StarTalk Radio: Space Chronicles (Part 1)

Why did the US really go into space? Why did the Apollo program end early? Find out when Neil deGrasse Tyson digs into the history of space exploration with Prof. John Logsdon.

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 to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. Today, I'm joined by my co-host, comedian Chuck Nice. Hey Neil. Chuck, are you nice today? I am very nice today, my friend. Are you nice all the time? No, I'm not gonna go that far. Sometimes Chuck is naughty. Exactly. That's when we like him best. There you go. Chuck, I think you're the right age to be my co-host for this. I'm not saying how old I am, but I know how old you are. I'm a space baby. You're a space baby? I'm a space baby. Today, we're talking about the history of space exploration. Right on. And that has a birthday, like anybody does. What's the birthday?

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me think. Would that be July 21, 1969? No, that's the birth of when we stopped going to the moon.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. I love the way you say the birth of when we stopped. Yeah, the birth, that was the beginning of the end. The end of the end. Yes. Of the space program. It wasn't even the end of the beginning. It was the beginning of the end. So when is the actual birthday? Would that be, would that be Luna 2? No, no, Sputnik, for goodness sake. Okay, so it's Sputnik. Of course. Sputnik, if you want to say it right. Well, I have slotted today an interview with Professor John Logstine. He's Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. He's one of the founding, he's the founding director of the Space Policy Institute there. Cool. And he's one of the world's experts on the history of space exploration. So I just had to get, I just had to extract all I could out of him. Very distinguished.

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He came to my office for it, and let's get right to some of those clips. Sounds good. And then we can react when they return. So this first clip, I asked him about the origins of the space age. Let's see what he says.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  The origins of the space age go, I mean, there was a Russian, Silcoski, a German, Oberth. These are famous, these are key people. In the early 20th century. Early engineers. Yeah. Did we have one of those? And we had Robert Goddard. Robert Goddard, good, okay. So, I mean, there were traditions of thinking about space in all of these countries. And then rocket clubs, space clubs, in all of these countries. So Russia, Germany, America. Yeah. Okay. World War II led to the development of a functioning rocket. The V2. The V2. But it was used as a missile, not a rocket. Right. And after World War II. Because missiles are the first things human beings think to do with rocket power. Right. Is blow somebody else up. It's long-range artillery. Okay.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Um, so the Germans, obviously, were defeated. Von Braun and his team moved themselves at the end of the war from Prussia, northeastern Germany, to Bavaria in order to surrender to the United States and not Russia. So had they surrendered to Russia, we would have had nobody. We would have had a few people. The people that started Jet Propulsion Lab were our rocket scientists. One of the NASA centers, Jet Propulsion Lab, okay. Now, but not then. It was an Army center. And they were doing rocketry. So Von Braun said to the US, "You will let me realize my dreams to go to the stars." So he didn't trust the Russians? No, he didn't trust the Russians. Why not? Russians had a fine space program. But they were nasty people.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  If you say so yourself. The aristocracy, and Von Braun was very much Prussian aristocracy, knew well what's happening to the German population. He had insider information in that relationship. Get out. Okay. So the Russians came in later. Even though we were sworn enemies with the Nazis, he still preferred us to surrender to. Yes. Presuming that he wouldn't be put on trial. They didn't put him on trial in Nuremberg. No, there was a very special operation called Operation Paperclip to move all these people, more or less illegally, into the US, give them special status. Bypassing all the war crime trials and all the rest of this. All of that. Operation Paperclip. Yep. Well, how quaint.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Look at that.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Fascinating stuff.

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  I have learned something.

• 4:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's what that's what we do. That's the motto of StarTalk. Learn something for a change.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Learn something for a change. What I just learned there was it pays to be really smart to the point where you can get away with war crimes.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, basically, even your enemy wants a piece of your mind.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because if you were that good, I mean, just think of the V2 rocket in Nazi Germany. This rocket, I think, is remembered, it gets under remembered for what role it actually played in the history of of everything. You know, it turns out to have not been important strategically. I mean, it was sort of a terror weapon and it would come out of the sky. You wouldn't hear it, you wouldn't know where it was coming from and a whole block would be destroyed. It was hard to aim them because they went so far and they went out of Earth's atmosphere. And if you look at the total casualties from it versus other ways people were killing each other, it was small.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  Pretty ineffective.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, yeah, but it was an exploration in how to drop a bomb from something that was practically in Earth orbit.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  Ah, those Germans, I tell you, they are something else, aren't they?

