Introducing Here We Go Again With Kal Penn

Hey SNAFU fans! We wanted to share a new show that we think you'll enjoy: Here We Go Again with Kal Penn. Each week, Kal Penn takes today’s trends and headlines and asks: Why does history keep repeating itself? From the new space race and plane delays to fad drugs and movie remakes, our guest's answers will make you feel better about everything. In this first episode, Kal sits down with legendary science educator and TV presenter Bill Nye the Science Guy. From the Cold War to today, space has always been about flexing power. So, why do we keep turning space into a race? What does that say about the future of space exploration -- and about humanity? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app or through the iHeart https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-snafu-with-ed-helms-102539700/ website. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  Here we go again.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Hey, I'm Cal Penn. Welcome to my new show, Here We Go Again.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  So you may know me as an actor from Harold and Kumar, House, or Designated Survivor. I'm also a former White House staffer, a NASCAR enthusiast, an eager karaoke participant, and I guess, as of like five seconds ago, a podcast host. How am I doing so far? I'm hosting this podcast because there's one particular question that I find myself asking a lot these days. Why does the same shit keep happening? War, labor strikes, getting ghosted by a hookup. No one wants to be stuck in a vicious cycle of patterns repeating. So every week, we're gonna take a topic from the present, see how it played out in the past, and try to figure out what it means for our future.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Each episode, I'll chat with an expert who can help me answer a different burning question, like, why is my plane always delayed? Are we headed towards another economic crash? Is this rash what I think it is? Oh, wait, ignore that last one. We're asking all the right questions to all the right people to make you feel at least like 9% better about, well, everything, except maybe the rash.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  So now that I got my little introduction out of the way, I wasn't sure how I wanted to kick off the first episode, but then I kept looking down at my tattoos. Some people have tattoos of bald eagles, lot of people have tattoos of X's. Most of my tattoos have something to do with astronomy. That's what you see if you look at my sleeve. And of that, I'd say at least half has to do with the NASA Voyager golden record. If you don't know what the golden record is, it's a piece of this spacecraft called the Voyager, launched in the late 1970s. And the idea there was that if it's ever found by an intelligent civilization, and if they can ever decode this record, they would see only the best of human civilization: biology, science, music, art, DNA.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  To me, space has always been about exploring the unknown, about possibility. And as the guy with the Voyager tattoo, I clearly care a lot about the new space race that's happening right now. From the Cold War to today, space has really been about flexing power. The United States versus the Soviet Union, for example, back in the day, or more recently, the United States versus China. But now there's also a new player: private corporations. Enter the billionaires. Elon Musk is willing to spend $15.5 billion to be the first to colonize Mars. Jeff Bezos is funding Blue Origin to keep up. And in the middle of all of this is still NASA with a shrinking budget.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  So here's my question: why do we keep turning space into a race? And what does that say about the future of space exploration and about humanity? This is Here We Go Again, a show where we take today's trends and headlines and then ask, why does history keep repeating itself? I'm Kal Penn. To explore the past, present, and future of the space race, I knew only one guy would do. He's super sciency, a spokesperson, an adventurer, a teacher, and the only adult man I trust to wear a bowtie. Unlike me, he's got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the singular William Sanford-Nye,

• 3:50Speaker 01

  better known as my friend Bill Nye the Science Guy. Welcome, Bill.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  It's so good to be here.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Thanks for doing this, man. I think that most of us have a very rudimentary understanding of space. And I will preface this by saying, I think I've shown you my astronomy tattoos, most of which are based on the Voyager golden record, or pulsar map and things like that. But that is still, for an actor, that's still a rudimentary, like...

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Well, you're a citizen of Earth, Kal.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Thank you. I like to put it that way.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's what we're going for here.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  So like, what is the history of the original space race in like, a minute? And I'm not asking for the version of like, if you and Neil deGrasse Tyson were in a room together, which I have seen and it's brilliant, but like, what's the second grade version of that?

