Space Chronicles (Part 2)

How much do politics, economics, competition and fear impact NASA? Find out when Neil deGrasse Tyson and Prof. John Logsdon discuss the space program, from the Cold War to the present day.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist, your personal astrophysicist. I serve as director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, which is part of the American Museum of Natural History. And I've got comedian Chuck Nice in the studio here with me. Good to see you Neil, as always. Good to have you back. So good to be here. You already did one of these programs with me on space. Yes, we did. And I got you back in because you were like rolling it. I love it. Yeah, we did Chronicles of Space, which is, Space Chronicles is your book. Yeah, that's the, thanks for that plug. You'll get, you know, I'll make it up to you later. Add another dollar.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I wrote a book that came out a year ago. It just came out in paperback like seconds ago. Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. Facing the ultimate frontier? I know, it's a kind of lamey title, but I really, I had a different title in mind that I submitted the manuscript with. And what was that? Failure to Launch: The Dreams and Delusions of Space Enthusiasts. Oh my God, that's awesome. I thought so. Who told you to change that? Oh, don't get me, don't get me, don't, don't. All I'm gonna say is this. Don't get me started. The publisher said, wait a minute, Failure to Launch, isn't that the title of a movie? Oh, shut up. It's like, shut up. Of course it's the title of a movie, except they use the phrase figuratively. Right. I get to use it literally. Exactly. Okay, I don't know who your publisher is, but here's what I'm sending

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  out over these airwaves right now. Smack.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  That's for you.

• 1:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An acoustic smack.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  An acoustic smack, that's ridiculous. That's an awesome title.

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thank you. It's every thought I've ever had about our past, present, and future in space. But there are other folks out there who've also thought about space, including John Logsdon. And John Logsdon, he's a professor of, well, I think of him as the founding director of the Space Policy Institute. And where's that at? This is in Washington DC, George Washington University. He's Professor Emeritus of Political Science there, and he knows everything about space. So I don't write anything about space unless I talk to him first. And so we're going to feature clips of my interview with him that took place in my office.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About his views of the space program. And by the way, he's not only just an academic historian, they tapped him. When the Columbia Space Shuttle broke up on reentry and we lost seven astronauts, a board was set up to investigate that disaster. These can be turning points in the pathways of a mission statement for an agency. Would we stop going to space? Would we continue with a vengeance? Would we reshape it? So let's find out his reflections on serving on that board.

• 3:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did your report change NASA?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  I think it changed the space program. It may not have changed NASA.

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have no idea what that sentence means.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Okay. The Bush administration, this was George W. Bush now, read the report which said the country needed a national goal. The shuttle was a means, not a goal.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Oh.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  And so it was...

• 3:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because for 30 years, that's all we were doing. So it was essentially a, it was a goal.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Flying the shuttle became the goal.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  So Mr. Bush, January of 2004, said, "Let's go back to the moon by 2020, then on to Mars." The so-called vision for space exploration.

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's when I got the call. And I ended up on that commission.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  That's right. So I think that was the biggest impact of our report was to lead to a declaration of a national goal. But that didn't change NASA's ability to operate to meet that goal.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it matters. Everything has to change. You can't change one piece if you want to sort of alter the direction of an agency.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 4:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  However, the only thing I heard there is that you served on a commission for the Bush administration. That's all I heard.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, it was surreal. I'm watching Bush give a speech. This is after the challenge, after the Columbia disaster and the report gives a new, offers a way to redirect how NASA operates and what direction it should go in. And Bush goes to NASA headquarters, gives a moon, Mars and beyond speech, saying, we'll go back to the moon and on to Mars and beyond. And he said, I will appoint nine commissioners to study the path by which this should be executed. Then my phone rings. It was, I mean, it was a little delayed, but nonetheless, the phone rings. And so we want you to be one of these nine commissioners.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  That is cool.

• 4:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was kind of, that was surreal. It was like, oh my gosh. So I get the call. And so I was, I was privileged to serve. And you never know if what you do is going to actually make a difference, but you, you bring in all of your powers of reason and academic prowess and for others on the commission, their sense of the business world, the cultural world, the, and so that's what it was. What the important thing is NASA was created in a different climate, in a Cold War climate.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now since 1989, since peace has broken out in Europe, it's a different world. So, but NASA had was, has baggage, luggage left over from that period. And so you got to wonder, how does geopolitics matter to the mission statement of NASA? And let's get, go back to my clip and see what John Lockson says about that. If I remember correctly, China put up their first astronaut just before Bush announces this new commission to go back into space in a big way. So are you confident that the geopolitics wasn't what was driving that?

