A Conversation with Dr. Mae Jemison

Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with Dr. Mae Jemison, MD, former astronaut and Principal of 100 Year Starship, to explore her multidisciplinary career, the challenges of interstellar space travel, and the best ways to make science more accessible for everyone. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Photo Credit: NASA

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. On rare occasions, I sit down to interview someone whose presence is so powerful, so entertaining, and so enlightening all at once. And the conversation that comes out of that encounter is so inspiring that we have to depart from our usual studio format in exchange for some one-on-one time. On just such an occasion, I sat down with former NASA astronaut, engineer, and physician Dr. Mae Jemison. And that interaction moved us all at StarTalk to break format for this particular episode.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So instead of our usual panel of in-studio expert guests and comedians and scientists, what follows is my uninterrupted conversation with May from start to finish. Dr. Mae Jemison has been to space, but that's not the only thing, or even the most interesting thing about her. From her early career as a medical doctor in Africa and Cambodia, to her space shuttle mission and now her newest project, 100 Year Starship, she has literally aimed for the stars. We talked about all of this. So in this first part of the conversation, we get to know about May and the life that prepared her to dream bigger than most people will ever dare to dream.

• 1:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's go to that conversation now.

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I feel like we go like way, way back, but it's only just way back. Like to the 90s, the early 90s, I first met you. At a conference where we were advising the head of NASA on where NASA should go. And you were there and it was like, wow, this, wow. She didn't only go into space. She's like, has thought this through.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, and, and you had a whole life after going into space. I just say congratulations just on what you've assembled here.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Well, it's really kind of interesting because so many times people think of, of themselves and particularly people who are in the public light as having this single dimension. And it's critically important to remember that there's a life before that that leads you up to the place you are. And then you have to continue on afterwards. And, you know, so for me, everything that I did before I ever went into space was just as important as going into space because that's what got me there.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  The conference that you talked about was about, you know, where should the space program go? And bringing that, thinking about it, I had to think about the work that I'd done before. I worked in West Africa for two and a half years as an area peace corps medical officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia. Two of the least developed countries in the world. I'd worked in a Cambodian refugee camp. What I-

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. And then you went into space?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  There's more stuff before I went into space. So, so, no, no, the reason why I'm bringing this up is because so many times people think, you know, you just appeared on the planet at that moment that they knew you.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hatched in that, in that circumstance.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  And you weren't, right? It's all the things beforehand, so-

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hearing you speak at this conference? I knew there was, I, there was, there's like some backstory there, there had to be. Cause you were just, you were just on point in everything you said. Your perspective you brought to the table. So that's why I, I just want, I knew that if I ever had a show, I wanted you on the show.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  So, so back then, so you were already plotting and planning. But, but isn't that the thing, you have to plot and plan anyway. But you know, the thing about the whole conference, when I was thinking about it. My idea was that space exploration has many uses. And it will only come to fruition, we'll only know exactly how it should be used as we get more people involved. And so it was literally because of my background of working in developing countries. I was very excited about how you could use remote sensing in developing countries. How you could use-

• 4:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Satellite's remote sensing.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Satellite remote sensing, how you could use satellite telecommunications to be able to get to places where telephone lines don't reach. And that's what I was very focused in. I had just left NASA, I was, was thinking about, how do I use this incredible knowledge and blend it with other things? Now, I talk about medicine, but I'm really an engineer at heart, right? Cause I did chemical engineering as undergraduate and also majored in African studies. So you can sort of see how those pieces blend together and how you think about things and how you think through life. You put the pieces together. So, after medical school, I really wanted to work in a developing country for a long period of time. Because you get to learn so much about yourself.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  So sometimes people think that, you know, when you go out and you're working these places, you're doing all this good Samaritan stuff and aren't you a good guy? But for me, it's feeling something that makes me feel good.

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you did it for completely selfish reasons?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we, I mean, let's look at the things. We usually do thi- no, no, no, no, no, you don't laugh. I think we usually do things for selfish reasons. But that doesn't mean that, that's bad. And when I say selfish, I mean, there's something inside of you that you're feeling by doing these things. So sometimes when we look at selflessness, you know, because I believe it's important that other people in the world share in the bounty of the planet.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  That fits with my internal compass. And I'm gonna feel better when my internal compass is pointing, you know, true north, true south, whatever it is, whatever direction you wanna go.

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pointing true.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  That's pointing true.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, growing up, K through 12, where were you?

• 6:25Speaker 01

  I grew up on the south side of Chicago.

