StarTalk Live: I, Robot (Part 1)

From Mars to Europa, the human exploration of space is increasingly robotic. Laugh and learn about our mechanical marvels from Neil deGrasse Tyson, Eugene Mirman and their special guests at StarTalk Live.

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.

• 0:21Eugene Mirman?

  Welcome to another evening of StarTalk Live. It is my very great pleasure to bring on the host of StarTalk Radio, ladies and gentlemen, Neil deGrasse Tyson!

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tonight's topic is robots.

• 0:39Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I want to bring out one of the world's experts in robotics. In fact, he's based in New York City. He is one of the co-founders of Honeybee Robotics. Why should you know that name? Because they make robotic tools that fly on rovers that have been to Mars. Give a warm Brooklyn welcome to Stephen Gorvan. Stephen?

• 1:05Eugene Mirman?

  The show wouldn't be complete with just two people who know everything about robots. We need people to be inquisitive and make fun of their knowledge. So it is now my great pleasure to bring on two comics, ladies and gentlemen, from FXX's Totally Biased, Kamau Bell!

• 1:22Eugene Mirman?

  And from Film and Television, Jason Sudeikis!

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we're gonna start off with perhaps the most famous space probe ever, made headlines in the last couple of weeks, Voyager 1. Voyager. Voyager was launched September 5th, 1977. What's special about it is that it was launched with enough energy to careen around Jupiter and Saturn. By the time it exited the solar system, it had enough speed to leave the solar system entirely. And upon doing so, just recently, it actually crossed the border between our solar system and space. The farthest object we have ever sent anywhere, ever.

• 2:11Eugene Mirman?

  I hope it has its papers.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's powered by plutonium?

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're looking at me like, "Yeah, Neil, this one fact you have correct."

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plutonium, by the way, was manufactured in a lab, in a particle accelerator in 1940, and was the next element discovered after the cosmic object known as Pluto was discovered. And so they named the element after Pluto.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  The planet.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The dwarf planet.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  His whole thing is that he ruins the careers of planets.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, that's right. By the way, the two elements before plutonium on the periodic table are neptunium and uranium. So it's Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. So Pluto got an element named after it on false pretense. Did Pluto hurt you as a child?

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, what happened?

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got it named the dwarf planet. You won. You won the battle. Voyager took advantage of a rare alignment to the planets because when you launch a probe, you don't aim for where you want to be, you want to aim for where the object will be when you get there.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  I get that. That's like Magic Johnson to James Worthy. I get that. Magic leads the past, leading the fast break.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't pass to where he is. No, he's gone. He's not gonna be there. It's not even gonna be there.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the Voyager mission took advantage of the gravitational field of Jupiter-Saturn to gain further energy to get out of the solar system. And it took images. We got the best images of Saturn at the time, of Jupiter's red spot, of the moons of Jupiter. One of them is Io, which is tidally torqued by Jupiter and the surrounding moons itself, which makes it hot. You have it in a racquetball, you hit it, so it's warm up the ball. You squeeze it and this heats up the ball. It also heats up planets.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Who squeezed Voyager again? I'm sorry.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm just saying, we got good images of volcanoes on Io from Voyager's trip. Let me ask you something here. Voyager, there's nothing sort of mechanical on it, really. Would you, in your classification, think of it as a robot?

• 4:21Speaker 02

  No. There you go. He just plutoed you.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not a planet, not a robot. We're just crossing them off. Next subject.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Well, wait, the question of what a robot is, is an important one, I think. And I think the simplest definition is that it's a programmable manipulator. Now, I realize that that sounds more like a cross between a computer and my ex-wife. Heyo.

• 4:45Eugene Mirman?

  You're hired! I just got you a writing job on his show.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice!

• 4:51Speaker 02

  But if a machine doesn't do more than a few things, it's not really a robot. That's why the curiosity robot on Mars...

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll get to it, we got a whole segment on that.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Well, I know, but it does many things. When it manipulates things, I think that's what makes it a robot. If it does sort of one things or a few, a short classification of things, then it's an automated spacecraft.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you make things that manipulate things, and the name of your company has robotics in it.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  But that's what robots, I think, do.

• 5:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, you've defined robots to be that, what you make in your company. Is that fair to my toaster? Are you quoting Shakespeare?

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I mean, I like to think of everything that does a task, that you'd otherwise have to do manually, is a...

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Is a Coca-Cola machine, the bottling machine, a robot?

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I bet is...

