Season 4 Time Capsule (Part 1)

Join your cosmic tour guide, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, as we explore the most memorable moments from your favorite episodes in Season 4, our most popular season ever.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. For my day job, I'm an astrophysicist and director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium, right here in New York City, part of the American Museum of Natural History. The show you're about to hear is a time capsule, representing fan favorites from the fourth season of StarTalk.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We start off with the number one pick, our live show at Town Hall in Times Square, featuring one of the first men to walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin. Also appearing in this show was the author of A Man in the Moon, Andy Shaken, and comedians Eugene Mirman and John Oliver from The Daily Show. Buzz, were any of you guys thinking we're doing this to explore, for science, for anything other than flexing muscle?

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Of course, yeah. We were doing it for that reason, but it was certainly a race. We were told that. I probably was more antagonistic than anybody else. There were a couple of, you know, real cozy people, let's buddy-buddy, but those were our enemies, yeah.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Were you hoping you'd get to the moon and there'd be a Russian that you could punch there?

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're on the moon, you're collecting rocks, so there's a little bit of science that comes out of that. You lay down the corner reflectors, right? Those are cool. Corner reflectors.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was Neil's experiment. It was pretty easy. You just put it down.

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all you had to do, put it down like that.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  The seismometer was a hell of a lot more complicated.

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you deployed the seismometer?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. There was a leveling device that consisted of kind of a round dish, and they had a BB in there. Okay? Now with the low lunar gravity, guess what that BB was doing?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Come back an hour later, and it's right in the center. That's not a bubble.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  No, it...

• 2:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It sounds like a child's toy.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  I've been a scuba diver since 1957. And so when these two engineers from Baltimore decided that maybe this stuff in space could be done in another medium like underwater, neutrally buoyant, where the body weighs about, you know, how much percentage are we? Ninety percent water?

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, you get the same density as water, and you're bubbling.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  So anyway, it sounded pretty good to me. Some of the other astronauts were, "No, no, no, that's just not gonna work." But it did.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  So Buzz, you've been a scuba diver and an astronaut. Do you just hate the surface of the Earth?

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  John, but there's more. Not only does he hate the surface of the Earth, even when he's on the surface of the Earth, back in his day, he was a pole vaulter. Do I not have this right?

• 3:16Speaker 01

  God, I would get away from the ground.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  So you started with pole vaulting, and then were like, "I should probably try a spaceship."

• 3:26Speaker 03

  So Dennis Tito, who is a gazillionaire in California who was the first space tourist, he flew to the...

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just bought a seat on the Russian Soyuz.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  Right, in 2001.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how do the old timers feel about people just buying a seat? When you guys were starving in the desert, becoming the right stuff to earn that seat, you got people who would just pull out a billfold and plunk it down. You okay with that?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  No, I'm looking at how much I got paid for going to the...

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much?

• 3:52Speaker 01

  I filed a travel voucher when I came back.

• 3:57Speaker 04

  You had to expense going to the moon. It's true. Is that really true? At the heart of the Cold War. Is that true?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Most of the meals were government meals.

• 4:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Most of the transportation was government transportation. You know, the rocket?

• 4:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. Government rocket.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  If only he'd been able to take a mile.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  The parachute, the aircraft carrier.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  I did need to rent a car.

• 4:29Speaker 04

  Yeah. And you had to cover that?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  To get from the airport in Florida to the crew quarters.

• 4:35Speaker 04

  Did the government cover that? Or were they like, "Sorry, you have to get there somehow and then we'll bring you to the moon part"?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Look, I have a damn official government travel voucher. Thirty-three dollars and thirty-one cents.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  That was a lot more in 1969.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, but not that much. It's a fair point. You did alright. Yeah. You're welcome. You could buy the Rolling Stones' catalog at the time.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  You know, I happen to be an Axe ambassador. You know what that is?

• 5:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A X E.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  A X E.

• 5:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The stuff they spray on your body?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  The stuff that makes you...

