Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Journey to the Stars with Bill Nye About this episode Could life hitchhike across planets? What color is the sky on Mars? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye, the current CEO of The Planetary Society, team up to discuss the science and advocacy that goes into space exploration, unraveling the threads of discovery that define humanity's quest to understand the cosmos.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Bill Nye? Space exploration is not guaranteed. That's why we have the Planetary Society, where the world's largest, most effective space advocacy nonprofit. Check us out at planetary.org/startalk and become a member today.
0:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.
0:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? StarTalk begins right now.
0:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, and today I've got an exclusive one-on-one conversation reserved for only those people who are not only important, but are also a friend of mine. We've got with me in studio, Bill Nye.
0:48 Bill Nye? Greetings, Doctor.
0:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How you doing, man? Got a bowtie on and everything. You're just completely that guy.
0:53 Bill Nye? I am that guy.
0:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The science guy.
0:55 Bill Nye? What you see is what you get.
0:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And did you tie your own bowtie today?
0:59 Bill Nye? Yeah. Can you imagine? Bill Nye wears clip-on tie.
1:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That would be a funny skit.
1:06 Bill Nye? Bill Nye decided to end his career and lose respect from all his fans.
1:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just, I want you to know, if I ever see anybody with a bowtie, I ask them if it's real, and if they say not, which is about two-thirds of people.
1:17 Bill Nye? Not? See what he did there?
1:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I say, I'm gonna tell Bill Nye on you. And then they shudder, because they...
1:22 Bill Nye? They can wear clip-on bowties, that's fine. I mean, I just think it's, it's not in the, as we say, the spirit of the game.
1:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I flew my ass out here to Los Angeles. We are now in your office of the Planetary Society, Pasadena, California, the same town where this society was birthed.
1:43 Bill Nye? A true fact, not a false fact.
1:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So give me a fast birther story on this.
1:48 Bill Nye? So Carl Sagan had been very influential in getting Voyager, the Viking landing on Mars, and the two Voyager spacecraft launched.
1:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And just for, just for historical completeness, there were two missions of Viking lander and a Viking orbiter. And so it could photograph the surface.
2:08 Bill Nye? Yes, amazing, really amazing visionary ideas. And so he noticed that public interest in space exploration, especially planetary exploration, was very high. But government support of it was waning and he had this big idea for a solar sail spacecraft.
2:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's in 1970s now.
2:27 Bill Nye? 1976.
2:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
2:29 Bill Nye? Yeah, and the disco era. And that was set aside for more human missions, including the famous handshake in space so that the Soviet Union and the United States would have no more conflict and that worked out great.
2:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It was an Apollo capsule in orbit around Earth, a Soyuz capsule. And they were configured so that their collars could, could join and they opened the hatch and they're all weightless, so they're just floating through and they would shake hands. And I was told that the Americans were trained to only speak Russian and the Russians were trained to only speak English.
3:07 Bill Nye? And US astronauts still speak Russian, but still a thing they do. So, uh, and we flew on Soyuz rockets for a zillion years, all that inclusive. Bruce Murray, who was head of the Jepp Propulsion Lab during these famous missions, Viking and Voyager.
3:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Jepp Propulsion Lab, right here in Pasadena.
3:25 Bill Nye? Yes, right at the library up the street. And then Lou Friedman, who was an orbital mechanics guy.
3:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Engineer.
3:31 Bill Nye? Yes, at both a PhD, which you like. They decided that there was enough interest in space exploration that they could start the Planetary Society.
3:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Enough grassroots interest.
3:43 Bill Nye? Grassroots.
3:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
3:44 Bill Nye? So we had, the Planetary Society had tens of thousands of members. By the end of, pick a number, 1982, was started in the winter of 79, 1980. I'm a charter member.
3:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now, I remember getting the letter and I, I was not, I'll be frank with you, I, I was not moved by the letter because if I remember correctly, it says, "Dear Citizen of Planet Earth." And I said, "That's not very special."
4:13 Bill Nye? What'd you want? Citizen of New York.
4:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Dear Neil, I mean, I don't know. Something a little more personal than, "Dear Citizen of Planet Earth."
4:21 Bill Nye? It was the state of the art. Anyway, uh, the Planetary Society's been around now that we'll have our 45th anniversary this spring and what we do is promote planetary exploration and just notably. Just last week, as we're recording this, the Europa Clipper mission left for the moon of Jupiter with twice as much ocean water as Earth. And that is, in part, let's say entirely, because of the Planetary Society, where our members, 40,000 people around the world, think space exploration of planets is very important, wrote letters and emails to US Congress especially, got this mission funded 11 years ago, and now it's flying.
5:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it was delayed because of Hurricane Milton.
5:08 Bill Nye? Hurricane Milton.
5:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, and I wanted to have a little sort of romantic nostalgia for the 1969 film Marooned. Do you remember that film?
5:17 Bill Nye? Yeah, with OJ Simpson.
5:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, that's a different, no.
5:20 Bill Nye? Oh, that's, what's that one?
5:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're getting your movies mixed up. That was Capricorn Five.
5:24 Bill Nye? Capricorn Five.
5:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
5:26 Bill Nye? Capricorn Five or Capricorn One?
5:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, maybe Capricorn One.
5:30 Bill Nye? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, this Marooned, where they-
5:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Marooned?
5:33 Bill Nye? Retro rockets don't fire, and they keep clicking the button.
5:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Can't get out of orbit.