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Yes, I am. As a matter of fact. I know you think differently.

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause I don't believe you.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I deal in the minutiae of what really happens.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. The minutiae is sometimes you get lost in the minutiae. And there's like a, there's a marionette or a puppeteer.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  So the White House decision to do something. Something new and big was made in September 03, a month before the Chinese.

• 6:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't think they had inside information about?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  No, I don't think they had enough.

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Intelligence information.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  They knew it was coming, and the Chinese said it was coming. Chinese have never been secretive, by the way.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, they just say what they're gonna do.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  And do it.

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And do it.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  But, I mean, sure, there's always a competitive edge in what the US does, I mean, always. But to say that the 2004 vision for space exploration was driven by competition with China, I think is an overstatement.

• 6:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even though when Challenger blew up on launch and we had to ground the shuttle program, there was no equivalent vision that came out at the time. Nobody else in the world was going into space at that time.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Well...

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, it's suspiciously circumstantial evidence that we come out with a report coincident with when China wants to go into space, and there's no report around the Challenger disaster.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Two things there. One is, the reaction to the Challenger disaster was, "Shuttle is key, let's just get back to flying shuttle. We don't need anything new."

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so just fix the problem and move on.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Forgotten was, if you went back to Time Magazine, October 4th, 1987, after Challenger, there's the...

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'll be the 20th anniversary.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  The launch of the Energia rocket by the Soviet Union, saying, "The Soviets take the lead."

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  So there was competition, we kind of ignored it.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't know if I'm with them on all this.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 7:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chinese put a boy in orbit, and then we say, "Oh, we're gonna have a new vision for space."

• 7:36Speaker 02

  And you know why? Because we did not want them to be able to deliver things in space before we did.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before we did, and all I wanted them to say, "Let's go to Mars," and then we'd be on Mars 10 months later. No, no, let's put military bases on Mars, and then we're there all right, snap of a finger. When we come back, more of my interview with John Logsdon, space historian, and I'm here in studio with Chuck Nice.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  A half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik. We had no idea how we would beat them to the moon. The science wasn't even there yet. NASA didn't exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets. We unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  This is our generation's Sputnik moment.

• 8:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. That was Barack O's State of the Union address. Yeah. 2011. Talking space smack. Now, space smack? What's... So, no, I had an issue with that speech. Now, why is that? Because, you know, everything he says sounded great. You know, "Oh, Sputnik moment." He said, "Now is a Sputnik moment." That's good. How did we react to the original Sputnik moment? We went to the moon. That's correct. Now, what I say in my book, Space Chronicles, because I talk about him in Space Chronicles. Okay. I excerpt that part of his speech. And I talk about the man. All right, and so I said, he says, "We have a new Sputnik moment." When the first Sputnik moment, we went to the moon. Okay.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He says, "With this Sputnik moment, we will have higher-speed internet in 90% of the homes. We will have high-speed rail. Um, we will have energy independence in 20 years." I'm thinking... It's like, kinda like, I don't know, down-to-earth Sputnik. I'm saying, I'm saying, "We should have everything you just listed anyway." A Sputnik moment is, "Let's go someplace we never dreamt of. Let us create a future that could only have been assembled out of the dreams of our greatest visionaries." And having high-speed internet? No! Having light rail? No!

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yo, man, I'm my own hotspot. That's my Sputnik moment! See?

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll give you that. Now, I have to say, that is a very valid criticism. I was all, call it some other moment. Don't be taking Sputnik. Okay. And telling me that's why you're gonna give me high-speed internet. I, I'm with you on that. And why you're gonna have light rail to reduce the commutes. Don't go there. Excuse, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's not a Sputnik moment. I don't play that. I'm gonna give you that. I'll say your criticism is well received. Thank you. And that's all in the book, in Space Chronicles. I love me some Obama, don't get me wrong, but that doesn't mean he's without my criticism. That's all I'm saying. Okay. So, but there's an interesting challenge that this raises. Every president has tried to shape a vision statement for our space agency. Right. But if the presidents are slightly different politically, or have slightly different, uh, uh, mindsets,

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  then NASA is this, is this ping-pong ball. Right. Or, or a, you know, it's this ball that's being batted back and forth, depending on the, the, the whims of the age. Right. And whereas in the Apollo era, from Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon, we went to the moon. Under each of those leaderships, the vision statement was strong and steady. So, this is a challenge that we, we all face. And then you can ask, if it's really expensive, then, do you do it alone? Or do you? Do you bring in some other people? Yeah, do you bring in some other people? And that's a, that's a huge problem, a huge challenge. And I, I say, alright, if you bring in other people, now you're subject to the vagaries of their politics.

