Cosmic Queries – The New Space Race

Why haven’t we gone back to the Moon? What are the responsibilities of the Space Force? Is Mars the new end goal for exploration? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Ray Ellin answer fan-submitted questions on the “new” Space Race. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Photo Credit: SpaceX

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, and I'm your personal astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and we're here in a Cosmic Queries edition. And I have a new co-host, never co-hosted before, Ray Allen. Ray!

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Hello, hello.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right in the house.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Great to see you, Neil.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know you, because you're a warm-up guy, a warm-up comedian for when we do live StarTalks.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Four seasons now.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Four seasons?

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Four seasons, yeah.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now, we put you in front of the camera, rather than behind the camera.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Right, fantastic, I'm ready. I'm ready for it.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you handle it?

• 0:59Speaker 01

  I think I can.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you handle it?

• 1:00Speaker 01

  It is such a fun... StarTalk is such a fun show.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, thank you. Yeah, that's not me. I'm thanking you for 50 of us.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  There's a trickle-down effect. It starts with you, and it ripples through the entire cast.

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, excellent. It's all labors of love for us. And I'm always delighted you make the crowd feel at home and comfortable. You only insult them intermittently.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Very sporadically. When they have it, when they deserve it.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When they deserve it. They deserved it when it happens. Excellent. And are you active on social media?

• 1:31Speaker 01

  I am. @raycomedy on Instagram.

• 1:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ray Comedy?

• 1:35Speaker 01

  On Instagram, yeah.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Instagram, okay.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Ray Romano is very upset that I got Ray Comedy. How'd you get that? Wow, how? What? I'm like, "You're fine without it." And then I have Twitter is @rayellen.

• 1:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ray Ellen. R-A-Y-E-L.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  L-I-N.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I-N, you got it. Okay, dude.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this is Cosmic Queries.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Love Cosmic Queries.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, you got the questions?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  I got the questions.

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Called from our social media?

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Footprint?

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And bring them out. I haven't seen the questions, but the topic... Solicited is the new space race.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  The new space race.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, not old boring space race where we only went to the moon.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The new space race where we're trying to get into frigging.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  That's right. The new and exciting updated space race.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Updated space race.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Although this first question does does pertain to the moon.

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  From Ryan Espinoza on Facebook.

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  And Ryan wants to know, why do you think we haven't gone back to the moon in decades? And would there be any good, sustainable reason other than preparing for Mars to have a permanent research station there, perhaps even to launch spacecraft?

• 2:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Okay, next one.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  No reason. What about the launching spacecraft?

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, there could be reasons, but the the economics is hard to justify. So you need a reason that overrode the economics, like war. Or or if China says we're gonna put military bases on the moon, we're going back to the moon.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Going back to the moon.

• 3:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because we then we we use that as an argument to justify it. That's why we went to the moon in the first place.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Russia was getting our upper hand. Here's something nobody talks about. We're Americans, right?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Americans.

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  America.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  America.

• 3:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apostrophe M U R R I C A. Americans, we, our our narrative of our history is that we are pioneers in space. Okay? But let's look at it. Russians came up with the rocket equation. This is the equation that tells you how much fuel you need to put a payload into orbit. Why does that matter? Because you need fuel to carry the fuel that hasn't burned yet to put the payload in orbit. So for every pound you want to put into orbit, you need much, much more fuel than you'd otherwise think you'd need. And that's why the Saturn V rocket is so tall and the astronauts and all their payload is just an upper little section. All the rest of that is just controlled bomb.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the rocket equation was Russian. Russians had the first, they had the first satellite in orbit.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Sputnik.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sputnik. And in fact, they got Sputnik right here.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I got this in Star City, Moscow. I mean, outside of Moscow. It's a very distant suburb of Moscow where they, it's like our Houston.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except it's really just for space.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Are there are there any cowboys there at all?

• 4:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no. So this is the International Space Station.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and then we go next one down. This is Skylab.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, which was the, uh, there's the Russian, the Apollo Soyuz project. We use the Skylab as a space station. So that's smaller than the International Space Station.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have no idea what this is. It looks like a flying saucer. Could have been some prototype thing that the Russians did, designed. And what else do I have here? This is some large satellite.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Satellite.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we keep going.

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's Sputnik and the tiniest of the dolls.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Look at that, that's a very, very clever doll.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know how this translates to radio, but I just disassembled one of these dolls. What are they called, the, uh?

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Those were the...

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Russian dolls, yeah.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  The, the, um...

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Russian dolls, the nesting Russian dolls. But there's a, there's a Russian name for it.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  I was thinking of Faberge egg. It's not a Faberge egg.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Not even close.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the littlest one in there, normally they have like heads of state or...

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Popes or prime ministers or czars. These are spaceships.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  If you crack that one open, it'll be a little bottle of vodka. And if you crack that open, it'll be a little piece of potato.

• 5:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not, I'm not showing it. So, uh, Sputnik, they had the first non-human animal in space. Who was that?

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Uh, chimp?

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Non-human animal?

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a dog.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Was it really?

• 5:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  What kind of a dog was it?

• 5:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lika, it's a mutt.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I don't, I don't know if it was a mutt, but I think it was kinda like a mutt.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  They take it...