5:37 Bill Nye? Yeah.
5:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, and, but they have a rescue ship to go rescue them, but they can't launch because a hurricane is coming through Cape Canaveral.
5:45 Bill Nye? Those were the days.
5:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, and I remember as a kid, it was like, hurricane, that's pretty artificial.
5:52 Bill Nye? Yeah, yeah. Storytelling.
5:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it's Florida.
5:56 Bill Nye? Yeah.
5:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This was not a weird fact to put into your story. And so then some clever meteorologist said, hey.
6:03 Bill Nye? Neil.
6:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The eye of the hurricane is gonna go over the launch pad.
6:08 Bill Nye? Have you seen, have you ever been in an eye of a hurricane?
6:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm told it's really eerie.
6:13 Bill Nye? It's weird, yeah. I was at Hurricane Agnes in the early 1970s.
6:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh huh.
6:18 Bill Nye? Came over and it, all of a sudden, it's a clear sky for a little while.
6:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I'm told there are birds that get trapped inside of the eye of the hurricane, like tropical birds, that end up-
6:27 Bill Nye? Whoa!
6:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? -thousands of miles away from there. It would've been cool had they launched, um-
6:33 Bill Nye? In the eye-
6:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You rope a Clipper in the eye there.
6:35 Bill Nye? That would've been a risky set of businesses, because the-
6:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The window is big enough, so they just delayed it a week.
6:41 Bill Nye? Well, not just that, just keep in mind, everybody, humans have to be there to launch the thing. Like, people have, go home, they have to secure, they've gotta screw plywood to the windows of their house, and then they have to come back to the Cape to be ready to push the button and look at all the- Fuel lines and liquid oxygen connections and all that, that there's a lot more to it. When we talk about spacecraft, we remind everybody there are tremendous number of assets and investments in the infrastructure on the ground. Back to you.
7:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Has the mission statement changed over the decades?
7:18 Bill Nye? Very little, but it's succinct now.
7:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
7:22 Bill Nye? We are the world's largest independent space interest organization advancing space science and exploration so that citizens of Earth will be empowered to know the cosmos and our place within it.
7:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's really catchy.
7:36 Bill Nye? Well, here's what it is. It's succinct. We empower citizens.
7:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I agree. I'm just saying it's like it doesn't roll off the tongue.
7:43 Bill Nye? Well, it does if you're the CEO, yeah, before the elevator doors close.
7:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You are CEO and president.
7:50 Bill Nye? No, no, there's a bylaw rule. I'm not president.
7:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What are you?
7:54 Bill Nye? We have a separate, I'm CEO.
7:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just CEO.
7:56 Bill Nye? Yeah.
7:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I thought you were important.
7:58 Bill Nye? Exactly. So the president is an unpaid position.
8:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Did not know that.
8:02 Bill Nye? Yeah, that's a great tradition here at a nonprofit in California.
8:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You used to be president.
8:08 Bill Nye? I used to be vice president.
8:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Vice president, okay.
8:10 Bill Nye? I was equally unpaid as vice president.
8:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
8:13 Bill Nye? And so the board of directors is committed and just notice everybody, our board is the real deal bunch of people. Our president's Bethy Elman, Dr. Elman is a professor at Caltech. She has a couple of missions that she's a principal investigator, a PI on. And our vice president, Heidi Hammel, is one of the 20 most influential women astronomers in history. Brittany Schmidt is driving around submarines under the ice in Antarctica to prepare to go under the ice on Europa and Titan, or Enceladus, I mean, I was joking, Enceladus.
8:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One of the moons of Saturn.
8:50 Bill Nye? Saturn.
8:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Another icy moon.
8:52 Bill Nye? Icy moon.
8:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
8:53 Bill Nye? And so everybody, if you have ocean water for four and a half billion years, is there something alive?
8:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That happens here on Earth.
9:00 Bill Nye? Yeah.
9:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One of the defining missions of the 1970s was the Voyager.
9:05 Bill Nye? Oh, it still defines people. Here's the
9:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Voyager.
9:07 Bill Nye? I don't know if it's wide enough to see, but there's a replica of the record.
9:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh huh. So this defined a generation of hope. For our future of space exploration and Carl Sagan was particularly visible and known over that time.
9:22 Bill Nye? Yes.
9:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Has it changed over that, over the decades? And I ask that because if I remember correctly, because I used to serve on the board of the Planetary Society and I cherish that, those years because it's where I met you.
9:38 Bill Nye? Lucky you.
9:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's where I met Andrea and Carl Sagan's widow.
9:43 Bill Nye? Yes.
9:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I did not know either. I might have met her once or something, but we didn't know each other until we were both on the board. So that was, these are important connections.
9:53 Bill Nye? Yes.
9:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To be made.
9:54 Bill Nye? This is, this is what we do. We connect people with the passion, beauty and joy, the PB and J.
10:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? PB and J, loving it. That's a, that's a Bill Nye-ism, PB and J.
10:07 Bill Nye? Yeah.
10:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It is.
10:09 Bill Nye? Yeah. But it's really caught on in the science education.
10:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is, that's how.
10:14 Bill Nye? But now, all that aside, peanut butter and jelly used to be a very common lunch treat.
10:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I remembered there was a resistance to people in space relative to robots.
10:29 Bill Nye? Well, so.
10:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And some of that might've just been the sphere of influence of Carl, Carl Sagan, where he, he just, who's a robot guy.
10:39 Bill Nye? From an engineering or scientific or science fiction critic of astrophysical observer.
10:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At which I count myself among the ranks of.
10:49 Bill Nye? Yes. Premier astrophysical observer. Note, well, you can't get people to Europa. It's too flipping far away and too cold and there's nowhere to walk and everybody's gonna die. So you build spacecraft to go there as our proxies.
11:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
11:08 Bill Nye? We designed the instruments to be as human, to. Give us both a scientific perspective and a human perspective.
11:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But in the day, robots were nothing compared to today. In the day, I mean, 50 years ago.
11:22 Bill Nye? Fifty years ago.
11:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Computer robots then to today. Today, I'm walking down the street in LA, there's a car with no driver.
11:28 Bill Nye? Yes.
11:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No driver. They're making left turns. It's a turn to going straight.
11:33 Bill Nye? You may see the bumper sticker here in California on the Tesla that says, "I'm probably not driving." It's charming, but note well.
11:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so these are robots. It's a car robot, in that sense, right?
11:46 Bill Nye? Yes, that's what I'm saying.
11:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What do you got here?
11:47 Bill Nye? So this is the Spirit Rover, a picture of the Spirit Rover, and the cameras.
11:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's solar panels?
11:53 Bill Nye? Yes, the cameras were set up to be, this is the expression, as high as a 10-year-old's eye. So that you were, these cameras were put there so that humankind could imagine ourselves walking around, driving around on Mars, and talking about the planetary side. The lore that we promote, and I think you alluded to this earlier, is that Bruce Murray was a young guy in the 1960s. Co-founder, working on the Mariner program.
12:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Married to Mars?
12:26 Bill Nye? Mars, which was the Ranger spacecraft repurposed to go.
12:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ranger went to the moon to map the moon.
12:32 Bill Nye? And as a kid, I was being in class and we watched the moon come up. Yeah, kept in space, no sound.
12:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, some of the Rangers crash-landed.
12:40 Bill Nye? Yeah, on purpose, purposefully, and to see what the lunar surface was like up close.
12:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I forgot all about Mariner, because Mariner, I think, took the first pictures of Mars that revealed that there were no canals.
12:52 Bill Nye? Yes, and so this Bruce Murray gets credit, when you're talking to us at the planetary side, for being the guy who insisted that spacecraft have cameras.
13:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because people think scientists love pictures, but we don't give a rat's ass about a picture.
13:08 Bill Nye? Well, it depends on the picture.
13:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, what I mean is, there's much less science in a photo than the public is led to believe.
13:16 Bill Nye? Yeah, well.
13:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We get chart recorders, we get magnetic.
13:19 Bill Nye? Geiger counters.
13:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Geiger counters. Magnetometers.
13:23 Bill Nye? Spectra, we got a lot of optical.
13:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gimme spectra over a photo any day, but if people get doe-eyed about how beautiful.
13:33 Bill Nye? Well, it changed the world.
13:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Changed the world.
13:35 Bill Nye? Pictures from space changed the world.
13:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We all, at some point, must confess to ourselves that that is the fact.
13:42 Bill Nye? Go ahead, confess your brains out.
13:56 Bill Nye? Greetings, Star Talkians, Star Talksters, Star Talklings. You know, space exploration is not guaranteed. It needs your support. That's why we have the Planetary Society. We are the world's largest nonprofit space advocacy organization, connecting you with the grand adventure of exploring the cosmos. Become a member today. Check out planetary.org/starTalk.
14:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If we want to credit back to some of these founding fathers, I think Carl Sagan was the first scientist in his writings and in his, you know, in his appearances on television and to put you, just a regular person.
14:50 Bill Nye? A regular person, citizen of Earth.
14:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You became a participant on that frontier. It was no longer, let them go do their thing and they'll report back later. No.
14:59 Bill Nye? Or spend some tax dollars on this. It probably doesn't have anything to do with you. That's not his.
15:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It all has something to do with you.
15:05 Bill Nye? Everything, you are part of this great process of discovery, this adventure. And Bruce Murray used to talk about the unknown horizon. Why are you guys sending spacecraft out to these extraordinary distant places? What are you gonna find? We don't know what we're gonna find. That's why we're sending the spacecraft.
15:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think it's Einstein that famously said, "Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
15:30 Bill Nye? That sounds good.
15:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, that's completely.
15:32 Bill Nye? And Isaac Asimov, "Science doesn't begin with a hypothesis, it begins with, oh, that's funny."
15:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, no, no, you got that wrong.
15:38 Bill Nye? Oh, help me out.
15:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, he said, "Very few scientific discoveries, if any, ever begin with eureka."
15:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's, "That's funny."
15:47 Bill Nye? That's funny.
15:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, we explore the planets. So, another thing I credit the Planetary Society for, and its philosophies, and its outlook, is turning objects in space into worlds.
16:04 Bill Nye? Worlds is a great word.
16:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When you use the word "world," it's no longer a detached object from your imagination. It really gets you here.
16:12 Bill Nye? You got it, man. You hit the, no, Neil, that's absolutely right.
16:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't know anyone else who, any other
16:18 Bill Nye? Organization.
16:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Organization or worldview that made that such an important point.
16:23 Bill Nye? Right on, man. So, you guys, you should join the Planetary Society.
16:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Another thing that I credit the enthusiasm with the Planetary Society for is, when I was growing up, the moons of planets, like, why wouldn't anyone give a rat's ass? It's the moon. Look at the planet, not the moons. And then Voyager goes out there, gets pictures of the moons, and the moons are more interesting than the planets.