• 5:34Eugene Mirman?

  The one with the moving arm, and can it make new choices?

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you see, the moving arm one is good. Okay, we could debate that, I don't know.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Is a player piano from the 1920s that can play all different kinds of music on it, and it's a very complicated mechanism, a robot?

• 5:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's a ghost. That's a ghost.

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is true, those keys just move?

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you see the...

• 5:55Speaker 02

  No, it's not a robot. So I'm saying that a robot can do many different things without having to retool it.

• 6:00Eugene Mirman?

  If it could play the piano and was a walk, then I'd be like, "That's a robot."

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, well...

• 6:03Eugene Mirman?

  Sorry to complicate things.

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so then, I have nothing to talk to you about for this whole segment?

• 6:10Speaker 02

  It's okay to call it a robotic spacecraft.

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He said condescendingly.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The reason why you need plutonium on board is plutonium is radioactive, it gets hot, and you take something called a thermoelectric coupler... We've seen Back to the Future, we know, yeah, I get you, we know. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, okay? You gotta go 88 miles per hour, yeah, we get it. So you get that, and then you generate electricity from that. Yeah, from the clock tower, we know this. Why doesn't it use solar panels? Because it is so far away, the sun is no brighter than just a slightly brighter little star in the night sky, it's ineffective as an energy source. So, therefore, you gotta give it an energy source that it takes with it, and there you have your plutonium. And we're running out of plutonium in the world.

• 6:55Eugene Mirman?

  What?

• 6:57Eugene Mirman?

  Really? You're telling me you can't make plutonium at the Museum of Natural History with all your knowledge and access to bones?

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right now, there's 36 pounds of plutonium in the world. That's it. That's it.

• 7:08Eugene Mirman?

  Can't we steal it back from terrorists?

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did the doc have? That was plutonium, wasn't it?

• 7:14Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah, so yeah, we can get it for Christopher Lloyd. So he's one source.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Well, no, he stole it, you know, he, I mean, that's a whole thing.

• 7:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So from the Libyan terrorists.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  You know, there was a lot of protest when that plutonium showed up at Cape Canaveral to be launched into space, because people considered that was dangerous. And there was a lot of preparations made for the protests that were gonna happen for the launch, and one person showed up for the protest. And there was a SWAT team there to deal with it, you know what happened? They beat the crap out of that guy.

• 7:46Eugene Mirman?

  Good.

• 7:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 7:47Eugene Mirman?

  That's what he gets for trying to stop the future of progress.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was in Florida?

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was he a black guy?

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just trying to get to the other angle, it could have been that.

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's what makes Voyager sort of culturally special. We knew in advance it was gonna leave the solar system. And if anybody was gonna capture this after it left the solar system and try to ask questions about it, it would be some intelligent aliens. So why not put messages on board that they could then decipher, and then maybe they could learn about us? And so, included in that messaging is like the return address of where the solar system is in the galaxy.

• 8:40Eugene Mirman?

  Fools.

• 8:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, at the time, that really sounded like a good idea, but now, you don't give your address to strangers of your own species. And we're giving the address of-

• 8:50Eugene Mirman?

  You do if you like to party.

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Voyager, after it passed Neptune, was instructed to perform a task.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They turned it around, looked back to the inner solar system, and photographed Earth.

• 9:08Eugene Mirman?

  A selfie.

• 9:12Eugene Mirman?

  Nice.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't thought about that. It still had the duck lips.

• 9:16Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 9:18Eugene Mirman?

  And the moon is photobombing, it's a whole thing.

• 9:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dead moon. So, this image led Carl Sagan to write a very famous book called The Pale Blue Dot. And in it, he waxes poetic about our presence in space. He talks about, as you stare upon this pale blue dot, barely a pixel in the image. This is Earth, something we're so accustomed to seeing with mountains and valleys and craters and hills and oceans. It's big, it is not even a pixel in this image. And he says, "Everyone you've ever known, read about, heard about, lived out their lives on that speck." And all the wars that are fought over the temporary command of one plot of land versus

• 10:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  another, all happened on this speck. Everyone who contributed to what we call history, lived out their lives on that dot. And so it's humbling, it's the cosmic perspective.

• 10:15Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. There's a great Indigo strain that'll make you feel that way, too.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that like-

• 10:22Eugene Mirman?

  I've heard, I've heard.

• 10:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've heard. Exactly. Also, on this ship, there's a golden record. It's gold-plated. The set of sounds on it are called murmurs from Earth. And we put together a sequence of them, let me just, I got a crib sheet here.