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a stray dog from, from, uh, Moscow.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  How would you feel, you're a stray dog just running into the streets of Moscow? Next thing you know, you're up in, in orbit.

• 5:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, they had no plans to bring it back alive.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So maybe you'd have second thoughts. However, I'm thinking to myself, if I were a dog, I could be a stray dog and die in the streets of Moscow in the winter. Or be the most famous dog since Lassie.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And die in space.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  That's, yeah, that's, that's not a bad option. Or, or how about just being adopted by a family with a yard? How about that?

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A rescue dog.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, a rescue dog. Wouldn't that be sweet?

• 6:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there, Pete, there's some bitterness about the fact that there was no plans to bring it back alive.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  And it was a Russian mutt.

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think it's most of some kind of breed. But I don't think it was a, I don't remember it being a purebred. Anyway, they had, um. Yes, rough, rough. And the first human in space. Okay. And that was who? The first human ever in space? Yes, Yuri Gagarin. Yes, it was Yuri Gagarin. He said, yes, that was a good. You saved yourself on that one. If I answer quickly, it meant I knew it. That was very Stewie and Brian right there. That was, that was very, um, and so they also had the first, um.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There were a lot of firsts, and then we landed on the moon first. Right. Then we say, we win. And, and obviously we walked on the moon first, yeah. You know, I'm just saying, we landed on the moon first. Right. And we say, we win the race. Right. When almost every other important achievement in space was achieved by the Russians. And the reality of that progression of achievements is what spooked us. Because they were accomplishing things faster and better than we were. And so then we leapfrogged it, and then we went to the moon. So that, that's all I'm saying. So, but going back to what Ryan asked. I forgot, I forgot the question. No, it's okay, but, but why isn't the moon useful to launch spacecrafts? Oh, okay, so, here's the problem.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're gonna leave Earth to go to the moon to then go to Mars, just go straight to Mars. Goes right, okay. All right? You're gonna need fuel to land on the moon. Because you have to slow down. Fuel is not just to go fast. Once you're going fast, how are you gonna slow down? In our atmosphere, you can use aero braking, which is why we have heat shields. So you need heat shields, otherwise you'll burn up. Glad you, glad you're going through the atmosphere, I don't need fuel to do it. Right. Using the friction and shock waves between the craft and the air to slow it down. So that I don't need to use retro rockets to slow down. You go to the moon, you need retro rockets to slow yourself down. So you have to carry fuel that you're not using yet. Right. So, no.

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Play, the moon would not be a place to organize to then go to Mars. You wanna organize, organize in zero G, in a, in a, in a Lagrangian point. There are these points where gravity balances. Okay. Between the moon and the Earth and the planets. Where you just put stuff there, it just stays. You can make really big ships. And then you, you leave from zero gravity. And now you're not trying to climb out of what we call a gravitational well, which is all the exhaust that's coming out of our rockets needs to do.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  That's interesting. You think that'll ever become a reality?

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Possibly, but unless there's a war driver, there's gotta be an economic driver. Otherwise, I don't see it happening ever at all.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I wrote a whole book on this. It was called, um, what's it called?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  This one right here?

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  The Unspoken Alliance?

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's not that book. So I wrote a whole book on this that I wanted to call Failure to Launch: The Dreams and Delusions of Space Enthusiasts. And the publisher said, "No, we can't have the word failure in a title. That's just bad." But I loved the title. They said, "By the way, isn't there a movie with that title?" Yes, except I'm using the title literally, Failure to Launch. That one was figurative about failing to leave home and get married.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  So why don't you just call it, uh, Successes and Unsuccesses?

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unsuccesses.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  In the world of launching.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unsuccesses. So that book's called Space Chronicles Facing the... So I settled on the title, Space Chronicles Facing the Ultimate Frontier. Half of that book is on why we didn't continue to go to Mars.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  My takeaway from this is that you've written so many books, you can't remember the names of them.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  That is remarkable.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  I've just written so... I'm such a prolific writer, I don't know.

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 10:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know it came out that way.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  No, it didn't. That's awesome.

• 10:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was not...

• 10:14Speaker 01

  That's pretty impressive, actually.

• 10:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I give you my one impressive book story?

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My first time I ever met Carl Sagan. I was 17. I'm in his office. And I'm sitting across his desk. And he's like, "I could give you a gift." He reaches behind, does not even look, grabs a book from the shelf, and it's his book. And he signs it to me.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said, "That is badass."

• 10:36Speaker 01

  That's badass.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't even... Whatever you touch is gonna be one of your books.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  It's gonna be his, yeah. It's just a bookcase full of Sagan.

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it was like, some years later, you know, after my sixth book or something, I had them lined up behind me, and a kid comes in, and I just reach back and I say, "Damn." I'm like, "That's what I'm doing."

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Did you reach back and grab one of Sagan's books?

• 10:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  How many books have you written?

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, fifteen.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Fifteen, incredible.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But four or five of them are co-authored because you can't know everything for everything you write about. But some of them I'm more proud of than others, but it's an opus of my effort to communicate the universe to the public.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  My sister Abby just wrote her second book called Duped. And I see firsthand up close how difficult it is to write a book.