• 4:42Speaker 02

  The second great version is the Soviet Union was created with this idea that they would be, that its system would be better than the West. And along with that, we're going to prove that we're better than the West. We're going to go into space, the ultimate high ground. So they built Sputnik spacecraft, and I was a little, little kid. 1957, and the grownups are all very, very concerned about this. And so then the US answered the threat or the historic achievement of Sputnik by creating NASA,

• 5:22Speaker 02

  the National International Space Administration, a civilian space agency that was involved in flying around in space, which you might think was more of a military thing.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  But this became, and this, everybody talks about this turning point with John Kennedy, whatever else you might think about him, presented this challenge of putting somebody on the moon before 1970. So that became a way to fight the Cold War was put somebody on the moon. And the US did. And it's not too long in historic terms after that, the Soviet Union went out of business. So that was good for us.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  During Sputnik, the old folks were kind of freaking out. And I'm curious, at that point, was there an understanding or a keen interest in the exploration part of this, or was there a fear about the militarization part?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  So there was both. So the guys at NASA, and they were mostly men, were arguing that we needed to understand the cosmos, we needed to understand what cosmic rays are, we need to understand the processes that create sunlight and stars. And we need to know more about what I like to call our place in space. But the reason it was done was the Cold War. But with that, these extraordinary discoveries were made and a couple of remarkable things. In 1968,

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Bill Anders, this astronaut, took a picture of the Earth that came to be called Earthrise, with the moon in the foreground. And this is where you see the Earth against the icy blackness of space. When the aperture of the camera was set to capture the planet Earth, the stars behind Earth were not bright enough to show up. So it's stark. There's the Earth, this planet. And then, the thing that struck my grandparents was the clouds. You see Earth from space and you see all these clouds.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  When you think of Earth before that, you would think of it as a classroom globe. No clouds, and just political boundaries, and the ocean is perfectly uniform color all around the world, and so on. And so this changed history. And it was not, in my opinion, and keep in mind, everybody, my opinion's correct. And so, a few years later, the Soviet Union was doing these extraordinary things. And they sent these missions to Mars, they sent missions to Venus, all these things. And along that line, the US was gonna keep up. And the US did. And this led to this extraordinary event, events of the launching of the Voyager spacecraft.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  And these were, are, two spacecraft that did this so-called grand tour of the solar system because of the alignment, or the orientation, or the places and spaces of the planets. And the old hilarious joke is, the same arrangement of planets happened during the Adams administration.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  In 1820, but they didn't do anything about it. They didn't send any spacecraft in 1820. What were they thinking? And so, uh, anyway, I claim this changed the course of history and this led to the golden record, which is on your tattoo.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Can you tell us more about the golden record? Like, I, I obviously like to think I'm an expert enough that I tattooed it on my body, but my real understanding is that, what? It's a group of people, which I think involved Carl Sagan. They made this recording of positive Earth stuff that we sent up, uh, on the Voyager missions. Is that essentially it?

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Yes. So everybody, let's just talk some more about me. I happened to be in class with Carl Sagan, famous astronomer. I happened to be in class. I was a senior in mechanical engineering school. I took astronomy 102 for kicks. Just, uh, I took a freshman level course because this guy had become so famous, this Carl Sagan, who's on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. This is before Jimmy Fallon, before Jay Leno.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  And Carl Sagan said, we're going to put this record, this phonograph record. And for the young people listening, I know you're all into vinyl again. Right on. Way to go. Turn it up loud. Okay. While you're doing all that, the idea was to send a phonograph record, two phonograph records into deep space. And so then you're going to put sounds on the phonograph record, sounds of this extraordinary world, Earth. And Carl Sagan said, don't worry, young people, we're going to put a rock and roll song on the record. And he said, it's going to be Roll Over Beethoven by Chuck Berry. And I certainly voiced

• 10:40Speaker 02

  a concern, but this next part may be a so-called constructed memory. I claim I stood up. This is a part of the semester. You know, there are people who are so confident. In in college that they don't go to class, they just take the tests and the final and they write the paper and they just read the text, don't go to class. I was not among those people because I felt that Sagan was so entertaining. He was such an amazing speaker. So I claim I stood up and I said, Professor Sagan, it's not rollover Beethoven. The song you want is Johnny Be Good by Chuck Berry. And so I was not the only guy expressing