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  South side of Chicago.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  I was born in Alabama. We moved up to Chicago when I was a little, when I was, before I started school. So, I grew up on the south side of Chicago. I went to Chicago Public Schools. And all the-

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Public Schools, all the way.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  There you go. And the whole time that I was there, I was always involved in science projects, but I also danced all the time. I wanted to be a professional dancer. I loved dance. I took lots of art classes, so I was one of those-

• 6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'm so glad you must have twisted your ankle at some point and didn't continue, because then we wouldn't have you as astronaut Jemison.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  No, I didn't twist my ankle. I had to make a choice.

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  So, when I was graduating for college, literally, this is true, I had to make a choice between becoming, coming to New York City to try to become a professional dancer or to go to medical school. And, you know, I'd always say my mother helped me solve that, you know, because she said you can always dance if you're a doctor, but you can't necessarily doctor if you're a dancer. So, when I came to New York City-

• 7:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's wise.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  I took classes at Alvin Ailey while going to medical school, because it sort of fulfilled that, that energy need that I had for, you know, the creativity where you just put yourself into things, just totally and completely physically and all that energy. So, it, you know, it, it was a choice. We have to make choices. Sometimes people say you can do everything. You can do a lot of stuff, but you can't do everything. Let's get real.

• 7:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Right? Sometimes you have to make choices, and those choices exclude some other things you might like to do.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Remind me, what shuttle missions were you on?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  I flew once. I flew on Space Lab J. It was done with a Japanese space agency, and it was a laboratory mission, so we carried up a laboratory in the back of the, the space shuttle.

• 8:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And which space shuttle mission was that?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  It was STS 47th, but it was actually the 50th flight of the space shuttle.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  So, they were, they were numbered in order of when they were put on the manifest. But then, if the flight slipped or anything happened, then you may fly later than your manifest.

• 8:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they kept the number nonetheless.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  And you kept, keep the number. So, STS 47 went with that payload and everything. We flew on Endeavour.

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Endeavour, nice.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  So it was a great mission.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think Endeavour now lives in Los Angeles, is that correct?

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Endeavour lives in LA.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So in LA, do you tear up when you see it on display at the California Science Center?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  So I went to the California Science Center when they were actually unveiling it. And yeah, it's a strange feeling because it's sort of...

• 9:01Speaker 01

  It's sort of saying goodbye to an era, but knowing that we have more to do. And so it's really sort of this bittersweet, very poignant kind of feeling.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  So it was a... So you know, just sort of being around that as a... You know, it takes you back for a second, right? But it also, I think, wants to move us forward. And I think that's the issue. How do we move forward on this?

• 9:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had strong... I had strong views on this. So many people were tearing up when the shuttle mission ended. And I said, "You're not tearing up because the shuttle mission is ending. You're tearing up, in fact, because we don't have a really well-developed plan to follow this." Did anybody tear up when we retired Gemini?

• 9:51Speaker 01

  No.

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the mighty Saturn V was like sitting right next to... That's where we're going next.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mothball this, let's keep going. So that's why I think people tear it up, because there wasn't something right there.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I teared up... I don't tear up.

• 10:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, sorry.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  But I was...

• 10:11Speaker 01

  You know I don't tear up.

• 10:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, alright.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  But no, but I think you're very...

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You give the clout.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I think you're spot on because the problem was, is we were doing this in like, "Well, we're just gonna stop doing because we don't have enough money." And the shuttles actually were... They were on the path to retirement in 2004. And most people don't recognize that it was right after the Columbia accident and that declaration that we're gonna go to the moon, but we're gonna do it at the same cost. So it meant that the shuttle had to retire. And when they started mothballing that...

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And reallocate those monies, right.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Reallocate the monies. And even station was gonna go away, right, earlier on.

• 10:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The space station, yeah?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Space station. So...

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Basically, we sort of like said, "Well, we'll try to figure out something and we won't make a commitment to it." So...

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How's that? Compare that to, "We'll put a man on the moon, return him to the Earth before the decade is out." We'll say, "We've got some money, we'll figure it out as we go along."

• 11:15Speaker 01

  And here's the thing.