• 11:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  That many, that's incredible.

• 11:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, no, it's a whole, it's a chapter of your life. It's a piece of you in the book.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when you're done, you've just got to regrow the organs that you expend.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, regrow your energy, refill your fuel tanks, regain energy, reestablish your existence as an entity because you're putting so much of yourself in the book itself.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Sure. This is why after every episode of StarTalk, when Chuck Nice and I say to Neil, "Hey, you want to go out and maybe have a glass of wine?" He's like, "Nah, I gotta go home, I have things to do." Like, "Write another book." See you later, drunk.

• 11:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The number, the amount of interstitial time most people spend doing nothing is extraordinary. Yeah, I'm writing.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's exactly right.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  That's great, great use of time.

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  You know who else spends some time writing? Matt, Matt Harefield.

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so what do you have? Next question.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Matt wants to know, Matt Harefield on Facebook, "Why are we framing this as a race? Is there an end goal that one country could achieve first?"

• 12:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, real, this is a thoughtful question. Oh, man.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Took him thirty seconds to write that.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, you know, race implies there's a big start point and an end point.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the race to the moon that we won, but we didn't win the race to space itself, Russia won that race. So, many people say Mars is the next obvious choice. You're not going to go to Venus. It's hotter than a pizza oven on Venus.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way. So Mars would be the next obvious target. But I have a contrarian view here. I don't want to call it contrarian. I have a unorthodox view here. I want to build the capacity to explore without reference to where you're going.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have a warehouse of rockets.

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you, so what do you want to do in space, Ray?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm gonna play baseball.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wanna play baseball, so, play baseball on the moon?

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Love to.

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, um, and you should know that the restaurants on the moon, they have no atmosphere.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  That's, I, I.

• 13:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You saw that coming.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  I did.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You saw.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  But tell me, can you, please tell me about the Italian suppositories on the moon?

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so you wanna play baseball, so you might wanna do that on the moon. So you go, what rockets do you need? How many people are you gonna take with you? That's this vessel with this many rockets. And you need to last this long, so you need this, um, food supply, um, and oxygen, this sort of thing. And then that's your, then you go to the moon and have fun. There's scientists that might wanna study the possibility of life on Mars, in a pre, at some other genesis on Mars. So they'll bring equipment with them and they wanna go there. Maybe they want robots? Maybe they'll stay in orbit and control robots down on the surface. So what I want is everybody's creativity to be empowered by our capacity to explore space.

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that way, no one is saying where the destination is. So in that sense, it's actually not a race. It's, let's all go play in our backyard and that backyard is the solar system.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Right, and well put. It's, it, uh, it's amazing to me. I always thought it was just so interesting how everything has to be turned into sort of framed as a competition.

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's, it's, we're human and particularly,

• 14:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  you know, there are people who rise to higher heights when they compete. When, when I first started watching the Olympics, I thought to myself, why is it that you can set a world record in the Olympics? Why didn't you set the world record a week ago? It's you, you're the same person. How different are you this week than last week?

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Exactly, yes.

• 15:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or than a month ago?

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why did you set it work? Because the competition, the moment, the urge, the, the pageantry, all comes together and creates a will, a, a, a force.

• 15:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Almost another force of nature operating on your ambitions.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  But it also creates a sense of pressure that maybe someone can, maybe someone could run, run the fastest time ever if he didn't feel his pressure. For example, there's some people who can only sing in the shower. They can't sing on stage, they're great in the shower. What if some-

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I can sing, I sing really good in the shower and I could sing on stage, but no one would want me to. That's the difference, okay?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  You want to do the remake of Jesus Christ Superstar?

• 15:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's my favorite musical of all time and I saw it in 1971.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Oh wow.

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, with an original cast, including Ben Vereen as, as Judas.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Oh, you saw it when you were two years old.

• 16:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  It was good stuff.

• 16:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But why did you, oh, yeah, so, so I don't have a voice that I, that's good. I don't have a good singing voice, other than I just sing in the shower.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Right, but there's some people who sound incredible in the shower and wouldn't be good in front of a live audience, so I'm sure there's people that participate in the Olympics who maybe aren't, maybe they could have broken the world record, just sort of on their own time, like on a random Sunday, they get out-

• 16:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  You'll kind of relax.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we need an Olympics with no cameras and no audience.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  No cameras, no audience, no fanfare. Sure, exactly, it's called the Home Olympics.

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Home Olympics.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we'll see, we'll see how that one, how that one plays.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  See how that goes.

• 16:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, competition drives it, so does the urge to gain wealth and power.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's driven all the greatest projects that humans have ever done in the history of civilization. Greatest in terms of what, what fraction of a society's intellectual, physical and financial capital was invested in it. So when that's high, generally it's praise of royalty, gods and royalty, it's economics or it's war. And today, you don't have praise of royalty triggering expensive projects, the way we once did.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, in civilization. So that basically leaves war and money.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  War and money.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wish that were not true, I'm just simply reporting-

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What has driven- And motivated people.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the past. And so, yes, competition to be the first to, to get the economic return or to get the high ground.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If there's a military motive to it.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  The Cheney Effect.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, next question.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Next up. Uh, all right, next question is from Pedro Semedo.