• 10:39Eugene Mirman?

  Is it like a romantic mix CD, like we got Olivia Newton-John? Yeah, here we go.

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it does not contain Olivia Newton-John.

• 10:48Eugene Mirman?

  She didn't travel back in time to send her music to space? Where it belongs.

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's got greetings in 55 languages, recorded on the sidewalk of the UN. People of all these languages came up and they recorded greetings in their native languages.

• 11:01Eugene Mirman?

  So literally aliens can come to Earth, say hello in 55 languages, and then murder people? And then blow up the White House? Literally 55 nations will let their guard down, maybe more.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, they know how to say hello, they must be friendly.

• 11:16Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh. Let's check it out.

• 11:19Eugene Mirman?

  Imagine you're in outer space and this is what you're hearing, you don't know what humans are.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Ayvenikos prosfilus elelithamen filoi.

• 11:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's Greek.

• 11:30Speaker 04

  Guaivai houma? Juk guaivai pingan jianhang fai lo.

• 11:35Eugene Mirman?

  Cantonese.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cantonese.

• 11:36Speaker 05

  Ta hia tuna lila astiqaa fin nu jum. Ya layta yajmaunas zaman.

• 11:42Eugene Mirman?

  Who is that?

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Arabic.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  Hola y saludos a todos.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Duh.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Salvete quicumque estis. Bonam erga vos voluntatem abemus.

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a Pope.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  Et pacem per astra ferimus.

• 11:55Eugene Mirman?

  We're assuming this is greeting.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  Konnichiwa, o genki desuka?

• 11:58Eugene Mirman?

  Said very calmly.

• 12:01Speaker 06

  Hello from the children of planet Earth.

• 12:05Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was Jeffrey Dahmer. That was a young Jeffrey Dahmer.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earthquake.

• 12:23Eugene Mirman?

  Is this one Spanish?

• 12:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How close is cousin right there? That's embarrassing.

• 12:43Eugene Mirman?

  The tractor in a river?

• 12:49Eugene Mirman?

  I would love it if this is just the guy from Police Academy.

• 12:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Morse code.

• 12:56Eugene Mirman?

  They sent Michael Witzler to space. They make the sound of machine guns to scare away enemies.

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're missing the Morse code. Too late.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The train followed by plane.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  F-111.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Saturn V rocket.

• 13:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has the time delay between the countdown and when the microphone catches it. You went somewhere and they made you listen to this and you didn't know about their culture, you would think they were insane.

• 14:09Eugene Mirman?

  98 sounds.

• 14:12Eugene Mirman?

  Enjoy.

• 14:15Eugene Mirman?

  One of them's a tractor in a river, why?

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is followed by a kiss.

• 14:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, alright. It was a quick kiss. Yeah, they're just friends.

• 14:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beethoven. Is it the Beethoven, this is the disco one?

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was 77, right?

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And finally...

• 14:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back to the Future, just like I was saying.

• 15:04Eugene Mirman?

  There it is.

• 15:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a sampling from the sound of the convoy. So, you might wonder, where is Voyager going? It will take 40,000 years for it to come near the nearest star to it. And so, we really still haven't gone anywhere. It's comforting, yeah. It's headed towards a star in the constellation Camilo Pardalis. Camilo Pardalis is the giraffe. Of the 88 constellations, one of them is a giraffe. This is the point it starts to feel like science is just making stuff up. Yeah. It's headed towards this place named this thing. You don't know that it's named that thing.

• 15:45Eugene Mirman?

  We sent Voyager to meet a giraffe in outer space.

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're gonna stick by that story?

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gonna come within 1.6 light years of a star called Gleasy 445. So there you have like highlights from Voyager. It's our robotic emissary that has gone the farthest. And we're calling it robot, just wanna say.

• 16:05Eugene Mirman?

  I'm with Steven, I don't know. Taping Chuck Berry to a spaceship is not necessarily a robot.

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it is. Admittedly impressive. It was duct taped to the, yes, that's what it was. By the way, the aliens are giving instructions on how to play this phonograph record. How to make the needle and how to then retrieve the sound from it.

• 16:22Eugene Mirman?

  Oh yeah?

• 16:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah.

• 16:24Eugene Mirman?