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very different times.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  I was really irritated when I joined the astronaut program. Because I figured when I was a little girl, by the time I got old enough to be an astronaut, I'd be hanging out at least on Mars.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At least.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  At least on Mars. And I wouldn't have had to be a crew member, I could just be a scientist working on stuff. And so, the reason we're not on Mars now has nothing to do, from my perspective, with the engineering. It has more to do with the public commitment. And that's the reason why we have to bring all those pieces and so many different people in and include them in things. It was a lack of public commitment, as people didn't see why it made a difference. I was a little girl, I grew up on the South Side of Chicago. I'm running around telling grown folks why it was important for us to be in space. I know, I was serious. I was running around telling grown people, "And you see, we could do this on the moon, we could do that and stuff." But so many folks were left out.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  When you look at the space program, there were lots of people involved, but publicly, when you viewed it, a lot of people felt like they didn't belong. I grew up in Woodlawn, the South Side of Chicago, African-American community. So many people, they were proud, they thought it was cool, but what did it have to do with us? Right? And that's the piece that's really important. How do we make sure people know that when they pick up their smartphone and they have their mapping services on it, that here's this GPS, Global Positioning Satellite Systems, right? That they have a space receiver in their hand.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  That's the job we have to do. That's how you get public commitment, when folks understand that this is not just for this peculiar group of folks, right? It's much deeper than that.

• 13:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to wrap up this segment of StarTalk. Coming back, more of my one-on-one conversation with physician, engineer, and former NASA astronaut, Dr. Bailey Jameson. We'll see you in a moment.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. We've been following my one-on-one conversation with former astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison. After she went into space, she continued to aim for the stars with her project 100 Year Starship. This is an inclusive, multidisciplinary project to get humans, not robots, but living, breathing, squishy humans, to another star system within 100 years. It's like a moonshot, but a whole lot harder. May and I discussed some of the challenges that we humans must tackle before we plan for such a launch date. And these include not only the obvious demands on energy and technology and propulsion,

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  but also medical and anthropological needs. So, let's get back to my conversation with May.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  100 Year Starship is about making sure we have the capability for human travel beyond our solar system to another star within 100 years. It's about pursuing an extraordinary tomorrow in order to create a better world today. It's by doing those things that we don't know how to do. It's about using interstellar travel as a platform to push radical leaps in knowledge, technology, and public commitment.

• 14:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dr. May, we haven't been out of low Earth orbit since 1972.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  And there's a problem.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're talking about traveling between the stars.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Uh huh. So here's the deal. When you look at interstellar travel, we're not looking at a specific launch date. We're talking about how do you make the capabilities exist? No one organization can do it. But can we create and help to form an environment where people try to do bigger things?

• 15:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is not rocket architecture, is it?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  It includes rocket architecture. It includes human health and human behavior. It includes sustainability. It includes civilization design. It includes how do you get financial commitment to something that you may not see the results of?

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you've got medicine, economics, engineering, biology.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Behavior.

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, human, uh, psychology.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Governance. So our motto is, we pursue an extraordinary tomorrow in order to create a better world today. By doing things that no one thinks you can do, we know how it changes things.

• 16:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what the moonshot did for our country and the world.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Just think about it. In 1901, when H.G. Wells wrote First Man on the Moon, it was less than 70 years later that we actually had a human on the moon. And back then, we knew, we knew so little about anything. So our technological arc right now is much steeper than it was back then. We know a lot more. So it's not unreasonable to imagine that in 100 years, we might be able to have the capabilities. Now, I'm not talking about Star Trek and warp drive and bending spacetime and all of that kind of stuff.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe, maybe.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Might be. I mean, I may be limiting us, but we may be able to have the capabilities to think about it. And 100 Year Starship is about providing a platform to think outside of those ways we usually do stuff. Right now, staying within our solar system, we can do a lot of incremental kinds of technology to get there. But getting to another star requires that you open things up.

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now we've got Proxima Centauri B, a little planet going around the nearest star to the sun. So that helps you out, I think.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  That helps out. That helps out. But just think about, think about the platform this provides. And some people say, take humans out of it. But no, leave humans in because that pushes the platform. Imagine what you have to do with sustainability, right?

• 17:42Speaker 01

  It's not just the rocket engines, we'll talk about the rocket engines. But it's sustainability. Because if you get to going fast enough that you could get there in 100 years or 50 years, you're not gonna slow down to pick stuff up, right? You're gonna have to carry everything with you.

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no filling stations.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  No filling stations, no grocery stores, no stop offs.

• 18:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No Quick Mart, none, nothing.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  No, uh-uh. You're gonna take it with you.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No Whole Foods.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  What we gonna do, no. So here's the thing. So you can get, and once you get there, you're probably not coming back. So, everything you take has to be sustainable, which means we have to understand things like the microbiome in the soil, which is what fixes nitrogen and other things for plants to grow. Because we're gonna have to grow our own food. We're not gonna be able to, you know, store enough food. You can't freeze dry and all that kinda stuff. You're gonna have to have a whole bunch of people on board.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't bring silos on your trip.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  And it doesn't make any sense, right? So you're gonna have to, because every silo you bring, every extra packet you bring is more energy that's needed in order to get you to point one light speed, right? So, so think about it. What does that mean? It means we have to make tremendous strides in understanding sustainability in terms of our own bodies, how we digest things. Because people's microbial system inside, it's, you know, your body has to carry these microbes with it. And they're essential to our health.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did I hear recently that is that 10, 20, 30% of our body mass are other living organisms?