• 17:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Uh, on Facebook. Uh, Pedro asks, are there any international ethics or rules for space exploration?

• 17:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Uh, let's suppose, for example, that Chang'e 4 had a problem when landing and the-

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the, this is the Chinese mission that landed on the backside of the moon.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Yes. The backside or dark side? The same thing?

• 18:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Two different things.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In spite of the 1973 album by Pink Floyd?

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The dark side of the moon? There is no dark side of the moon. All sides of the moon receive light.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Ah, oh.

• 18:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, day on the moon lasts a month.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Oh, no kidding?

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I can get a lot done.

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so there's a far side of the moon. That's why I said the backside.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  I got you.

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  I got you. The under, not the underside.

• 18:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's not, it's not a place where the sun don't shine.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Uh, so, okay, so in Chang'e 4, yeah, if it had a problem when landing and the potato seeds and silkworms were spread over lunar soil, were they to be punished somehow for contaminating lunar soil with terrestrial life?

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Two different things.

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, there are three things here. In 1967, there's something called the International Space Treaty. It has a much longer title, but that's, you want to shorten it, International Space Treaty.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Signed by a hundred, more than a hundred countries. And it's a code of conduct for space. Very kumbaya. They saw the, that the Cold War was getting hotter and space was becoming a contested regime.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of international politics. And the UN said, we gotta do something about this. So in it, it says, if you're in trouble, even if we're enemies on the ground, I gotta help you.

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I will bring you food or help you, you know, it's this kinda, it's a, it's very

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Unifying.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forward looking and unifying.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's beautiful. My, my cynical skepticism is if you can actually pull that off in space, why didn't you pull that off down here on Earth?

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Right, sure.

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. Why is space different?

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're humans and we're human, alright? We, we, we kill each other from limited resources, we kill each other because your skin color is different, because you worship a different god, because you live on a different side of the line in the sand. Why do we think, and if you can accomplish it up there, let's do that here. Let that be evidence that you could do it in space. That's my cynical side of it. But, so we have that.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  But you're right, I mean, you are right.

• 20:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  We don't allow greed on rocket ships.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. In addition, NASA has a branch of itself called Planetary Protection Office. And this protects contamination in destination places of Earth life.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it protects Earth life from what could be a contaminant brought back from space. And there are regulations about that and what, what level contamination and sterilization is allowed for different kinds of objects. So Europa, that one, has the highest chance of their having life. So you want the most sterile objects going there.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 20:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To minimize the risk of contamination. The moon itself is kinda sterile. We're not worried about contaminating life that's there. Because it's got no atmosphere, the ultraviolet light, which is hostile to life.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The molecules of light just breaks apart the molecules.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there's asteroids hitting all the time. So, we're not worried that if you go to the moon and sneeze, you're gonna contaminate a future experiment that we're conducting. So, um, so there's, there's a lot written on it, but no, nobody gets punished. There's, you, you look bad on the international stage, but there's no, there's no punishment. There's no, it's no go back three spaces, you know?

• 21:33Speaker 01

  So you're saying, so, so China will not be penalized for, uh, bringing, uh, fifty children on, uh, on that mission so they could make sneakers on the moon?

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Too soon?

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How did, how, how did seeds breaking open to the thing to bring? That'd be very costly.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  That'd be very costly.

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And child labor historically had been through-

• 21:56Speaker 01

  There's no child labor laws on the moon.

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the moon. Yeah, so that's another question.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what, what is a crime in a place that's not within a municipality?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And don't get me started, like if an alien more intelligent than you lands and you kill it, is that murder? Right? There's the whole thing. There's a whole legal frontier here.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Well, you could argue, I mean, he, he, he, he reached for his, uh-

• 22:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Or she, or it.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a male, yeah.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know why I made it male, you're right.

• 22:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You totally made it a male.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  That's terrible. The alien reached for its, uh-

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reached for something.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Phaser. I like that. I have the alien, it was from 1960's television.

• 22:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a 1964 alien. Uh, yeah, so there's a whole frontier there, and it's a great question, but no, there's no penalties, other than, maybe we won't invite you on our next mission. That's probably penalty enough.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a big penalty.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a break. Uh, StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, the next Space Race edition, when we return.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  This is StarTalk.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. We're back. Cosmic Queries. This is the next Space Race edition, and I have a newbie as my co-host, Ray Allen. Ray?

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Hey!

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's just a newbie as my co-host, but he's been in the comedy scene forever, and in fact, you have your own comedy, like Ray's Comedy Club.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  I have it in, in, on the island of Aruba.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a crazy dude. When are you flying us all down?

• 23:55Speaker 01

  You are-

• 23:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The host of StarTalk.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Oh, that'd be fun. I'm heading down tomorrow, and I expect everybody to be joining me March 1st.

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Aruba.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  In Aruba.

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool. We gotta, we'll, we'll- Maybe we'll go on a cruise and that's a port of call.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  You could, sure, that'd be great. That would work.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  I'd love it. I'd love it. I'm bringing you up on stage if you come down.

• 24:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, bring me some questions here.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Okay. Uh, this is, uh...