• 11:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you have two legally forces operating on your mission statement. So I don't know that that will always work. It'll make it a little cheaper for you, but when do you have greatest revol- resolve? When you're holding hands and cooperating, or when, "I'm gonna beat that sucker." Right, right. Well, yeah, unfortunately, it's the latter. Right, exactly. And so, so what happens? Uh, we, we stop going to the moon, we build the shuttle, we build the space station, and you can, why do we build a space station to begin with? Was it to do science? No. It was because the Russians, once again, we were...

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Competing, reacting.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reacting. We are reactors. We're reactors. Human reactors. And so, in my interview with John Logsdon, we chatted about the motivation, the modern day motivations for going into space. And the space station was born at the tail end of the Cold War. Ah. Yeah, the Cold War was just kinda fading, but it was still there and we still thought about the Russians as our enemy. So I asked him about the space station. Was it really for space? What's behind it? And he told me, "Let's find out."

• 12:56Speaker 01

  One of the arguments made to Ronald Reagan as he considered approving this station was that the Russians had one.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  There was a competitive.

• 13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A geopolitical dimension to this.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  And that the right way for the.

• 13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once again, we're reactive to Russia, not proactive.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Well, but it wasn't the primary reason. I think a major reason was the way to be a leader in space after Apollo is to bring other countries to work with us. And station from its start was going to be an international project with the US as the managing partner. And, yes, there is a hypothesis, yet to be proven or disproven, that there is good science to be done in the environment in the absence of gravity, microgravity.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I can tell you, there is good science. The question is, if you tell a scientist, "Here's $3 billion. Would you do science on the International Space Station or would you build labs on Earth?" No one would choose the space station.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  No, of course not.

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To spend their $3 billion. But given that you already have a space station. Sure, you throw up some zero G.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Well, and you have an agency dedicated to using it. So it's not fungible money. It's money dedicated to that particular use.

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I remember watching a TV commercial, might have been during a football game, one of these high-profile television events, this back in the 80s. There's a space station flying overhead.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I know the one you're talking about.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a huge ship. And you then become shadowed by the ship. And then you see the Russian CCCP, or whatever they are in Cyrillic pronunciation. And you say, "It's not me, it's them." I felt that.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  There was a tagline to that commercial.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was it?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Shouldn't we be there too?

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, they were appealing to fear factors, just as it kinda worked with the commies, right? In the 50s and 60s.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Well, it's strong enough to get the program started. But then we brought in the commies, the Russians, as partners.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh wait, so let's back up. So we brought in the Russians after the Cold War ended?

• 14:46Speaker 01

  After the fall of the Soviet Union.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now we have these wayward space scientists.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Who we did not want going to Libya, or Syria, or North Korea, or Iran.

• 14:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now the motivation for the space station is different. It has evolved.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  But still geopolitical.

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has morphed.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Still geopolitical, but is now morphed. Oh, we now want the space station to get all the people who would go to the dark side.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Right. All the former members of the Russian space program, we wanted them to stay in Russia. And work with us.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, then they go on our side, not their side. Okay, and did that succeed?

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It did succeed, okay.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  I think it did. In the critical path of the station, and thank heavens we did.

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apparently. How we get in the space station now?

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Right, Russia. So, I mean, there was a geopolitical calculation, that the risks of having another country necessary for success were worth the benefits of bringing them together with us.

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it also means that we no longer had an enemy that we were racing against. Everyone was friends.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we can't spend money, even though we're not at war.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Oh, I think there are other reasons. I mean, you and I differ a little bit on this, because it's not religious.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we can take this outside.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, the domestic politics of space are strong enough to keep a program going at a certain level.

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At a certain base level.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  And I think that's what sustained the station and the shuttle program for a long, long time, and continues even to today.

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think the lesson is, you need an enemy if you're spending big money. I mean, that's really how it's gonna...

• 16:19Speaker 02

  I like the fact that he's very kumbaya, because in my heart, I'm the same way. But the fact is, nothing gets done without competition.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all, that's what it is.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  We're a competition-driven society. Kidding me?