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ain't they something? So, uh, so, yeah, as, as, as John Logsdon correctly noted, the V2 was a, it was a missile, not a rocket. But the fact that it would leave Earth's atmosphere, travel most of its distance in the vacuum of space and then drop out of the atmosphere told everybody, wait a minute, if we ever go into space, we better look closely at what's going on with this V2 rocket. And that's why all rockets from science fiction movies from the 1950s, what they look like?

• 6:08Speaker 02

  They look like missiles.

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They know, yeah, yes, yes, they look like missiles and they looked specifically like the V2.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  The V2.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They had big fins.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They look like bullets.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was a ladder you climb up into them and that's the only way people could think about going into space because that was the only thing that had any chance of actually accomplishing that.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here we are, humans with the whole universe to explore. And the first thing we think of doing with our possible ways of exploring is like, let's kill some people first.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Well, of course. Of course. I mean, that's human nature, isn't it? I mean, seriously, when we, when we discovered fire, it was discovered by a comedian. Everybody knows that. And the first thing he did was set some other dude's foot on fire.

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is in the comedy journals. You read of, you read of this research, I'm sure. And, you know, most people think of NASA as a civilian agency because they, you know, they got a space station and they're doing science up there. But of course, it was born in wartime.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Born in reaction to Sputnik. I mean, this is.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  It's kind of like the early version of the arms race.

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, essentially. Well, I mean, the arms race was going on.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  The arms race was still going on, but a derivation of the arms race.

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an aspect of the arms race and hence the space race. This is where you get the phrasing space race as a takeoff on arms race, right? And so it's an extraordinary period. And what most people don't know is that the, the Air Force, the Air Force has their own budget for going into space. People said, we don't want war in space. It's already, excuse me. It's like been there, done that. And they don't tell you about it.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how that.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  There's a secret war in space.

• 7:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, well, in terms of what the Air Force sees as needs to protect us from enemies that might want to influence us on the ground or our assets in space. That's the code word for our satellites. Chuck, we got to take a break. And when we come back, more of my interview with John Logston, who is a professor of the history of the space program.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  These missiles, to solve them for the good of all men. There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept. One we are unwilling to postpone. And one we intend to win.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kennedy. Ain't that something?

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a speech, that's a speech for you.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  That's very inspiring. You know what I like most about that speech?

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Uh, is that he said, "There is no strife, there is no prejudice in space, uh, as of yet." In other words, "When we get there, buddy, we're gonna make sure all that crap is there."

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause we're gonna find the, the, the, some, some alien species that will be our slaves.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was a speech given by John Kennedy in Rice Stadium in 1962. And many people remember him saying, "We'll put a man on the moon, return him safely to Earth." That was in a joint session of Congress a, a year earlier.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This speech put it all together.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I chatted with John Logsdon about this and just, so the politics of the space race and Eisenhower, which preceded Kennedy.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And transitioned to Kennedy, how did all that work? I asked him about it, let's check it out.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Sputnik 1 had only one purpose, which was to be in space first.

• 10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apparently they knew that that would matter.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Well, Khrushchev didn't. The Russian leadership was surprised by the world reaction. So was President Eisenhower. Eisenhower's reaction was, "It's no big deal."

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's alone thinking that, apparently.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Uh, well, he and his close advisors.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was Eisenhower's reaction to all this space stuff?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  His first instinct is that this shows we can launch satellites to spy on the Soviet Union.

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a military general, what else could he possibly be thinking? He's not thinking, "Oh, I can explore the universe."

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Well, more than that, he's a veteran of the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. And say, "Never again will we be surprised like that."

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By anything.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  If we have the capability to see what's on the other side, denied areas behind the Iron Curtain, let's do it. We had 13 failures of the first intelligence satellite before the first success. Couldn't do that today.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Eisenhower's a militaristic activity.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  What he wanted to do was, military on one side. And an open civilian program on the other side that the US could show to the world and cooperate with the world. So he had a very sophisticated strategy.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the open side was geopolitical posturing, then. We have peaceful uses of space.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Right. That phrase originated in his administration.