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic queries.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Cosmic queries. This is from Woody from Adelaide, Australia. Uh, what is the goal line for scoring in the new space race? Last time it was boots on the moon, a badass station on Mars would be cool.

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  So...

• 24:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a great question. I, I, I can't speak for everyone, but I can definitely list certain things that have not been accomplished yet. Okay? So, if you go to the moon and set up a colony, whether it's a permanent colony, or a colony, or a place that you visit seasonally, you want to be able to use local resources to make stuff. And in NASA abbreviation lingo, it's ISRU. In situ resource utilization. So, it's better discussed with regard to Mars. You go to Mars, are you bringing all the water with you that you'll ever need? No, that's kind of stupid.

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're driving to Los Angeles, you don't bring all the water you need. You're gonna, you're gonna stop places and pick up some water.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you'll refuel your tank. You're not gonna go with one fuel tank. Yeah, well, it's gotta be bigger because you gotta make it to Los Angeles. No, you're, they're filling stations along the way.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, one goal is that space becomes,

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  space itself becomes a self-supporting commodity, if you will. So you don't need a huge rocket. You need a half-sized rocket and refuel halfway there. You don't need all the water you're ever gonna drink. Get to Mars, sift the water out from beneath the soil, beneath the, the, the surface, and melt that, and now you have water. Oh, uh, by the way, water also serves as rocket fuel. Build a factory, separate the two molecules, the two atoms, what are they in water? What's the molecular form of water?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Hydrogen and, uh, and, uh, the oxygen.

• 26:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. H2O?

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, H2O.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  For some reason, when you ask me a question, I think you're trying to trick me.

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm not a trick question guy, no!

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Not a trickster.

• 26:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I ask very simple questions.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Well, thank goodness for that.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so H2O, if you separate those two atoms and put them in separate liquefied tanks, so liquid liquefied hydrogen, liquefied, very cold, you cool it down, it liquefies, and then have a nozzle that connects them, it's a highly exothermic reaction. Endothermic means the reaction absorbs energy around it.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exothermic means it releases energy. You bring hydrogen oxygen together, it's rocket fuel. So you can have water there that you can drink, water that can serve as a, as a rocket fuel, and so then you don't have to bring it. Okay, well, how about food? Well, we, Mark Watney, solved that one.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Yes, he did, yeah.

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Group potatoes.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Potatoes.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you gotta grow something first. Figure that out, whether there gonna be greenhouses, this sort of thing. So, one of the goal lines or high bars for us is in-situ resource utilization. And now that we have 3D printers, if something breaks, I need a nut, a bolt, a fan blade, print it. Send in the CAD, get the, load up the CAD from Earth, the computer-assisted design, load it from Earth, because I'm not gonna design it on Mars, I don't have that talent.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get somebody to design it, oh, here's that new part you need.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Just bring the designer with you.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, not, they wouldn't have to.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  You would, if, just bring, bring the machine.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's a time delay of like 20 minutes, but that's fine.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  What about, uh, long-distance energy transfer? Is that, is that something that we're sort of?

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, you mean, oh, well, so, no, our rockets, we're still using chemical fuels in our rockets. Well, you know what we need? Warp drives. Warp drives.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  We need phasers and warp drives.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Phasers and warp drives, and, we don't have flying cars yet, but we need the warp drives, like, real soon. Then you could cross the galaxy during the TV commercial. Otherwise, you're dead. The, the time it takes to travel star to star is incommensurate with the life expectancy of human physiology.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Is that right?

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, going the fastest we've ever gone, sent anything? If I aim for Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the sun, ask me how long it takes.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  How's it take?

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, depending, if there's a tailwind.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a tailwind fifty thousand years.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Wow. I see, I find that, I find that-

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's sad, it's sad.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, I find that depressing.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's sad, so-

• 28:46Speaker 01

  It's very depressing.

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're not going to Alpha Centauri?

• 28:49Speaker 01

  I'm not going to Queens, what are we talking about here? I don't mind Alpha Centauri.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then he said, "Well, do you want a generation ship? Are you gonna commit future generations to live out their entire lives just to make more babies on a ship so that some generation, a thousand generations down lands, you know, enters the the space of a, the sector where you have the nearest star? This is not sensible."

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Right. It's really not practical.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, we need warp drive.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  We need warp drives, yeah. Can you work on that, please?

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'll work on it.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  I got people, I got men.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh. Time for one more question before the break.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Uh, okay, one more question before the break. Okay, how about this, this is nice. Uh, this is from Uma Claire on Instagram. She said, "Hi, my name is Uma Claire. My family and I always listen to you on our way to school. I certainly can't wait to hear, uh, this episode. Of all the countries likely to be involved in the new space race, which is the closest to bringing people to Mars? Calculations and testing-wise."

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Good question, Uma.

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh. Uh, nobody is close to doing that now, but when China says they wanna do something in space or technologically, they just do it. Cause they have that power over their resources in ways that democracies don't.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have to kinda all agree, the population has to agree, not so in China. China just decides as a country, this is our next mission.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  We're doing it, we're doing it.

