Life on Mars Mashup

Ponder living on Mars in this Martian mashup as we explore “The Martian,” food and sports on Mars, and more. With Neil Tyson, Bill Nye, Mike Massimino, Buzz Aldrin, Andy Weir, Mary Roach, John Oliver, Eugene Mirman, Chuck Nice, Gary O’Reilly and many others. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/life-on-mars-mashup/

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. Welcome to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. This week, we've... This week, we're bringing you a special sort of mashup episode. This week, we've got a special mashup episode for you. It's all about life on Mars. What would it be like if humans lived there, ate there, and more importantly, played there?

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've wrangled clips from across the StarTalk Podcast Network, StarTalk All-Stars, Playing with Science, StarTalk TV, and of course, the original flagship, StarTalk Radio. "The Martian" by Andy Weir planted an image of human life on Mars in the public imagination. And I remember the movie. I couldn't get it out of my head. Living there, eating there, surviving there. And so, we have to ask, is that image scientifically accurate? Let's find out in our first clip featuring Bill Nye, Andy Weir, Eugene Mirman, Maeve Higgins, and NASA Planetary Science Director Jim Green.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  I came up with this idea for an astronaut stranded on Mars, but I wanted everything to be physically accurate, just because I always get taken out of a story when I see some blatant physical inaccuracy.

• 1:31Eugene Mirman?

  The book is fairly accurate too, right, or very accurate?

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Oh, the book's delightful in many ways, but you know...

• 1:37Speaker 03

  No!

• 1:41Eugene Mirman?

  Sorry. I meant to say, is the book delightful scientifically?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Let me think about that. So, you know, it's science fiction. There are things in the book that, you know, we don't find on Mars. Not yet, anyway. Might happen someday. For example. Well, Matt Damon's not on there. Yeah.

• 2:03Eugene Mirman?

  But there is a guy from Boston.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Probably buried, is that what you meant, buried somewhere on Mars? So, um...

• 2:11Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, from the big dig.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Turns out that's where Jimmy Hoffa is. The dust storm, the dust storm. Okay, you know, Mars has famous dust storms, they go, you know, global sometimes. You can see them with telescopes from Earth, right? Yeah, absolutely. And it obscures the entire planet. And they look gnarly from space sometimes, but, um, but in reality, the pressure is so low. How low is it? It's very low.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  It's about 1, 200... 1, 200 in the atmosphere. Yeah! 1, 200 in the atmosphere, roughly, of what we have, you know? And so, although the winds can be pretty hefty, it can be 120 miles an hour, but that's not enough to straighten an American flag, let alone blow away a, you know, a radio dish. Because there's so few molecules going that way. Right, that's right.

• 2:53Eugene Mirman?

  You, so you, so you, did, did you have trouble watching the movie with all its lies, then?

• 2:57Speaker 01

  No, absolutely not!

• 2:59Eugene Mirman?

  Well, you're like, "Another lie, another lie!"

• 3:04Eugene Mirman?

  Stop lying to me, Ridley!

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Are you gonna put it on Ridley? All right. I could.

• 3:11Eugene Mirman?

  Well, freaking Ridley!

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Now, what you gotta do...

• 3:14Eugene Mirman?

  That guy looks accurate, delightfully so.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Delightfully so. But you, you gotta check the science at the door and go on in and enjoy it! It's, it's enjoyable, it's great. You're talking about seeing the movie, not your job. You know, I do that kinda stuff all day long, why do I wanna sit in a movie theater and think about some more of it? Andy, as Nerd Man, you had to work out some serious scientific problems. Yeah, I did, um, yes, absolutely, the, uh, the dust storm is, or the sandstorm is inaccurate, and I knew that at the time, I just didn't care. I wanted a good reason to strand him there, and at the time I wrote it, most people didn't know that. Like, most people thought that a sandstorm on Mars... But then, because The Martian got so popular and became a very popular movie, and then got a bunch of scientists talking about it, now everybody knows a dust storm on Mars can't do that.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  But it was cool, it was you blew the thing over and you couldn't see.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Oh man. Yeah, what are those chunks, by the way, that were coming out?

• 4:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, I don't know. Space debris. But it's one of my favorite things is how JPL almost ruined everything. Um, when I, uh, you know, I wrote the book, it was done, it was already in final editing. I can't make any more changes, or other than like copy editing and, you know. And, and like, at that point, like, they were deciding they had it down to the final four candidates of where they're gonna land Curiosity. They eventually landed it, you know, near Mount Sharp and Gale Crater. But, um, one of the...

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Mount Sharp.

• 4:35Speaker 04

  Mount Sharp, Gale Crater.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  On Mars, you know.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, on Mars.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  The big one.

• 4:38Speaker 04

  Right, on Mars. Which is, which is thousands and thousands of kilometers away from all the things that happened in the Martian, not a problem. One of the final four candidates on where they were thinking about landing it was Marth Valis, which Mark drives through. Like, I specifically call it out in the book, he drives through this ravine, Marth Valis. He would've had to have gone around the rover to keep going, and I'm like, "Oh, you guys are killing me with your stupid real science." And then my, but my favorite little, little...

• 5:06Speaker 01

  It's like they didn't even take that into account. It's like they... You know? Nobody asked me.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking. Sorry about that.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. So Jim, one of my favorite final decisions? No, actually, I didn't. But we were down to the last four, and I loved any one of those, so, so my boss did. And that was, um, Ed Weiler at the time, and, uh... So, yeah, everybody, this is the real guy. That's all I'm saying.

• 5:33Speaker 04

  This is the... So, just so we're clear, just so we're clear, the character in the book, Venkatesh Kapoor, who is in the movie Vincent Kapoor, that's, he holds that position in The Real NASA. So if you're curious, that's who he is, so.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Your tax dollars at work. That's right, and they work, too.

• 5:55Speaker 04

  But, um, what, one other, my favorite little, you know, stories of like, you know, space research screwing with me is, um, the, uh, the University of Arizona that runs the Highrise instrument.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  High-resolution camera.