• 11:20Speaker 02

  this sentiment, but I was I was vocal, particularly vocal, because I'm a particular fan of Chuck Berry. And so Chuck Berry's on the record. I take full credit.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Wait, you're saying that you helped decide what was on the golden record? How did I not know this?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  It's all me, everybody. And it's just you guys understand the dumb lucktivity of my life, that I happened to be in this class. First of all, that I got into this extraordinary university, Cornell, that I got into there was, I'm sure, some mistake in the admissions department. But I happened to be there at this moment in history of space exploration that changed my life. And so I'm very thankful and I tell everybody, those two spacecraft are still flying because they're powered by plutonium. It is extraordinary. And this is what Carl Sagan used to talk about all the time. Humans, in so many ways,

• 12:19Speaker 02

  are not worthy of respect. Like, we're just mean spirited, crummy creatures. But in other ways, we can do these extraordinary things and understand our place in space and try to know where we came from and to ponder whether or not we're alone in the cosmos. These are just extraordinary questions. And along with that, for Carl Sagan and Adrian, his wife, then, and the people that he worked with.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  They just wanted everybody to appreciate the beauty that humans appreciate. And that's what's on the record.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  The way that you're describing, everyone from the astronaut who took that photograph of Earth from the moon to the fact that you put Chuck Berry on the golden record. All of the sixties and seventies and eighties, the reputation that NASA had was almost this glamorous and certainly now, looking back, very fucking cool. Cool group of people who seem, especially in retrospect, given the world we live in now, very hopeful, very aspirational. And I think we think a lot about that, but also think about, you know, the competition that has come to dominate space that then kind of ignores the cooperation.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  What I'm getting at here is, at what point did the International Space Station come into this conversation? Can you talk a little bit about how it started and then which countries cooperated with it? Did it come out of the same idea of, hey, we can do amazing things together. Let's put music and send it out there.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Well, another thing along this line, talking about Carl Sagan again, this mythic astronomer. I say mythic, he's a real person, but he is so influential. Like, for example, you mentioned earlier, before we started, you mentioned Neil deGrasse Tyson. As, you know, Steve Martin said, "Personal friend of mine." And me, we probably would not be doing what we're doing without the creation of NASA and without Carl Sagan and his influence. So, along this line, Carl Sagan started the Planetary Society because he and his colleagues felt that public interest in space was very high, but government supportive, it was not especially high.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  That would never happen again. Same thing's going on now. And they were very concerned about nuclear war.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  And they wanted very much to engage the Soviet Union. And so there was this handshake in space. Uh, now I'm doing this from memory. I should look this up. I should have it at my brain for tips. Leonov and Allen, that's not quite right.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  I got it. It's a Leonov and Stafford astronaut, Thomas Stafford and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Right. They shook hands in space, an astronaut and a cosmonaut.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  And this was gonna be okay. Cold War over shook shook hands in space. Let's go. And that led to the International Space Station. And for those of you who remember, for many years, the only way to get up and down to the International Space Station was on a Russian rocket. Because the Russian rockets were just big, heavy and reliable. And they still are, but the space shuttle was created to get people up and down to the space station. They use the word shuttle like you're gonna go, you know, on a bus every day. But it turned out to be fantastically expensive. But that dream or that vision of using space exploration to establish international relations

• 16:08Speaker 02

  to prevent an international conflict is still with us.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  That you talk to any US astronaut, he or she speaks Russian. You talk to any cosmonaut, he or she speaks English. Cause they train together, they still cooperate with all the other stuff that's going on. Sabotaging underwater natural gas lines, conflict in Ukraine, all the other sort of Cold War knock on stuff that's going on, there's still international cooperation in space. It's remarkable.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Welcome back to Here We Go Again with me, Kal Penn, your host, and our guest, the wonderful Bill Nye. Okay, Bill, so I love how you ended that last segment with the reality that that no matter what conflicts are happening in the world, we're still cooperating in the space station. But, okay, what about, what about the space race now? I'm curious what's the same and what's changed, and especially that original space race. Did it truly ever end? Does it continue in a version of its original form today?