  That's kinda condescending.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what if we affect other cultures? With American rock and roll? Oh, by the way, it wasn't just Beethoven and Chuck Berry. It was music from all around the world. It was like Aboriginal music and mountain music. So there's been some debate about whether it really left the solar system. Because Earth's gravity extends beyond that. And it hasn't really fallen into the next star yet. So if you're a gravity person, no, it hasn't left the solar system. If you're a gravity person.

• 16:55Eugene Mirman?

  And what if you're not a gravity person?

• 16:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, if you're a planet person... Then you're floating. If you're a planet person, you would say left the solar system after it crossed the orbit of Neptune.

• 17:04Eugene Mirman?

  Oh.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just a matter of how you wanna define...

• 17:06Eugene Mirman?

  Solar system.

• 17:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your solar system.

• 17:08Eugene Mirman?

  How do you define it? I'm gonna go by your take.

• 17:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like the definition they used. The sun is losing mass every moment of every day. And it's, we call it the solar wind, it's charged particles extending out...

• 17:18Speaker 02

  So isn't it where the solar wind heads the other direction? Is it the end of the heliopause?

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, so the solar wind goes out in every direction. And it keeps going out. And there's a point where the sun's field that controls what these particles are doing becomes indistinguishable from the galactic magnetic field. And when you cross out of us into that, you will no longer be able to use the particles as an indicator of which way you came from.

• 17:45Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all.

• 17:46Eugene Mirman?

  So you can't use solar particles to get back to Earth if you happen to be far, far deep in space?

• 17:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd have to use some other cues, but not that.

• 17:53Eugene Mirman?

  What would be some cues, like a rope?

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You say, "Well, there's the sun right there."

• 17:56Eugene Mirman?

  You see the sun.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'll be your closest star to you.

• 18:00Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, okay.

• 18:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so you'd still see... Would Apple Maps still work that far out?

• 18:04Eugene Mirman?

  Does it work here?

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, we're done with Voyager. When we come back, more on robots. Robots on Mars.

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, now let's talk about the robots that Stephen will agree are robots, because he builds these.

• 18:40Eugene Mirman?

  I gotta say, he might be right about what's a robot, because of his robot knowledge.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Nothing worse than a nerd bully.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right now, I've lost count. There are dozens of robots and telescopes orbiting the Earth, on their way to planets, orbiting planets, and, basically, it's humans attacking the solar system. And in particular, the ones that typically get the most press are the ones that go to Mars. Because Mars, if you didn't already know, has, basically, a 24-hour day. It has a tipped axis, like Earth's axis. Mars has polar ice caps, like Earth. Mars has evidence of running water that had been there long ago. So Mars captures our imagination like no other planet. And the most recent rover there is Curiosity. And Curiosity, beautiful, is the size of an SUV. It had very complicated landing mechanisms.

• 19:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They couldn't land this one with airbags. Previous rovers were small enough that you surround it with airbags. It just drops out of the sky, bounces, the airbags deflate, and it goes running on its way. This thing had joists and retro-rockets and drogue chutes and all manner of things to slow the damn thing down so it could land safely and softly, so that it can then conduct its tasks. Before this, we had a pair of twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. One of them, that launched 10 years... One of them is still going. Which one is still going? You remember which one?

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Opportunity, 3,500 days.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 20:10Eugene Mirman?

  Nice.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Opportunity, those are much smaller rovers.

• 20:14Eugene Mirman?

  Do we get information from it? What does it do?

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 20:16Eugene Mirman?

  Just doing donuts, right? Just peeling out, you know?

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So curiosity descended through the atmosphere in six minutes of terror.

• 20:26Eugene Mirman?

  A beautifully executed terror.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Wonderful engineering achievement.

• 20:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to get the thing down on the... Finally, engineers had a day in the sun.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  They just said, "We're gonna just plop this thing down." And they optimized the mass of the rover that way. They didn't have to develop a lander.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And plus, if you drop it down, you can land with more precision. You can land exactly where you want from the surveillance photos.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  And we landed about two and a half kilometers close to the center of where we wanted to land. Two and a half kilometers.

• 20:50Eugene Mirman?

  Which is very, very good.

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's good if you went 100 million miles, yeah.

• 20:54Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, if I was like, "I'm at your house, but I'm two and a half kilometers away." They'd be like, "You're really, really off." But if I went to another planet, they'd be like, "Not bad."

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's that Apple Maps problem again.

• 21:07Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  You know, we lost the landing location of Opportunity. We didn't know exactly where it landed. And Mike Malin, one of the members of the science team, suggested we spell out with two wheelies and make a drawing.