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so NASA gets founded under Eisenhower, 1958.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, but Eisenhower said, "Let's do a modest scientifically driven, open program. Put a person up to see what happens, but I Eisenhower don't think there's much value to human space flight." So at the end of his administration, December of 1960, what Kennedy would do was not at all clear as president.

• 11:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because NASA gets founded and there's no real mission statement for it, right? It's just kind of there.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Well, do everything. Explore space.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do whatever that is.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, be a leading nation in space.

• 11:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Kennedy's up.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  And Kennedy's up.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we're already supposed to lead the world, why do his speeches have any value at all? We're supposed to do that anyway.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Well, because he saw, within three months of taking office, that space was an area of visible achievement, which the Soviet Union was winning.

• 12:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because he takes office January 1961, and Yuri Gagarin goes up April.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  12th, 61.

• 12:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Three months.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Three months later.

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In his face.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Before that, he was very uncertain about what his posture would be. You know, people talk about Sputnik moments. It was really a Gagarin moment that drove the US

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Right. And eight days later, April 20th, after the Bay of Pigs, which kind of reinforced the inclination to do something positive and dramatic, Kennedy wrote a memo and asked his advisors to find him a space program that promises dramatic results in which we could win. And the answer came back, moon.

• 12:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To go to the moon.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Go to the moon.

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was Gagarin in your face.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  That's it. So basically, the United States was shamed into going into space.

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think, and in fact, we don't remember it that way, but that's exactly what it was. We reacted.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  We reacted.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To Russia. And, and I studied carefully, because I have a book recently, The Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. And in it, I try to... Put the stuff on the table and say, you want to remember America as pioneers in this. But in fact, almost every decision we made was reactive to what Russia did or reactive to what Russia said they would do.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. So instead of space, the final frontier, these are the voyages of this. It wasn't that. It was, oh crap, oh Jesus, the Russians are in space. Well, what are we gonna do?

• 13:38Speaker 02

  It was more that.

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly. Thank you for that. That's the history through the lens of Chuck Nice, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, no, but I have to say literally that's what, you know, there's the outward appearances and then there's what's actually going on.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Really the underlying motivation.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because, so I had not appreciated how big a role the Yuri Gagarin step into space was. Because we all remember Sputnik as the birth of anything going into orbit at all. And so you remember the moon landing, right?

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Of course, yeah. I mean.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause you were big.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  I was a kid at that time. I was, I was a kid, but uh, I, I do remember it being a big deal because let me see, what grade was I in? I was young enough where they, I believe they bought in either a television or a radio. I'm not sure.

• 14:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they had TVs, man.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  They did have TVs. I do know that.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, actually it was a big deal to have a TV that was on wheels.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Right. And that's what it was. It was on a, it was on a cart or something.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. That was the thing. You had, there was one cart in the whole school and you had, you had to do it. So it's interesting that the space race would begin in this hysterical reactive way. But then we kind of aligned our ducks and said, let's actually go to the moon.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  So, so do you think that the lack of competition, as it were, right now to do something big in space is really what the problem is with America? Or is it more political?

• 15:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, it's all of the above, but let's find out what role Kennedy played in this now. Because Kennedy was not president when Sputnik was launched. And so like I said, Sputnik.

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go to my, my next clip with John Locke and see what he says.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Kennedy's assassinated, we go to Johnson. What guarantee does anybody have that this epic adventure is going to continue under different leadership?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Well, the first thing to know is that Kennedy wasn't sure what he wanted to do right at the end of his life. People totally forget, he went to the UN, September 20th, 63, and said, "Why not do it together?"

• 15:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Formal proposal to the Soviet Union, and he was serious. So seeing whether there's a possibility of turn Apollo into a cooperative undertaking, was worried about the money, lot of reasons. By his death, though, Apollo became a memorial to a fallen president. And that was the one space priority of Lyndon Johnson, was to finish Apollo.

• 16:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so that actually constrained then, what might have been a broader space program?

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Indeed. Overwhelmingly, the focus was only moon by end of the decade. And there was very little planning, and certainly no money for future programs.

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything after, or even beside that?