• 17:18Speaker 02

  It doesn't continue in the original form in that it's not the US versus the Soviets or Russians anymore. Now, people are just, as far as space racing, people are just beginning to acknowledge the importance of China, and the Chinese National Space Agency is doing extraordinary things, and they're doing them for the same reason everybody else did. First of all, it's national pride. You get taikonauts up there in their own space station, doing their own cool experiments. They want to go to the South Pole of the Moon because there is nominally an engineering reason to go there. That is to say, people

• 17:56Speaker 02

  suspect strongly, there's enough ice in the regolith, that's a fabulous word, the rocky surface of the Moon, that you could use solar panels to make electricity, turn the water into hydrogen and oxygen gas, and then liquid hydrogen and oxygen, recombine them and have a rocket from the Moon run by rocket fuel made of Moon stuff. I know, it's okay, it's a lot. But the other reason to go to the Moon is the national pride and plant the flag and so on. But then, that's this international space race that's just getting acknowledged here in the US circles, since that Congressman Wolf retired. You don't

• 18:41Speaker 02

  have the same, well, he just was bringing it up all the time.

• 18:44Speaker 01

  So Congressman Wolf, for those who don't know, was the author of the Wolf Amendment, which prevented and prevents still the US from cooperating with China in space exploration.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  But then the other space race is these million, billionaires, rather, who are going at it with their own rocket companies. And so they're doing it for a couple of reasons. First of all, their own pride. And space intrigues everybody. Everybody, I think, goes through a period of wanting to be an astronaut and fly in space. And we all embrace science fiction where you go to other worlds and do these extraordinary things and compare the other world to our world and wonder if we're alone in the universe. That's all in there. And then there's real money to be made. A lot of people I speak with are not aware of the extraordinary amount

• 19:34Speaker 02

  of money that's spent in space. Wait, all the money that's spent in space is really spent on Earth. Wait a second. Yeah, so SpaceX, for example, is huge business with the Air Force, Space Force, NASA, along with its own Starlink thing. Man, they launch rockets a couple, three times a week, these very reliable Falcon 9 rockets. And they do it for business, to dominate global communications in low Earth orbit. And the technology has gotten to the point where you can do that. You know, it's like a cell phone signal. You know, when you drive around in a cell phone, you can go from one cell to another and the system

• 20:17Speaker 02

  hands it from one, hands your phone call from one cell to another cell seamlessly. Now, these, you know, these spacecraft are going in English units, it's over 17,000 miles an hour, and they're handing, handing the communication signal from one to another. It's really amazing.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  The number of satellites that allow us to do what we do was kind of put into scope. I did a USO tour to the Space Force Base in Greenland at Thule a couple of years ago.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  What time of year were you?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  I mean, it didn't matter. It was Greenland.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  You'd have to kill me.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  It was, it was so, well, it was winter because it was cold and it was dark. It was dark the whole time we were there. And two, I mean, two things that I walked away with, a thing on my list, you're never allowed to have your own schedule when you go on these USO tours, nor should you, I guess, you're giving your time. But I really wanted to see the Greenland Telescope, which is part of the event, Horizon Telescope. And so I like DM'd the folks who were working on it directly. I found out who they were, followed them on Instagram. They were gracious and excited that I was coming. And so

• 21:22Speaker 02

  As Carl Sagan said all the time, when you're in love, you want to tell the world. They wanted to show you their equipment, right?

• 21:29Speaker 01

  It was very cool. They wanted to show me the equipment and they were from all over the world. I mean, these, these, these incredible scientists. But the second thing that I saw, I did, you know, worked in government years ago, no longer have a clearance. So I couldn't see everything. But it seemed like one of the big purposes of Space Force, especially at that base, was to track satellites all over the world and make sure that they don't crash into each other.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Huge problem.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  And I was like, this is crazy. And of course, I mean, when you think about it, exactly what you said, the fact that you can, you know, you can listen to everything, no matter where you're in the world. I mean, how do we think on my phone, telling me which subway line to take and knowing where I am and whether I'm changing trains, like all of that is because of all of this. You've also spent some time at a Space Force base, Colorado, right? Last year?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I went to Butler, yeah.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  So is that the same, are these big concerns that, is that why Space Force exists?