• 21:20Eugene Mirman?

  Spell something?

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that we could see it from orbit. Because we have spacecraft going around the planet.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you do that?

• 21:25Speaker 02

  No, because we found it before we were able to do it.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would have been so fun. So you built a tool that was on Spirit. On Spirit or Opportunity, both of them, right?

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Well, they're twin rovers, so the tools are identical. So we abraded the rocks on Mars so that you could get below the surface of the rocks so that you could reach virgin rock material.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's wrong with the surface of the rock?

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Because there's dust and dirt on the rock. And you'd just be looking at aeolian material that's been blown around the planet. You wanna look inside the rock to get a window into the history of the rock and the climate.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aeolian. That's windswept.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Windswept.

• 22:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So abraded, it means you're like grinding it, basically.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  We grind into the rock with diamonds.

• 22:06Eugene Mirman?

  What's an example of some of the things that you would get from grinding it?

• 22:10Speaker 02

  We found a rock at Gusev Crater where Spirit, the first rover, landed. That was volcanic rock. But there were veins in it, and these were minerals. And we found out that there were water-deposited minerals. So we concluded that there had to have been water at Gusev in liquid form.

• 22:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At some time in the past.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  At some time in the past. And of course, life is usually associated on the Earth with liquid water.

• 22:31Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's always associated on Earth.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 22:34Eugene Mirman?

  So there might have been gazelles on Mars.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Our mantra for NASA and the Mars Extraterrestrials Program is to follow the water.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Follow the water. You had an acronym for your tool. What was it called?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  RAT.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The RAT. So the R stood for what?

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Rock abrasion.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rock abrasion.

• 22:47Eugene Mirman?

  Tool?

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Tool.

• 22:50Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. Can I have a job naming stuff?

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how deep in would it go? How deep in?

• 22:55Speaker 02

  10 millimeters typically.

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, just enough to get it to get out?

• 22:58Speaker 02

  Just to get past what we call the rind of the rock.

• 23:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And do you have anything on Curiosity?

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Curiosity, we have a similar tool. And we also have a sample manipulation system. Because samples now on the Curiosity rover, Mars Science Laboratory, MSL, are taken by the robot arm and deposited in a very sophisticated chemical laboratory where we can identify organic compounds that might...

• 23:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're reaching in, scooping up soil and putting it in this...

• 23:23Speaker 02

  And cuttings from drilling into rock.

• 23:26Speaker 07

  Did you say 10 millimeters?

• 23:27Speaker 02

  10 millimeters.

• 23:28Speaker 07

  So like, that's an inch, yeah?

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Half an inch.

• 23:31Speaker 07

  Oh man, sorry, a centimeter? Is 10 millimeters a centimeter?

• 23:35Eugene Mirman?

  It's definitely 10 millimeters.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  25 millimeters to the inch.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Wait, so...

• 23:43Eugene Mirman?

  How thick would you say this piece of paper is? Is that a millimeter?

• 23:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nooo, way less than a millimeter.

• 23:48Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah! Okay, let's do two pieces of paper.

• 23:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 23:52Eugene Mirman?

  I'm gonna get it right with these pa... okay.

• 23:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so 25...

• 23:55Speaker 07

  Best radio ever.

• 23:57Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 23:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  2.54 centimeters

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is an inch exactly.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:03Eugene Mirman?

  That's great news.

• 24:04Speaker 07

  But I'm talking about millimeters. How many millimeters are in a centimeter?

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  25.4

• 24:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  millimeters is an inch.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  So it's a little less than half an inch. But that was enough to get to virgin rock.

• 24:12Eugene Mirman?

  You don't want to talk about centimeters, do you?

• 24:14Speaker 07

  I imagine, yeah. It has to be a virgin for it to feel anything. I would say, that's not very deep. That's not very far into the rock.

• 24:20Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, but it's tough for it to be like, fresh and new.

• 24:22Speaker 07

  Is it really?

• 24:23Eugene Mirman?

  That's what I say.

• 24:24Speaker 07

  That's crazy. We're talking that much, you know?

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's not soil where stuff could have seeped in. It's a rock.

• 24:29Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 24:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Completely solid.

• 24:31Speaker 07

  Okay, yeah.

• 24:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're just cutting off...

• 24:33Speaker 07

  I'm thinking it's dust. I got you.

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, no, no, no.

• 24:35Speaker 07

  You're right.