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that?

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Isn't that neat?

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's creepy.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Is that creepy to you? But that's neat, so that it means that we're...

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta be me.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  You are, but you have buddies to help you out.

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't be microbes.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Look at you have, you have billions of buddies to help you out, right?

• 19:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta be me.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  You're being you, but you have buddies to help you out. So it talks about how we're in this, this balance with our environment. But we have to understand that. So the whole thing around the microbes, sustainability, materials, right? Clothing, you can't, right now when we go up into space, people carry the clothing with you. We had a textile and design professor, Carl Espilon, who came in and said, "How many people in this plenary session can sew?" We got a few hands up. He said, "The rest of you all can go." Because we're gonna have to make our own clothes. Because we're gonna have to look at material and ruggedness. You're not gonna be able to carry a box cars of clothing for people. You're gonna have to be able to reuse and recycle the materials.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  So it changes our relationship to textiles. Everything that we do starts to change.

• 20:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think. Space pilgrims. Pilgrims had to do everything themselves.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Pilgrims had to do everything themselves.

• 20:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was no Quick Mart.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  But everybody, I mean, our history of every society.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They got help from the natives, right?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  But, but the natives were here doing stuff for themselves.

• 20:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For themselves, exactly.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and all over the world. But you see, we had this wonderful planet that supplies us with so many things. So now we're gonna have to understand enough about it to be able to recreate some of that. So it helps our understanding of our own planet. Let's just talk about energy, right? So how fast can you go?

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Currently, I mean, I did the math on this.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Go ahead.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You take the fastest thing we've ever launched and it doesn't even have people on it. All right, and you aim it towards Alpha Centauri. It would take, the Alpha Centauri system, it would take, you know, fifty, sixty thousand years.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 21:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somewhat longer than a human lifespan.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  It's somewhat longer than we've been able to cave paint well even.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's longer than since we've been cave painting.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  So we, we have to go much faster. Which means that we have to generate these tremendous amounts of energy, store them safely, and control them. But you, that means you can't do chemical.

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chemical energy will not do it.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Chemical energy is out. All that fire and flame that comes up under the shuttle or.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It looks good.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Looks good, but it's not gonna do it. So we're gonna have to do.

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, so chemical energy are molecules that have energy stored in them. You break apart the molecule, or you bring together molecules, atoms, and energy is released.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you aim that in a way so that you thrust forward.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. So that's, that's everything you see. But if we were going to try to generate the kinds of energy that we would need to get to another star in fifty years or something.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is a tenth the speed of light?

• 22:18Speaker 01

  A tenth the speed of light.

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At four light years away, it's forty year, forty year trip.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Okay. So you're going to have to, we're gonna have to do.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  And minimum fission safely, right? Which powers atomic plants and things like that where you break atoms apart. Or you're gonna have to do fusion, which is what runs the sun, right? Which the sun generates energy, which we don't really know how to do well. Or we're gonna have to use antimatter. Each one of these are orders of magnitude more energy. So if we started to be able to do even a little of that, look how it would change life here on Earth. If we were able to do it safely.

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Access to energy.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Access to energy, which is one of the things that's fundamental about people's quality of life.

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's one of the things that the futurists got wrong in the 1940s, 50s, and early 60s. They're imagining the year 2000. And everyone is in a flying car and motorized sidewalks. And they were thinking that somehow, energy would be unlimited. Because all that takes energy. But they got that wrong. Energy is rather finite. But information is unlimited. And so our lives have been changed by access to information. The whole IT universe. So I'm intrigued by that. So you're gonna need a future that's kinda like the one people dreamt of.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  We're gonna need.