• 22:21Speaker 02

  It is the concern-est of concerns. And so you hear it expressed different nouns, but Kissler, a guy named Kissler did this analysis, the Kissler effect, the Kissler syndrome, the Kissler catastrophe, where he pointed out, when you start running these spacecraft into each other, you'll create orbital debris on a global scale that you cannot clean up. This is trying to catch a bullet with a bullet, as the saying goes. And you just can't, I mean, almost certainly cannot. And every year at science fairs, people come up with the giant nets and, but it's just a huge concern. And so, were you around

• 23:05Speaker 02

  when People's Republic of China Army?

• 23:10Speaker 02

  Shot down one of their own satellites.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  This was literally my next question for you. I was around for it and I remember it being shocking, at least in some of the astronomy blogs that I read. And then so just this danger of can it pierce the space station? Will it affect other satellites? What was that about?

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Well, they were showing off is my understanding.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  That we could do this. We could shoot down satellites. We could shoot down your satellites. So you better have a treaty with us. You better not presume we're not a spacefaring nation with extraordinary technical capability. Okay. So in response to that, you may remember the US shot down its own satellite, this UCARS, which was an acronym, Upper Atmospheric Something Something Research System. The acronyms just take over. Like the word, even the word NASA is a word now. It's not an acronym for many people. National Air and National Space Administration.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  So the Chinese shot down a satellite kind of as a display of power. What happened next?

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Along this line, then the US shot down its own satellite to show this is how you do it. You don't make a mess. You shoot it down, you know, carefully. And I just remember this, that it was shot down from a missile on a ship at sea, a US ship at sea. And they couldn't shoot it down sort of same day because the ocean was too rough. They didn't want the initial trajectory of the missile to be messed up by the the motion of the ship.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  And I just remember thinking, okay, the Cold War will be, once the hot war starts, it'll be really good as long as the ocean is calm. Like this is serious business. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  I mean, so then militarization is still, it sounds like a major aim. You're basically describing war games in space right now.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Well, sure. But what is your?

• 25:21Speaker 02

  What's the name of the podcast?

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Here we go again.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Yes. So there was an anti ballistic missile treaty.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Long about 1968 because people realize this is not winnable, man. If we start throwing weapons, this expression is so called mutually assured destruction, MAD. You can't do this. If everybody's in on it, then we can take a meeting. If you pretend that it's a winnable situation, then you're just going to keep escalating. And this was something that Carl Sagan and the guys in the 1970s and 80s talked about all the time. Okay, let's have a treaty. Gee whiz, man. And then if we start blowing up or knocking apart satellites in space. I worked at a company that was involved in the KKV, the kinetic kill vehicle. You just run a satellite into another satellite and have it shatter.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  It's not winnable. Let's have a treaty. And yet it's come all the way back around. People are talking about warfare in space, weapon, putting weapons in space. The ultimate high ground. And man, it would be much better if everybody got along.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  It's just, it is not a winnable thing. And this thing in Ukraine is what I like to call the extended dance mix of World War II. It's the same bunch of people fighting over the same land. And it's a land war in Europe, just like we had in my parents' day. And everybody got together and resolved that. But right now,

• 26:54Speaker 02

  it's not clear that everybody's getting together to resolve it this time.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  So things are repeating themselves. The one, is it fair to say the one big difference is the role of billionaires in the private space? Sector that didn't exist in the 80s?

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yes, you're right. But with that said, you know, it's government investment in weapons that.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  You know, the Space Force goes back and forth all the time about which rocket company to use and who to sign contracts with and all that stuff. But that aside, Cal.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  The reason we love space exploration is it brings out the best in us.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  We solve problems that have never been solved before. But on the way, people realize the extraordinary nature of planet Earth, that we live on this extraordinary world that is but one world in this literally unimaginable vastness of creation. Nobody can really imagine how big the universe is, how big, how many galaxies there are and how many planets there must be. And this leads us to the two deep questions. Where did we come from? And are we alone in the universe?

