new inventions. We've been to Mars. Wait, let's back up. Back up. Okay, so it's not like we don't know how to get to Mars. We know how to get to Mars.

• 4:39Mike Massimino?

  Right, but he's right as far as coming back is where a lot of the cost is. I mean, and that's what a lot of the dangers. The guys that went to the moon, when they went there, they not only they had to land, but they had to get back. It was another launch that they had from the moon. Mike Collins, I heard him speaking about it, said that when on Apollo 11, he was pretty sure he would be able to come back alive because he didn't have the added complexity of landing and then having to launch.

• 5:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mike Collins was in the command module that never landed.

• 5:05Mike Massimino?

  Right, he did not land. Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong on the moon, they were, there is a much different situation for them. And they were worried about the abort light and, you know, did they have to abort before they landed and so on? Because once you got there, you had to be able to come back. And it is really risky. He's right about all that. But as far as, you know, but that's kind of the point is to come back. You know, if you want to come back, that's what you have to do.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but if you want to come back, you're not signing up for his mission. So what's your, so you've got.

• 5:29Mike Massimino?

  All right, okay, fine. Let's go to the next topic.

• 5:32Eugene Mirman?

  So it's all people who want to go and stay on Mars?

• 5:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 5:36Mike Massimino?

  But he wants the people to arrive alive, correct? I mean, he didn't say that.

• 5:39Eugene Mirman?

  No, he wants the people to die halfway and stay there.

• 5:43Mike Massimino?

  Now, that I agree with he can do. But if he wants them to arrive, if he wants them to arrive and be healthy, they're going to have to solve a lot of problems.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay, but you're an engineer professionally. You're a PhD in engineering. Don't you love an unsolved problem?

• 5:57Mike Massimino?

  Yes, but he's saying they don't need any new technology.

• 6:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but they need some clever ideas from engineers. But he doesn't need new physics. You know, we know how to go to Mars.

• 6:05Mike Massimino?

  We do, but the technology you're going to need to protect these people, the radiation problem they're going to have, keeping people healthy on that long journey and then able to survive on the surface.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, here's what, he's got a plan to send supplies in advance to set up a base camp. So that when they land, they're not just bare ass on the surface of Mars.

• 6:22Eugene Mirman?

  There's already snacks. Who wouldn't want to fly to a planet full of pretzels?

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's your incentive. It's like the carrot on the end of the stick.

• 6:30Eugene Mirman?

  Literally.

• 6:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except the stick is on Mars.

• 6:31Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 6:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Well, so the question is, all right, if given enough time, engineers, I think, can solve any problem.

• 6:39Eugene Mirman?

  I agree.

• 6:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so let's find out from Bas what kind of timetable he has thought up for this plan. Check it out.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  Our first unmet mission is scheduled for departure in 2020. And this is possible because it's a copy of the NASA Phoenix mission that was sent to Mars in 2006. We'll use that platform and install some instruments that will demonstrate important technology for Mars One. Extraction of water from Martian soil, thin film solar panels, but perhaps most importantly...

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just for people to remember, the Phoenix mission was designed to land right at the melting, receding boundary of the polar ice caps so that there'd be the highest chance of finding some kind of liquid something, presumably water.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, they found frozen water, of course. The platform was not specifically designed for that purpose, so we can use it at the lower latitude where we want to use it. But the most important demonstration of this mission is Mars One. And we need to demonstrate to the world that we can actually send stuff to Mars.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  And that's what this mission will demonstrate. So that's 2020.

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So 2020.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  2022, we're going to send a rover to Mars, a rather big rover, more than two tons, that will drive around to find the best location for the settlement. So we know the area by then, and it will pinpoint the exact location, determine the water content, make sure it's nice and flat for construction. Again, two years later, in 2024, we're sending all the hardware. So two life support units, two living units, a second rover, and all the supplies.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in the artist renderings that I've seen, these are these modules, I guess, the living modules. Is that what I've seen in the posters, I guess?

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, the modules are the landing modules. The living units are actually two inflatable structures behind two of those landing modules. That will give them about 200 square meters to live in.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let's go piece by piece. One-way mission, with people who would just, we agree to go one way. And he sends supplies in advance. There's gonna set up hab modules. So that's like 2,000 square feet for four people, I think. It's like, you know, I guess a regular-sized house almost, in the suburbs. Yeah, yeah, exactly, okay.

• 8:56Eugene Mirman?

  Forever.

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, right. Well, until you build another one of those.

• 8:59Eugene Mirman?

  Well, here's my question: what does he do is...

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got stairs, you get to go outside. Look, I'm sorry, you can go outside, go ahead.

• 9:05Eugene Mirman?

  Oh yeah, you could just walk around.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You go for a walk, it's great.

• 9:07Eugene Mirman?

  I had no idea how walkable Mars was. Uh, what is... Is he a pyramid scheme? Or is this, uh, sort of reasonable?

• 9:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so I asked Bass, what are his plans for actually making this happen?

• 9:22Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's check it out.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  A very important benefit of the permanent settlement aspect is that the size of the hardware you need to land is only slightly bigger than such systems as the Curiosity rover. So we are building on a payload mass of roughly 3,000 kilos of useful cargo to the surface, so excluding the landing system itself.