• 6:09Speaker 04

  Apparently, we have like, four of their alumni here today.

• 6:13Eugene Mirman?

  Four people who are great at clapping.

• 6:17Speaker 05

  They just got the joke filled made 10 minutes ago.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  In the book, yeah, well, they're U of A, I mean.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Somebody got it.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  But, in the book, I give the exact latitude and longitude of the hab.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  The hab is the habitat.

• 6:32Speaker 04

  The habitat, the main, the base where most of the Martian takes place. Where Mark Watney is stranded, where they are.

• 6:39Speaker 05

  The habitat.

• 6:40Speaker 04

  Habitat. Yeah. And, um, and so I describe the terrain as being kind of flat and sandy. There's not much going on in Nacogdoiania. It's a large, empty desert and stuff like that. And the guys who run Hi-Rise are like, "Let's check." And so they did these super-high-res photos of the hab's location on the real Mars. And they're like, "Well, that's nothing like he described it."

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but Ridley got it right. You know, because there are these beautiful craters right around where that hab would be. And the scenery looks great.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 7:14Eugene Mirman?

  Those people must hate Star Wars.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  Almost. They don't have good resolution on galaxies far, far away.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  They don't have, we don't have a camera for that yet.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, we're working on it.

• 7:29Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, thank you.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  So, the guy's on Mars. He's got a lot of food. Because there were supposed to be six people, but he's only one.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, and they left, in the book, they left after six days of a planned 31-day mission. And they had redundant food supplies. So he had enough food to last about 400 souls. A soul is a day on Mars for the four of you who don't know that.

• 7:52Speaker 04

  And, um, well, three of you and one of her, I guess.

• 7:58Eugene Mirman?

  Wait, I have, uh, I know it is that, but why is that? Why is it called a Sol?

• 8:02Speaker 04

  Sol is Latin for sun. It just means, uh, because day is an ambiguous term. Day to scientists means the time it takes Earth to rotate once on its axis, just Earth. So Mars rotating on its axis, that's one Martian Sol.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  I remember.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  During the disco era.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  A different Sol. That's right.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  The Sol train.

• 8:29Eugene Mirman?

  Tell us what Studio 54 was like, Bill.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  I don't remember, man.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Yep, he was there.

• 8:38Eugene Mirman?

  You're the science pi guy.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Bill, Bill, Bill. Stereotyped.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  You don't always do that well with the ladies. This stereotypical male in here. I know, it's shocking.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In our next clip, I chat with Chuck Nice, astronaut Mike Massimino, and author Mary Roach about handling waste on Mars. And an unusual space snack.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We came off the segment talking about food, comfort food. What's your favorite? You love the lasagna, but lasagna's not comfort food.

• 9:21Speaker 06

  For an Italian kid, it is. Macaroni and cheese.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got mac and cheese.

• 9:27Speaker 06

  Shrimp cocktail is a favorite. I don't know if that's comfort food. I really don't know what comfort food is. To me, it's food.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Comfort food for the bushes, yes.

• 9:33Speaker 06

  All right, so, yeah. We have hamburgers.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Depends on how wealthy you are.

• 9:43Speaker 06

  You want some good food, don't you? The idea of wanting to look out the window and not worrying about food, that's when you're applying to get on the mission. Yeah, I don't need food, I'll eat granola bars. But after you get assigned, you're gonna want to eat. So the quality of the food is gonna have to be pretty good, I think.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, you said the Jamaicans would, why would they make good astronauts?

• 9:59Chuck Nice?

  Because, think about it, man. You know, everything that you need to deal with, your stress and food issues are taken care of with one little Rasta puff.

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That works.

• 10:11Chuck Nice?

  If your fellow astronaut is on your, "Hey man, go ahead and smoke these."

• 10:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm guessing there's no smoking in space.

• 10:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's not just that, but there's a few issues there. I don't know if we want to go there. But that might not be an easy, it might sound like an easy solution, but it might not work as well as you think.

• 10:28Chuck Nice?

  We, we, we.

• 10:29Speaker 06

  Space flight is tough in that way.

• 10:30Chuck Nice?

  We just put it in a pouch, you add water and put it in the oven. No smoking, no smoking necessary.

• 10:37Speaker 06

  No comment.

• 10:38Chuck Nice?

  That's right. We put them in brownies.

• 10:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's fun is if you create a Mars settlement, there's food you might bring, but maybe you don't want to bring food. You bring seeds, you bring sort of baby animals, and then you sort of raise livestock on Mars. That way the astronauts wouldn't, they didn't have a real burger. You know, you can have like Kobe beef on Mars, maybe. I interviewed Mary Roach, author of Packing for Mars. Let's see what she says about Mars settlements.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think we know enough about space, we don't have to send animals to Mars first. What a waste of money that would be.

• 11:07Mary Roach?

  No, no, nobody's gonna do that. Unless someone decides, there was this wonderful paper from a 1964 conference on space nutrition and related waste issues. Okay, he was.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the title of the conference?

• 11:18Mary Roach?

  That's the title of the conference. If you were to bring livestock to Mars, like if you're gonna bring animals and have ranching going on, what would be the best species to bring in terms of how much it costs to launch them versus how many calories you get? And he did an analysis of calves.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would include taste in there too. Somehow quantify taste.

• 11:36Mary Roach?

  I don't think he did because the winner was mice. Mouse stew.

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ew!

• 11:40Mary Roach?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So mice are more efficient.

• 11:42Mary Roach?

  That's what he determined, that you should launch mice.

• 11:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know why I can't believe it? Because.

• 11:46Mary Roach?

  There's not much meat on a mouse.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying. I once ate a squirrel when I was in Texas. There's barely any meat on a squirrel. You know, there's nothing on a mouse.

• 11:52Mary Roach?

  Well, you gotta take it up with Max Clybrow.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could it be that mice, they have a very short gestation period? So they can multiply their generations very quickly?