• 16:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it became a one-trick pony, really.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they basically wanted to just go like, "Ay, man, it's kind of like a swan song. Let's shoot something up there for Kennedy." You know, like, the way they pour something out for the brothers who ain't here.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, yeah, yeah, usually alcohol, yeah.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's never milk.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Right, "Let's shoot a rocket up there for the president."

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, let's do one, like, do one for the Gipper.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so that's interesting. I don't, I don't believe, I mean, I, you know, Lockston is the historian, not I, and, but doesn't mean I can't have an opinion. I don't think Kennedy believed that Russia would join us in going into space. And knowing that he didn't believe it, he still goes on record for the olive branch offering. Then they say, "No," and he say, "Well, F y'all, we're going in, you know, we're gonna go our own route." And that, that's a way to politically set yourself up.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For reacting to something without looking like the bad guy.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you know your opponent's gonna say, "Screw you."

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're the commies, for goodness sake!

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, this is after the dude hit his shoe on the podium, you know, so...

• 17:24Speaker 02

  "Out good we partner with you capitalist running dog bastards."

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, so I, maybe for the appearances, it looked honest, but I think politically, it was actually a pretty clever move on his part.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  That's pretty brilliant, actually.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you know, there's, you know, after that, there was Johnson, and then of course Nixon comes along, and then we stopped going to the moon. And, you know, all the Kennedy supporters like to blame Nixon for that. But no, it's more, it's more interestingly subtle and complex than that. I love the moon. He made the first really expensive phone call to outer space. He called these dudes at, you know, AT&T set up the phone call. And there's the gap, you know, it takes light time to, you know, radio waves, time to get to the moon and come back, but we'll talk more about that after this break. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. We'll be right back.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I've got nice Chuck Nice here. That's right. He's being nice today, as he is most of the time, but I don't want to see him when he's not nice. No, no one does, to be honest. I even cover the mirrors. That's good. So, today we're featuring my interview clips with John Logstine. John Logstine's an old friend of mine, and he's, he's professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. That's not why we have him on StarTalk. We have him on StarTalk because he's former director of their space, he's founding director of their Space Policy Institute. He's a space historian extraordinaire. Cool. And I write about a little bit of the history of space, but more as an observer,

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  not as the, you know, the academic professor. Professor historian. I'm not the historian. I just observe it and just riff on it. And so, you know, we, we were talking about the Apollo program as a focus of the American space program, and it's what drove everybody. It drove the spending, it said, anything NASA did, it was to get to the moon. Every next dollar they were handed in their budget, it was to get to the moon. Mm-hmm. We need hookers to get to the moon.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  If I don't spend a night with a hooker, I can't think clearly. If I can't think clearly, we can't get to the moon.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you know, so we can ask, well, was it worth it? What are the benefits? Now, people like talking about spinoffs and, you know, I, who doesn't love a good spinoff?

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Everybody loves a good spinoff.

• 20:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, they've got astronaut ice cream.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I prefer mine cold, but if I'm in space, uh, you know, you know what they, they should do? Cause space is cold.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you're not facing the sun, add some milk back to it or water and put it out in space and stir it. Get me some, get my ice cream cone again.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Real ice cream.

• 20:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Hammy, this is room temperature stuff that my saliva reconstitutes. But, um, no, but what it did was it forced us to think about, uh, food, food preservation.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, life support systems. I mean, there's a whole, all the surrounding thought that had to go in astronauts, uh, mental, mental health. What's it like to be cooped up in a, in a tiny little capsule for days and days and days with one other person or two other people? Are you friends? Are you, do you have attitude?

• 20:45Speaker 02

  I call that marriage. Truthfully.