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And all the women come chasing after you?

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See Buzz, I would have thought, at the bar, telling the lady, "I went to the moon", that that would be enough.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know? You don't need something to smell.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  You are the one man who does not need Axe body spray, Buzz. We need that. To smell like our concept of what you smell like.

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Presumably the moon has a special place in your heart and mind and soul. So, there's no talk today about moon bases. You're okay with that?

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm talking about moon bases.

• 5:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want moon bases?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  No, yeah, but they're for international people, not the US.

• 6:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  We'll build them.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Russia.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  He's a Ruski.

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  Not anymore.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so you've got...

• 6:12Speaker 04

  Not anymore.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  No, not gonna happen.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, moon bases for international science research such as what hap- what goes on in Antarctica, I guess. It's an international base there.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Takonoids, Chinese takonoids.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  German astronauts.

• 6:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Indian, Japanese.

• 6:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't that kinda what the space station...

• 6:32Speaker 01

  But, but they're doing things for prestige in their country.

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In their country, that's for sure?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All of them?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  We've done that.

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what should we do for prestige, once again?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Lead what happens at the moon without wasting money.

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so...

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasting money.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. When you could use it, better going elsewhere.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, like?

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Oh, like San Francisco?

• 7:10Speaker 02

  You have to go, it's wonderful.

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Buzz, if we're gonna go to Mars and hang out, shouldn't we like, practice hanging out on the moon?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Well, 'cause the gravity's different.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  So.

• 7:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's got gravity at all?

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, you don't practice at one place to then go somewhere else and do it.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, Mr. Swimming?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Hell, we didn't do that, we...

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Please don't fly a jet into me, you're probably right. Just an unattractive example.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. This time capsule features your favorite episodes from season four. Next up, our live show at the Bell House in Brooklyn with planetary scientist David Grin spoon talking about the Mars Curiosity Rover. Joining us were the comedians Eugene Mirman, Jim Gaffigan, and the one and only Sarah Silverman. It was page one story. An SUV-sized rover was plunked down on Mars. Like, what's up with that?

• 8:42Speaker 05

  Well, we're really glad it made it.

• 8:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I was scared. I said, "This is not gonna work."

• 8:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you go nine months, and then it wasn't just the airbags, like the old ones did, right? That was scary, but I got accustomed to the airbag landing. This one, it had like, heat shields, and then a hypersonic drogue chute, and then retro-rockets, and then a hoist crane. It was something Rube Goldberg would have designed, and I'm thinking, "I don't want Rube Goldberg on Mars." So...

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, with his OK videos.

• 9:16Speaker 06

  Why don't you just say what you mean? No Jews on Mars. Let's make that T-shirt. I would wear it.

• 9:26Speaker 07

  Why does it have to be an SUV? I mean, I wish they would do something a little better for the environment.

• 9:30Speaker 05

  Well, the last one was a Mini Cooper.

• 9:34Speaker 07

  Electric?

• 9:35Speaker 05

  Well, the last one was solar. This one's got nukes.

• 9:38Speaker 07

  Yeah, those suck.

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, first of all, how confident were you that this whole sequence of landing devices would've worked?

• 9:46Speaker 05

  I wasn't confident at all. I was shitting bricks. The thing is, I'm on the science side of this thing, so we've got our instruments. We want to get them onto the surface of Mars and go to interesting places so we can learn things. And the engineering side of it, those guys tell us, "Don't worry, this'll work." And then we say, "So, how are you gonna do it?" And they describe this thing, you know, "It's gonna come in at hypersonic velocity and make these S-turns, and then drop off the heat shield, and there's a parachute, and it's gonna fire these rockets, and then it's gonna stop 50 meters up and hover and drop things down on this..."

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On a hoist!

• 10:16Speaker 05

  And we're like, "You gotta be kidding me. That's not gonna work." And it was scary. We were scared. I was not confident at all.