• 11:59Mary Roach?

  That could have been it. But just think of the steer, talk about waste issues.

• 12:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, then it's fertilizer for the plants that you're gonna grow.

• 12:05Mary Roach?

  Or it becomes radiation shielding, because you want your hydrocarbons.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So manure being radiation shield.

• 12:11Mary Roach?

  NASA has a device down at Ames that can take.

• 12:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ames Research Center in California.

• 12:15Mary Roach?

  Yes. It's kind of like an easy bake oven where you would take. Waste material and could plasticize it in a tile and you could line the capsule with that. On your way home, you'd use that for radiation.

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You take animal poop, put it in an easy bake oven.

• 12:28Mary Roach?

  Or human.

• 12:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, or humans or animals. And so it hardens.

• 12:31Mary Roach?

  It becomes a tile, like, you know, like the ceiling tiles.

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you line your craft with this.

• 12:35Mary Roach?

  It's a good radiation.

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And doesn't it smell? I mean, or you have to coat it.

• 12:38Mary Roach?

  It's sealed in plastic.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it is interesting, because if you go to another place, you're thinking you're going to take food that you would be comfortable with eating and might want to sustain. So it would be like an ark, right? You wouldn't just take a cow, you could take a cow and a bull. No, more likely a cow and bull sperm, right?

• 12:53Mary Roach?

  Right, right.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because a bull sperm weighs less than a cow. Sorry, I just did the math on that one. That's just how that worked. So, so Mike, if you could, if you ate mouse stew, would you, if that's all you could eat, would you go to Mars?

• 13:08Mike Massimino?

  Uh, that's what I would say when I, if that was my interview question, if I could go, yes. And then after I got assigned to the mission, I want to be any, any mouse.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Boy, mice cannot catch a break. I'm telling you.

• 13:21Mike Massimino?

  God.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we're not eating mouse, we're not eating mouse. I'm telling you. Uh, you know, it's just, it's just interesting using animal waste to line the aircraft, because there's still this radiation problem unsolved.

• 13:31Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, you know, I, I think it shows the way you have to think out of the box for these, uh, for this type of trip. Uh, and any crazy idea might seem a little bit nutty, you need to, to think about if it's going to help you. You need to think creatively.

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's more like thinking out of the butt.

• 13:44Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not out of the box.

• 13:46Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry.

• 13:48Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Call my cat, hold it together. The crappy shields are crapping out.

• 13:51Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 13:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quick, poop, we're in danger. We need more poop.

• 13:55Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, eh, uh, I don't know, I'm trying to give some credence to it.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. This week is a special mashup edition. You're going to hear clips from our favorite discussions across the StarTalk network. So let's get right back to it.

• 14:41Mike Massimino?

  Hello, this is Mike Massimino, talking to you from StarTalk All-Stars. I guess I'm actually an All-Star.

• 14:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:49Mike Massimino?

  I haven't been an All-Star since I was 13 years old in Little League. That was 40 years ago, but I'm an All-Star again and you're host tonight. And I have with me my friend. Can I call you my friend?

• 15:00Speaker 05

  Yes, please.

• 15:01Mike Massimino?

  Maeve Higgins is my new friend. No, we're friends. And she's a tremendous, great space enthusiast, but more important, a comedian.

• 15:10Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 15:10Mike Massimino?

  So she's gonna keep us laughing. Thank you for being here.

• 15:12Speaker 05

  No, thank you for having me.

• 15:14Mike Massimino?

  You bet. And I'm very excited because a good friend of mine who I work with at the Johnson Space Center, John Charles, really smart guy. He's a scientist. He's actually a chief scientist.

• 15:25Speaker 05

  Oh, so there's scientists and then there's chief scientists?

• 15:27Mike Massimino?

  There's scientists and then there's chiefs.

• 15:29Speaker 05

  And there's like baby scientists?

• 15:31Mike Massimino?

  And you gotta grow up to be a chief. You don't start out as a chief. They check you out and they're like, okay, we're gonna make this guy a chief. And John is a really smart, well-spoken genius, although he'll never say this, but he certainly is. He's the head of our NASA Human Research Program, chief scientist for the NASA Human Research Program, trying to get people to the moon, to Mars, off the planet, far away, and taking care of them.

• 15:53Speaker 05

  Whoa, thanks for making time to talk to us, two bozos, John.

• 15:56Mike Massimino?

  John Charles.

• 15:57Speaker 10

  I'm telling you what, Mike, with an intro like that, I'm glad I made it.

• 16:01Mike Massimino?

  I'm really glad that you're here. And we're gonna talk about what it takes to get people to Mars. People on Mars. That's right. People like you and me, maybe not you and me, but people like us.

• 16:15Speaker 05

  Like us.

• 16:15Mike Massimino?

  Real people. But John, what did you think about the movie to Mars? I'm sure you get questions all the time about that. What was your opinion?

• 16:20Speaker 10

  Well, I I enjoyed it. I thought it was probably the best space movie since 2001. And we can argue about whether it was better than 2001. My wife says she prefers not to go to space movies with me because all I do is huff and puff and roll my eyes audibly during the usually during the entire movie, but she said I would behave I behave myself well this time. You know, Andy has said that the the opening event, you know, the the wind that that blows everything around and causes the problem couldn't happen on Mars. The atmosphere is too thin and the dust is not sandy, grainy, granular like that. It's it's more the the the the texture of smoke particles. And he said, I asked him that question during a Q and A one time, and he says, yes, I know, but I needed to start the movie somehow. That's how I chose to do it.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  Did you just did you just show up at a Q and A like a regular citizen? Like, he didn't know that you had all this like surprise?

• 17:10Speaker 10

  No, no, he actually came to Johnson Space Center and did series of a series of book talks and Q and As for all of its nerds. So he was very well prepared for the audience and we all loved him.

• 17:20Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, John John was a plant.

• 17:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:23Mike Massimino?