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And... So, so, so now we actually cooperate... created before with, uh, uh, remember Apollo Soyuz? We had the Apollo, we stopped going to the moon, but we still, you know, what do you do with the craft? And so we docked with the Soyuz missions. It was quite, quite a bit of, uh, forward thinking at the time. You felt very United Nations.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, and so it's not like there were not experiments at doing this, but I will note that that Apollo Soyuz sort of project, I don't know that it was advancing a space frontier. It was just sort of cooperating within the space environment that each country had already created.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  I think it was more like the ranks were closing in on the space community. Like, we better get together because pretty soon we could be extinct.

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you mean that in terms of the...

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, you know, because when you think about it, now that there isn't competition, Cold War's over, you gotta kind of band together and work together because the impetus for you to do your job has pretty much been taken away from the people who write the checks.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep, yep. And here's what's interesting. Everyone complains about how expensive NASA is.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And should we spend the money in a different way down here? You know, in 1958, when it was born, it was one tenth of 1% of the federal budget. All right, but then, of course, you're building your capacities and you're building the ships. And so it peaked out, it topped at 4% of the federal budget in 1966. It topped at 4%, then it fell back again. But 4%, oh my gosh.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  4%. No, actually, that's still small compared with military. It's still, it's military. So right now, the budget in the military, the entire annual budget of NASA is spent every 11 days by the military.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Look at that.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it is. That's how, that's how it rolls. When we come back, more on the past, present and future of our place in space.

• 18:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back to StarTalk Radio, Chuck Nice in-house.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got a Nice in the house tweeting at ChuckNiceComic.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  That's correct, sir.

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's cool. I love following you.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  That's fine.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I must confess, I follow other comedians as well.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Oh, that's fine.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just in disclosure here.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  You know, I'm not possessive that way.

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  You know?

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we were talking about the space station, International Space Station, and how the reason for having it kind of morphed. It was a product of the Cold War, and then the Cold War ended because peace broke out in 1989. And then, "Oh, we want to get the Russian scientists so they don't go to our enemies, North Korea and Iraq or whomever. We want their scientists so that way they don't build bombs for our enemies."

• 19:29Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is strategic, and I understand.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Smart.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then, when that was clearly no longer necessary, then, "Oh, we need it to... Maybe we'll do science on it." And then, so, what's interesting is you're stuck with something that had a Cold War foundation, and now you see people sort of shoehorning in ways and means and reasons to try to still justify it. But that poses the question, what might the future of the International Space Station be?

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will there be some other reason to justify? Because it's expensive to keep that puppy going. And we only have a handful of people up there.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not the, you know, it's not a city. So, my interview with John Logsdon, and he's expert on everything space, I spoke to him at length about the International Space Station and its future. Let's see how that goes. Right now, it's an official national lab to do science on it. And is that just our section, or is it the whole?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  No, it's just ours.

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our section, and other countries do whatever they want with their section?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Well, we have 49% use of the European and Japanese laboratories.

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  So, there's the Russian section, and then the allied section, if you want, or the original partners.

• 20:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Russia's 100% Russian.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our section's 100% us, and everybody else is 51% them.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we're quite the landlord then, right?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we are the managing partner.

• 20:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, now, you can have other countries going to and from the space station without any reference to us, because they can go up and back on the Russian Soyuz?

• 20:52Speaker 01

  No, we've bought all the seats. We control the seats that Europe or Japan would use. We have access to the space station. They can't independently buy a seat. Why? Technically, because it's our responsibility to transport. The astronauts back and forth. Of our partner countries. I didn't know that. That's part of the deal. So therefore, we're not as a landlord, we drive the bus. That's right. We provide the taxi. We pay for the bus. Yes. In this case, we're paying Russia to be the taxi service. Right, right. And so, they're going up and back. Do they pay us rent? Mm-mm. In kind. In kind. The original agreement is they were going to pay us money. And then their parliaments woke up, their governments saying, "That's not a very good deal."