• 10:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you know that I had a private Twitter conversation with the rover? Just before it landed.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 10:30Speaker 07

  I don't think it was the rover.

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you mean? Who said what?

• 10:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me, I had a relationship.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Meaning you tweeted the rover and the rover was like, "Hi Neil."

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The rover tweeted?

• 10:42Speaker 07

  You know what? It was probably just some old guy pretending to be the rover.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was like, "Can't talk now, I'm about to go through seven minutes of terror."

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Seventy-six rockets have to fire in weird directions.

• 10:53Speaker 07

  There was a video all about that.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you were mentioning this tension between the scientists and engineers. One of my last two questions was, "Who do you like better, scientists or engineers?" You asked the rover this? I asked this of the rover. Oh, and what did she say? Yeah, it's a she. It's a she, actually.

• 11:09Speaker 07

  Sure it is.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Scientists have to build a lady and send it to Mars. That's how they fall in love.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She said she would not pick between the two, that they are both important to her life. She loves us both. She loves us both, yes. So it worked. It landed. Nothing went wrong? Almost nothing went wrong. What went wrong? Well...

• 11:35Speaker 07

  Helicopter crashed into the wall?

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it actually was... Martian. It was remarkably free of glitches. Actually, I did my very last question to Curiosity, which is her name, was...

• 11:46Speaker 06

  That's such a stripper name.

• 11:51Speaker 07

  She sounds very curious.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  What's your favorite?

• 11:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I asked her.

• 11:56Speaker 06

  Curiosity.

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said...

• 11:59Speaker 07

  You typed to her, you didn't ask her.

• 12:00Speaker 06

  I have an eight-year-old son named Josh. He's my world. Do you want to have a party?

• 12:04Speaker 07

  Do I say that? I say that.

• 12:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I said, "Suppose a Martian crawls out from under a rock, climbs on your back, and rides you like a rodeo bull."

• 12:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She said, "That was not in my briefings." I last counted, it was like ten experiments on this thing. What's your favorite among them?

• 12:22Speaker 05

  Well, I'm a little bit partial because I'm part of one of the instrument teams. I help propose and design and...

• 12:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So by partially, you mean you're biased?

• 12:30Speaker 05

  I'm biased.

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so which one is...

• 12:31Speaker 05

  I mean, the obvious thing to say is the cameras, because the cameras are so cool, because we all want to see, and it's beautiful, and it's amazing, and part of it's just sightseeing. But our instrument is called RAD, and it is RAD. It's the Radiation Assessment Detector, and we are measuring for the first time...

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what RAD stands for?

• 12:46Speaker 05

  It is what it stands for.

• 12:47Speaker 07

  I invented that ten years ago, sorry to tell you.

• 12:50Speaker 05

  No, we're measuring how much radiation there is on the surface of Mars, which has never been measured before, and it's one of the things that would possibly kill you and possibly kill Martian bugs, so we want to characterize it and see what it's doing in the soil and in the atmosphere and so forth.

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's not measuring anything about Mars itself? It's just stuff that's coming to Mars?

• 13:08Speaker 05

  Well, but it's doing stuff to Mars.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  When you say Martian bugs...

• 13:13Speaker 05

  You don't know about that?

• 13:14Speaker 02

  I'm not saying there aren't Martian bugs, I'm just saying, are there Martian bugs? And then also, are they attacking us?

• 13:22Speaker 05

  Well, that was a slip. There are no Martian bugs.

• 13:26Speaker 06

  No, aren't there like, isn't there like microscopic life of some kind?

• 13:29Speaker 05

  Well, that's what we're trying to figure out.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the RAD detector would tell you whether the radiation flux would sterilize the surface and kill all bugs?

• 13:39Speaker 05

  Exactly. Probably if there's bugs, microbes, whatever, on Mars, they're underground, because on the surface, there's no water, there's ultraviolet, it's freezing, it's nasty. But underground, there might be water, it's a little more reasonable temperature, and you're shielded from the radiation. But what we're trying to figure out is how deep do you have to be if you're a Martian bug? What's happening to the radiation and...