• 9:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So 3,000 kilos, that's a few people, plus food and drink.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Exactly, and the Curiosity rover was only 900 kilos, but it was landing at about 2 kilometers altitude above the Martian zero, and we will be landing at about minus 4 to make sure that we have as much as possible benefit of the atmosphere, as much as possible time to slow down.

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what you're saying is, I didn't know this, in fact, that the elevation where they landed Curiosity, the air, the density of the air was relatively thin.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Compared with lower level, lower areas. And if you go lower, you can...

• 10:26Speaker 03

  You can bring more stuff.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can use more air to support your landing.

• 10:30Speaker 03

  Correct, yeah.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To give you lift as you descend.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and therefore bring more stuff.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  Bring more stuff, which is very important, because every kilo you send to Mars is very expensive. So if you can maximize what you can bring. And so, finding a place in a low elevation, in the right latitude for solar and water. So as far north as possible for water, but as far south as possible, of course, for the sun.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're thinking of landing in a place not too close to the poles. It may be too cold and not enough sunlight.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Closer to the equator, but not on the equator. Because you think there might not be water there, or less water.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a lot of research going on that's at the moment. And we think that the best place is probably between forty and forty-five degrees north latitude.

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's where New York City is, where forty-one degrees north latitude.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  So your day will be very comparable to the day in New York City.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sign me up, okay?

• 11:25Eugene Mirman?

  No, he wants to go to the New York City of Mars.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's exactly right. I don't know if you knew, but Mars rotates once in about twenty-four hours. It's tipped on its axis, as is Earth. And which means it goes through seasons, as does Earth. Mars has polar ice caps, as does Earth, or at least as does Earth at this moment.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so...

• 11:48Eugene Mirman?

  You leave your communist propaganda about science.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the equator would be zero degrees latitude, and the north pole would be ninety degrees latitude. So, New York City's about forty degrees north. I think Barcelona, one of the big cities of Spain, is at that latitude as well. LA is a little more south. So, he wants to be close enough to the poles to be near water. But if you're using the sun as energy, you want to be closer to the equator for that. So there's some place in between.

• 12:19Eugene Mirman?

  Where there's energy and water.

• 12:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Absolutely. He's thought about this. Sure. Yeah, he's got a good landing spot.

• 12:24Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, no one's gonna think about it, we're saying it's unlikely slash unrealistic.

• 12:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. I mean, I could pick a nice place to go in Australia.

• 12:30Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I'm gonna have to figure out a way to get there.

• 12:31Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you... yeah.

• 12:33Eugene Mirman?

  Also, we know where there's water in Australia. Do we know where there's water? No.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, wait, on Mars? It may, it may be below the surface in a form of permafrost.

• 12:43Eugene Mirman?

  Uh huh.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you'd have to be able to dig and melt it and bring it back up.

• 12:46Eugene Mirman?

  So you'd have to bring, uh, some sort of super shovel.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They would have to bring all manner of things to dig. Yes. Yes.

• 12:52Eugene Mirman?

  What are two of the manners?

• 12:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no, no, I mean, uh, tools could, they could be electric or shovels or, you know, I, they have to be able to get through the Martian surface if they're gonna find water that we think is there. Now, we've heard his plans for getting to Mars. We haven't heard how he plans to fund it. That came up. You, you, you were worried about this. You, cuz you were saying, it's gotta be NASA. It's gotta be Russia. It's gotta be NASA. We got big budgets and he didn't have a budget. I heard you. Is that the way I said it? Yeah, that is so how you said it.

• 13:21Eugene Mirman?

  I think, I think he's...

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think you're exaggerating here a little bit.

• 13:24Eugene Mirman?

  Well, he's gonna go to just like Nabisco or somebody.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. So, when, when... Mars bars.

• 13:30Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna find out what Mars One Founder Bas Landsdorff had to say about that when we return on StarTalk.

• 13:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk.

• 13:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're featuring my interview with Bas Landsdorff, the guy who wants to send you to Mars and not bring you back. And I've got help talking about that with astronaut, former astronaut Mike Massimino in studio and of course Eugene Mirman to help make sense of all of this.

• 14:12Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we, we, we wanna know...

• 14:15Eugene Mirman?

  If I can't make sense of it, no one can.

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No one can. Yeah, we wanna know... No one counting on you. How is he gonna pay for all this? Cuz it's gonna be some number of billions of dollars.

• 14:24Eugene Mirman?

  How many billions?

• 14:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I don't know. I didn't know at the time. We know how much NASA costs. Anytime NASA wants to do something, it's billions... A lot of money. A lot of money. So... It's expensive. Going around the corner here. We're going a long way. Right, right, right. You're not driving around the block. No. Boldly going where hundreds have gone before. That's right. We're going somewhere. Going somewheres. So thousands of people have already signed up for this trip to Mars. But there's a catch. I, I can't wait to hear.

• 14:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not everybody can go. Not everybody can go, I bet. You have to bring your own cat. There's a cat. Let's find out. Alright. So, I asked Bass, "How's he gonna do this?" And he started talking about television. Let's check it out.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  I started Mars One when I found the revenue numbers of the Olympic Games. One Olympic event makes about 4.5 billion from broadcasting rights and sponsorships and partnerships. 4.5 billion.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Worldwide.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  Worldwide. But that's a billion and a half per week, only because you and I and a few other people, almost everybody else on the planet, is watching. Access to our eyeballs is apparently that valuable. And that made me realize that this is going to be so much bigger than one Olympic event. Especially the first mission, but also the missions after that. If we can make it into a global event, we need to make this mankind's mission to Mars, and then the world will watch for a very long time.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic reality TV.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  The term "reality TV" has been polluted by many different programs on the world.