  Going there and say, hey, what was wrong? But that was right. And the EVA scene, the spacewalk scene, the end, as soon as you mentioned that, my my son and I saw it together. And he said the same thing. He goes, Dad, what kind of spacewalk are they doing? Even my son, you know, my son was picked up on it.

• 17:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:37Mike Massimino?

  Yesterday, it was very unprofessional, the way they were untethered at the end.

• 17:39Speaker 05

  You were like, but wasn't it cool when he pulled the antenna out of it?

• 17:42Mike Massimino?

  Right. I said, yeah, don't worry about that. Matt Damon was a cool astronaut. This one's approved.

• 17:47Speaker 05

  I mean, it's good. It must be great, like, PR, right? Like, that's like my, you know, when you see a great movie about space, like, it makes you think highly of NASA for some reason.

• 17:57Mike Massimino?

  I think so. What do you think, Joe? I think that was that was good for us, wasn't it?

• 18:00Speaker 10

  I agree. I I we got a lot. We certainly used it for a lot of publicity. We we tried to link a lot of the one-year mission, uh, space station work to it and and things like that. So, yeah, that was great.

• 18:10Mike Massimino?

  Johnny, but there's also the serious part to what the movie portrayed, which was, how do you keep a crew alive? Now, he was in a survival situation, but still, there must be a lot of parallels with the work you're doing, to what you saw in that movie, right? Food and water and life support and so on, yeah?

• 18:27Speaker 10

  Exactly. Well, I mean, the food was one of the, actually, the potato was like another supporting actor in the whole movie, and your buddy-

• 18:35Speaker 05

  That's like in the whole history of Ireland.

• 18:38Speaker 10

  But Mike, your pal, Don Pettit-

• 18:40Speaker 05

  Potatoes are huge for us.

• 18:42Speaker 10

  Have you heard what Don Pettit said about potatoes in space, though, Mike?

• 18:45Mike Massimino?

  No, Don Pettit is one of my best friends-

• 18:48Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 18:49Mike Massimino?

  And a very entertaining guy and a genius. Very rare for an astronaut, let me add. What did he say this time?

• 18:58Speaker 10

  Don Pettit said he's never seen a potato on the space station or on the shuttle that was not sliced and had its eyes cut out. So there's no way a potato in space would have been able to grow and produce more potatoes.

• 19:10Mike Massimino?

  But Don did actually grow stuff in space, and he are growing stuff on the space- but Don grew his own, he grew a sunflower and he grew a-

• 19:17Speaker 05

  Did he?

• 19:18Mike Massimino?

  Squash. Yeah, that was kind of on his own. But he did his own little experiment. But they have grown also lettuce on the space station as well.

• 19:25Speaker 10

  On purpose, yeah. We have special seeds, we fly up to do that, that kind of research, to eventually lead to growing fresh food in-

• 19:32Speaker 05

  I knew it was on purpose. I didn't think it was like an accidental-

• 19:35Mike Massimino?

  No, what I'm saying, some guys grew, some astronauts might do things because they're interested in their own experiments. But this was, the lettuce was a real, growing lettuce was a real project-

• 19:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:46Mike Massimino?

  That they had, and it was successful. So you can't, to grow your own food in space.

• 19:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:51Speaker 10

  And then you eat the results.

• 19:52Mike Massimino?

  And then you eat the results, and they're good, hopefully. Go ahead, man.

• 19:56Speaker 05

  I was just gonna ask about water.

• 19:58Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 05

  That's what I was gonna ask. Like, how on earth could you provide water for people on Mars? Could you find it there? What's gonna happen there?

• 20:06Speaker 10

  Well, you have to bring it with you, probably. At least the starter kit for water, and then the point is, with any luck, you can generate- Water out of in situ resources. And of course, what you have on Mars in situ is carbon dioxide. It's a very thin atmosphere, but it's almost completely carbon dioxide.

• 20:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:24Speaker 10

  And if you bring along the right kind of machinery that knows how to crack carbon dioxide, and if you brought along a tank of hydrogen with you, you can get oxygen and water out of the reaction of carbon dioxide and hydrogen using chemistry that is far beyond my capability to explain, but it's a possibility. So if you're there for the long term, you got to plan ahead and either bring stuff with you or make it from local resources.

• 20:50Mike Massimino?

  You're also going to recycle it, aren't you, John?

• 20:53Speaker 10

  Exactly.

• 20:53Mike Massimino?

  That's what we're doing on this. As my friend Don Pettit, who we referred to earlier, describes, today's coffee is tomorrow's coffee.

• 21:03Mike Massimino?

  Right? You drink something, you pee it, and then you drink it again.

• 21:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:08Speaker 10

  With some cleaning up.

• 21:09Speaker 05

  That explains Starbucks.

• 21:10Mike Massimino?

  There's a couple of steps in between there, by the way. But that's going to be the plan, too, I would assume, right, John?

• 21:15Speaker 10

  Exactly right, exactly.

• 21:17Speaker 05

  And what would it look like to live? Like, where would you live in Mars? Like, what would it look like? What would your, you know, I was going to say tent. That's because I've seen the movie. But like, what would, like, where would you sleep and live?

• 21:31Mike Massimino?

  Habitat.

• 21:32Speaker 05

  Your habitat? Yeah, that's the word.

• 21:34Speaker 10

  Yeah, the habitat would probably look very much like you saw in the movie. And that was actually based on a habitat that we're doing studies in on the ground, which was, of course, primarily designed for studies back in the deserts. So it's probably going to look something like a repurposed spaceship. It might be inflatable. It might be rigidized. Certainly, we're only just now doing research on the right way to do that, so there's no final answer yet.

• 22:00Speaker 05

  It sounds like the Burning Man Festival. I don't know if you ever sent anybody on a research trip to Burning Man, where you have to, like, bring your own water and tents, and everyone is really spaced out.

• 22:12Mike Massimino?

  Woodstock.