16:47 Bill Nye? There's a lot going on.
16:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A lot, and they're all different.
16:49 Bill Nye? Io, Europa, Ganymede.
16:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Our moon is like the least interesting moon in the solar system.
16:54 Bill Nye? What's interesting about the moon is it's got a far side and a near side. That, to me, is amazing. And I asked Carl Sagan, "Why is the near side relatively smooth?" I asked him this, as we say in middle school, to his face. And he said, "It's the Earth's gravity enabled these impacts to get, the impactors get accelerated," yeah. And so, lava flowed more recently on the near surface than the far surface.
17:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Did that turn out to be true?
17:24 Bill Nye? You tell me, astrophysics gravity guy. I have seen your gravity books, man. I dabbled in the three bodies. I dabbled in the, in the Hamiltonian.
17:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think there's an argument that any asteroid that's headed in our direction would feel Earth's gravity, and it would, you'd have a focusing effect towards.
17:43 Bill Nye? So, Sagan, back then, said gravitational winds, which was, that's not how the term is used. But we'll all get through it.
17:52 Bill Nye? No, your words include more than they leave.
17:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so planets become more interesting, moons become places to go and revisit. But there was a whole other, a whole other goal. And that was the search for intelligent life.
18:09 Bill Nye? Still is.
18:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the universe.
18:10 Bill Nye? Oh, man.
18:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I'm remembering how big a part of that was in my couple of years when I served on the board. But then when I came off the board, you know, it's less tangible, right? Because we don't know if the aliens are out there and are they hearing, listening to us? So where is TPS, the Planetary Society, relative to the search for intelligence?
18:33 Bill Nye? Well, we've let that go to this SETI Institute.
18:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? SETI Institute, of course.
18:37 Bill Nye? Intelligence Institute.
18:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they're based up in Northern California.
18:41 Bill Nye? Yeah, yeah. And they're very well endowed and they chip away at this problem.
18:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They just got a boatload of money just recently.
18:47 Bill Nye? Well, I went with well endowed, you can go boatload of money. Spacecraft full of money.
18:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
18:52 Bill Nye? And so they will carry on.
18:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A barge full of money.
18:55 Bill Nye? A barge full of money. They will carry on that research in their enabled best way possible.
19:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they have a whole suite of telescopes originally funded by Paul Allen.
19:06 Bill Nye? Paul Allen Ray.
19:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so these are telescopes that are sensitive to radio waves.
19:11 Bill Nye? Yeah.
19:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On the assumption that if anyone is going to talk to us, they're going to use radio waves because radio waves penetrate clouds.
19:16 Bill Nye? Carl Sagan was very well spoken about this, about this logical place where water molecules would not absorb radio waves. Logical place, logical frequency.
19:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
19:27 Bill Nye? Where radio waves would not be absorbed by water vapor. And so if an alien civilization was.
19:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because water vapor is in the, across the universe as well.
19:36 Bill Nye? Hydrogen's everywhere. It would, you could aim your intergalactic or interplanetary.
19:44 Bill Nye? Interstellar, interstellar message to go through the water hole, as he called it.
19:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Nice.
19:50 Bill Nye? Very well, very cool term.
19:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
19:52 Bill Nye? But all that aside, it is very reasonable that maybe in my lifetime, but in your kids' lifetime, somebody's gonna find evidence of life on another world. And the logical places are gonna be under the sands of Mars.
20:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, but this would be microbial life. This is not...
20:12 Bill Nye? Well, yeah, but still, it would change the world.
20:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Little green.
20:14 Bill Nye? Then you would say to Mr. Microbe, Ms. Microbe, they, Microbe, do you have DNA? Are you a whole nother, different?
20:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I get that, but that wasn't what SETI was about.
20:23 Bill Nye? No, no, it's still not.
20:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. SETI finding microbes, that's not their...
20:27 Bill Nye? That's fine. Knock yourselves out.
20:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's not their thing.
20:29 Bill Nye? And 'cause if we found such a signal, it would, dare I say it, change the world. And so we keep, so SETI Institute keeps listening.
20:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We had an exhibit at the Hayden Planetarium before we rebuilt that was narrated by William Shatner, and it was about the search for life. And I will, I remembered the quote, because I thought it was a brilliant sentence. And he said it in his sort of pause-acting way. "The day we discover life will signal a change in the human condition that we cannot foresee or imagine."
21:02 Bill Nye? Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. That's pretty good. No, everybody, I say all the time, everybody will feel differently about being a living thing.
21:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes. Whether or not it's what we call intelligent, oh yeah, it would transform biology.
21:14 Bill Nye? The logical question from the sands of Mars, there's another hypothesis that once life starts, you can't stop it. So if life started on Mars...
21:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Life finds a way.
21:25 Bill Nye? There's, yes, there's salty slush near the equator of Mars, we've kept almost warm by sun. Are there microbes living under the sand? And if we found them, do they have DNA? To wit... Was Mars hit with an impactor, which happens all the time?
21:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Long ago.
21:44 Bill Nye? Knocked a living thing on a rock off into space. It fell, whoo, whoo, whoo, accepts in space, no sound.
21:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? These would be microbes stowing away in the nooks and crannies.
21:55 Bill Nye? Trapped, stowing away. Land on Earth, and you and I are descendants of Martians. That is an extraordinary hypothesis.
22:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You more so than me.