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it landed where on Mars? Because there's a lot of places to go. You prepicked a spot?

• 14:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, we landed in a place called Gale Crater.

• 14:08Speaker 07

  I've been there.

• 14:11Speaker 07

  It's nice.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  He does score a lot.

• 14:12Speaker 07

  It's nice. I actually named it after a friend of mine, Gale.

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gale.

• 14:19Speaker 07

  It's not funny, she's dead.

• 14:24Speaker 05

  Killed by a Martian, I might add.

• 14:29Speaker 05

  It's by far the coolest place we've ever landed on Mars because...

• 14:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because Mr. Universe has been there.

• 14:36Speaker 05

  I've been to some cooler places. So back me up here. It's a cool place, right? Because it's an ancient crater that used to be a lake and has all these sediments in it that tell us about the ancient past on Mars. And it's got a five kilometer, that's three miles for you Americans, three mile high mountain in the middle of it that we're gonna climb up. And it's like going up the Grand Canyon on Mars. Every layer is from a different time in Martian history. It's gonna tell us the whole story.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mars rotates in 24 hours. We rotate in 24 hours, right? Well, actually, not quite 24 hours. What's the exact rotation?

• 15:10Speaker 05

  Well, Mars is slightly slower. It's like a half an hour longer in the day, which is strange.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the people studying Mars, are they on Earth time or on Mars time?

• 15:19Speaker 05

  They're on Mars time. Actually, we was out there last week.

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Out where?

• 15:22Speaker 05

  At JPL. On Mars. Half hour more for partying in Mars. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena where we're running the rover from. And the day is on Mars time, which changes compared to California time. And it's really an odd experience.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Wait, Mars time isn't the same as California time?

• 15:40Speaker 05

  Well, sometimes it is. But it sweeps past.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  24 hours out of the day.

• 15:44Speaker 05

  It slows down by half an hour a day, which is convenient if you're stuck in traffic. But actually, it's very weird because it gets to the point where it's completely the opposite. And it's fine if you're, you know, a grad student or whatever and you're just doing that. But if you have a family or whatever, it leads to like divorces and psychosis and, you know, bad things.

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how many Mars divorces has there been?

• 16:05Speaker 05

  I can't give you a precise number on Mars.

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How come they always couch the mission statement in ways that where they're not actually saying, "We're looking for life." "We're gonna look for water that could be life." "We're looking for minerals that could tell you if there's water." Then, "Why all the subterfuge?"

• 16:25Speaker 05

  Because we don't know how to look for life. We tried that once and we realized we didn't know what we were doing.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  What do you mean? How did we try it?

• 16:31Speaker 05

  Well, we had a mission called Viking, our first ever lander on Mars.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  1976?

• 16:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, and did all these experiments.

• 16:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's America's.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  They're all like emails and like, "Why is no one responding?"

• 16:41Speaker 05

  The experiments worked and then afterwards we said, "Well, we still don't really know if we found life because we didn't even know what questions to ask." And then we realized decades later, "Well, we gotta go back and do this a little more slowly and try to understand the history of Mars and what kind of life there might even..."

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could it be that you cannot ask what something is if you only have one example of it?

• 17:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a big problem with astrobiology.

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You cannot characterize life if, as much as biologists celebrate what they call biodiversity, at the end of the day, all life has common DNA and common origin, you are dealing with a sample of one. And when you have a sample of one, you don't really have a science, do you?

• 17:24Speaker 05

  No, you've hit on a problem.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Yeah! That's what I would've said myself, really.

• 17:31Speaker 05

  This is a major problem for astrobiology. We're studying something, we have one example, how scientific is that?

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, how you define what life is if you only have one example of it?

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Wasn't there like some silicon-based thingamajig in a pond somewhere in California or something like that?

• 17:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, I saw that episode.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  I know that what I said was vague, but, uh... Do you know what I'm talking about, where there was like one thing that was found that had like a different element in the place?