• 23:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unlimited access to energy.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  We're gonna need a future with a lot more energy, right? But that's gonna be needed anyway. Information will not take the place of some fundamental physical properties. And this is where we have to balance things out. And I think that we've gotten a little confused as we start to look at IT, right? Information technology. And assuming it's gonna solve everything. Because there's some fundamental physical things that living, breathing beings have to do. And that is, they require energy. So whether it's.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Being able to cool vaccines, to deliver in places, to keep food safe, to move from location to location, maybe you can decrease that with IT. But we need energy and it's something we need to put money and effort and research in. And that's what, again, 100 Year Starship is about. How do we start to push things forward? One of the things that we have to think about as well is even in health. That's the reason why I bring humans in. We work on something that we're calling crucibles. This is forging thought into reality. How do we jumpstart new disciplines? And these crucibles are subject matter experts working on a tough problem that you need

• 25:00Speaker 01

  for interstellar travel. One of those problems was, how do you create a healthcare infrastructure that travels with you? Biology evolves in space and it's going to evolve over 50 years, right? And when you get someplace. Right now, our healthcare system, our healthcare infrastructure, depends on clinical trials, pharmaceutical development, looking at the epidemiology of what's happening around the world. And it sits in lots of different places and you bring in folks, you do things, and it's a big old system. But you can't carry that with you, nor are you going to be able to radio back to Earth or get supplies. So how do you create something?

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no supply ship coming after you.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  There's no supply ships. They would have to catch up with you, right? So how do you do that?

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if it could do that, why not get on that ship and get there faster?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Well, that's something called the weight equation, but we're going to, let's do this. So how do you, how do you do, you know, have you ever noticed like physicists, they always want to jump out of the bio stuff? They want to jump into the energy and how do you go faster?

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry, I'm guilty about that too.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, so I'm going to keep you honest.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  But, so if you, if we did something called virtual human, a crucible, and it was done in Graz, Austria, in a castle, right? You know, you got to do it right. But it was being done with a number of different people. And we're looking at, how do you wholly model human physiology and health?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  By being able to do a model that includes epidemiology, behavior, the physiology and stuff. Because that's the kind of infrastructure system that you'll need to carry with you.

• 26:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But how are you gonna do this when I've seen the thickness of the physician's desk reference? Okay, the PDR is this thick and it's filled with prescribable medicines. You're not gonna have every one of these medicines on the ship.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  That's exactly the point, and the medicines will evolve. So you need to be able to figure out a way to generate your own medicines. So you know those microbes that you're so adverse to that are on your skin?

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll take them, that's fine. If I gotta live with it.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Well, some of them become bad actors when they go into space.

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, is that right?

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Some of them become more pathogenic.

• 27:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  When you go into space.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They get pissed off, "Where'd you send me?"

• 27:22Speaker 01

  So there's this evolution, your body, you know, there are a lot of things that may happen. So we need to be able to understand epidemiologically what's gonna happen.

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So your body's flora changes.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  It may change a little bit, and we don't know exactly what's gonna happen. But so, this is the reason why you need to be able to do your own investigations. You need to be able to do your own infrastructure, what's gonna happen when you go there. You know, things happen to your immune system, but there's lots of stuff that go, it's really good stuff. But there are lots of things that happen, very exciting. But how do you understand that? How do you put it together? And it's by starting to, uh, being able to model it, right? And being able to carry that model with you. So you're gonna have to have a way of really understanding, um, like, yes, the information that's in the PDR. But the PDR is just the, I mean, that's like just a star chart, right? Right, that's all that is.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  You actually have to go and understand all the stuff that's back behind the stars, right? So you have to understand all the numerous reactions and the, you know, pharmacokinetics and the kinetics of enzymes and all of these other things that go on. And then you have to understand how one's behavior affects your body and your physiology. You have to understand, I mean, there's so many things. That's what part of the health infrastructure is. So what we're doing with Virtual Human is bringing in people in genomics, proteomics, um... People who do tissue cell culture growth, gaming, people in gaming, quantum computing, and all of those things, to bring them together to start to think about how would you create that model?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  That would not have happened if we didn't say, "Let's think about going interstellar."

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course not.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  And let's bring other people in.

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a non-thought without that goal. Right now, we have to close out this part of the show, but stick around for our final segment, where we wrap up my conversation with former NASA astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison. We'll be right back. Welcome back to StarTalk. We've been following my conversation with Dr. Mae Jemison. She's a former NASA astronaut, she's a physician and engineer, and she's also the founder of 100 Year Starship. We've been discussing the dreams and challenges of taking humans interstellar. Let's get back to that conversation now.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  So 100 Year Starship, we proposed an inclusive, audacious journey to transform life here on Earth and beyond. And I was fortunate enough to lead the team that won the modest seed funding from DARPA.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  DARPA?

• 30:02Speaker 01

  DARPA.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  The modest seed funding from DARPA to create this independent organization. But you notice the first word is inclusive? Because we have to include not just over gender, ethnicity, and geography, but across disciplines. And so we brought in people who had not been involved with space exploration, the amateurs and the experts. Because there's so much expertise out in the world, there's so much knowledge out in the world that may not have been applied to space exploration, that if you give people permission to be involved, if you give them a way to participate, tremendous things happen.