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're doing it, we're doing it, right. So, all they have to do is say, "We're gonna put a Taikona on Mars," or orbit Mars, and then they'll just do it, in the timeframe established for it. So, I have no doubt that that resolve is real, even though it's not a stated goal at this moment. Of course, Elon Musk, what, it's a stated goal, he wants to put people on Mars, but there's no business case for that.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He could do it as a one-off. He can get together with Jeff Bezos and get the multi-billionaires. So let's just put somebody on Mars.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you're an investor in that company and you say, well, like I say, it's a short meeting. It's, uh, so what are you gonna do Elon? I'm gonna put humans on Mars. How much does it cost? Trillion dollars? I don't know.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Probably more. Is it dangerous? Yes. Will people die? Probably. What's my return on investment? Uh, nothing. That's a five-minute meeting. I say this all the time. That's a five-minute meeting.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So unless we discover oil on Mars.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 31:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Diamonds, but China can do it for no other reason, but that they want to do it.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause then, if you're not a completely free society, then you just decide to do it. Like the Pharaoh said, make me the biggest pyramid, the biggest tombstone ever. And so they make pyramids. And they just do it. Cause it's commanded.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  We should spread a rumor that there is oil on Mars.

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no. Spread a rumor that China wants to build military bases on Mars.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they just have to leak a fake memo.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and have the CIA discover it. Fake it, just do it. And then we're, then we're going to Mars.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  That's, that's a, that's a great premise for a movie.

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For, for a movie. Oh, yeah.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  That's the next Will Smith movie.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so I think, here's a scenario that I can imagine. China builds up their interest in Mars and they want to send people, even if they want to do it peacefully. Forget war. We want to do it peacefully, but we still will get a little bit spooked by that.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? We'll react.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll say, we're going to Mars.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, NASA doesn't have a spaceship to do so. We have one that's kind of works, but does anyone else have a spaceship? And Elon raises his hand. I got one right here in the warehouse.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So then.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Right here next to the pool and the tennis court.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we end up using an Elon spaceship that he diligently built, researched, designed and built. And that's good, but that's not Elon landing on Mars. That's the American taxpayer landing on Mars. That's the difference.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Right. So they're so long and privatized.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not a business model.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's, we're doing it.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Thanks, Uma.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we gotta take a break. When we come back, more of the next Space Race on StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition.

• 33:05Speaker 02

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

• 33:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition. The next space race is the subject. And I got Ray Allen with me.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Hello Neil.

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Ray, you have a TV show now on Comedy Central?

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's very cool.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very cool.

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're all like calm and cool here in my office, but you're badass outside of the...

• 33:46Speaker 01

  I'm a very humble dude. I really am. It's called This Week at the Comedy Cellar. It's on Comedy Central Friday nights. We just wrapped season one.

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Season two should be starting up, probably...

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This week, so it's like John Oliver this week, tonight?

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A review of the...

• 34:03Speaker 01

  It's a weekly topical stand-up show. We have about 20 different comics come on every episode.

• 34:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every episode?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, every episode. We have a great mix of comedians.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  It's fantastic.

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice. So, how does a listener find you?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Go to comedycentral.com

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  And you can watch every episode that's been archived.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice, nice. All right, good.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, I thought we were your only gig, and now I'm happy and sad.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  But you know what Neil? You are my favorite gig.

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, there you go. That makes up for it.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Comedy Central's not blasting me into space.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  I don't know if you will, but...

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what questions you got?

• 34:37Speaker 01

  All right. Here we go. This is from Almetastar from Instagram. "When will the Space Force start cleaning up space? Or is there another program that's already working on space cleaning? Sayudos de Puerto Rico."

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Greetings from Puerto Rico.

• 34:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Space Force.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So a lot of talk about Space Force because Trump said he wants a Space Force. He sure that's what he wants. But let me just say unequivocally. Yeah. That just because Trump mentioned it does not mean it's a crazy idea. Just for the, for the Trump naysayers out there. Sure. Just want, just, just. Right. The moment they hear that word Trump, they immediately just. Yeah, they can't listen to anything else that comes out of their mouth. Yeah. Space Force is. You think it's practical? Reasonable? I, I don't care really, but I can tell you the, the benefits of it. It will focus attention that is already allocated to space within the Air Force. The Air Force has the United States Space Command. The Air Force has been thinking about space ever since we've had access to space.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know who else is thinking about space? The CIA and reconnaissance agents, other reconnaissance agencies. Because space is the high ground.

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when you think of Space Force and you want to think of Space War, the urge is Star Wars with lasers and weapons and phaser. So phasers. You need the photon torpedoes, but, but it turns out it's very impractical to attack Earth targets from space. Right. Because you're moving 18,000 miles an hour in orbit. Mm-hmm. And that's just really fast to then aim and do something on Earth. It's just, when we can send an intercontinental ballistic missile and hit a target any place on Earth within 45 minutes,

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to say, oh, we gotta wait until the satellite is in position. So no, no, you just threw. So we already know how to kill each other from surface-based weaponry. We already know that. So space is not improving that. Okay? Quote, improving that. So what's, so space is a place for reconnaissance. And by the way, the Air Force, no one questions, why do we have an Air Force? They used to be a branch of the Army. It was the Army Air Force throughout the whole Second World War. But, but the notion of Space Force to be sort of be. But let me. Oh, my bad. My bad. Telling you. Yeah, I got you. The engineer that fixes the tank, is that the same engineer that fixes the airfoil on an airplane? No. No.