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you get the marriage dudes to tell you, to, to, to help you out. Things like filtering air with carbon dioxide poison, you know, you can be carbon dioxide poisoned if you don't do that right. And so a lot of this was how to make use of materials that you have that you can't swap out. So recycling becomes a big issue in space exploration. If you're not otherwise going to go someplace and, and hew out of the mountainside, uh, materials that you had just consumed en route there. So there's a huge side of this that, that matters.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  So astronauts are like the first hippies.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah, basically. Yeah. Except they had crew cuts instead of long hair. Uh, but I, there's a whole other side of the spinoff that I don't think people talk about, and I've been talking about it lately.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, I was in front of the House of Representatives, members of the House of Representatives recently talking about this very thing. Did you know that here we are in the 1960s, a turbulent decade, it was bloody. Kids were getting shot on campuses with the Cold War in the, in, in Southeast Asia. And I, I mean, a cold war in the world.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a hot war in Southeast Asia, Vietnam.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We were losing a hundred servicemen a week, yet we found time to go to the moon.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Man, you know what's funny is that nothing has changed with what you just said, except that we don't go to the moon anymore.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything you described is happening right now. So that's bad. So that's, so that's bad. So what I found was not only did, is that just a crowning achievement technologically, scientifically, emotionally, but in those years that we went to the moon, you know what happened? And the year plus one year, so from 1968 to 1973, that five, six year period, we created the Environmental Protection Agency. That happened after we saw the picture of Earthrise over the lunar landscape. We went to the moon looking to discover it and we looked back and we discovered Earth for the first time. Yeah, much to the chagrin of Rick Perry.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And all of a sudden, the modern day environmental movement began. Let's find out what, I got another clip with John Lockston, just to see what, did Russia try to go there too? Let's find out.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Russia decided in August of 64 to go to the moon, built moon rockets, built a lander, trained a crew.

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And wasn't their moon rocket more powerful than ours?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  It's just about the same.

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Except it didn't work and ours did.

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Small detail.

• 23:13Speaker 01

  There were four launches of the N1 rocket, four failures.

• 23:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  And we had been to the moon. So the program got canceled, but there was a very real Russian program.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When did it get canceled?

• 23:24Speaker 01

  In 72, I think.

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so we kept going through 72.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apollo 17, they canceled their moon effort.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  72, 73.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then we're done. We're done. We don't even do Apollo 18.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, we had canceled, there were supposed to be 20 Apollos.

• 23:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  20 Apollos.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  And we stopped at 17.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The enemy was defeated.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Well, the problems, problem, but the reality is if you make something a race and you win it, there's no reason to run it over.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, yeah.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  There wasn't a strong scientific rationale. You've won.

• 23:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're done.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  A lot of people in NASA were scared to death of the risks of the program and Apollo 13 showed that.

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We won.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Look at that.

• 24:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Who knew?

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So had they still been at it, we probably would have had Apollo 18, Apollo 19, Apollo 20.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And maybe beyond. So, once again, we were reactive and not proactive. So there is no accounting of the history of this that says, "We are explorers, we are discoverers, that's why we went to the moon."

• 24:21Speaker 02

  We're reactors.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're reactors.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  That's what we are.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are emotional reactors. More when StarTalk Radio continues with my interview with John Logstand, and I got in studio. Chuck Nice, see you in a moment.

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio. Chuck Nice.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My co-host, comedian co-host, and you're tweeting at Chuck Nice.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Comic.

• 25:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Comic.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Funny. I'm a comedian.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You came from a comic strip.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. Chuck Nice Comic.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. I think I follow you.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  It's me and Doomsberry.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Chuck Nice Comic.

• 25:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've been talking about the space program, the space race, and how we won getting to the moon, but we actually had lost almost every other metric of space exploration. Russia had the first satellite, the first living anything, which was a dog, Lika.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  I didn't know that. Now, see, the popular convention is that it was a chimpanzee.

• 25:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no. First thing was a dog. That dog was a mutt running around the streets of Moscow, and they put his behind up there in space with no plans of bringing him down alive. And so all the animal rights says, "That's not right. He didn't have choice." And he didn't, I said, "Look."

• 25:47Speaker 02

  He's alive.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look, I said, "Look, all right, this dude died in space. He is the most famous dog since Lassie."

• 25:55Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. And if you got, they're gonna die anyway, and you're gonna die in space? That's how, instead of hungry on the streets of Moscow? Excuse me?

• 26:04Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how I'm going.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  I'd rather die in space than just be in Moscow. I'm sorry.