• 22:32Speaker 11

  Today we enter Twitterdom through the vast multiverses of Neil deGrasse Tyson's mind and light up the cerebral spheres that engage with the complex and ever-evolving world of sport.

• 22:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so, uh, did you, did you change your meds?

• 22:47Speaker 11

  A little.

• 22:48Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Neil deGrasse Tyson has many opinions and many things which he chooses to share on a regular basis, but he has a heartfelt connection to sports that's constantly filtered through his scientific lens on Twitter.

• 23:03Speaker 11

  So, when you play with science, there can be no better playdate than the man himself.

• 23:08Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 23:09Speaker 11

  And to take us to sports that are out of this world.

• 23:12Chuck Nice?

  Out of this world sports.

• 23:13Speaker 11

  Yes, indeed, out of this world sports, we have Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 23:17Chuck Nice?

  Yes, thanks for joining us right now. It's the one.

• 23:20Speaker 11

  The only.

• 23:21Chuck Nice?

  The inevitable Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 23:33Chuck Nice?

  You like that?

• 23:34Speaker 11

  Scared?

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where'd you get the gong? My gosh. Normally that's how you get someone off the stage, right? I saw the gong show.

• 23:41Speaker 11

  Alrighty, no, no, don't take it personally.

• 23:43Chuck Nice?

  No, that is, uh, that is a royal entrance right there. That's what the gong is for.

• 23:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, normally I'm sitting there.

• 23:50Chuck Nice?

  That's right, sir.

• 23:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, you just took, you just took your own damn show. Now, I'm a guest on your damn show.

• 23:57Speaker 11

  Weirding you out? Are you comfortable? You okay?

• 24:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll get, I'll get used to it. That's all right.

• 24:02Chuck Nice?

  It doesn't happen without you, no matter what, though. What's up?

• 24:04Speaker 11

  Neil's gonna start asking us questions. He won't be able to help himself.

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, I'm, I'm happily be your guest on this show.

• 24:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's when, please don't ask us any questions.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It means I feel loved. I feel loved, yeah.

• 24:15Chuck Nice?

  That's very cool. Thanks for being here, man. We appreciate it. And of course, you are a prolific tweeter.

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is from the 2012 Olympics.

• 24:22Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 24:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said, "How about a Mars Olympics? Yes, all athletes would suffocate." Ignoring that complication, way cooler than an Earth Olympics, that's all.

• 24:33Chuck Nice?

  Way cooler than an Earth Olympics.

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm setting you up for tweets that follow.

• 24:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I was gonna say, cause when you say way cooler, then you actually give us some examples of why an Olympics on Mars, or pretty much any sporting event on Mars, might be cool.

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's also a couple hundred degrees below zero on Mars, so way cooler has double meaning there.

• 24:50Speaker 11

  Yeah, no, I think we picked that one.

• 24:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You picked that up, okay.

• 24:53Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so let's look at one of the Mars tweets, and this is cycling on Mars.

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright.

• 25:01Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so go ahead.

• 25:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so this is again during the summer 2012 Olympics. If there was cycling on Mars, try Olympic Mons, a volcanic mountain five times taller than Mont Blanc in the Alps.

• 25:17Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you think you got tall mountains here. No, the tallest mountains and the deepest valleys are not on Earth. In the solar system, they're on Mars, they're on the moon, so we ain't got, we, yeah, we're not, we're not winning those contests.

• 25:33Speaker 11

  As you know this, the atmosphere on Mars is how much less than the Earth's atmosphere.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's about one one hundredth.

• 25:39Speaker 11

  Okay.

• 25:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 11

  So if we had that.

• 25:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pressure, atmospheric pressure. So in other words, for every breath you take on Mars, there's one one hundredth the amount of air in that breath, and it would be on.

• 25:49Speaker 11

  As an athlete, altitude becomes your enemy, in terms of the oxygenation.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're performing at altitude, but the ideal way to do this is you train at altitude, and then compete at sea level.

• 26:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:00Speaker 11

  What we need to do is go to Mars.

• 26:01Chuck Nice?

  That's why Sherpas don't have any problem getting up the mountain while all the tourists are like.

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 26:07Speaker 11

  Fill the baggage.

• 26:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, I need more oxygen. Here's what you do.

• 26:10Speaker 11

  You go train on Mars.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna make a suggestion that's never been made before, you ready?

• 26:13Speaker 11

  Here we are.

• 26:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You drain the Pacific Ocean.

• 26:16Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 26:17Speaker 11

  Oh.

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then hold the Olympics at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. But you train at high altitude, but now you compete at the bottom, which is six miles down. Now every breath of air has way more oxygen than at sea level. And so now you have heroic feats before you don't even have to dope your blood. The air itself will put the oxygen and force it right into your lungs.

• 26:42Speaker 11

  I'm sure the IOC are gonna stump up for that draining of.

• 26:45Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, I just like the fact that you're thinking like a supervillain.

• 26:49Speaker 11

  See, I'd have gone the other way and said, let's all go train on Mars. On the, on the mountain.

• 26:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the Olympic Mons.

• 26:55Speaker 11

  And come back to Earth and compete.

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Problem is, it's only forty percent the gravity of Earth. So you're, the weight that you are carrying is not as much going up the hill.

• 27:03Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:03Chuck Nice?

  Right, so there is some trade offs there.

• 27:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some trade offs.

• 27:06Chuck Nice?

  There's some trade off there.

• 27:07Speaker 11

  Some leaded suits.

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, oh yeah, yeah, just led, led, led yourself down. Uh, another thing, once you've drained the Pacific Ocean, that had nothing to do with sports, just while we're on the topic. If you drain the Pacific Ocean, that is the great toilet bowl of dead satellites.

• 27:21Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 27:22Chuck Nice?

  Oh yeah, because they always splash down in the Pacific.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, they crash down in the. If it's a dead satellite, they're not splashing.

• 27:28Chuck Nice?