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, you know and I know that if space is the carrot, you can attract some of the brightest minds in the landscape.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely. We found that there were so many people who wanted to be involved, who just hadn't had a way to be involved. And in fact, I'll have to get you a T-shirt that says, "Space isn't just for rocket scientists and billionaires." That's our other motto. Because by bringing in other people, they bring these perspectives in. So when we opened it up to life scientists, who were never involved with space exploration, there was this little cabal that occurred, where they just sort of took over. And out of it came virtual human. Because they said, you know, the deal is the infrastructure. It's not about space countermeasures and, you know, lower body negative pressure and all these things

• 31:39Speaker 01

  where folks try to do stuff. It's really about how do you create a system that will evolve over time? And that's where it started from. And so we're working to continue to move those things forward. We're looking at things around design as well. And even how do you become an advanced civilization? You know, there's this thing called the Kortenshaw, you know, scale on civilizations, and it's all around energy. And that's all, physicists have been doing the work. They say it's about energy. But you know there are people called anthropologists, and psychologists, and historians and stuff, who study civilizations and how they evolve. So I want to get them into that

• 32:23Speaker 01

  because using all the energy of your star may not be the marker of an advanced civilization. Draining your planet of all of its energy may not be the marker of an advanced civilization, or a civilization that can't hang around for a long period of time. So what we want to do is to bring other people in and really have this transdisciplinary look, letting other people be involved. Because that's how you're going to get these radical leaps in ideas and design. That's how you do it.

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I guess I had just not fully understood the whole mission statement. Because I'm imagining, because what else could you expect someone to think? All right, here's Maia Jameson. She's been in space and now she wants to go to the stars. That's just kind of weird. Okay, we'll let her, okay, fine. But what you're doing is...

• 33:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not building a spaceship. You are saying, here are the challenges that such a mission confronts.

• 33:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wouldn't it be interesting to solve those as a thought experiment? As or in real, really solve them? And look at how it applies back to the rest of our life. And so you would have a moonshot without actually going to the moon.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Well, you know, the, yes, let's be clear. We want to do it with the stars because if you pretend that it's not for the stars, then people lose interest in some ways. But it's about capabilities. We can't set up a launch date until you know some things.

• 33:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Like I've had people sort of say, well, what's the technology roadmap? I don't know because we don't know what the hell the technologies have to be. I mean, let's be serious. We could have a capabilities map, right? Which we know certain things have to exist in order to do that trip. And so let's work on the capabilities. We'll reassess in 10 years or 20 years or 30 years. And then you might be able to start this other thing. But it's really about how do you transform life here on Earth? How do you use this as a platform to push? Because again, we would be on the moon. You and I would be sitting having this conversation and a lunar base are Mars, right? If there had been commitment and people understood how this could affect our world.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  But it's really again about the capabilities. Creating a capabilities map and engaging people. No one organization can do all of this. So if we could help to start to change the environment. You know, the first thing I had to do was to get the woo woo out of it. That's a technical term. Get the woo woo out of it.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The woo woo.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Right? You know what it is, like you said, maybe I'm just going to go to the stars. Okay, that's kind of weird. That's the woo woo, right? So to really start to think, why might this be a reasonable proposition? But my task has really been to get other people involved to change the way people think about things. Right? We do things like we have a Canopus Award for excellence in interstellar writing.

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is science fiction?

• 35:24Speaker 01

  It's science fiction and, and nonfiction.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  So. How you tell the story is really important. How do you communicate the story?

• 35:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Canopus is one of the brightest stars in the sky.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  What else?

• 35:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Visible mostly from the southern hemisphere. It was a navigational star.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 35:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For so many civilizations, including NASA, I think.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  It's a navigational star. It was for people on land, right? Along with the North Star.

• 35:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  And it's the star that's used for deep space probes.

• 35:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Right? And with, along with the sun. And the other thing about Canopus, it was used for planting in the cradle of humans, right? In the Great Rift Valley. And people use it for figuring out when planting season started. And the interesting part, it is the star about which the spice planet orbits.

• 36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh. I had forgotten that.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  So...

• 36:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the novel Dune.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  In the novel Dune. So what we wanted to do when we chose that one is this incredible connection from our past to potential futures. Because it really is about this longevity. When we, when we look at all of this, it's really about who we can be and getting people involved, giving them a path forward. That, that's what I believe I can help uniquely with just from my perspective and my background. I'm comfortable with other folks coming in. I like cats. I have a lot of cats at home. So I don't mind herding cats because I'm good at it.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've had, you had practice.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  I have practice. I have practice.