• 28:15Speaker 02

  And I say all the time, if you meet somebody who says they've never wondered that, they are lying to your face.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  You know, obviously, all of us have thought about the philosophical part, the exploration part, the part about whether, you know, how it is possible that we're here. And the idea that you can't wrap your head around the infinite nature of all of these galaxies.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  So there's three things that keep me in this game. First of all, I want to explore. I claim that our ancestors who did not have the drive to explore are not our ancestors. But guys, if you had a tribe where the men and women did not want to go over the hill to see what's on the other side, they got outcompeted by the people who did want to go over the hill and see what's on the other side, the other valley, the other resources and what have you. So I claim that's deep within us. Then the other thing is, I want to find evidence of life on another world. I want that to happen while I'm alive.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  So the places to look are Mars, and this is, I'm talking about evidence of life. So it'd probably be the equivalent of fossil bacteria locked in the mud rocks of an ancient river basin on Mars. Stranger still, though? Near the equator of Mars, maybe there's some really salty slush under the sand and there are Martian microbes, Mars microbes, still doing their thing, like alive, things that we could fly with spacecraft. I mean, it's extraordinary. Then the other place right now is Europa, the moon of Jupiter, where there's twice as much ocean water as Earth has. If you have ocean water for four and a half billion years, is there something

• 30:06Speaker 02

  alive on Europa? It's amazing a question. Then the other thing, the third thing, is do not want to get hit with an asteroid.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  It's a real thing. It's not just science fiction. In 2029, nobody's talking about it much yet, but oh, we will be. Apophis, name for Egyptian god of chaos and anxiety. It's gonna come not closer to the moon. It's gonna come closer than the geosynchronous satellites on Friday, the 13th of April, 2029. People are gonna be talking about it. And so we want it, Planetary Society, we want it to be a dress rehearsal.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  For international cooperation on deflecting an asteroid, or so-called mitigating the effects of an asteroid. If you knew exactly or pretty much where it was gonna land, you could get everybody out of the way, you know. But if it's gonna land in Paris, like, that would be bad. Like, you get everybody out of the way, but you still crushed a major international city.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  How far out would we know where it's gonna land, if it is gonna land?

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Oh, this is the dark art, my friends. No, so 30 years would be really good. And right now, I don't know how serious these people are, but right now, there's an effort to cut NASA's funding overall by 25%.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Half or more of the science budget, so called science mission directorate, SMD, within NASA. So that is not in anybody's best interest. That is short sighted and not being able to find asteroids using the Neo Survey or Earth Object Survey Mission and other ground based telescopes, coordinated systems is you don't want to stop doing that.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Well, that's that was sort of the the big question I had for you, obviously, as as a planetary society member, and you should all join. The advocacy that is around funding for NASA and funding for STEM and all things astronomy and exploration related, they were always impressive to me. Even as a kid, I went to space camp when I was in like sixth grade and I was that nerd, right? And you get this sense of like, oh, there are all of these different, you know, when NASA was set up, it was purposely set up in different places around the country so that funding would be sustained, right?

• 32:38Speaker 02

  That's it was done on purpose. Yeah, there's in NASA center spread all over the country. It is inherently inefficient. But that's not a bad thing in this case.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  For folks who don't know, that's because Congress ideally sets and decides and eliminates funding according to what they think their priorities should be. And so distributing NASA facilities around the country assures that there are going to be jobs in particular communities and there there are four votes to fund this stuff, right?

• 33:05Speaker 02

  And there's almost not a single county in the United States that does not have a connection to NASA.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, the one that doesn't have too many is Nebraska, but it has a few. And a big advocate for NASA is Don Bacon from Nebraska. He's a good guy.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  You just mentioned that that people want to cut the NASA budget, cut the funding budget. A, what percentage of the larger federal budget is it? By the way, big pet peeve of mine, so I can't even imagine how big of a pet peeve this is of yours, this idea that like, why are we wasting money on space when we have all these challenges on Earth? Can you walk us through the reality of what that is?