• 15:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you want to elevate the concept?

• 15:58Speaker 03

  Well, I think we need a new term by now. But yeah, this is the greatest adventure of mankind, and we want to take humanity along for the ride. I think that the images...

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll be there. We'll be watching. You do that, I'm tuning in. You guys tuning into this? Only if it doesn't compete with your timeframe. Because we're gonna watch this. Okay, so you don't want it to be co-broadcast with StarTalk? Yeah, someone work that out. Somebody work... That's what DVRs do, okay? Just get what the century do. That's that new technology.

• 16:29Eugene Mirman?

  So he wants to just have like a Mars channel?

• 16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Essentially.

• 16:33Eugene Mirman?

  That people will watch for the first few days?

• 16:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A Mars reality channel. I think from the reality TV I've seen, what makes it interesting to those who watch it...

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is the conflict that develops among the people who are portrayed, am I right? Yes.

• 16:49Mike Massimino?

  Yes, you're right.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's cat fighting and who's jealous and who's gonna backstab?

• 16:54Mike Massimino?

  That's good for ratings.

• 16:55Eugene Mirman?

  Or just any conflict.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Any conflict.

• 16:57Eugene Mirman?

  Including will you die right away or will you live? But once it's like, looks like they're living, then it's sort of like, alright, what's next?

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you think people get bored?

• 17:07Eugene Mirman?

  I, I mean, if it's just people sitting in space, I think they'll be very, very curious for a while, but at some point...

• 17:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here you're floating in a different position.

• 17:16Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, at some point it's gonna be like, oh, more snacks, but then, you know...

• 17:20Mike Massimino?

  If the urine purifier breaks down.

• 17:23Eugene Mirman?

  That will be, that will be exciting.

• 17:26Mike Massimino?

  They can have some, you know, they can plant a few things.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying to, they should, they should break the urine purifier?

• 17:33Mike Massimino?

  I'm not saying anything, I'm just wondering.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what you said!

• 17:36Eugene Mirman?

  No.

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, did you hear, I heard him.

• 17:38Mike Massimino?

  You know, you might not have to break it on, some, some things will just happen.

• 17:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Mike, there's been forty-three, I, I'm checking the numbers here, I think these are right, forty-three robotic missions to Mars, twenty-one of them have failed.

• 17:51Mike Massimino?

  One advantage he has, that he does have people there. So sometimes a rover or something stops and if you have a person on the spot and they're well-trained, they can help fix it. So I think he's that, he's got that going for him. Um, but, but yeah, you know, it's not an easy thing to do and they're gonna have a lot of unexpected things happen.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in fact, if he's gonna, if this is gonna persist forever, he needs Olympic-sized money coming in all the time.

• 18:14Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, he, he does. And, and I was thinking when I was watching this, you know, and, you know, it's, when we, the, the moon missions, which you and I, I think can remember, and Eugene's too young for that, but...

• 18:22Eugene Mirman?

  But I know they happened. I don't think it was like a scheme of the government.

• 18:26Mike Massimino?

  It really happened, believe me. But everyone was glued to their TV set on July 20th, 1969, for Apollo 11.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The little black and white TV sets.

• 18:34Mike Massimino?

  Little black and white TV sets that we all, that we had back then. And everyone watched it. And a lot of people watched the, the launch and every, just about everyone who could watched the landing. And then Apollo 12, less so, and Apollo 13, people were kinda tuned out. And at NASA, we always had this frustration is, you know, why can't people pay more attention to what we're doing? We're still doing cool stuff.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll tell you why it waned.

• 18:55Mike Massimino?

  Go ahead.

• 18:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I will tell you why.

• 18:57Mike Massimino?

  Because it...

• 18:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll tell you why, because after we got to the moon, we didn't keep advancing a space frontier. You've gotta keep advancing a frontier and then there's a new headline to report on. Not, oh, astronauts go to the moon again. Excuse me.

• 19:08Eugene Mirman?

  Is there a, is there a C-SPAN version of, uh, of the shuttle? Like, like when, like the space mission?

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have NASA TV. It's called NASA TV.

• 19:15Eugene Mirman?

  Is it?

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:16Eugene Mirman?

  Can we turn, turn it on and we'll see people in space having lunch?

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can turn it on and see what they're doing usually, yeah.

• 19:21Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta, we gotta break. When we come back, we're gonna feature an interview with somebody who's actually made the cut. He made the cut to be in the final 100, to be selected to go to Mars and not come back. When StarTalk continues.

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk.

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Featuring my interview with Bas Lonsdorff, the guy who wants to send you to Mars and not bring you back. And so, we wonder, you know, who's gonna go? Cause he's got a selection process. But before I learned that, I, I had to find out, is he gonna go on this first mission? He's planning the whole thing. He's funding the whole thing. Is he gonna be on the mission? You know what he told me? I don't know. He, he said, "No, he's not going." Maybe he wants to come back. So I've had to find out, how come he's not going? Check it out.

• 20:34Speaker 03

  I wanted to go myself on that first mission. I know now that I'm absolutely unqualified. As an entrepreneur, I'm impatient.

• 20:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a little suspicious. That's a little suspicious.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  I would give, I would give anything. I, I recently had a baby.