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you scooped up a fossil, you wouldn't even know that it was life because it was fossilized. Isn't that right? You'd be grinding up the fossil, and then analyzing ground-up fossil, and say there's no life on Mars.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Well, you're pointing out a very good problem with these rovers. You know, compared to sending-

• 25:09Speaker 08

  Well, you're designing, you, you-

• 25:11Speaker 02

  I know, but compared to sending-

• 25:12Speaker 08

  Neil, be nice, he's a guest at your thing, be nice.

• 25:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're grinding up all these state fossils.

• 25:17Speaker 08

  We ain't getting paid, calm down, brother, just let them just-

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ain't doing nothing over there with your bare robots.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  If you were to send a geologist-

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're just beating up fossils.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  A geologist to the Mojave Desert, you know, in a helicopter. He'd get out, and he'd walk over to a high-rise of land, and he'd look at the most interesting rock in the distance, and he'd walk over to it, he'd take out his rock hammer and break it open, and take out his loop and look at it. That takes maybe a minute and a half. In the beginning, with Spirit and Opportunity, we could do the same thing, but it took us four days to do that.

• 25:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you actually want to go there?

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Well, that means that robots do not approach the capability of human beings. Takes us four days to do something a geologist could do in a nan-

• 25:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, in speed, yeah, but you can analyze it there.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  You can't duplicate- We have brought a very sophisticated laboratory with Mars Science Laboratory in Mars. More than sophisticated in that anything's been brought to another planetary body before, but it still pales in comparison to a laboratory in Earth.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all you have to do is go to Mars, bring stuff back?

• 26:13Speaker 02

  That's right, and that's what we're doing now.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go.

• 26:16Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. I'm in.

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what do you mean you're doing it now? You're not doing it now.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Well, I'm part of a group that's already getting ready for the 2020 mission that will-

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Illuminati.

• 26:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, is this a funded mission?

• 26:29Eugene Mirman?

  It's a mission called Obamacare.

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, is this a funded mission in 2020?

• 26:35Speaker 02

  It's as close as it can be to a funded mission. I can tell you that there's money now for developing the conceptual design for the 2020 mission, which will not only-

• 26:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have design money? You don't have launch money and-

• 26:46Speaker 02

  No, no, but it's looking very good.

• 26:48Eugene Mirman?

  Maybe a seven-billion-dollar Kickstarter, where people get also a CD of sound from Spacex.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  But the 2020 rover, if it happens, and I think it will.

• 27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You pray that it will, yeah.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  I pray that it will. It will develop probably a cache to gather samples.

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Handpicked by people on Earth.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  That's right, and there will be like a triage system onboard the rover. To pick the best samples, store them, and come and get that cache, and yet another mission.

• 27:18Eugene Mirman?

  Another mission to retrieve it, or it'll come back to Earth?

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Another mission to retrieve it.

• 27:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now you have to get funding for that mission, too.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Think about it, if you're going to, well, that's true, but if you're gonna return a sample from Mars, you have to bring a rocket to Mars.

• 27:31Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless you converted the water in the soils into rocket fuel, and then build a rocket ship and send it back.

• 27:38Eugene Mirman?

  Wow.

• 27:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get on that, Neil.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Spoiler alert.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we got other robots out there. We've got New Horizons mission, that's a mission to Pluto, by the way.

• 27:49Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so you know, and I'm down with that.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Okay, alright.

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who names these things New Horizons? It sounds like a retirement center.

• 27:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wouldn't you name it like, "Space Laser 50 Million"?

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It used to be called... "The Future of Everything". It used to be called the Pluto Kuiper Express, and that was happening right around the time when Pluto was getting demoted. And the people who were tooling the spacecraft were worried that if Pluto got demoted, the Pluto Kuiper Express would somehow get its funding affected. And so, it got a whole fresh makeover, basically.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  New Horizons. Die in peace.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So NASA has a robot called Robonaut 2. Do you know about this robot?

• 28:30Speaker 02

  I do.

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that robot tweets at @astrorobonaut. And this is a robot that looks like a human to do what a human would do in a previously human-designed task. Now, when you say "looks like a human", do you mean like, "looks like a human"? You know?

• 28:46Speaker 02

  It's an anthropomorphic design. You would look at it as at least looking like a moving mannequin of some kind.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because think of it... Like a movie mannequin?

• 28:53Eugene Mirman?

  But you would not be fooled at a restaurant. You wouldn't be like, "This is my friend Jack", and they'd be like, "Jack's a robot, sir".