• 33:44Speaker 02

  That's ancient. That's an ancient concern.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Uh, first of all, uh, you can't stop exploring space. We rely on it, space for all, for, for this phone call or this podcast, we could not do without space assets. The weather you rely on and military situational awareness is all about space. We hived off part of the air force and into the space force because the space concerns became so significant. And so you can't not explore space. And then the other thing is everybody wants to know what's going on on Mars. And then this perception that every kid, everybody in the world has now that Earth

• 34:30Speaker 02

  is this planet that is like Mars, that's like Venus, that's like Saturn, only different and special and remarkable. And how did we all get here? And we've got to be stewards of it and all that. That is a result of space exploration. And if we were to find evidence of life on another world or stranger still, something alive on another world, it would change the course of history.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  Everybody, everywhere would feel differently about being a living thing. Everybody would just feel differently about being alive. Not saying we'd all start driving on the left in North America or something.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  But it would, it would change history and we do it for an extraordinary small fraction of the federal budget. You know, it's, it's barely 0.8% of the federal budget. And then this planetary division within NASA has 9% of that.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Wow, that's miniscule.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  It's just very, very small, uh, fraction of the, of our intellect and treasure. And you ask people on the street, well, how much, how big is the NASA budget? They'll say 10%. They're off by a fact-

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Oh, they think it's that inflated. Well-

• 35:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it is such an important part of what I like to call, and Casey Dreyer, our policy guy, likes to call the American story. NASA is such an important part of the American story. And everybody understands, South Africa has a space program. Vietnam has a space program. Mexico has a space program. Australia has a space program. Because everybody realizes the value of exploring space to your overall national treasure.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  So that's us now. A sky full of satellites, hearts full of hope, and a space program in desperate need of more funding. What's next? Is our future mutually assured destruction or mutually assured cooperation? We'll be back to the future of the space race. Sorry, I had to, after this.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  When we're talking about exploring Mars, whether it's to find, hopefully, life there or elsewhere, is that something that NASA ideally is investing in? Or is it some of these private companies? Because I feel like there's so much conversation now about rare minerals and resources we can harvest from these places. Are they the same conversation or are they different conversation?

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Well, if you're asking me, and I got the impression you were-

• 37:09Speaker 01

  I was.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  I like to remind people, there's a lot of platinum on Earth. When you say, "Let's get an asteroid made of essentially stainless steel, and bring it back somewhere near Earth where we could access it", that is just, it's just a very, very difficult and expensive proposition. More power to you guys, but I'm not writing the check. It's, uh, it's just a very, very difficult problem. And what we advocate for and what I strongly believe in, based on my life experience- Is NASA does things that nobody else can do.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  There is no business case for looking for life on Mars. Unless you know how to say, oh, it's gonna be great. I'm gonna sell theater tickets or something. Well, maybe, but this exploration is done for exploration's sake. To know more about outer space than to know more about ourselves. The more you travel, the more you know about your home. This is the old saying. What's absolutely true about space exploration also. You know, people thought Mars had canals on it. There were Martians running around doing Martian stuff. It turns out it's not the case.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  People thought the Venusians were these great looking people living in a tropical paradise. It turns out to be a deadly hellish place, a hellscape on Venus. And that's where I like to argue that climate change on Earth was discovered on Venus. When especially James Hansen, Dr. Jim Hansen at Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He was looking at Venus and realized what's going on on Venus was happening on Earth. And then all this research came together and the greenhouse effect, especially due to carbon dioxide was international news based on that research.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  So, you know, when we talk about space exploration, it was space exploration that led to the discovery in the modern era of climate change. People exploring other planets realized that we're changing the climate of this planet. And it does, I admit, it does seem incredible. It does, it does not seem possible that the human presence on Earth could change the climate of a whole planet. But we have. And the example from Earth history we like to give you. Is cyanob- uh, blue-green algae, cyanobacteria.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  Where these organisms stumbled on a way to take carbon dioxide out of the air, metabolize it and make oxygen. And it changed the course of planetary history. None of us would be here without this species, or a set of species. And so this bacteria changed the whole planet. So yes, when you have eight going on nine billion humans breathing and burning the atmosphere, you can change the climate of a whole planet. But the other side, as people who used to work in the White House would say, is just spiritually committed to the idea that climate change does not happen,