22:05 Bill Nye? Yeah, well, it's an extraordinary hypothesis, but if it proved to be true, it would change the world, and so it is worth.
22:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That would be panspermia.
22:14 Bill Nye? Panspermia, it's worth investigating, and I just discourage all of you out there who want to go to Mars by yourselves on your own giant rocket. Just don't go to the same places, the same places that are interesting to you maybe are very likely the same places that are interesting to people studying astrobiology.
22:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's just for anybody who happened to.
22:39 Bill Nye? Just anybody who happened to, used to be on the board of the planetary society before he or she was being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission and is trying some political tactic to try to not, to try to get a pardon someday. If you're that person, consider doing it a different way.
22:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Could be any one of a number of people, for sure. There's nothing specific there.
23:00 Bill Nye? So, in the Viking missions, famously, the rocks came back, those pictures depicted the Martian sky as blue, and the rocks were too pink. And it took them, I was at the 30th anniversary of this thing, and these guys were talking about it, it took them about a day and a half to realize that the cameras had been calibrated on Earth, and the pictures needed to be recalibrated. So they found intuitively that if you look at the shadow, you can infer the color of the sky. So those of you out there haven't sat through this, go outside on a sunny day. If you're in Ithaca, New York, where I went to college, there is a sunny day scheduled in the next 10 years.
23:43 Bill Nye? Then you make a shadow on something white, like my shirt would be good, and you'll see the shadow is gray, to be sure, but it's also ever so slightly light blue. And that's because the sun is not the only source of light here on Earth's surface. The sky is the source of light. Looking at me, nothing but orange skies on the other planet. Yeah, so on Mars, the sky is orange or salmon colored or what have you. And so they've found that by looking at the shadow, they could infer the color of the sky and then how much the colors of the rocks had been influenced on the camera, on the images, by the color of the sky.
24:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's very clever. So what you're saying is, to summarize, whatever's going on in the shadow is not directly influenced by the sun.
24:34 Bill Nye? It's directly influenced, but it's not the only influence.
24:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, sorry. You get, you get an authentic background lighting from the rest of the sky.
24:42 Bill Nye? Yeah.
24:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
24:43 Bill Nye? So, let's send a shadow caster to Mars. I was in a meeting.
24:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A Stratocaster? That's a guitar.
24:50 Bill Nye? The blues guitar. And you, I don't know if you are a Stratocaster master, but there is, the idea was to send this post, this stick, to Mars to cast a shadow. And I was in the meeting and I said, aren't there many, many things to cast a shadow? No, we need it to fall in something precisely calibrated or well-known colors of grayscale. And so I was in the meeting. Now, my dad had the misfortune of being a prisoner of war in World War II for almost four years. And he told the story often of looking at.
25:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In Japan?
25:26 Bill Nye? In China at first, and then Japan at the end of the war. They got, as Japanese influence shrunk, they got moved to the South Island of Japan for the last year of the war. But he would, by all accounts, stick a shovel handle in the soil and watch the shadow and reckon when it was lunchtime, kind of thing. And so he came back.
25:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's very sundial of him.
25:48 Bill Nye? That's right. So he wrote a book about sundials. He was the astronomy merit badge counselor. He made a sundial.
25:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That would be for the Boy Scouts.
25:57 Bill Nye? For the Boy Scouts. So I was in the meeting. They're gonna send a metal stick to Mars to cast a shadow.
26:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you have genetic.
26:05 Bill Nye? I'm just jumping out of my chair. You guys, we gotta make that into a sundial.
26:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, I'm glad you didn't put a shovel here for this.
26:11 Bill Nye? So they were all looking at me like, dude. It's the space program. Bill, I see you're wearing a watch. No, come on. It'll be like people who speak Klingon, except it'll be real.
26:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mars 2004, two worlds, one sun.
26:26 Bill Nye? That's so Lou Friedman, one of our founders, came up with that. He was, we were having dinner at a place that's now, it was Louise Trotteria. Now it's Cheesecake Factory, but he said, one sun, two worlds. And a few seconds, we all went, oh, no, no, two worlds, one sun. That's really inspirational. Light shadows on Mars are cast by the same life giving star as shadows on Earth. Now, wait, wait, there's more. On the edge around the dial is a message to the future. We built this instrument in 2003, arrived here in 2004 to study the Martian environment, look for what signs of water and life. And on the last of the four panels.
27:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What is it? Is it in Braille? What is it?
27:12 Bill Nye? It's in a younger person's font.
27:17 Bill Nye? It says, on the last of the four, it says, to those who visit here, we wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery.
27:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that's written in English because of course aliens read English.
27:30 Bill Nye? Well, English would, no, no, it's written for humans. So.
27:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, other humans who.
27:34 Bill Nye? Yeah, English is the language of aerospace even now. And so.
27:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And of aviation too.
27:39 Bill Nye? Yeah, aviation. Yeah. So it's, it's optimistic. People are going to be there and they're going to go up to that thing and look at it and think about.
27:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The way we go up to the Plymouth Rock.
27:50 Bill Nye? The way we go up to what have you. Yes. A pyramid, a Michu Picchu. We go up and go, wow, that's extraordinary thing humans before us did. And it's optimistic and it has the joy of discovery. And that has become PB and J, passion, beauty and joy, J O D, joy of discovery. That's become a phrase with me and the staff.
28:29 Speaker 02 Hello, I'm Alexander Harvey and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.
28:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tell me about literal political advocacy, because it's one thing to just celebrate it, but at some point, somebody's gotta show up in Washington.
28:56 Bill Nye? This is what we do.
28:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Have you been asked to testify?
29:00 Bill Nye? Oh, heck, yes. So, what we have been able to do is hire two guys who are just really into this and are excellent at it. So, we have one guy who studies policy.
29:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This sounds like you're talking about lobbyists.
29:15 Bill Nye? No, so lobby, a lobbyist is a paid person and he has to have a license and this and that. We are advocates. So, what we do is get our members, 40-plus members around the world.
29:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thousand.
29:30 Bill Nye? Forty thousand.
29:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well said.
29:32 Bill Nye? Forty K.
29:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
29:34 Bill Nye? Forty-plus K.
29:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
29:36 Bill Nye? Close to 50 K people around the world.
29:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is evidence I'm paying attention to what you're saying.
29:41 Bill Nye? Yes, thank you.
29:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I just want you to know that. That's why I interrupt you when I pay attention.
29:44 Bill Nye? And I appreciate it, Neil. It's very appreciated much.
29:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Forty members of the planetary society.
29:48 Bill Nye? Forty thousand members, plus almost 50,000, some weeks it is over 50.
29:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
29:54 Bill Nye? We have this nonprofit problem continually.
29:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
29:57 Bill Nye? People fall off, you have to reengage them. They fall off, all right, all that aside. We send letters and emails to members of Congress and the Senate advocating for space missions that we believe are in the best interest of humankind, in the best interest of making discoveries on these other worlds that will affect our world. And the one that we're all talking about this week is the Europa Clipper.
30:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
30:23 Bill Nye? A replica shown here.
30:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it launched, right.
30:25 Bill Nye? And I testified in front of Congress in 2013 about the importance of this mission, where we're looking for signs of life on another world. And or organic material from on another world to learn more about our own world. And we do it for inspirational, wonderful joy of discoveries, reasons. But it's also if you want to be the world leader in technology, you invest in space exploration.
30:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I testified once, but I felt like it was going into a black hole.
30:56 Bill Nye? Well, that's a black hole. See what he did there?
30:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But I wasn't representing a whole organization as you are.
31:02 Bill Nye? Well, that's what I say.
31:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a different force operating.
31:04 Bill Nye? Plus, I'm one voice and my voice is not irrelevant, to be sure. It's relevant. But when you these congressmen and senators get thousands, tens of thousands of 10 Ks of letters and emails, it affects them.
31:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You at the helm of this ship that has influence. And when I testified, I'm just Neil talking to the Congress. And I do they, you know, what am I doing here? Like, what are they?
31:28 Bill Nye? That's what they said to everybody said to me, Neil, behind your, behind your back. No, so.
31:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But so I look at this list here, because it's not just Europa Clipper, which is successfully on route. It's just most recent, Hubble, Mars sample return, the New Horizons to Pluto. The Europa Clipper, of course, what I got two other missions here, Veritas, which means truth, but that's all I know about it. And Viper, what are those?
31:53 Bill Nye? So Veritas is a mission to Venus. So I haven't had a mission to Venus in 40 years.
31:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not entirely hospitable.
32:00 Bill Nye? Oh, well, but you want to have a look and see what what happened on Venus. Yeah. What happened on Venus, we don't want to happen on Earth. In fact, people talk about climate change now regularly. As I, as you know, I've been whining about it for.
32:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You've got a whole book.
32:15 Bill Nye? On, yes.
32:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What's the name of that book?
32:17 Bill Nye? Undeniable.
32:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Undeniable. Yes. A whole book talking about the reality of climate change and how to, how to spread that information against misinformation.
32:29 Bill Nye? Misinformation.
32:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
32:31 Bill Nye? From fossil fuel industry, who's worked hard to make scientific uncertainty the same as doubt about the whole thing.
32:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
32:38 Bill Nye? But that aside, you can argue that climate change on Earth was discovered by studying the atmosphere of Venus.
32:47 Bill Nye? And so, uh, in 1984 or so, so this is really an extraordinary thing. It's this classic Bruce Murray. What are you gonna find when you go exploring these other worlds? We don't know. That's why we go exploring.
32:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Bill, what you just said reminds me of that quote from T S Eliot, where he says, you, I'm gonna mangle it, but the essence of it will be there. You explore the world, you know, see new places. Travel, travel. And then you come back home and only then will you know your, that place for the very first time.
33:23 Bill Nye? As I say, the more we explore these other worlds, the more we know about our own.
33:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's that, is it a new field? Comparative planetology.
33:31 Bill Nye? Carl Sagan used to toss that phrase around like it was a real phrase.
33:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not like we're here and everything else is something else.
33:37 Bill Nye? That's right.
33:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Can I tell you, one time I was delightfully out geeked.
33:42 Bill Nye? You're pretty, when you out geek Neil, you're geeking pretty hard.
33:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But geeks, you know, geeks are on an unlimited spectrum.
33:48 Bill Nye? Yes.
33:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. However geeky you are, there's someone geekier than you.
33:52 Bill Nye? Yes.
33:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Particularly if you go to Comic Con, arms reach.
33:55 Bill Nye? That is hardcore.
33:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Shake a stick, there's someone geekier. All right. So I calculated how long it would take to cook a 16 inch pepperoni pizza on your windowsill on Venus.
34:07 Bill Nye? On your windowsill?
34:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, you just put it out on the windowsill, you know, closing window and just let it cook.