• 26:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have said that. It was wrong. So here's what happened. So we get to the moon and we discover Earth for the first time. And in a short period of years, even while there was turbulence, the most, the most violent decade of American history since the Civil War, 100 years earlier, we take the time and the interest after we see Earth, Spaceship Earth, aloft there in the darkness of space. We found the Environmental Protection Agency. We banned DDT. We banned, we set in regulation to get rid of leaded gas. The catalytic converter gets introduced. The whole Earth catalog gets formulated. We saw Earth not as the schoolroom globe would reveal it with color-coded

• 26:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  countries. We saw Earth as nature intended it to be viewed with oceans, land, clouds. On HDTV. That was later. Later nature. Okay, then we stopped going to the moon because the Russians stopped going to the moon. So that's the evidence that we were not explorers. We were just reactors. I like that. We're hu- human reactors. And then, you know, NASA needed another thing to do. And so what do we do next? Uh, let me go with Space Shuttle. Space Shuttle it was. And let's go back to my interview with John Logstine, just to get a sense of that transition and why we did it and what its point was. Check it out.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Nixon made the decision that characterized the program for 40 years, which is to build the shuttle.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  And the shuttle decision also meant we were going to build a space station.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That gave the shuttle something to do.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  They were kind of joined at the hip from the get-go.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And so then the shuttle gets launched and the space station gets initiated under Reagan.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Under Reagan, 1984.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  And basically, that's all we've done in human spaceflight from 1981 to 2011 is fly the shuttle, build the station.

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many shuttle launches were we supposed to have a year?

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Uh, when, when the...

• 28:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, when it was proposed.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  30 to 50.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So one every week and a half?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it became how many a year?

• 28:13Speaker 01

  The most ever was nine.

• 28:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't even know it was even that many.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did it average out about?

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Well, there were 135 flights over 30 years, so...

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, do the math.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. What's that?

• 28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's three to four a year. Three to four a year, yeah.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  It proved to be an experimental craft, a remarkable technical achievement, but an experimental, very touchy, very difficult.

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember in the first launch, the news announced, "America has now launched the most complex vehicle ever to go into space." And they said it with bravado, and I said, "Is that really what you want?"

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Complexity?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  I mean, we on the board said, "Too complex. Replace it with something simpler," which is what's happening.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something blunter, something simpler, something like the Russian, the Soyuz, in spite of the early failures is one of the...

• 28:56Speaker 01

  It's been remarkably reliable for a long time.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it has three moving parts or something. What's with the Soyuz?

• 29:02Speaker 01

  They're all built out of cast iron, I think.

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Iron?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Well, and it's an exaggeration, but it's a very sturdy, robust spacecraft, not a temperamental, pre-modonic.

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like a Lamborghini. You know, when it's working, it's great, but when it's not working, it's in the garage.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so the Russians, it works. That's all. It doesn't look good, it doesn't, it works.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Looks like a bunch of oil drums welded together with a rocket strapped to its back. So, but it works.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It worked. And so, that's what's fascinating to me is the space age gets born in 1957, and we land on the moon, how many years later? 12 years later. We go from no space anything to footprints on the moon in 12 years, and from 1981 to now, what we've been doing is driving around the block. Right? Just, just, there it is. And so, people complain that, "Well, there's not much interest on the manned space," well, they're not actually going anywhere.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they were the ones going to Mars instead of robots, then you know we'd be talking about them. What, you know, what music are they listening to along the way?

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in the interim, we wanted to advance us, at least the science frontier, we sent robots. Let's find out more about robots when we get back to StarTalk Radio.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Radio and we're talking about the history of the space program. Chuck, you're a space baby, right?

• 30:49Speaker 02

  I am a space baby.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  This whole thing started kinda like when I was born. Well, it didn't start when I was born, it ended when I was born, apparently.

• 30:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, there are chapters. There's we're going to the moon and then we're gonna drive around the block.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in all fairness to the shuttle era, it showed that we can like build huge structures in zero G. The space station is the size of a football field. I mean, it's huge.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we can live and work in space, not quite to the numbers originally imagined. In fact, there was a prediction in the 1980s, by the year 2000, 50,000 people will be living and working in space.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Wow, they were just a little bit off.

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Three orders of magnitude off.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There were three on the space station at the time. So there's some failed dreams there, but you can't fault people for wanting to try. And remember, of course, there were two tragic shuttle disasters. We lost Challenger on the way up.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We lost Columbia on the way down. Right? These are the two tricky parts of any mission. And same with flying an airplane.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, it's the same thing when you get on a jet.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take off or land.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Take off and land, that's where all the problems are.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Going 600 miles an hour at 41,000 feet never hurt anybody.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Nope. Not a problem, you don't even know you're doing it.