• 29:00Speaker 07

  I wouldn't say that. If the person introduced the robot to me as a human, I would deal with it that way, because I don't know what this person's deal is.

• 29:09Speaker 07

  I don't want to judge.

• 29:10Eugene Mirman?

  You gotta learn to accept people.

• 29:11Speaker 07

  I mean, I'll leave there, I'll go to the bathroom, I'll go, "You'll never believe this shit I'm dealing with at this table."

• 29:18Eugene Mirman?

  But, so it looks barely human, what does it do? When you say "human" task, do you mean like it makes breakfast?

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just want to clarify, I just want to clarify. So, the old days, you'd make a robot, and a robot in our mind was something that looked human. And then we realized, we can make something better than a human to do specific tasks, so why anchor it to the form of a human?

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Well, that's right, maybe make a human that could crawl across a truss work on a space station should be more like a bug than a human.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, than a human, for example. And so, there might be some tasks that we duplicate with human motion that we use this robot to do.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  That's right, part of the idea, I think, is that if the astronauts are unavailable, we'd need the robot not to use the tools that the astronauts use, so it would have to be a similar design.

• 30:01Eugene Mirman?

  How long till, whatever you're describing-

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has fingers.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  It has fingers, and it has arms, and it's gonna fit through hatches, and so on.

• 30:07Eugene Mirman?

  And how long till it votes?

• 30:10Eugene Mirman?

  Like, 10 years?

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There'll be a new amendment, it'll be a three-fifths rule regarding robots.

• 30:16Eugene Mirman?

  No, no, no, no, no, no, not enough black people here to have that reaction.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Good catch.

• 30:20Eugene Mirman?

  Calm down.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Good catch.

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what's your favorite robot in space out there now? Other than your own rat?

• 30:45Eugene Mirman?

  It could be his own rat.

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or your favorite spacecraft? I just want to know, what does a roboticist think is the favorite?

• 30:51Eugene Mirman?

  And don't just say Led Zeppelin.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Well, I actually have a, this is gonna sound terrible, but my favorite is one of the Russian spacecrafts.

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's Russian, so you're good with him right there.

• 31:03Eugene Mirman?

  It's kind of my spacecraft, go on.

• 31:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which one?

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Sample return was what we're trying to do on Mars, it's such a complicated thing, it's where you have to bring a rocket to the surface. The Russians executed a sample return mission in 1970.

• 31:17Eugene Mirman?

  Because they scared the spacecraft so much? Then it was like, "If I mess up, I'll die."

• 31:22Speaker 02

  They'd returned samples three times from the moon with a completely automated and robotic device, and it just astounds me, hardly anybody knows about it, but it was a stupendous achievement.

• 31:32Eugene Mirman?

  And where did it go and come back?

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what sample return means.

• 31:37Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, no, I mean, I'm getting it slowly now.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  We had to send Neil and Buzz to get those samples. And they sent an automated spacecraft three times, and they did it, we never did it.

• 31:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What a country.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  And no one's ever done it from a big planetary body.

• 31:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We sent Neil and Buzz, they sent a robot, they probably did it for less money. So, if you had the choice to send a robot or a person, what would you do?

• 31:59Speaker 02

  To which location?

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 32:01Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, France, the moon, the sun.

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Mars.

• 32:06Eugene Mirman?

  Can we pick the people? And be like, "It's somebody I don't like."

• 32:10Speaker 02

  I'm all in favor of ultimately sending people to Mars. And part of the Curiosity rover is equipped with instrumentation that is designed to look, for example, not only the amount of water that's available on Mars, because it's important for the astronauts when they get to Mars someday, that they have water available for, not only for drinking, but for power and energy. But also, they need to know if the radiation levels are survivable. And there's an instrument on Curiosity that is constantly monitoring the...

• 32:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Radiation from the sun.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  From the sun, and galactic radiation and cosmic radiation as well.

• 32:42Eugene Mirman?

  Could you drink the water? If we found water on Mars, you could drink it.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  In fact, this is a finding of Curiosity's finding, is that the water that was present at one point was probably quite drinkable.

• 32:53Eugene Mirman?

  At one point, but not now.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, it's not there now, on the surface.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't exist now, yeah.

• 32:56Eugene Mirman?

  It might exist. There's a chance there's still water.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, not on the surface.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  In fact, we know that there's water. Another finding, I think it was just released the day before yesterday, is that the contents of the rocks in the near surface are holding a tremendous amount of water.