  They're not splashing down, they're crashing down.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so the reason why is the Pacific Ocean is almost a third of all possible longitudes on Earth.

• 27:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you de-orbit and you do it, you have a lot of latitude, no pun intended, to where you begin to de-orbit so that it's gonna plunk down in the Pacific no matter what. And, and people don't live there, so not over the great bulk of the expanse.

• 27:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a safe place to drop your stuff out of orbit. The day we de-orbit Hubble, it's going straight into the Pacific.

• 27:54Chuck Nice?

  Going into the Pacific Ocean.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's the size of a Greyhound bus, by the way, if you didn't know.

• 27:59Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 28:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hubble telescope.

• 28:00Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 28:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:01Chuck Nice?

  So this is one of my favorite.

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:04Chuck Nice?

  Uh, you, uh, we, we actually talked about this in, in a different forum on StarTalk. Uh, and it's swimming on Mars.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so here it is again, the same, same week. Uh, if there was swimming on Mars, the low temperature and low air pressure would force the pool to simultaneously freeze and boil.

• 28:26Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 28:27Speaker 11

  How many hours does Michael Phelps have to train?

• 28:33Speaker 11

  To cope with freezing and boiling simultaneously, cause he's up to about fifty thousand hours.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is gurgling, and then there's chunks of ice in there as well.

• 28:40Chuck Nice?

  So at the exact, at the same time, so can you explain that, so they?

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wonder how you get to that situation. How do you get to that situation? Okay, so in chemistry, in physics as well, it's called the triple point. Okay. So, which is a cool name. Yeah, yeah. The triple point of a substance is the point where it is happy being solid, liquid, and gas all at the same time. All at the same time. Okay, so now, now, that sounds freaky because it's outside of our common life experience. Right. But it's less so than you might think. Well, no. So, take a look at, um, uh, dry ice, okay, CO2. Okay. That's in a double point of its state. So it is simultaneously a solid. Mm-hmm. And a vapor. Right. It's happening all at once. Yes. Okay, you open the thing up, the vapor comes out and it's solid. Right. So that's a double point that it's occupied. That's not as interesting as the triple point.

• 29:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it does make for awesome concerts. So here, uh, so here's how, I think they use other smoke for that, rather. I think there's other, they got that done. They used to use dry ice back in the day, but you're right, they use smoke machines now. But back eighty years ago, yeah.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When Twisted Sister performed and, and Aught 3, you know. So, so here's how it works. You know that when you go to high altitude. Yeah. It affects cooking times because water boils at a lower temperature. Right. You know this. Instead of two hundred and twelve, if we're all using imperial units, uh, it could, it could boil at two hundred degrees or a hundred and eighty degrees. So you have to increase the cooking time because the food is not at the high temperature for as long. And you can't get boiling water hotter than the temperature that it's boiling at. Right. All right, one of the earliest experiments I did with my kids, so they understood this. You, I, I would start boiling a pot of water. I say, I give them a thermometer, say, measure the temperature. And it's like a hundred degrees. Three minutes later, measure it again, a hundred and ten degrees, a hundred and twenty. They keep doing this. And I say, there's heat going into it.

• 30:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I say, yep, we see the flame. Uh, my kids are like six and seven and eight. So then, it's like two hundred degrees, they check it again, two hundred and five, two hundred and ten, two hundred and twelve, okay? Ten minutes later, measure it again. Still two hundred and twelve. Where's the energy going?

• 30:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh, it stops going because water and at that air pressure.

• 30:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's got to become.

• 30:52Chuck Nice?

  Got to become a gas.

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so now you lower the air pressure, the boiling point drops.

• 30:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the more you lower the air pressure, the lower the boiling point drops.

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And eventually, the boiling point meets the freezing point of water.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now you have frozen water, liquid water, and boiling water all in the same pot.

• 31:13Chuck Nice?

  That's great, awesome. Hey, before we jump back into it, I just realized something. So, everyone's once you, when you were talking about volleyball on Mars, burning the skin, uh, because no UV protection.

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, by the way, Mars is farther away from the sun than is Earth.

• 31:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the, was it 1.4, carry the 2.

• 31:32Chuck Nice?

  Always carry the 2.

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't you get it wrong? You'll get, uh, so Mars has about tw- uh, one half the solar intensity.

• 31:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Than does Mars. So, in any given amount of time, all other things being equal, it would take you twice as long to get, to get sunburned. But Mars does not have a UV layer.

• 31:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, a, an ozone layer. Right, because there's no free oxygen on, on, on Mars.

• 31:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, on Earth, free oxygen is the oxygen we breathe, that's O2.

• 31:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oxygen binds with itself. The ozone layer high up in the atmosphere is three oxygen atoms. And the reason why that blocks UV, I don't, do you ever know, wonder why, how?

• 32:04Chuck Nice?

  I did not.

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so this molecule is sitting there fat and happy in the upper atmosphere.

• 32:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one of its bonds that binds these molecules together is the same energetics as that of an ultraviolet particle of light, an ultraviolet photon.

• 32:22Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 32:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ultraviolet photon comes in, it is just what it needs to bust it open.

• 32:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the energy of the light is gone, and it got converted to breaking apart this molecule.

• 32:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, basically ate the UV molecule, the UV photon.

• 32:37Chuck Nice?

  Right, that, that, that actual molecular bond.

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 32:40Chuck Nice?

  Becomes a natural block.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Block.

• 32:43Chuck Nice?

  Like, it's, it's literally like a, like a blocking tackle.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Literal block. And if there's a very close explosion to us in our solar system.

• 32:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Supernova, you can calculate, because it takes a while to regenerate the, the ozone.

• 32:58Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because it's a stable layer, you, you win some, you lose some.

• 33:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Re-manufactured.

• 33:03Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, Al Gore.

• 33:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so watch what happens. So, if you have a, a nearby supernova, which has a lot of UV, the waves of UV light. Take out your ozone and then the next wave goes through without uh without conflict.

• 33:19Chuck Nice?

  Wow, so the first wave.

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just like an army. It's exactly like army wave, waves of armies. And so the ozone can only protect you so much before it has to rebuild itself. If you have a a a major flux of UV coming in.

• 33:33Speaker 11

  What's the timeline on a rebuild?

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I I I have to calculate that. I don't.

• 33:37Speaker 11

  Okay.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It it has many sources. Lightning can actually regenerate. Um you can put energy back in uh to recreate this um. Uh because different chemical reactions are exothermic and endothermic. And it's the balance of all of these that creates the chemi- the the chemical cocktail that is our atmosphere.

• 33:54Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 33:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So yeah, so other mechanisms can regenerate it and I. Whatever those mechanisms are, you can construct actual things in the universe that will override them. Such as supernova explosions. Yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 11

  Any other planets or moons in our solar system with a similar ozone layer?

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because we get our oxygen from life.

• 34:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I used to think in Star Trek, oh, Captain, this is an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere. We can go down and breathe it. I said, oh, all we have to do is look around the universe for a planet that ha- that happens to have the the the chemical mixture that Earth has.

• 34:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then I realized, no, that's not how it works. It's not that every planet's got its own mixture. It's that Earth has oxygen because we have life.

• 34:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we, because the the the photosynthesis, all the the the green plants make that oxygen. And that then that's like rocket fuel for animals. Then animals can now rise up, metabolize oxygen, and we have this harmony of plants and animals.

• 35:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. This week is a special mashup edition. You're going to hear clips from our favorite discussions across the StarTalk network. So let's get right back to it.

• 35:30Chuck Nice?

  So this is somebody who wants to know about the atmosphere and the gravity on Mars. But I love the way that Steven Matlow phrases this question somewhat inventive.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it came over which path?

• 35:44Chuck Nice?

  This came over Facebook. And he says, "Okay, Neil, when the New York Yankees play a road series against the Mars cosmos, how big will the outfield have to be to prevent everybody from hitting home runs? Also, will the pitcher throw faster in the atmosphere or slower? And will he or she, this guy's very liberal."

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 36:13Chuck Nice?

  He's got a female pitcher in the major league interstellar baseball.

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interplanetary.

• 36:20Chuck Nice?

  Interplanetary, not interstellar, interplanetary baseball league. "Will he or she be able to throw a curve ball?" And he, um, take it back, Steven is coming from Livingston, Montana.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Livingston, Montana.

• 36:32Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Yes, flat country.

• 36:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, here's something.

• 36:36Chuck Nice?

  Guy's never seen a mountain in his life.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why it's called Montana.

• 36:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I was in Montana recently. I gave a talk in Bozeman, Montana.

• 36:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 36:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep. 6,000 people showed up for it.

• 36:52Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 36:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know that many people lived in Montana.

• 36:55Chuck Nice?

  I think you had the entire state there, to be honest. And by the way, I was joking about mountains, because there are mountains in Montana.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why it's called Montana.

• 37:03Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 37:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's big sky.

• 37:04Chuck Nice?

  Big sky.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's big sky.

• 37:06Chuck Nice?

  But, uh, go ahead. So here's his question.

• 37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got the question. I remember, you read it, I got it.

• 37:14Chuck Nice?

  Excuse me, excuse me.

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have an awesome memory from three minutes ago.

• 37:18Chuck Nice?

  I know.

• 37:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, um, a couple of things don't change and other things do.

• 37:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The pitcher does not throw faster, because that's just their musculoskeletal capacity to do so.

• 37:29Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ball will not slow down as much between release of the fingertip and crossing home plate, because the air is thinner. And there's air resistance to the ball.

• 37:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That slows it down. I don't know, maybe 10 miles an hour, or five, whatever it is, five miles an hour. It's not traveling for very long, so, but it will slow down a little bit, it does that in the majors. Uh, it will do that on Mars, but it will slow down by a little bit less.

• 37:55Chuck Nice?

  A little bit less.

• 37:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's not the major thing going on here. The Martian atmosphere is very thin. It's like 1% of our thickness. And it's the air, the movement of the ball through the air that enables it to curve.

• 38:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So curveballs would be very hard on Mars.

• 38:12Chuck Nice?

  Because you don't have the air, or the thickness of the air.

• 38:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The thickness of the air.

• 38:17Chuck Nice?

  For those, those, what do they call, stitches?

• 38:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stitches, yes.

• 38:21Chuck Nice?

  Right, is that what they call?

• 38:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what they call the stitches on a ball?

• 38:24Chuck Nice?

  The stitches?

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They call it the stitches.

• 38:25Chuck Nice?

  The stitches? Do they call the stitches on the ball a stitches? But, you know, that's what's causing that rotation.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it, it assists it. Even if it didn't have stitches, you still have some, you could still move it, right?

• 38:36Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really? Okay, but?

• 38:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The stitches help it, definitely.

• 38:39Chuck Nice?

  But without the, the thickness of the air, you can't get that movement?

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, you don't get as much movement.

• 38:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't get as much movement. Now, it is windy on Mars, so you could throw an awesome knuckleball.

• 38:52Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because knuckleballs don't rotate, and so they're not stable, moving through the air.

• 38:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rotating things are stabilized.

• 38:58Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, you know, that's why football's, rotating football is stable.

• 39:01Chuck Nice?

  It's spinning.

• 39:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spinning, okay. So, a, a knuckleball does not spin, therefore it is susceptible to any possible puff of air that comes across its path.

• 39:11Chuck Nice?

  So you could use a, a windy day knuckleball? To create the, the, the effect of a curve ball.

• 39:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yeah, but it, it'll, it'll curve in a way that you can't predict. And that's why catchers are always dropping knuckleballs. Cause they don't know where the hell the, the, you know, the ball's jiggling and wiggling and, and it comes in. And so, uh, the number of passed balls, passed knuckleballs by a, by a catcher is huge relative to other pitchers.

• 39:38Chuck Nice?

  Cause it's a surprise ball.