• 37:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The grunt on the ground who's carrying the weapon, is that the same soldier training as the pilot of the jet fighter? No. So you branch off air force from the army. And no one is really questioning that. The value of that. So to branch off space force from the air force? Why are you gonna have an issue with that? That's, and by the way, if you're gonna do that, let's add, let's add priorities to whatever it is they were doing before. And one of them would be, let's clean up space. Right. Space debris. Space litter. Oh, it's litter. Oh, I'm, I think that's why we haven't been visited by aliens. Too many balloons up there? No, no, they, they just looked at it and said, you guys are nasty.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're slobs. You're just slobs. Dirty, filthy people. You're dirty, filthy. So NASA tracks space debris so that when they launch the next thing, they don't slam into it. Right. All right? The space station has limited maneuverability power in case something is headed its way. So, yeah, that, that, another one, what I want them to do is deflect the asteroids. Yes. I don't wanna be like the dinosaurs going extinct, because we have a space program and the, and the dinosaurs didn't. Right. Dinosaurs, if they had a space program? No, they didn't. I'm sorry, I didn't tell you that before the show. I thought the, all the pterodactyls had a... Oh, they would lead the, they were the flying ones. They're leading the space force. Yeah. They're the front men. The front men.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And plus the badass one was, was Rodan. Rodan was, was, yeah. The supersonic pterodactyl. Sure, supersonic. Yeah, definitely. Uh, so, so what am I saying? So, yeah, you'd want, I think you'd wanna add to their portfolio.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  But wouldn't Space Force sort of be, if it, because it's all of space, outer space, wouldn't that need to be an international organization?

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, that's a really good, that's, that's good. That's like saying the air molecules above this country belong to the United States.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 39:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's kind of, no.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  It's insane.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Air moves, it's insane. Right, it's insane. You, you can say, "I don't want you over this country," but to declare ownership of air, when air travels around the world, yeah, it's that kind of thing.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "I own space." No, you don't. You can't own space.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  I like to dispute air rights on top of my apartment building, never mind, never mind how the atmosphere, all over the world.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, ownership is a thing. So, I think what the, any discussion about ownership is about who owns the moon? Who owns an asteroid? You go to an asteroid to mine its natural resources, do you own it? Or does every, or who owns it?

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Finders keepers, man.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  No, but it's, it's a great point. I mean, that's like saying, "Do we own the moon? We, we put a flag on the moon. The moon's, it moons us. It's U.S. light."

• 40:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we didn't put the UN flag on the moon, we put the American flag.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Right, we put the US flag, so it's, it's, it's US light. It's the United States, it's our, it's our, you know what I'm saying. It's our island, so to speak. By the way, you cannot see the, that the flag, the flag that we, that, that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted on the moon. You cannot see that with any, the Hubble telescope wouldn't, can't capture that.

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's too small to resolve with, with ground-based telescopes or the size of telescopes that are in orbit. But you can see the flag from satellites that orbit the moon. So, we have image, you can see the rover tracks, it's kind of cool.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Oh, that's cool. That's awesome.

• 40:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what they got wrong in, what movie was that? Was it?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Interstellar?

• 40:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, Transformers.

• 40:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it was one of the Transformers movies. They show one of their craft passing by the moon. And you see the, the landing spot for the Apollo astronauts. But it still has the, it still has the lem on it.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Oh, is that right?

• 41:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, cuz that departed from it, it just have the spidery legs at the bottom. Uh, yeah, so they left the whole thing cuz you wouldn't recognize it as anything if it's just a platform. So.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Did you ever tweet that at some point?

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it was a little obscure.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Well, you have too many Game of Thrones tweets to get to, so you know.

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But anyhow, yeah, it just looks so naked to just have the base and these four legs. So they left the whole module there that the astronauts occupied. Just so it looks like a landing spot.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Is it sort of, is it understood that if China were to land right where we had landed, the US had landed, that they're not supposed to, you're not supposed to tamper with any of the, the flag, the?

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When has the history of human conduct fulfilled anything that was supposed to be anything?

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if they went up and, and like broke the flag?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Technical foul.

• 41:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fifteen yard penalty. Uh, so, yeah, I mean, that would be, I don't wanna say that was an act of war. I would say it would be a profound act of disrespect.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there would probably be repercussions on earth.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  That was certainly with this administration, it'd be severe repercussions.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Disrespect.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially since.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  It'd be a moon tariff.

• 42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially since, even though we planted an American flag, Neil Armstrong laid a plaque that said, "We come in peace for all mankind." Didn't say we come for America.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For Americans.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I don't know any act of exploration where upon planting a flag, the next words uttered were, "We come in peace for everyone, all of humanity."

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The history of that exercise, especially Europeans leaving Europe, is, "I put a flag here, now we own it."

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we have warships to back up that statement.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No matter who you find living there. So it was a fundamentally different act. And so we'll see what the future of this is. I don't know.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Got time for a couple more. Give me a couple more.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  All right. Alexis Wojo, Instagram. Alexis from Hong Kong here. When do you think we'll start sending world leaders into space? And if we could do that now, who would you send?