• 33:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In them?

• 33:09Eugene Mirman?

  So you are saying, "Be careful of the water in Mexico, but drink the water on Mars." It's fine. Squeeze a rock right into your mouth.

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, speaking of looking for water, one of Jupiter's moons, Europa... Has an ocean of liquid water. Another one of these moons kept warm by the gravitational stress of-

• 33:31Speaker 07

  This is not a smartass question. You said liquid water.

• 33:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, I was right there with you.

• 33:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, good. Does that mean, is that because you would distinguish for ice and a gas?

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, frozen water or gaseous water.

• 33:39Speaker 07

  Gotcha, okay, cool. Yeah, I'm just checking. That was not a smartass question?

• 33:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, no, no, that's cool, we're cool.

• 33:42Speaker 07

  Just checking, I'm just-

• 33:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're cool.

• 33:44Speaker 07

  I'm trying, I'm trying to learn stuff here as well. I dropped out of community college, so this is like four credit hours.

• 33:53Eugene Mirman?

  Dear college, I think now I can graduate.

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Listen to this. So Europa has kept warm on the inside, it's frozen on the outside. If we want to look for life in that ocean, it's been ocean for billions of years, we're gonna have to drill through maybe a half a mile of ice.

• 34:08Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you drill through a half, can you, your peeps do that?

• 34:11Speaker 02

  We are among a few groups that are conducting research and development projects where we are building a mole to try to dig through a half a kilometer of ice.

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it drill? What does it do? How does it get through?

• 34:24Speaker 02

  It does drill.

• 34:24Speaker 07

  Is it a robot mole?

• 34:26Speaker 02

  It's a robot mole. And it takes the cuttings that it's drilling down and throws it behind itself and keeps drilling down that way, but you have to get rid of the cutting. So it eventually has to bring the cuttings up to the surface and keep going down. And it may take months to do it, but there's no technical reason what we see that can prevent it from happening.

• 34:44Speaker 07

  I have a question. You said you're on a team. How much nowadays space exploration is distinguished between country? Like when you're saying the Russians did this, are-

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How international are your collaborators?

• 34:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  I'm not sure exactly what your question means.

• 34:56Eugene Mirman?

  You ever, you have any-

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, are we still in a space race against the Russians?

• 35:00Eugene Mirman?

  Have you ever had an Italian friend?

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Like friend, friend, like, you know, like driving to the airport kind of friend. Not just someone like, "Oh, you're having a dinner at your place." Yeah, you gotta go to this guy's place, he makes amazing bread, kind of friend. No.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  While the Cold War definitely spawned actually some amazing space races in robotics, with these lunar missions, the Russians sent countless missions to the moon-

• 35:24Speaker 07

  Right.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  That were automated, and to Mars, also into Venus.

• 35:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're the only ones that ever been to Venus.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  And they took pictures on the surface of Venus.

• 35:32Speaker 07

  What have they done lately? Are they still doing that? Is it still happening?

• 35:35Speaker 02

  No, no, but see, now, after the Cold War, the Russians have way scaled back their space exploration. But they have fabulous capabilities. We're sending our astronauts on Russian spacecraft to the space station.

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we don't have a shuttle. But I want to get back to Europa. There might be life there. You're drilling a hole through it.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  There's liquid water.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have collaborators.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And are your climbers American or international?

• 35:53Speaker 02

  Well, on the technology, they're American, but the instrumentation, there is a lot of international. Curiosity has instruments from Spain, Russia, France.

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  So it's an international...

• 36:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even the French?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Even the French.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, when is this launch?

• 36:08Speaker 02

  The Europa mission?

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah!

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Oh, no, well, the engineering problems are so Titanic, NASA is smart enough to know that this is going to take a decade...

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you're looking for water, don't use the word Titanic, okay?

• 36:17Speaker 02

  That's true. That's true. Fair point.

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  We're gonna need decades of research and development, and we're talking about digging a hole tens of millions of miles away with only a small amount of power, and like as you said, a half a mile deep. It's a really big achievement.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'd be hundreds of millions of miles away.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Hundreds of millions of miles away to the outer planets.

• 36:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Thousands of miles away, too.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  And there's no...

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  There's no solar power available out there, so you're gonna have to bring nuclear power.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Way more than one mile away.

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's great that you're in all of this, but I'm not done with you. We're gonna find out what robots are doing back here on Earth. You're listening to StarTalk. My, Bill Hous!