• 17:55Speaker 05

  Oh, you're talking about the arsenic-based life?

• 17:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, sorry, arsenic.

• 17:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, no, that was really...

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Arsenic-based life?

• 18:00Speaker 05

  That was really hyped and possibly interesting, probably wrong, but it wasn't another kind of life. That stuff was still carbon-based, it just maybe had a different kind of DNA. So...

• 18:10Speaker 02

  I tried.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get partial credit for...

• 18:13Speaker 02

  You can only learn so much from USA Today.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. Our next time capsule episode again comes from our live show at the Bell House in Brooklyn with planetary scientist David Grin spoon. This time, he and the comedians Eugene Mirman, Jim Gaffigan, and Sarah Silverman talk about exploring the rest of the solar system.

• 18:55Speaker 05

  We got Messenger, and what's it? Mercury, the little guy near the sun. Mercury, and so what did we find there? Well, there's ice at the poles, we think, which is really weird considering Mercury's that close to the sun. There's a much stronger magnetic field than we thought. Wait, so that would be ice, that would be ice where the sun doesn't shine? Yes. Yeah, it's got a much more complex history than we used to think. We used to think Mercury was just a sort of, what we call an end member, just a dead, cold, small world, but it's got a complex, long volcanic history. That's been a surprise. It's more interesting and much more complex than we thought. Okay, so next out, we've got Venus. Who's at Venus now? Well, there's a spacecraft called Venus Express, a little European space agency. I love that name.

• 19:39Speaker 05

  Because they had like a year to build and launch this thing. They said, "We got a spacecraft, if you can do it quickly." So they put together... Why did they have a year to do it? Because there was a spare from Mars Express, and they said, "Whoever can come up with a mission quickly can launch this thing." And so they came up with instruments and they sent it to Venus. And it was actually amazing how fast they were able to do it, and the thing has been in orbit for years and still working. So it's basically our first weather satellite at Venus, which is neat. It's also where we get those razor blades, right?

• 20:10Speaker 05

  So what do we have in the asteroid belt? Well, we actually have a spacecraft out there now called Dawn. It's been orbiting an asteroid called Vesta for a while now and getting these really amazing 3D close-up pictures. And this is really like a small planet. You know, we can get into what's a planet and what's not. We're getting there. But the largest asteroids are these round objects. You might call them dwarf planets even if you wanted to, and it's been orbiting it for a while. Sure. And what's cool about this is that this spacecraft has now left this asteroid and is on its way to another asteroid called Ceres. And it's the first spacecraft we've ever had that visited one object in space, did

• 20:52Speaker 05

  a mission there, and then took off and is heading to another object in space. So it's our first time we've actually had sort of an expedition that could explore more than one planetary object.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  There's nothing at Jupiter now, right? Well, no, but we have a spacecraft called Juno on its way. Well, it hasn't launched yet, but it's about to be launched to Jupiter. And it's a magnificent spacecraft. It's gonna basically probe the interior of Jupiter by orbiting in such a way that we can measure the gravity and learn what it's like on the inside. Sounds dirty. See, the word "probe" today, you know... Well, we haven't gotten to Uranus yet. So Jupiter's got Europa. I'd love me some Europa. Yeah, we don't have any missions on their way to Europa now, but we might. NASA's top priority for a next big, what we call flagship mission, billion-dollar-plus missions. Billion-plus would be billions and billions. Yes, thank you. I'm sure we just shut down the schools in the states that don't matter. We could easily afford to do this. Yeah, exactly.

• 21:48Speaker 05

  Europa's NASA's top priority target for a next big mission because it's one of the places where there ought to be life, if we're right about what it takes for life. There's a ocean, we think, beneath this icy crust. In fact, maybe our solar system's biggest ocean of liquid water there. So, we wanna know that for sure, and we wanna understand... Kept warm not by the sun. Yeah, kept warm by... But by the core? No, no, no, by... well, kinda, but it's Jupiter's gravity. It's the flexing of the moons in orbit around Jupiter's massive gravitational field, interacting with each other. What if, in doing this, we opened up... That warms them up and melts that water. And all the monsters came out. What? Onto Saturn! Yeah, we have a spacecraft there now called Cassini.