• 31:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't even know you're doing it. So, by the way, all the while, the scientific community is conducting science. There's always been a fraction, emphasis on fraction, of the NASA budget given to science. The long-term average is about 20 to 30% of its budget has gone to science missions. So in fact, we had, they were like landers on the moon before humans went there. Did you hear about it? No, because we were sending people. See, when people go, you don't pay attention to the robots.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause nobody gives ticker-tape parades to robots.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  And you know, I hear the robots are a little upset about that.

• 32:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact... They might ta- you know, what's the the net in in in the Terminator? Skynet. Skynet might. Skynet might take over, baby. They've been notified, has been duly notified. Rise of the machines, watch out, people. Uh, but there's a long string of missions. We we sent missions to through the 1960s and into the 70s. We sent, um, Explorer 1 was the first US satellite, but we had Mariner, right? And we had, you know, there was Russians went to Venus, uh, and and those were called the Venere spacecrafts. That sounds good. Oh, by the way, the genitive form, the the genitive form of if you're of Venus is venereal. Venereal. Yeah. And but we we said, we're not going there. So we invented like. You keep my shuttle away from your venereal. That's all I'm saying.

• 33:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so we had, so we had sort of missions that went to Mars, robotic missions that were flybys, a couple of landers and Viking, and we have reconnaissance orbiters that photographed the Martian surface. Good stuff. And we continue, not only with rovers, but with telescopes launched into orbit by NASA. And the top of that list would be. Hubble. Hubble, of course. And so what's interesting is, in the face of these disasters, you always ask, oh, that'll end the program because we have seven dead astronauts. But each time that happened, it didn't. Right. The widows and the widowers of the spouses of those who died would stand up

• 33:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  one by one in front of microphone and said, it is a reminder that the frontier is a risk. And often you put your life at risk. Right. But if the act of losing a life meant you should never go further, we would still be in the cave. Exactly. So, I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what every one of them says to a person. It's like you're allowing me to die in vain now. Exactly. That's basically what it comes down to. Exactly, Chuck. That was the perfect, uh, analysis of how all that happened. And so, so basically, the space program not only serves a geopolitical purpose, an emotional purpose, a technological purpose, a scientific purpose, uh, there's also a symbol. It serves

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  as a symbol for who and what we are and who and what we can be. Mm-hmm. Let's find out John Logsdon, who studies this professionally. Let's get his reaction to this notion. Cool.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All things considered, when you add up all the disasters versus the achievements, how do you view that?

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Oh, I think on net, the space program has had multiple great benefits for this country. It's been a symbol, remains a symbol of something we do well. And so when we don't do well, we're surprised and disappointed. I think it is a symbol-

• 35:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's set a performance standard for us.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, of American excellence. You think, what are our symbols of American patriotism? The flag, the bald eagle, and some sort of space image. Human on the moon, shuttle launch, Hubble image. Those are the things that make us feel good about being American.

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, symbols. So let me ask you, what of the whole space program, what rises up in your heart and mind?

• 35:36Speaker 02

  I think I'm most astounded by-

• 35:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just realized, I'm asking a comedian this, so maybe you could be finding the most comedic moment, like when the astronauts, when they tripped on the moon or something.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  I wish I could. No, for me, it's Hubble.

• 35:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 35:49Speaker 02

  To see in such clarity, the places that are unimaginable.

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The universe was brought into our backyard.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Exactly. And I'm still astounded by the pictures that I see.

• 36:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love you for it. You know something? The Hubble images are so extraordinary, even as scientific record of our exploration of the universe, it was so extraordinary that they did not require captions in order for you to embrace all their majesty.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  I know, but I took the liberty of writing some anyway.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you wrote the captions, okay. For me, it was Apollo 8. It was an uncelebrated mission. Well, yes, it was celebrated, but it was the first time we ever left Earth en route to any place else in the universe. They're the, they went to the moon, went around it, photographed Earthrise.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's what birthed our entire environmental movement. It enables humans to care about who we are and what our relationship is to this universe.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  Nicely done.

• 36:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is part one of two parts of StarTalk. We're gonna get back to the space program, but we gotta sign out right now. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Chuck, thanks for being on.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  A pleasure.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk Radio, funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.