• 39:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's a surprise ball for everybody.

• 39:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even the pitcher. A curve ball, the catcher calls for the curve ball.

• 39:44Chuck Nice?

  Right, so he knows what he's doing.

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they know where it's coming. So.

• 39:47Chuck Nice?

  See, this is what I love, this is what I love about you, man. I mean this, I swear to God. See, thi- this is what's great. We're talking about baseball on Mars, but yet you know all this crap about baseball. Well, cause how does this happen?

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you know what it is? It's not like, I mean, but I like, who does, I'm, I'm a red-blooded American. I like me some baseball and hot dogs.

• 40:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And apple pie.

• 40:09Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 40:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just start there.

• 40:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now the rest of it is just cause I go to a baseball game and I'm curious about it. Like I just ask questions of the game and of myself relevant to the game.

• 40:19Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for example, I say to myself, suppose you're hit by a pitch on ball four.

• 40:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ought to be able to go to second base.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 40:34Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 40:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 40:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, true.

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 40:37Chuck Nice?

  No, that makes sense when you think about it.

• 40:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just, these are the kind of questions I asked about the game.

• 40:41Chuck Nice?

  That's very funny, yeah.

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, now.

• 40:44Chuck Nice?

  We gotta get that rule in baseball. That's awesome.

• 40:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, uh, how far, how big a stadium would you have to make? Martian gravity is about forty percent of Earth's gravity.

• 40:53Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you weigh a hundred pounds on Earth, you weigh forty pounds on, or thirty-eight pounds on Mars.

• 40:58Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So at two hundred pounds, you weigh eighty pounds, which is great because the muscles that you have for carrying a two hundred pound body, uh, will now be operating in an eighty pound body. So you'll be able to jump higher. Okay. Yeah. You'd be able, yeah, so there's, so maybe you'd make the infield a little bigger because you'd be leaping, uh, you know, you'd have to sort of adjust that. There'd be some trial and error on this. Right. To get the ideal field size. Now, when you hit a homerun, the ball is doing two things. It's going forward and it's going upwards. Up, right. Okay. And then it finishes going upwards and then it starts coming downwards while it's still going forwards. Right. Each of those have a different effect, okay? How far you, how fast you can hit the thing going forward has nothing to do with being on Mars.

• 41:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. That's just how, how fast did you swing it back? Right, that's your, that's your swing strength. It's your swing strength. Now, the Mars, the ball going up, okay? The same force will have the ball go higher. Correct. Than on Earth, which means it will travel farther simply because it'll go higher. Right. All right, and so you gotta do the ma, I haven't done the math on that. Oh, yeah. I don't have, if I were to guess, uh, you know, make it forty percent bigger. I mean, just as a first cut. As a general rule. Just a first cut. Just a first cut. And probably if I do the math, there are some adjustments in there. Right. So a four hundred dead center field, a forty percent greater than that would be a hundred and sixty more feet. And, is that right? Yeah, four, yeah, a hundred and sixty more feet. So it'd be five hundred and sixty feet dead center. Right.

• 42:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to recreate the same likelihood of a. The same likelihood of a homerun. Now, now, now, that means outfield is huge. Right. Which means you gotta have some fast outfielders. That is true. You might have to add two more outfielders to it. Yeah, that's, exactly. It fans out from home plate. Right. So if you, if it's, if it's five hundred and sixty dead center, you know, you're, you're gonna be missing a lot of balls. Yeah. Be like Little League, you add a fourth outfielder.

• 42:53Speaker 03

  Bringing space and science down to Earth. You're listening to StarTalk.

• 43:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York, where I also serve as the Director of the Hayden Planetarium. And I've got with me Eugene Mirman, Comedienne Extraordinaire. Eugene, thank you.

• 43:43Eugene Mirman?

  And with me is John Oliver.

• 43:47Eugene Mirman?

  England's gift to America.

• 43:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And John, you've got this regular gig on The Daily Show.

• 43:52Speaker 12

  I do.

• 43:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool.

• 43:53Speaker 12

  That's right. Normally it would be cooler, but I am sitting with an astronaut.

• 44:00Speaker 12

  So it only compounds the failure that the six-year-old version of myself.

• 44:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Annie Shaken, you've become a journalist in your later years, an author, writing about space, and a geologist by background, a planetary geologist. Welcome to StarTalk Live.

• 44:13Speaker 13

  Thank you.

• 44:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one, the only, the truly inimitable Buzz Aldrin. Ladies and gentlemen.

• 44:27Speaker 13

  Do you think that people would come? We've seen the pictures of what Mars looks like, and I, you know, I love Mars as a planet as much as anybody, but to look at it every day with the brown dust and the brown sky, which is the dust floating in the air, do you think people would learn to love that? People who came from the Earth, their children, their grandchildren, would they start to feel like that's home?

• 44:50Speaker 14

  They will be the most remembered, the most talked-about pioneers that have ever ever set foot on Earth, because they pioneered something that nobody ever did, and they carried it out. The leader who makes a commitment for human beings on the planet Earth. How long we've been here? We came down from the trees, whatever, and we've done kind of piddling things, but all of a sudden...

• 45:22Speaker 13

  A couple of cool things, I think.

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:25Eugene Mirman?

  Earth's 5,000 years old, but anyway.

• 45:27Speaker 14

  Now, thousands, thousands of years in the future, the person on Earth that kind of pushed human beings to go and establish...

• 45:40Speaker 14

  A settlement that began to grow and grow. You don't think that's a small thing in the history of mankind? Oh, I do, but I think I'm asking for the people who are actually living on Mars. Yeah. Will they feel that they are happy? There'll be more movies written about them, more books and everything.

• 46:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it's like Leica the dog. Leica died, but it was a mutt stray dog running through the streets of Moscow. And now it's more famous than like Lassie. Yeah. So if I were a mutt dog, I'd want to die in space because people would like talk about it. You've been listening to a special mashup edition of Start Off. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.