• 21:34Speaker 01

  So they launched supply vehicles, both Europe and Japan. And a certain number of those vehicles is equivalent to the value of the money they're supposed to pay. So it's all border. That's the in-kind donation. That's right. So how long do you think the space station will last in orbit? Well, we're committed till at least 2020. The hardware's qualified to 2028. You mean stuff starts breaking after 2028? Well, probably, and probably beforehand. Starts falling out of the sky. Or at least not working. I mean, you know, the toilets are bulky anyway, oxygen, all that sort of stuff. But it costs 3 billion a year. I always thought, how is it that a toilet can't work in space? You have all the universe for all your stuff to go. One of my areas of expertise is not hygiene aboard.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  It does not include hygiene. Okay. So after 2020 to 2028, do we just drop it in the Pacific? What happens? Yeah, we'll probably have to break it up. It's not going to come down in one piece. It's too big. Too big. So it would have to be separated and de-orbited. De-orbit, and so that's the code for crashing into the Pacific. Well, let's hope. How fortunate we are that a third of our longitude is an ocean. Right. So that you don't even have to be. Which is full of spacecraft, by the way, on the bottom. On the bottom. We've doused lots of spacecraft. All our spy satellites are down there. Really? Yeah. I'm gonna go pick one up. Well, we've tried that. Who's the "we"?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  The US tried to recover a Soviet nuclear submarine out of the Pacific back in the 50s or early 60s. And what happened? They failed, as far as we know. Too heavy, too confined? No, they found it. Too hard to get up. Oh, wow. But satellites should be easy. Well, but what's left of them by the time they actually hit the ocean and then the impact of hitting the ocean, probably there's not much left.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's our trash bin.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The fishes probably wonder what the hell's going on.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Well, it's better than having up in orbit is debris.

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Bumping into things.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you want to get it all out of orbit.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it kind of feels like we're stuck with the space station inventing things to do for it.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Well, and...

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Given the geopolitics that birthed it and given how we're currently using it, it kind of feels that way.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  I mean, we really have just...on Earth, you don't expect a laboratory to be productive until you finish building it.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  We just finished building the station.

• 23:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm, yeah, I mean, important point there is, you got a station that's $3 billion a year and you hand it to a scientist, I think you can do some really cool zero-g experiments there, but no scientist in their right mind is going to say, "Oh, you just gave me $3 billion? I'm going to build a space platform to do zero..." They're not going to...that's not how they would spend the $3 billion, they're just not.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Why not?

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They just wouldn't.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  They have better things to do with their money.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know how many labs...

• 24:20Speaker 01

  They have better things to do with $3 billion.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, whatever is the cost of your lab on Earth, it'll cost 100 times that to put it in space.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 24:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so you can essentially build 100 labs on Earth for the one...well, I don't know what the exact number is, but it's about that, and so...

• 24:35Speaker 01

  And you're not going to have to worry about a toilet backing up in space.

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A toilet.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  A non-working toilet.

• 24:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, I guess, you know, that'd be a shame if we had to de-orbit the space station because the toilet backed up. That would be embarrassing. I mean, in the history of technology and society. You're listening to StarTalk Radio and we're featuring my interview with Professor John Logsdon, who's an historian and an expert in space, everything about space and culture. When we come back, more from that interview. I'm here with Chuck Nice, see you in a moment.

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson and we're talking about the past, present, and future of our place in space. Chuck Nice, I got you here too. Thanks for helping me out on this. It's great to be here. Part of this is like the paperback version of my book, Space Chronicles, was just released. Yes. And as awkward as that plug is, the fact is I've thought a lot about this. And in my interviews with John Logstine, we're sort of merging our perspectives for your benefit. And I am benefiting. For you, the listener. And just a quick note, while no scientist would say, "Let's spend $3 billion on a zero-G lab," if they're handed a zero-G lab, that changes the money equation. And the government declared the space station as a national lab, like Brookhaven

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  or Fermilabs or Lawrence Berkeley Labs. These are labs that are under the management of the government to do research in the interest of the greater good of the country, be it for security, military, or for anything else. And so, in zero-G, there's like, there are valuable things you can do with the creation of medicines, with possible cancer treatments that can come out of it, studies on aging. And so, there are a lot of, there's a lot of sort of human physiology things you can do in zero-G. And I look forward to the results that can, could come out of that, provided the scientists don't pick up the $3 billion a year debt. Yeah. Now, a big question that everybody's wondering about, what's, does the future of space embrace commercial activities? When can I go?

• 26:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When can you go? When can I go? And I spoke with John Logstine about it, and he had some views on that. I'm very opinionated on it. And you're gonna hear it before we're done? Okay. But, let's get John Logstine's view on the table before we continue.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  I think there's a gross misunderstanding of what the term "commercial space" means.