• 22:32Speaker 05

  That's one of these Energizer Bunny spacecraft. It got there in July 2004, and it's been making beautiful images of Saturn in the rings. But the most astounding discoveries have been about the moons. Titan is a moon of Saturn that is one of the most interesting places for astrobiology because it turns out to be a very Earth-like world in some ways. It's got rivers, it's got volcanoes, it's got clouds, it's got rainfall. But it's got coastlines, too, yeah. It's got coastlines, but it's all made out of weird stuff. The rivers are liquid methane, the rainfalls liquid methane, the dunes are organic matter blowing around... Wait, what do you mean "organic matter"? By carbon stuff, the stuff that we're made out of. Like life? Is... maybe. Rivers of flowing life? Maybe.

• 23:17Speaker 05

  That would be scary! It literally sounds like a James Taylor song.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, take me to Uranus and Neptune. But we got nothing, nothing there.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  You saying Uranus in a way that's like different from how people used to say it? You saying like Uranus or something?

• 23:30Speaker 05

  You want to hear something funny about that? One time Carl Sagan told me that-

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Name dropper.

• 23:35Speaker 05

  I know. But he told me that when he-

• 23:38Speaker 02

  But if you're gonna do it somewhere, this is a good choice.

• 23:40Speaker 05

  When he was in school, the kids got all giggly about calling it Uranus because it had the word urine in it. So you can't win. In NASA's 10-year plan, the decadal survey that they just came out with a very influential plan for the highest priority missions for the next decade. One of the top priority missions is a billion-dollar probe to Uranus.

• 24:04Speaker 06

  We need Obamacare.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, and so now we got a mission to Pluto.

• 24:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got one Pluto fan. But we're headed there, I'm glad.

• 24:16Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, it's gonna be awesome. So it's a little spacecraft called New Horizons. It launched in January 2006. I was there-

• 24:24Speaker 02

  It sounds like an airline magazine.

• 24:25Speaker 05

  It was incredible. It's the fastest object ever launched from Earth, because it's got a long way to go. And is most of the way there now. It's getting there in July 2015.

• 24:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. This Time Capsule Show features fan favorites. And for many of you, my interview with the controversial podcaster Joe Rogan was a season four highlight.

• 25:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Joe, you always talk about science. It infuses almost everything you do.

• 25:13Speaker 08

  Because all of it, the physics, biology, chemistry, engineering, there's gotta be some force operating. What is it? Um, with me? Yeah. It's just curiosity. Um, I just think we live in extraordinary times and the, the ability to access information is so unprecedented. How often is science material for you? A lot, yeah. Some of my best bits have involved science. Is there any quick one? Well, nah, that must be my- I know, I know that the mood isn't there or whatever. No, no, it's not even that. It's just my style of stand-up is more like these long chunks. Had you heard the one about that, right? Yeah, it's not like a one-liner, you know, like, one of them is the anti-evolution of man, which explains like pyramids and the idea is that we are the bastard children

• 25:57Speaker 08

  of the idiot stoneworkers of Egypt and what happened was the dumb people just out-fucked the smart people and it just got to a point where there was no smart people left. And the bit was about like how many of us really truly understand how this world operates. And I would like tap on a microphone and go, "Why is that loud?" I'm a stand-up comedian. My whole life, it depends upon this, but I have no idea how this works. I just get up here and I do my job. And I'm like, "How many of us understand how the power is on?" And if the power went off, what would you do? One day, we're gonna out-fuck all the smart people and there's gonna be no smart people left. Cause women, they wanna have sex with rappers and baseball players. I mean, maybe you, you're like a celebrity scientist. I'm sure you get a lot of hot college chicks