• 20:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apparently not, because you're not going, so you're not giving anything.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  No, but you can only, you can only achieve your goal if you are the right stuff. If you're not the right stuff, then you should not go.

• 20:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you're the wrong stuff.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  I'm the wrong stuff to be on the crew. I, I'm impatient, I'm stubborn, I'm easily, easily annoyed. So that, that makes me a very bad first crew member. Maybe later, when there's a, a bit of a colony where I can blend in and escape every now and then.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or find some, uh, some people who you don't irritate.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  We might try.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Mike, he doesn't get along well with other people. Did you have to go through? When you were selected for an astronaut, did they give you psychological testing?

• 21:26Mike Massimino?

  Obviously not.

• 21:29Mike Massimino?

  If he can't get along with people, he shouldn't be there because that especially, you know, I mean, if this mission would have get pulled off, no matter, any kind of space mission, you really need to be able to get along. It's more important in some ways than than your technical ability to do the job. And that's what people don't always understand is that when you're picking a crew member like that, you're kind of like picking a friend or a family member, a teammate. That's very, very important.

• 21:52Eugene Mirman?

  They should just send the cast of friends.

• 21:54Mike Massimino?

  They should do that. They're already there. But there's something about, you know, becoming, you know, wanting to come back in some ways that I think makes you a good candidate for for doing these things in some way.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I hadn't thought of that. What you're saying is if you select people who don't want to come back, that could be, that could correlate with a personality trait. And, and so every sci-fi movie I've seen that has a group of people, there's always some person who like weirds out.

• 22:17Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. Right. You know what? Am I wrong? I think I will murder everyone.

• 22:21Mike Massimino?

  Right. And if you're weird out with no way to get away from this dude, because you know, you're stuck there. But there is, I think there's something about, and I'm not saying anything against these people, these, these very courageous people. I think their hearts in the right place. But it's just something about it. You do really want someone who wants to leave and not come back. Is that the kind, not, is that the kind of person you really want going?

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bass didn't want to go, but I still wanted to know how he was choosing candidates. So I asked him, let's find out.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  We've announced a search for our candidates almost two years ago now, and we had more than 200,000 applications, from which we've now narrowed down to about 100. What we see, first of all, is that it's, it's everyone. It's all kinds of people. It's men and women, old and young. It's engineers, of course, scientists, but also politicians, lawyers, soldiers. It's all kinds of people. And I think it's actually very comparable to the kinds of people that explored the earth, which could also have been anyone. Anyone could step on a ship and sail across the ocean. Anyone could decide to leave their village for new opportunity.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In your first four people, is you're going to make sure one of them is an engineer and a medical doctor and a navigator? I mean, don't you need some basic?

• 23:38Speaker 03

  We will pick our astronauts for their most demanding task, which is the separation of the Earth. The mental skill, the team skill that you need to go on this mission. Then, of course, they need the medical skills and engineering skills, but we are training them for more than 10 years. That's enough for a medical degree and an engineering degree. And they'll be trained very specifically. They'll be trained for the equipment and for the emergency situations that are most likely to occur. And they're not... An important difference between the old exploration and going to Mars is that they are in touch. If you were going to North America from Europe,

• 24:23Speaker 03

  you could send a letter, which would take at least a month.

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the old days, right.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  In the old days. And nowadays, Mars is, in the worst-case scenario, 40 minutes away. So if there's an emergency...

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forty minutes of communication time. Yeah, that's the radio signal travel time between Mars on the other side of the Sun and Earth in case we're not lined up close.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah. But in the best-case scenario, it's still three minutes. Three minutes one way, six minutes return. So if there is a medical emergency, they will know how to stabilize the patient. But if it's something that they've never done before on Earth, they can receive all the instructions. They're trained as doctors, and they can receive the instructions to operate or to do whatever is necessary to help their crewmate.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cut here.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, 200,000 applicants, down to 100. And guess what? I've got one of those 100 on video call right now. Ryan McDonald.

• 25:25Mike Massimino?

  Oh, all right.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a master's student in physics at Oxford University in the UK. And we should throw to him right now. You got him online? There he goes, hey!

• 25:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're one of the successful candidates. So why did you show up among the 200,000? What special talents did you have?

• 25:51Speaker 04

  Well, I think principally it's about the mind that you have. You need to be able to rapidly absorb large quantities of information and be able to apply them in an unfamiliar context. Because as long as you have a good brain, you can be taught whatever skills you require. Obviously, I have a physics background. It helps me. I can solve my differential equations and the like. But I know very little about medicine, for instance, which I'll have to learn as part of this. So I like to think that I've demonstrated that I can learn the skills that I need to be able to to train for a mission such as this.

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there was an exam they gave you to demonstrate this talent?

• 26:21Speaker 04

  Yes, but we've only been tested as individuals up to this point. It's the group dynamic which ultimately decides who gets selected to go into training for this, and that's still coming up.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you're particularly smelly or hard to get along with, you're not going to get past that last 100?

• 26:35Speaker 04

  Well, we'll have to see. If you're in a group of four people who all like each other's smells, maybe that's fine then. We'll see.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I hadn't thought about that possibility. Good. And so it's interesting because we, here in the United States, we have this image, and one of my panelists is an astronaut here. We have this image from the old days of the right stuff going into space, where it would be physically challenging and they put you through physical rigor. But apparently, not so much in this situation. It's all mental.