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Herding and feeding cats, yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Herding and feeding of cats is dangerous, right? I have scars from it, but it's a very worthwhile venture. But really, 100 Year Starship is about how do we really push for something better? How do we really do something that we don't know how to do?

• 37:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I figured out. If you need more darker money, you say, some of our top researchers established that en route to the nearest star, the aliens are going to want to intercept our food supply. So we need weapons to take out the aliens. Then they'll just give you more money. See, that's how you do that. We don't have to tell anybody. We keep that on.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  I have no idea what to do with that. I'm gonna pretend I was not in the room. I was not in the room. I had nothing to do with it.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta protect the Starship Enterprise and Star Trek. It's on a peaceful mission to explore new worlds. But it's got photon torpedoes. It's got, it can kick some butt if it has to.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I think-

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's just not its point.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  But, but, but there-

• 38:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The defense budget is like a gazillion dollars. You get this much of it and just keep, keep the engineering going. That's all I'm saying.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, there, you're right.

• 38:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just say thank you.

• 38:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're welcome.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  You're very-

• 38:34Speaker 01

  I don't know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna extricate myself out of it.

• 38:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Out of that one.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  But, but you know, it's this whole thing that we have to look at about when people talk about science. They so many times see it as something that's outside of them.

• 38:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  That it doesn't have anything to do with their world. And yet, so much of our world, we're looking for how do we get out of these difficult situations and just assuming that science and tech is gonna take us out of it. But it's not. It depends on who's involved. And if I can't do anything else, I should be able to bring people and get them involved. When you look at, I do a lot of work with our own science literacy. I started international science camps. When I first came out of NASA, that was the first thing I did. I started an international science camp called The Earth We Share. Why? Because I believe science literacy is vital. Science literacy is not becoming the next professional scientist.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  It's about being able to read an article in a newspaper or magazine and figure out what it has to do with it.

• 39:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And knowing how to vote relative to those issues.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Being able to vote. We ask people to vote for all kinds of things, right? That have, that have science as a basis for it, right? We need to be able to do that. I tell people, you know, you want your hairdresser to know a little pH. Guys don't get it, but all the women do. You want your hairdresser to know about pH acid-base balance. As they're putting the colors, the perms, and the relaxers, and all those things in your hair. We need-

• 40:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I've never had that conversation with my barber. I can tell you that right now.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  But it's true, right? But you also, you want folks who are working in their gardens, when they're sort of like drenching everything with the insecticides, to understand stuff. When we put statistics about folks' healthcare, right? And, "Oh, you ought to do this, and you need to be your own health advocate." If you don't have any numeracy around what these statistics mean, and how to interpret it, how in the world are you going to be an advocate for your own healthcare?

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're disenfranchised. You disenfranchise yourself.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Right. You've disempowered yourself. And that's one of the issues that's really important. How do we get more people involved? And people also have different perspectives when they come in. You ask different questions, depending on what you've, the experiences you've had.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you're a living example of that.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Awww. I want to tell you one other reason why Interstellar. I love Mars.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nobody doesn't love Mars.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Love Mars. But, think about Mars and the generations that are going to be working on these things. Even since we were kids, we've had something on Mars. We've seen Mars close up, right? Everybody who, most of the people who are alive today, were born after we landed on the moon. It's no big whoop. You know why we say, "Ooh, the moonshot, you know, ooh, that we went to the moon." A lot of, you know, when I talk to college students, they say, "Yeah, that's cool." It would be like me saying, you know, "They're airplanes," when I was a little kid. People would think-

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know airplane.

• 41:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had jets.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  We had airplane.

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the John Denver song, "I'm leaving on a jet plane." Why'd you have to specify that? A jet plane as opposed to any other plane? Because they were a big deal at the time.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Right, so but but but for us as little kids, it's like it's a plane. You know, why are you thrilled about it? So the idea that the moon is something too far or that Mars is really going to push. We've had stuff roving around on Mars since most people were born, right? Up close. We did samples, Vikings did samples when I was in school.

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not really the next frontier.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  It's not the next frontier. Even going, we've had, you know, we saw the pictures of Saturn, right? Everybody remember the first time Saturn's ring? Like, ooh, Saturn's ring.

• 42:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Close up.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  They've seen this, like, that's just like a regular old thing.

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is just a thing.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  That's just a thing.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just Google it. It's there.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  But but going outside of our solar system, doing something that we can't do, that's what grabs you. You know, I would go to Mars in a heartbeat. Right? I'm like, ah. But it's not the most difficult thing that we can think of doing.