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, didn't I, did I do this on another episode? I can't do it too often, but I'm gonna do it again now. Okay, you ready for this? Right, you're not ready. Are you ready?

• 43:39Speaker 01

  I'm ready. I am so ready for this.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't feel.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Hold on a second. You feel that? I'm ready!

• 43:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're feeling it. Okay, you ready? Which world leader should we send into space? Okay, so first, we should send all the flat-earthers into space.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I think, I think they wanted that anyway.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  So Kyrie Irving, not a world leader, but he can go.

• 44:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, just so they can see, they can orbit the Earth and see that Earth is a sphere.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you bring him back. I say, "You happy now?"

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Oh, for educational reasons.

• 44:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm an educator, dude!

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 44:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not trying to get rid of him. I'm trying to help him out.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  No! What are the dumb, dumb ideas you have? Get out of here!

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You demonstrate the roundness of Earth. Okay. Next, you send all world leaders. Okay, it'll be like a people mover van, okay? No, it'd have to be bigger than that. How many world leaders? Hundreds of world leaders.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Hundreds.

• 44:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it's hundreds, okay. You ready?

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Thousands if you count the islands.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a quote, exactly.

• 44:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if leaders of established nations, it's a hundred and something. How many countries are there? Uh, is it 174? Hundred, yeah, it's between one and 200 countries. Yeah. We got, we got our crack team researching this now. How much? Yeah, 190. So 200 countries, so 200 world leaders. Okay. Okay, here we go. Did I get a plus one?

• 45:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, 400 world leaders. I'm gonna read a quote from Edgar Mitchell. Okay. Apollo... Uh, 3.

• 45:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apollo 14. 14! Apollo 1 through 6 were scrapped after we lost the 3 Apollo 1 astronauts. Okay. So the next Apollo was Apollo 7. That's my question again.

• 45:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so here we go.

• 45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Edgar Mitchell. Edgar Mitchell, Apollo, is he 13 or 14? 14. 14. "You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter million miles out and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.'" That's great.

• 46:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's juicy. Juicy. Just give a cosmic perspective reality check to every politician, and then bring them back down to Earth. I think they'll be changed. Yeah. That's what the universe can do to you. When you see Earth

• 46:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  as only nature can present it to you, with oceans, and land, and clouds,

• 46:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  no color-coded national boundaries, no... None of the usual trappings of who owns what part of what section of the world. It's just a planet.

• 46:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our life-giving planet.

• 46:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't make peace on that planet with fellow human beings.

• 46:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't deserve the power that science has given you.

• 46:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To serve as a shepherd of our future survival on this planet. You don't deserve it. You should just go somewhere else. Put people in power who understand what Earth is, what it means to us and all the other life on Earth, and what steps they need to take to cherish this place that we have borrowed from our descendants.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  That would be a great unifying experience, I think. If you could do that, if you could send those 200 people up together.

• 47:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  I really, I really think it would.

• 47:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After you send up the flat-earthers.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually would like to become a flat-earther, just to get that trip.

• 47:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To get the first trip.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  That's a nice trip. It's far better than getting a freebie to Cape Cod.

• 47:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Ray, we gotta wrap, we gotta, we gotta call it quits here.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Uh, well, I just want, before we go, I just want everyone to know, I came across Neil's book, Accessory to War.

• 47:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you're in my office, so the book is there.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Well, that's how I came across it. I was snooping around his office. And in between all the bobbleheads of him and, and the Campbell's soup, the Star Wars Campbell's soups that he has up there on the shelves.

• 48:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, this one, but this one is, is primordial soup. Just get your soup straight here.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Well, what's the?

• 48:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Primordial soup.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  A match up over there, you have a.

• 48:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, those are Star Wars Campbell's soups.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Star Wars Campbell's soups, yeah. But this is Accessory to War, The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military. You, this is a book a few months ago?

• 48:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It came out, yeah, last September, co-authored with Obus Lang. A major, it's like 500 pages. So my, my book before that was Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is Astrophysics for People Not in a Hurry.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Not in a Hurry, yes.

• 48:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To make that clear.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the, the other book I read on a subway ride, this one's gonna take me a subway ride with four stops. It's gonna take me a little more extra time. But again, you are so.

• 48:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thanks for that plug, thanks for the plug. It's another labor of love. It's the history, because science is not untouched by war. And with the funding for it, then enable it, then empower it, then feed it. And so this is just a candid review and assessment of what that relationship has been between the history of astrophysics and war itself.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  I'm excited to try to tackle this. You are the most prolific non-comedian I've ever met. Like, there's some comics I know who just write endlessly.

• 49:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah?

• 49:13Speaker 01

  And of all the non-comedians, this is unbelievable. Fifteen books and...

• 49:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a new word for being a non-comic. It's called non-comic.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  A civilian.

• 49:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Civilian. We gotta go. Ray, thanks for doing it!

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Thanks, man. A lot of fun.

• 49:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we're gonna get you back again.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 49:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the invitation to Aruba stands.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Apps wide open.

• 49:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. You've been listening to, possibly even watching, this Space Race episode of StarTalk. And I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.