• 27:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's entirely about the mentality. That's crucial for mission success. You have to be able to cope with extreme isolation. And I don't know a priori whether I will be able to cope with that or not. That's why simulated missions are so important for selecting the crews for this mission.

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now, did he tell you that you're not coming back from Mars?

• 27:26Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, that is the entire point of this. It's not about, I wouldn't have signed up for a mission just to go there, plant a flag, and bring it back.

• 27:34Eugene Mirman?

  That would be boring.

• 27:37Speaker 04

  It's a long road still to go, but I've been really enthusiastic and passionate by seeing just how much Mars One have achieved thus far. And in particular, in terms of getting the public excited about space exploration and meaning that we're having this conversation about humans going to Mars one day. So it's just the beginning, it's just the conceptual design phase, but yeah, things are moving ahead in the right direction.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mike, what are you gonna say to this man? Mike Massimino flew on the space shuttle, repaired the Hubble in one of the repair missions, and he's a PhD engineer, but he's been nodding as he's been listening to you, but until you came on, he was shaking his head, right? Making funny faces. But now with you speaking, he's been nodding. Mike, what do you say?

• 28:18Mike Massimino?

  It's very interesting to hear the attitude, this young man, what he's trying to do.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He can hear you. Don't say "this young man."

• 28:24Mike Massimino?

  I think you're doing great, man.

• 28:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ryan, you can hear him speak, right?

• 28:26Mike Massimino?

  Ryan, I wish you the best of luck. I really like your enthusiasm, and it's these kind of ideas that get things done. I think you're realistic in the standpoint that it's gonna take a lot of funding and there's a lot of roads to cross, but hey, it's really great to see you up on that screen.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  That's why I see, it's the one thing that I've noticed that all the 100 candidates at this point share in common, and that's it. We're fundamental optimists who are in this in order to give something back to the world as a whole. It's not about running away to Mars and leaving problems behind, it's about how we can make the world a better place.

• 28:56Eugene Mirman?

  It isn't about escaping your problems on Mars?

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, who are you in debt to here on Earth?

• 29:04Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, that is a lot of unpaid credit cards.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  Oh, well, when I signed the contract for my student loan, it didn't say anything about moving to a different planet.

• 29:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's right, that's right. But you'll be leaving family and friends and loved ones on Earth, and you're okay with that? Or rather, are they okay with that?

• 29:25Speaker 04

  Well, so, my family's always been really supportive of everything that I've wanted to do in life. They know that this is what I want to do more than anything else, and that I want to do it for the right reasons. If my involvement as a candidate in this mission can get even a single young person inspired about space exploration, it's more than worth it for me.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's a great answer, and you're as compelling a candidate as I think we can imagine here. So Ryan, thank you for your time.

• 29:54Eugene Mirman?

  Good luck, Ryan.

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Ryan, just good luck with that. We'll be, now, you're the only one we know on this trip now, so we'll be bucking for you to get to get on.

• 30:03Eugene Mirman?

  Please write.

• 30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Please write. Write when you get to Mars, right?

• 30:09Speaker 04

  Oh, absolutely. I'll make videos just for you next.

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. Alright, thank you, Ryan.

• 30:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When StarTalk comes back, more with my interview with Bas Landsdorff, the man who wants to send you to Mars and not bring you back on StarTalk.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk is back.

• 30:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the Hall of the Universe of the American Museum of Natural History. Mike, you helping me here? Trying, man, I'm trying. Former astronaut, shuttle astronaut. You know, we don't fly shuttles anymore. Did they tell you that? Yeah, I know. Yeah, okay, just so you know.

• 30:57Eugene Mirman?

  You ruined it for the rest of us.

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Eugene, thanks for helping me try to unpack this, this story about Bas Landsdorff, the engineer, space entrepreneur, who wants to send people to Mars one way. We've been talking about how to get there, how to fund it, who he's gonna choose, but then there's the little matter of keeping people alive once you get there. They have plans on manufacturing air, breathable air, and they have plans on extracting water.

• 31:29Eugene Mirman?

  Breathable air is my favorite kind of air.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Water, there's likely water in the lower soils of Mars. But what about food? What are you gonna eat? Very important. There's talk of mice. They reproduce rapidly. Mice or rabbits or some other small mammals, they reproduce fast and...

• 31:54Eugene Mirman?

  Who wouldn't want to fly to Mars and eat fried mice?

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but, but you don't, you don't carry fresh food that you then kill, be they animal or vegetable, when you are in space?

• 32:06Mike Massimino?

  Fresh food is a problem because of refrigeration.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which takes energy and...

• 32:11Mike Massimino?

  Which takes energy and, and, yeah, and so we had...

• 32:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is anything refrigerated?

• 32:14Mike Massimino?

  Uh, there, there is, there is some refrigeration, but on the space station, for example, but it's very limited. And on the space, space shuttle, we had none. So, for the fresh food, we were gonna have, we are able to take some, but you had to eat it right away, because it would, we had some fresh fruit, but you had to eat it right away.

• 32:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, they have to figure that out?

• 32:29Mike Massimino?

  They have to figure it out. And we've been able to grow plants on the International Space Station, so there's, there's hope to do that. But there's a lot of details in there, what are you gonna eat? And people can say they're okay with eating, like, raisins for the rest of their life, but that really is not something you wanna do, particularly when you wanna maintain a good morale and a good health. I mean, that's really important, there's a lot that goes into that.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, if they're gonna have a sustained colony?