• 40:39Speaker 02

  that humans are not causing it. Just committed to the idea that it is our manifest destiny to dig up old swamps and burn them. I'm talking fossil fuels.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Do the, I, I, I don't mean to be referring to them as billionaires as, as a pejorative, but the, a lot of these big aerospace and space exploration, space tourism companies are, are run by individual billionaires. Does their, is their involvement in Mars, in space exploration and space tourism and private space flights, like can that interrupt things like climate research in certain places? Or can they work hand in hand? Is it ultimately a good thing that there's that much new stuff?

• 41:26Speaker 02

  You're asking, is it a zero-sum game?

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, basically.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  They're all winners. I mean, just the, while the fraction of the US budget goes to space exploration is quite small.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  The fraction of the billionaires budget might be pretty large, but it's still a small, relatively, compared to the challenge of climate change, it's a relatively small investment, everybody.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  And space assets are going to be involved in addressing climate change. You know, there's MethaneSat, the satellite that's looking at methane from Earth orbit.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  We, right now, there's PACE, this plankton satellite that can tell by the light reflected off the ocean what species of plankton are living in the ocean and how they're getting moved around by ocean currents and how ocean chemistry is being changed by the interaction of the species, plankton, with the salinity in the water and the warmth of the water. And as they're all being studied from outer space, from outer space, people, we're learning these extraordinary things. So, climate change is a big issue with me, but I work professionally in space exploration because I've always had this wonderful passion for knowing our place in space.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Is the solution to invest in escaping Earth, like you hear all these people having that conversation, is that a...

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Okay. The answer for me is absolutely not. Or put another way, are you high? Like, okay, the example to ask yourself is, do you know anybody that goes to live, not goes to explore, goes to live in Antarctica? No, it's too cold.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  And there's not enough to eat for a large population. And nobody's going there to build schools and libraries and stuff. People go there to learn more about Earth's climate systems and ice and species that wander around there, but you're not going to go there to live. And if you want to run this experiment, go there to live and you have to bring your own air.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Because on Mars, there's nothing to breathe. You will notice that immediately, man. If you go to Mars and open the cabin door... You'll suffocate in a few seconds and that would be undesirable. And this whole idea of being a two planet species for the sake of being a two planet species, I am not on board with. Building an exploration base, a science base on Mars where people come and go, I, okay, perhaps, is an extraordinarily difficult problem. And it's not only difficult technically and scientifically, it's very difficult financially. Like, how are you gonna make money doing this is a pretty, uh, it's a tough nut to crack.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  So basically, you're saying no?

• 44:29Speaker 02

  This guy said he wants to go die on Mars, but not on impact.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  Okay, I just don't think he's really thought through how difficult it is to be on Mars. There's no place like home. There's no place like Earth. Space exploration has shown us there is no place like Earth. We have to be stewards of this world. We are all crewmates on Spaceship Earth.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  And it's worth saving?

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Well, if, if you want to stay alive, and a lot of people do, there's a few people I wouldn't mind, am I right? And so you probably have a few people in your world, so, and I might be one of them and all that, but, uh, Earth is extraordinary. There's no other place to live. Let's go.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Thanks, Bill.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Thank you, guys.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Here We Go Again is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snafu Media in association with Kelly & Kelly. Our executive producers are me, Kal Penn, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alyssa Martino, Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Caitlin Fontana is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is our producer and editor. Additional writing from Megan Tan. Our consulting producer is Ramon Borsalino. Tori Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly. Logo by Matt Gosson. Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson, and Megan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn Basner, Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lain Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, and Nikki Etor.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Thanks for listening. See you next week.