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because for me, NASA's always had a commercial dimension to it, right? They've always been buying materials and partnering.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Eighty-five to ninety percent of the NASA budget goes to profit-making firms, or universities.

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Through, through contracts.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Contracts, grants, all that sort of thing.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's already that way?

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Uh, it's commercial in a particular sense.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  What is being proposed, first with cargo to the space station, and then to replace the shuttle with crew to the space station, is a different kind of partnership, where NASA and the private sector share the risks, share the cost burden. The private sector designs and develops the systems, and NASA buys the services.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so because it's private sector, the premise is that they'll do it cheaper, more efficiently, and the economies of scale.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the normal sort of business trappings that is expected to get them.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  All the American ideology that the private sector's more efficient than government.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whether or not that's true, that's the premise. I don't have a problem with that. You have a problem with that? Why do some people have a problem with that?

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Well, because it means NASA loses a bit of control.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're just trying to get to low Earth orbit. Who cares if you could... What control do you need? You're on Earth, put me in orbit, we're done. It's like, put the letter on the airplane, take the letter off the airplane. I don't need to know anything else.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Unless somebody gets killed in the middle of it.

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Well, not that people haven't been killed before.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you worried that maybe a NASA astronaut will be killed on a commercial flight?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  There are people that are worried. I'm not one of them.

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 28:47Speaker 01

  People believe that only NASA...

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the lowest bidder is not going to have the best action.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Well, and that NASA won't have enough control to certify the safety of the vehicles. There is a belief, deep in the NASA culture, that only NASA knows how to do human spaceflight.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now suppose they end up doing it safe to everyone's standards?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  We're ahead of the game.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're ahead of the game.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  If there's enough money to get it done. You know, it's not snapping a finger and overnight you got a rocket system.

• 29:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you didn't know that NASA's, most of NASA's budget goes to corporate entities?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  I was flabbergasted.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, because NASA doesn't do everything that it does.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  Right, which is the kind of perception that you get.

• 29:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess it is a little bit of that perception, but there's, all of the aerospace industry serves NASA. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Grumman, all of these folks. And for example, the, the, the next generation space telescope that's being built by Northrop Grumman, for example, it'll carry NASA's logo as the biggest one, but you, you park the curtains there, there's going to be a Northrop Grumman logo sitting somewhere near it.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Somewhere inside of it.

• 29:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep, yep. And so I think commercial space is great, but the difference is, commercial space will never lead a frontier. They can help us out and they can do our cargo transport, they never lead a frontier, they can't.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  It's a really bad business model to be first.

• 30:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  That's all there is to it, man.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you, what do you say, okay, take me to Mars first, no one's ever been there before, it has unknown costs, unknown risk, and you might die.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who are my investors at that point? So, yeah, you could like do, make it a vanity project and use corporate money to do it, but it's not a business model.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and you want to turn a space program into a space industry. So the government charts the way and draws the maps and finds out who the friendlies are and who the enemies are, what the trade winds are. Then, once that's established, the private enterprise can come in afterwards. And that's how Columbus started and the Dutch East India Trading Company came in afterwards.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They weren't the first European state, it was Columbus and others. So, there you have it, I'm all for it, let's run with it. When we come back, more on StarTalk Radio's Space Chronicles, see you in a moment.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio, Neil deGrasse Tyson here, Chuck Nice Nice.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice Comic.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  Chuck Nice Comic on Twitter.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you're on Twitter and you've got some TV, crazy TV show I heard about.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Uh, it's called Home Strange Home on HGTV, check it out.

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You bust into people's home and talk about it.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they call that television.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you ain't coming into my place, just gonna let you know that in advance. I don't know what you're gonna say. You come in 60 Minutes style, "We're gonna do a report on..." Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about that, but we'll do that off the air. We'll take that outside. So, we're talking about the past, present, and future in space. I've been featuring clips from John Lockson, a friend of mine and a professor, historian of space. And we got on the topic of space, privatization of space. And so you wanna go to space, wanna be a tourist? To tell you the truth, I would love to be a space tourist. Me too, I wanna... But you know what I really want? I want a whole suite of launch vehicles. And you just set up the reason why you wanna go into space. And you strap on whatever rockets will work for that, and then you go. Yeah.

• 32:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I wanna go to the moon, that's one combination. I wanna tour an asteroid, that's a... I wanna go to Mars and do science. The military might have a geopolitical reason for doing it. Going somewhere, that's a different combination. Space becomes our backyard. You're talking about a whole space tourism industry. Industry, and I brought that up with John Lockson. Let's see what he says about that.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Virgin Galactic, a Richard Branson company, is gonna be taking people up above 100 kilometers.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  200K a pop. But that only requires going three and a half times the speed of sound.