• 42:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, time for the final part of the show. Dr. Mae Jemison had a question for me about my experience as the director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium. And we chatted about why there's no substitute for hands-on learning and why you probably still remember all your elementary school field trips. Check it out.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Actually, a question I have is as the director of the Hayden Planetarium, what do you consider some of the big challenges in terms of public engagement? And what kind of a platform does it give you to impact, say, for example, students in New York City and their parents?

• 43:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a great question. Oh, my gosh. Great question. Okay, you ready?

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, as a museum, what would be true for any museum? We're competing with high-value, high-quality video media that you would have access to at home, on your computer, on your TV screen. And so, the museum experience has to continually be something that absorbs your entire mind, body, and soul.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Viscerally.

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Viscerally. So you walk in, "Oh, my gosh, there's a meteorite. I can touch it. What's this behind me? What's this above me?" And you engage all of your senses simultaneously so that that kind of experience calls to you away from the TV screen or from your device.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  It's not virtual reality, it's reality.

• 44:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's reality. And so, I think it's the it's a challenge that museums should rise to, not acquiesce to, rise to, to create an unforgettable experience for anyone who visits, no matter the age. And I look at kids, second graders come in, whole school groups come in, and I just watch them. And I say, "Yeah, that was me when I was a kid." Okay, so we got, we still do, we're still at it. We still have this. And it also remains true. Research and education has shown that we will remember school trips from elementary school.

• 45:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Research and education has shown that we will remember trips taken in elementary school long into adulthood. Don't you remember school trips?

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, school trips are fascinating.

• 45:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every one of them. And so, what is it? You're not looking at a textbook. You're not listening to a lecture. You are experiencing something.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Experiential education.

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Experience, that's what I always worked on.

• 45:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if a museum can't do that, then get out of the business.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  The best way to teach science is hands-on, is experience, by touching and feeling things and by watching it grow, right?

• 45:56Speaker 01

  And that's what so I remember my trips to museum, I grew up in Chicago, so I was at the Museum of Science and Industry, Natural History Museum, the Planetarium and all of that. And you know, it was just like, ooh. And even when I was an astronaut, I, I, I went to Chicago.

• 46:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many people get to say that? Even back when I was an astronaut. That's just a cool sentence. I just wanna pause and reflect on that sentence, just for a moment. Okay, continue.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  I went to the Planetarium in Chicago.

• 46:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Adler Planetarium?

• 46:26Speaker 01

  The Adler Planetarium.

• 46:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The first one in the United States.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  And they had this, this exhibit, this hall where you went into and they said it was, I can't remember how they were, the, the, the visual field you would have when you were close, I can't remember if it was like you were a million miles from the sun and how it would just fill up the entire view. Or I don't remember exact distance, but they had mirrors and different things and so, I mean, I was an astronaut, I'm cool, right? I, I got it going on. It was something that just sort of like touched me and said, oh my god.

• 46:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, a million miles from the sun is only as far away from the sun as the sun is large. So, you know, the sun is like about 900,000 miles across, so if you're a million miles from the sun, the sun is half your field of view.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  It fills up everything.

• 47:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Oh, they didn't tell you that you would vaporize instantly? They left that part out.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Well, no, no, but, but, but this, no.

• 47:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ignoring that complication.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, we, we actually have special shields.

• 47:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  We have special shields, right? We're good. But, but, but it was just, you know, it, that whole visceral feeling that you can still be moved, or when I go outside at night, like, in the cities is so sad because we don't see the stars the same way. When I was a little girl, growing up in Chicago, I could see the stars. We don't see them the same way. But, I remember being in South Africa and stopped and you looked up at the stars out and you see the Milky Way and everything and it's just like, alright? And I get that same feeling from, you know, being under the ocean or looking at a beautiful flower close up.

• 47:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, not virtual reality, reality.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 48:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's time to wrap up this episode of StarTalk, and I hope you enjoyed listening to this conversation with the one and the only Dr. Mae Jemison. If any of her contagious energy, passion and audacity came through on this podcast, then the world will be better off for it. For me, when I think of the people who shake and move the world, deep down within them, they're dreamers. But they don't dream things that have no connection to reality. They're tap roots there. They're tap roots in what is possible, but also branches that reach for what has yet to be discovered, for what has yet to be imagined by anyone before.

• 48:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's kind of what genius is, really. It's seeing what everyone else sees, but thinking what no one else has thought. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio, and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astro physicist. And as always, I bid you to keep looking.