• 32:52Mike Massimino?

  Yes.

• 32:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At some point, they not only have to make food, they have to make other colonists.

• 32:56Mike Massimino?

  Yes.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, I, I had to ask Bas.

• 32:59Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what, when do you start making more colonists? Just find, just find out where, where his mind is in this, in this regard.

• 33:06Mike Massimino?

  Let's find out.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  We will actually send, in each crew, two men and two women, but, of course, we don't know yet, scientists don't know yet, if, uh, if fertilization works in reduced gravity of Mars. We don't know how a fetus will develop in the reduced gravity of Mars. So, before we have a really long and thin embryo, let's, uh, let's find out that information first. Let's build a colony that is safe, so maybe twenty, or thirty, or forty people living there. Imagine a toddler running around in a colony with four astronauts living on Mars. That's not a good place for a kid to grow up. So, at some point...

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's the most famous kid there ever was, though.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  The first Martian.

• 33:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, after Jesus. Jesus in the manger comes the child born on Mars.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, the first Martian.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Second most famous child ever, okay?

• 33:55Speaker 03

  No, that's, that's crazy, but, uh, it, it needs to be done in a, in a thoughtful way. And we will, we'll be sending very responsible people to Mars, and I expect that they will behave responsibly.

• 34:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, on the Mars One website, it says, "Mars One will advise the first settlement inhabitants not to attempt to have children."

• 34:19Mike Massimino?

  At all.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, a- am I not right? Sperm count drops in zero G? They never told me that one. What? Are you kidding me? So it says, "Don't have babies," but it doesn't say you can't have sex.

• 34:30Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all.

• 34:31Eugene Mirman?

  Well, also, can you send, like, a pregnant animal and then see what happens?

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A non-human animal.

• 34:37Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I like a cat or a dolphin or something.

• 34:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, dolphin, yeah.

• 34:41Mike Massimino?

  But I'm presuming the reason he doesn't want them to attempt to reproduce for the first crew is because they want to do some kind of testing and experiments to see what's possible.

• 34:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I can only get that.

• 34:52Mike Massimino?

  So that would almost make sense.

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're trying to survive at all...

• 34:56Mike Massimino?

  Right, this might not be a good idea.

• 34:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your first choice would not be having toddlers running around.

• 35:00Mike Massimino?

  Right.

• 35:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they themselves are not good at survival.

• 35:04Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most of the life of the parent is preventing the toddler from dying. Am I wrong here? Parent, any parents in there? That is the whole job, to have them not die.

• 35:18Eugene Mirman?

  It'd be one thing for a toddler to break your dishwasher, but to break your thing in outer space would be terrible.

• 35:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dang it, I told you not to push that button!

• 35:25Eugene Mirman?

  Yes.

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back to StarTalk, we're going to enter the Cosmic Queries Zone. We're gonna be taking your questions on Mars exploration when we return to StarTalk.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk, we're back. And what we've got in this segment is a section we like to call Cosmic Queries. And this is where we solicit questions from either our audience, or from the internet, or from our website. Now, kinda what makes this fun is I have no idea what the questions are in advance. And so, we'll just see how I... If I don't know the answer, I'll just say, "I don't know the answer, go to the next one." That would be impossible. No. To stump me on, that's impossible. All right, Eugene, go for it.

• 36:20Eugene Mirman?

  All right, let's see. Kyle Toth from Garfield Heights, Ohio. He asks, "What would it be like to swim in a pool on Mars, given the lesser gravity?"

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be fun. Oh, so first, if you had a pool with a diving board, your dives would look like they were practically in slow motion. So, so you, you would fall more slowly to the water. You would get sort of less injured because you wouldn't hit it at such a high speed. That, and the waves would move more slowly. Like, they would, they would sort of rise and fall at a, at a slope. They'd weigh less. Okay. And other than that, once you're underwater, I don't know that you would notice much of a difference. In fact, Mike, when you train for the Hubble, to, to simulate zero G, the best we have is underwater.

• 37:08Mike Massimino?

  That's, that's correct. Yeah. And you, you're trying to get neutrally buoyant, meaning that your, your force, the buoyancy force pushing you up out of the water, negates the gravity force pulling you down into the water. So you're just floating there. You're kind of floating in the water column.

• 37:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So if you're in the water, you wouldn't notice it, but I, I would love to see a diving contest.

• 37:26Eugene Mirman?

  On Mars.

• 37:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Mars into Martian water. Okay. So if we're going to send people to Mars, there are dangers. We haven't really talked about dangers yet. The likelihood of dying. This is something you want to know before you do this.

• 37:42Eugene Mirman?

  Maybe not.

• 37:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mike, did you know your chances of dying statistically by going up to repair the Hubble twice?

• 37:49Mike Massimino?

  Uh, yeah.

• 37:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know that?

• 37:51Mike Massimino?

  They, they took, they had a, they had a calculated probability of what the chances were. And it's a higher number at, depending on where you're going to go. The Hubble altitude had more debris at the altitude we were at than at the lower altitudes.

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could have been knocked out by space debris.

• 38:04Mike Massimino?

  Correct. And so all that's calculated.

• 38:06Eugene Mirman?

  You could have been gravitated.

• 38:07Mike Massimino?