34:11 Bill Nye? It's pretty quick.
34:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It would take seven seconds.
34:13 Bill Nye? Seven seconds. Okay.
34:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. All right.
34:15 Bill Nye? So not only is it cook in seven seconds because of the temperature, did you take into account atmospheric pressure?
34:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
34:22 Bill Nye? Yeah.
34:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes. In my calculation, I considered, as you suggested, what is the temperature of the air? And how many air molecules are hitting it? Because it's got 10 times the pressure that we have here on Earth. That's all factored in. All right. That's how I got down to seven seconds.
34:38 Bill Nye? Bubbling pizzas are hardly gonna bubble.
34:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so I then got out geeked. So was it, Neil, did you consider the?
34:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thermodynamic radiative layer within the atmosphere. It's the optical depth. It's the distance over which a photon is no longer absorbed by the air and it goes to your target.
35:03 Bill Nye? Mm-hmm.
35:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I said, "No, I hadn't. That's important." It's why when you're in front of a fireplace and someone walks in front of it, you feel cold immediately.
35:13 Bill Nye? Yes.
35:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's not the air temperature changing. And so I had neglected the radiative factor from the hot atmosphere.
35:24 Bill Nye? So how long does it really take?
35:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Two and a half seconds.
35:27 Bill Nye? Two and a half.
35:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's three times faster.
35:29 Bill Nye? It's pretty fast.
35:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, yeah, if you gotta get out geek.
35:31 Bill Nye? So if you're there with your pizza and you have some means to open a window without exploding, dying, getting cooked, I'll keep that in mind. But these are important thought experiments because they're physics.
35:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
35:46 Bill Nye? All science is either physics.
35:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
35:48 Bill Nye? Or stamp collecting.
35:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So we gotta land this plane?
35:52 Bill Nye? Oh, man.
35:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so a couple of things.
35:53 Bill Nye? Are we gonna tail-first, propulsively land or are we gonna go in, you know?
35:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're a glider. I'm a glider, lander guy. So I don't wanna splash in the ocean. That's very primitive.
36:03 Bill Nye? But it's hard to miss. That's why they did it.
36:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The Pacific is a big target.
36:08 Bill Nye? Well, and so is off the coast of Florida. Now, yeah, I don't know if you remember this, but when I was young, the spacecraft was in 10 miles of the Navy ship. That was a big deal. Now they, "Why don't get too close?"
36:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, they landed on a bullseye.
36:23 Bill Nye? Yeah, yeah.
36:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know?
36:24 Bill Nye? Back to you.
36:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So another big part of the Planetary Society's identity was the successful funding, appeal, funding and launch and deployment of the solar sail, which was the dream of so many people. And one of your founders, Lou Friedman, wrote a book.
36:41 Bill Nye? Yes.
36:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so this was like a very big experience. Andrian was a big proponent of this.
36:47 Bill Nye? Oh, yes.
36:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Andrian calls Carl Sagan's widow and board member. So would you count that as among the bigger achievements?
36:54 Bill Nye? Oh, yeah. Especially under my watch. No, really. We had a solar sail launch funded largely by Andrian and some people associated with the Discovery Channel. And it crashed in the ocean and it was okay, game over, done, boom. So then it took many years, nine more years to get it together to build another spacecraft. And in that interim, this thing called the CubeSat emerged, cubical satellite, which are 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters. And then variations of that have been created. You can go online and buy parts for satellites.
37:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they're cheap to launch.
37:35 Bill Nye? Very inexpensive.
37:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's like your science project.
37:38 Bill Nye? Yeah, it is. And a lot of students, a lot of universities and high schools participate in CubeSat programs. And the other thing is electronics have gotten increasingly smaller, more miniaturized.
37:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One could argue that the miniaturization of electronics was stimulated by space.
37:53 Bill Nye? Yes, well, it's, how to say, symbiotic.
37:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
37:58 Bill Nye? We were able to get funding, 50,000 people around the world just think it's great. We launched a spacecraft in 2014 to prove that it would work. And by the way, I've done very little as CEO. The place is run by Jennifer Vaughn, our chief operating officer. We have a chief financial officer, Jim Seau. We have chief of communications, Daniel Gunn. We got a development officer, we got all these people. But once in a while, somebody's got to decide to do something. So it was my decision, should we take this launch in 2014 with a spacecraft that wasn't as capable as we hoped one day would be, but it had cameras. And so we launched in 2014, we got these pictures down, and that enabled us to get
38:43 Bill Nye? funding to launch Lightsail 2.
38:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There it is. You could see the lightsail unfurling?
38:47 Bill Nye? Yes.
38:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Am I remembering this? It makes it very real.
38:50 Bill Nye? So right there is a boom, that golden looking thing is beryllium copper. And what's cool about it, or remarkable, this is the same material in much shorter length. Just notice how stiff it is if you try to bend it.
39:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, can't.
39:08 Bill Nye? And then notice how compact it is if you try to roll it or bend it in the other axis. And so this is what enables.
39:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You fold it up to get into the fairing.
39:18 Bill Nye? Well, rolled up. Yeah, and if you look at it, it's, there's these tiny dots. These are laser stitch welded at the US Air Force Research Lab. Anyway, I mention all this because there's a lot of cool technology that we.
39:34 Bill Nye? Perfected and flew in 2017.
39:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As any good space mission does.
39:38 Bill Nye? Yes.
39:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because you're doing something that's never been done before.
39:40 Bill Nye? Never been done before.
39:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Somebody's gotta innovate.
39:42 Bill Nye? Yep, had to innovate. The control laws, how you steer it, and rolling it up and getting it robust enough to tolerate cosmic rays without being too heavy to fly. We did all that. And so, very proud of that. And people ask us, "What's next?" I'll just say, "Stay tuned."
40:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, a quick, I want to remind people, unless they've been living under a rock, many people, you taught them science, growing up, as Bill Nye the Science Guy.
40:13 Bill Nye? It's amazing. It really is amazing.
40:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And now they're full grown adults with kids, and they, some of them have kids, and you're like Papa Science here.
40:19 Bill Nye? Yeah.
40:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you were the heir apparent to what maybe was in our generation, who's the guy on TV?
40:26 Bill Nye? Don Herbert.
40:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, Don Herbert.
40:27 Bill Nye? I had lunch with him.
40:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You did?
40:29 Bill Nye? I looked like nobody, I had lunch with him.
40:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don Herbert, and he was Mr., what was he?
40:33 Bill Nye? Mr. Wizard.
40:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mr. Wizard.
40:35 Bill Nye? Are you fooling with me, Mr. Wizard? So I went to his memorial service.
40:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
40:39 Bill Nye? And you guys, I was just crying. I just couldn't get over it, man. The guy was so influential.
40:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
40:45 Bill Nye? I can tell you the technical aspects of everything, but his show was done intuitively. Our, the Science Guy show, we had all this research, that 10 years old is as old as you can be, to get the so-called lifelong passion for science.
41:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To get it, didn't you?
41:01 Bill Nye? So it was dialed in.
41:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I was nine. I was nine.
41:04 Bill Nye? I love you, man.
41:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
41:06 Bill Nye? It was dialed in for people 10 years old. That's why, that's part of why the show was so successful.
41:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then, you would, I wouldn't say transition out of that, but you added to your professional profile.
41:21 Bill Nye? Added, yes.
41:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes. To, to be a space advocate, like, for adults, and for the nation, and for the president.
41:27 Bill Nye? For the world.
41:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This sort of thing, yeah.
41:29 Bill Nye? So...
41:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And did you ride in Air Force One one time?
41:32 Bill Nye? Yeah.
41:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excuse me.
41:33 Bill Nye? Barack Obama got to meet me.
41:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah?
41:35 Bill Nye? And spent some time.
41:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Did you chill in with Barack?
41:40 Bill Nye? Well, yeah. But he was, he is a very thoughtful and frankly charming guy.
41:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And smart, yeah.
41:46 Bill Nye? And so, I, it was brilliant. And so... We talked about space exploration.
41:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, good.
41:52 Bill Nye? On Marine One.
41:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, the helicopter.
41:55 Bill Nye? You've hung out with him, but I, uh, it was quite.
41:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not on his airplanes, though.
41:58 Bill Nye? But it was quite cool, and he's very receptive to, uh, addressing climate change.
42:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, good.
42:05 Bill Nye? He was very interested in that.
42:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
42:06 Bill Nye? And, uh, his policies led to this, the beginning of the start of a beginning of, uh, climate policies involved in the Inflation Reduction Act, AKA the Clean Power Program.
42:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, which had some elements to it, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Bill.
42:25 Bill Nye? Neil.
42:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Planetary Society.
42:26 Bill Nye? Great to see you.
42:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, what did we find? Did you got a website for it?
42:30 Bill Nye? Planetary.org. It's your homepage.
42:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Planet, uh, planetary.org.
42:35 Bill Nye? Planetary.org.
42:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
42:36 Bill Nye? And, uh, we have a podcast.
42:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There that, that you can join?
42:39 Bill Nye? Yes, and so on every page, if you guys want to run a nonprofit, you put a donate button on every page.
42:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, that's what it is.
42:46 Bill Nye? And so, we thank everybody out there who is a member, encourage those of you who for some reason are not members to join us, and we have now the Planetary Academy aimed at families.
42:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and the monthly Planetary Report.
43:00 Bill Nye? Planetary, it's every four times a year now because people get their space information on the electric internet, so we have longer form articles in the printed magazine.
43:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Rather than, rather than journalistic articles, which would make any sense.
43:13 Bill Nye? We have, I claim, the, we have the world's premier long-form planetary science journalism.
43:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Nice. But I, myself, have referenced it to catch up on certain.
43:24 Bill Nye? Yes, well, thank you. Yes, we have the best reporters going.
43:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because, you know, mission information is very fragmented.
43:30 Bill Nye? It is everywhere.
43:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's a little bit there and a little bit there, and it comes into a coherent, uh, sensible pedagogical delivery.
43:37 Bill Nye? To give us an idea of what's involved, you want to go, you send a mission to Jupiter. Big enormous rocket Falcon Heavy, three Falcon 9 strapped together, 27 engines, blasting at once, going as fast as you can, getting a slingshot from Earth, takes almost six years. And so you're in this game for the long haul.
44:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And with Europa Clipper, we're six years out.
44:04 Bill Nye? That's what I'm saying.
44:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
44:06 Bill Nye? Five and a half years.
44:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what you described.
44:08 Bill Nye? Yeah, yeah. And it will change the world. Thank you all. Planetary.org, turn it up loud.
44:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This has been my exclusive conversation with the one and only Bill Nye the Science Guy. Oh, yeah. Tune in next time for our next episode of StarTalk. And until then, as always, keep looking up.
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