• 26:39Speaker 08

  that are knocking it your way, but like for the average dude involved in science, there's very few opportunities to breed. For sure, the podcast represents me in a better way than anything I've ever done before. It's easy to have a perception of someone, but how well do you really get to know someone unless you hear them talk for hours and hours and hours and end? And I think that anything else I've done, whether it's hosting the Ultimate Fighting Championship or Fear Factor or what, even stand-up comedy, it's gonna give you like a sort of a limited view into how a person functions. It's sort of like you're, you're operating in a very specific bandwidth or very specific frequency, rather. Whereas with the podcast- Frequency. We, we talk about everything.

• 27:22Speaker 08

  Frequency bandwidth, I like the words. Keep the vocabulary coming. Do physics vocabulary, upgrade it at the end. See how you did on all your vocabulary. I'll be happy with a C. Um, but with the podcast, it's really anything that I find curious and that has resonated with a lot of folks that I think felt like they were unrepresented before.

• 27:43Speaker 08

  The idea of needing attention is a trip. And the idea essentially comes from, in the ancient days of human beings, the person who got the most respect was the one who was the most successful in the hunt, the most successful in battle, the one who was the most successful in breeding. That lead was to be followed, because there was benefit in being the leader. There was benefit socially, there was benefit sexually. And they had more offspring as well, right? And as I said, we were talking about before about reward systems built into our genetics. Well, these reward systems are now hijacked in this weird way, where you can kind of circumvent all regular reality, like all hierarchies.

• 28:26Speaker 08

  And all you have to do is get a camera on you, where other people see that, and you get some benefit. And it's really, really strange. It's a strange aberration, a strange sort of a blip in the matrix, where you get like this Kim Kardashian-type human. Where you just get someone who's famous for having a lens put on them. And that is essentially it. There's not that much interesting going on. You know, there's prettier girls, there's certainly smarter girls. But because this lens is on, there's a great amount of power and energy, focused in this one really mundane spot. So it's a perversion of evolutionary features that exist within us? Yeah, I think so.

• 29:10Speaker 08

  Do you think science literacy, if every fighter had it, would improve their fighting? Yes, unquestionably. Because a lot of fighting is hindered by emotions. And I think science literacy would benefit fighters extremely. I think that, as I said before, technique is the most important aspect of martial arts. And technique, up to a point, allows you to overcome physical advantages. And that's very scientific. And I think that the ability to use leverage, and the ability to understand force and mass, all of that applied with the understanding of the cardiovascular system, the understanding of the scientific principles.

• 29:53Speaker 09

  of nutrition and rest and recuperation. All of that would unquestionably benefit not just fighters, but any athlete, anyone involved in doing anything that's difficult where you're competing against other people that are also trying to do their best. Science really changes the entire game.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. We're wrapping up our season four time capsule with our episode on asteroid mining. The show featured my interview with Peter Diamandis, who not only created the X Prize, but also co-founded the asteroid mining company Planetary Resources.

• 30:47Speaker 09

  We now have the ability privately to go out and begin to extract resources from asteroids. You know, much of humanity's exploration, much of humanity's growth has been a function of gaining access to resources. Whether it's the Silk Trail from Asia, whether it's Europeans looking to the New World for gold and spices, or American settlers looking to the West Coast for timber, land, gold, oil, that's what's driven us. It's driven us consistently. And so as I-

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, think about it. Why are the 49ers called the 49ers? Because in 1849, there was the gold rush in San Francisco. There's people moving body and soul.

• 31:27Speaker 09

  And that drove the creation of the railroads. It drove different parts of the United States to be literally settled, Homestead Act and so forth. So people were looking for resources that would create value and uplift humanity in that regard. How do we connect opening the space frontier to what I call an exothermic economic reaction? Meaning, how do we connect it to something that makes a profit that consistently drives us?

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exothermic, that is the release of energy-

• 31:55Speaker 09

  Yes.

• 31:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -more than what you put in.