• 32:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's nothing, you just go up and back, right? You're not hitting orbit.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And you come back where you took off.

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and you don't even need heat shields.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  No, none of that. So, to get to orbit, you have to go 25 times the speed of sound. That's technically a much, much tougher thing.

• 33:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think there's a whole community of people who are deluded into thinking, "Oh, we go up and back today, tomorrow we're into orbit." These are completely different...

• 33:09Speaker 01

  They are qualitatively different tasks.

• 33:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tasks, exactly, for the machine and the fuel and everything.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Everything.

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And getting back.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Reentry, all of that.

• 33:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So I wanna go back to the moon. The moon is not in Obama's plan. Where do you wanna go next?

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Moon.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a moon guy too. I think the moon is three days away.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  That's right, offshore island.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  There's a new thing that's emerged just in the past couple of months of building a gateway at a particular point in space called the Earth-Moon-L2 point, the other side of the moon, from which you can go all kinds of places.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so it's a balance point, centrifugal and gravitational forces.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  All that sort of thing.

• 33:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it doesn't take much energy to leave that spot and target anywhere else.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Right. Asteroids don't ring my bell very much.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An asteroid that would render you extinct does not concern you.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Well, sure, but those are not the ones we're talking about going to.

• 34:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you want to visit some, oh, as a target.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Obama, you were there, I was there, said asteroid by 2025.

• 34:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  To me, that's not an inspirational goal.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But is it real? Is he gonna do it?

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Well, that's what's driving NASA's plan.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, except that 2025, that's under a president to be named later.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 34:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On a budget not yet established.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  We've started to build the rocket, we've started to build the spacecraft, whether we can continue this time to follow through on a program is TBD.

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're already kind of not in a good situation right now.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will that get worse, or will that stay the same, or will it not matter?

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Well, I think that...

• 34:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plenty of countries don't have space programs, and they're doing just fine.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Germany, for example.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  First of all, I think there's enough political support to keep a program at some level. I mean, one of the things that people forget about Apollo was a massive mobilization, a war-like mobilization of resources.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  We're not gonna do that again.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why not? If it can boost the economy, why not? Why not convince people NASA is an investment in our economy? Then venture capitalist money should flow like rivers. Why not?

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Well, you'd have to prove the point.

• 35:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Not just state the point.

• 35:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's hard to prove the point because it's an experiment on a huge scale.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we should only have one previous example of it.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in that era, it birthed all of our modern understanding of our identity as a nation, the miniaturization of electronics.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  It had a remarkable effect across wide segments of society.

• 35:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think of NASA as a flywheel, and we tapped ideas and energy from it.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  You know, not enough people feel that way. That's the job you're doing.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I go on the street and grab people by the lapel and say, "Here's what you're missing."

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's what'll happen.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Here's an investment you could make that your children, your grandchildren would really benefit from.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the message.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  That was depressing. I'm sorry, but that exchange you two just had was depressing.

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, there's a little, there's a hidden text here where Obama's speech where he said, "Let's go back into space." "Under Bush, on the commission that I had served on, it was we would return to the moon, "go on to Mars and beyond." Obama gave a speech just more stirring that said, "Look, we've been to the moon. "Let's go to Mars and asteroids." And everyone applauded, and then it would say, "Wait a minute." Everyone who was tasked with getting us to the moon, where did they go?

• 36:21Speaker 02

  Right, we're done with you.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're done.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  We're done with you. Basically, you know what Obama just said, because 2025, let's be for real. He's not here, okay?

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he's on the beaches of Hawaii.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  He's back in Hawaii, okay? And here's what it comes down to. "Hey, kids, we're gonna get a PS3 when you graduate from college. Daddy's gonna get you a video game when you get out of college."

• 36:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm trying to work it. That's the whole point of my Space Chronicles book. And, you know, the struggle continues.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. I like his idea of you going out, grabbing people one by one by their lapels, and just shaking some sense into them.

• 36:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ten today, seven billion to go. Well, just Americans, 330 million to go.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 37:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta close this one out. Chuck, always great to have you.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Great to be here, Neil.

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With me. You're listening to Star Talk. You've been listening to Star Talk Radio, brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Thanks for joining us. As always, until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.