  It's right. And it's a, and one of the reasons, one to, to, to reduce, reduce that probability. Neil, we were only up at the telescope when we were servicing the telescope. Once we got rid of the telescope, we came down to the lower altitude for the last couple of days.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know that. And by the way, of course, Hubble is at a much higher altitude.

• 38:21Mike Massimino?

  Three hundred, about 350 statute miles compared to about 250.

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So that you don't have to correct its orbit as often. And so, and the reason why there's more debris there is because there's so little atmosphere. The atmosphere doesn't take the debris out.

• 38:34Mike Massimino?

  That's right. It stays up there longer.

• 38:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It stays up there longer.

• 38:36Eugene Mirman?

  So what was the risk? What did they tell you?

• 38:38Mike Massimino?

  So the updated risk we had for our mission was about one in 75. One in seventy-five meant there was a one out of seventy-five chance of total loss of vehicle and crew. That's total, that's total loss. So then there's other scenarios where you may just hopefully get the crew back, but lose,

• 38:52Eugene Mirman?

  The vehicle.

• 38:53Mike Massimino?

  Lose the vehicle, or some of the crew comes back and stuff, but generally you're looking at about a one out of seventy-five possibility of a bad thing, of a really bad day.

• 38:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had to ask Mars One founder Bas Landsdorff, what are the risks that he sees that his people will face going to Mars? Check it.

• 39:10Speaker 03

  The design of our mission is not detailed enough yet to give percentages, but I, I am certain that it's not going to be a safe mission to Mars, because there's no such thing as a safe mission to Mars. Exploration has always been dangerous, and what's important for Mars One is that we identify the risks, we make sure that everybody knows them, not just our candidates, which for, for them it's the most important, but also our investors, our media partners, the audience. And then if something does indeed go wrong, just like with the Apollo program, people will understand that this was something that could happen.

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not, you're not guaranteeing complete survival, because that's inherent with being on the frontier of discovery.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  And everybody, everybody, all of our candidates know that this is a risky mission.

• 39:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They know it. They might die. So there's some among us in the human species who readily take those risks.

• 40:08Mike Massimino?

  Uh, yeah, but it's, and you know, from, from our standpoint, I would hope for these same folks is that it's not a foolhardy risk. You're not doing it for the risk.

• 40:16Eugene Mirman?

  It's not like you're going to Mars.

• 40:17Mike Massimino?

  It's not like you, yeah, yeah. Well, I would.

• 40:21Eugene Mirman?

  That's a good point. Just an example.

• 40:22Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 40:23Eugene Mirman?

  With no hope of return.

• 40:24Mike Massimino?

  Crazy.

• 40:25Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 40:26Mike Massimino?

  But, you know.

• 40:27Eugene Mirman?

  To be on TV.

• 40:28Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Eugene Mirman?

  Because how else could you get on television?

• 40:31Mike Massimino?

  And you're not coming back, you're sure you're not coming back, so yeah.

• 40:33Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 40:34Mike Massimino?

  No, I, I would hope that they would think that what they're doing is worthwhile and that their, uh, the risk they're taking is worth it.

• 40:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do you think if there was a big disaster and half the people died, that that's it? Or will that attract more people? Because the year that the, I, I read this, that the year that the most people ever who died on Mount Everest?

• 40:52Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The year after that?

• 40:53Mike Massimino?

  More people went.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More people went.

• 40:55Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, I don't.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More people applied than ever before.

• 40:57Mike Massimino?

  I think for, for.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that just because people are crazy?

• 40:59Mike Massimino?

  No, I, I think it's because when you make a decision to go, you keep, you keep going. And the only way I can relate to that is after we had our, our accident with the shuttle. It really didn't change the equation. You knew it was dangerous before you decided to do this. And all that is, is more dated it to say, yeah, you know, it's, it's really, it's really dangerous.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they went to a person, the closest relatives to everyone who died, and said, should we continue this mission? And to a person, everyone said, you have to continue it.

• 41:24Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, I, I think that's...

• 41:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If for no other reason in their memory.

• 41:27Mike Massimino?

  Correct. And that's, that's what I, you know, that's what we kind of dedicated ourselves to when we had our accident. You're gonna go, are you gonna continue in their memory? And you, you're, you've already made your decision to go. It doesn't, didn't add any data. You knew it could have happened to you. It happened to someone else. You feel sorry for them. In some ways, you feel fortunate it wasn't you.

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 41:44Mike Massimino?

  And it's, it's your job to continue. And, and I think that, that is, that is true exploration. Same thing, you know, when Shackleton, you know, the exploration to the, to the South Pole. Those guys all, they all signed up to go again. They had, they were stranded. They got out of it after a couple of years. And they all signed up to go again. It's, it's, you make, you make the decision, that's what you think is important to your life. And you, and you, you keep doing it. I don't, you know, I don't, this is, I don't want to get overly dramatic about it, but I would hope that these people feel the same way about what they're, what they're trying to do. We can be skeptical about what they can do, but I think the spirit of it would be the same.

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back on StarTalk, we're gonna find out what Bill Nye has to say about all this. Check it out.

• 42:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk, we're back. We're back. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. And I tweet at Neil Tyson, if you care about my brain droppings that show up every now and then. And Eugene, Eugene Mirman, your tweet?

• 42:48Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 42:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Astro Mike, Astro underscore Mike.

• 42:50Mike Massimino?

  Yep.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, you, you tweeted, you were the first human to tweet from space.

• 42:55Mike Massimino?

  I was.

• 42:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, very cool.

• 42:56Mike Massimino?

  First tweet from space.

• 42:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Carrying about more than a million Twitter followers with you. Big responsibility.

• 43:01Mike Massimino?

  Yes.

• 43:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't mess it up.

• 43:02Mike Massimino?

  I, I'm trying. You've, you've inspired me in this area. I'm doing the best I can.

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've been featuring my interview with Bas Landsdorff. The, you know, the, the founder of Mars One, sending people to Mars one way. And I didn't want to have this happen without Bill Nye weighing in on what this means to him. Let's check him out. He's somewhere in the city. I don't know where. Let's find out. Okay.

• 43:28Bill Nye?

  Lady Liberty, a symbol of arrival for people from all over the globe who came here seeking a new life, not knowing exactly what they'd find when they got here, but they were confident there'd be water to drink and air to breathe. When we compare that to the expected experience of the Mars One astronauts, well, it's going to be a very different story. A recent MIT study concluded that the first Mars One astronaut would die within 68 days. She or he will either starve to death, die of thirst, or burn up in some sort of yet-to-be-forged-out artificial Martian atmosphere. Furthermore, they think they can do this for four and a half billion dollars. Well, the International Space Station goes through that kind of cash in about a year.

• 44:11Bill Nye?

  So they're going to make up the difference in cost with a pay-per-view scheme, which will enable those of us back here on Earth to watch the Mars One astronauts die. I'm sure it will be riveting. Meanwhile, we could be doing real exploration. So let's do that. Let's send real astronauts to Mars to leave boot prints instead of corpses. Let's honor the great tradition of exploring new worlds so that we will have a better future for all of us.

• 44:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lady Liberty.

• 44:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Bill wants to leave boot prints, not body bags. Do you, what, how do you read this?

• 44:53Mike Massimino?

  I, I, I agree. I, I, absolutely. I, I think that the idea of sending people on a one-way trip, um, and...

• 45:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You say that as though people are dragged kicking and screaming to do so. They have signed up for this, and they're going to read the MIT study, and they're still doing it. So you don't, that's not an argument, that they might die. They know they might die. You knew you might die. They know they might die. So now what?

• 45:20Eugene Mirman?

  But the spirit, I think you're saying the spirit of exploration involves coming home.

• 45:24Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, I, I think so. The idea of coming back or, or being able to...

• 45:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Mayflower... Had no intentions in coming.

• 45:31Mike Massimino?

  Okay, so let me, let me. But they knew they could if they were like, this place is terrible. I would, I would wanna, I would wanna come back and I'd wanna go with people that wanna come back. Right, let's forget that.

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, the seafaring, the, the, the people who went on these oceanic voyages, half of them didn't survive either. And that was a well-known fact in the day. I'm talking about back in the 1500s and 1600. They knew this. So, you know, this is the, the widows, what do you call the?

• 45:57Mike Massimino?

  Widows' walk?

• 45:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The widows' walk. Where you would see the ship, not knowing if your husband was even alive, even if the ship did come back. I'm just, I had to ask Bas, where did he think any of this would be 100 years from now? 100 years from now, you'll still be saying it'll never work.

• 46:13Mike Massimino?

  I will? I hope so, because I'll still be alive.

• 46:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's, let's find out what Bas says about the future of Mars One. What does Mars look like to you 100 years from now?

• 46:26Speaker 03

  100 years from now, I hope that we have a, a very successful colony there. A number of villages, maybe, a, a small city.

• 46:38Speaker 03

  That are no longer dependent on, for their lives on the earth. So maybe, maybe they still receive medicines or, or microchips.

• 46:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a supply chain, that's all.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  It's, yeah, but it's, I hope that it's not a supply chain that they need for survival, only for luxury.

• 46:57Speaker 03

  But it's, it's very difficult to look into the future. And with all the developments in 3D printing and even atom printing, even those things might go faster than we can currently foresee. But one thing that has not developed very quickly lately is rocket technology. And the rockets that we use today are basically still the same that launched the Sputnik, the first satellite into earth orbit. And that would really change everything.

• 47:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. Alright, so you skept- that's cool. I'm skeptical too.

• 47:24Mike Massimino?

  I think the value that, that what, what Bass has done is that he's gotten people talking about going to Mars in a way that we probably wouldn't talk about it if it was gonna be our traditional government program. You're doing a program here that people are gonna watch, hopefully lots of people are gonna watch, and start wondering, millions or whatever, they've got billions.

• 47:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hundreds.

• 47:45Mike Massimino?

  Whatever you get here, at least I'll watch it Neil, and what they'll do is learn something and think about going to Mars. I think that's the value here. Even if they don't make it to Mars, just the idea of dreaming about it and trying to do it, I think is very commendable.

• 48:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think everyone's gonna be alive and happy. There'll be a lot of dead people, but they would've at least known what those risks are. And if somebody doesn't take risks in this species, if someone had never, if people had never, if the subset of us who do take risks had never taken risks in the history of this species, we'd still be living in a cave. And that's no place that I wanna be. Mike, thanks for being on StarTalk.

• 48:25Mike Massimino?

  Thanks for having me, it's been great.

• 48:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eugene, you've been watching StarTalk on National Geographic Channel, here from the Coleman Hall of the Universe at the American Museum of Natural History.

• 48:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As always, I bid you to keep looking up.