• 31:57Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 31:59Speaker 09

  And as I think about this, space has tremendous value. Everything we fight wars over on Earth, metals, minerals, energy, real estate, those things are in near infinite quantities in space. People look at the Earth as a very closed system, but the Earth is a crumb in a supermarket filled with resources. And if we can gain access to those resources, it uplifts everybody. We are building the very super-low-cost, deep-space satellites. Satellites that can go beyond low Earth orbit, millions of miles, and consistently, accurately operate out there, communicate back by laser, have super-high-precision pointing, have

• 32:39Speaker 09

  big optics to look for asteroids, and ultimately go out to them, prospect them, understand what they're made of, put a beacon on them as the first step, and then be able to extract valuable resources. Okay, so there's a whole prospecting phase. There's a prospecting. How long is that? We're gonna be prospecting for decades, I'm sure, but we're launching our first of what we call the ARKID series of spacecraft within 18 to 24 months. And these ARKID spacecraft are space telescopes. They're telescopes that, in low Earth orbit, are able to see asteroids coming whizzing by the Earth. The second iteration of the ARKID spacecraft are gonna have propulsion that you see it coming by, ignite the engines, and go on an intercept course.

• 33:23Speaker 09

  Okay, so first you see that they're out there, now you chase 'em down. Chase 'em down. Bag 'em and tag 'em. I think we're gonna call officially the Bag It and Tag It mission. I mean, we look at three phases. Phase 1, ARKID 100, are spacecraft in orbit of the Earth, trying to characterize and find these Earth-approaching asteroids. That's the prospecting. Next? Next is, we go out. Phase 2, the ARKID 200 spacecraft, have propulsion on them, they're going out to actually tap these spacecraft, put a beacon on them, dock with them, and be able to actually characterize them, what are they made of, how big are they? So one is telescopically, the next one is... The next one actually has the same telescope onboard, because they're gonna be using

• 34:08Speaker 09

  these telescopes to actually look at them and point at them as you're going close, because these things are moving at tens of thousands of miles per hour, and you need to be able to accurately track them down and go and dock with them. But once you dock with them, now you're there. Now we're putting a beacon on them. Then the third phase ultimately is going to be, as you said, bag them and extract the resources.

• 34:32Speaker 09

  So the question is, can a private company own it? And ultimately, what is a celestial object? You know, not owning the moon, I can buy. Don't say "I can buy." Use a different phrase. Not only moon you can agree with. Yeah, owning the moon I can agree with, but owning a 10-meter rock in space? I mean, where do you draw the line? And if you can't own the asteroid, can you own the materials you extract from the asteroid? Just like, you know, you don't own the ocean, but when you pull the fish out of it, you own the fish. So somewhere in there is a structure that will be defined over this next decade, because we're going to drive it to be defined in a way that ultimately allows for business to exist. Because if you can't have ownership, no one's going to go out there and extract materials.

• 35:16Speaker 09

  And the loser is humanity. Because the fact of the matter is, once you can extract these resources, everybody wins. Because it becomes cheaper. That drives new battery technology, medical technology, electronic technology that we all benefit from. It sounds like that's the frontier of the new trillionaires. I think it is. I think that the first trillionaires will be made in space. But as a result, it's upping the economic growth of humanity, not just any one individual. In summary, it will have an effect on the free-market trade, but it's not a bad thing. No, it's a great thing. In fact, that's the way science works. You know, genome sequencing used to cost a billion dollars. Today, it's $1,000 and dropping.

• 36:01Speaker 09

  Energy, over the last 100 years, the cost of food has decreased 13-fold. The cost of energy has decreased 20-fold. The cost of transportation... So we're spending a smaller fraction of our paycheck on food than ever before. Ever before. And, you know, the cost of transportation... And it's not hurting our calorie input either, apparently. But, you know, think about it. The cost of communications has dropped 1,000-fold. So that's what technology does. And hopefully, if we do our job right, these metals that are valuable for society will get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper.