Social Media in Space with Chris Hadfield

Find out what it’s like to be an astronaut in the age of social media when Neil deGrasse Tyson interviews Chris Hadfield. Eugene Mirman co-hosts, Astro Mike Massimino is back, and Bill Nye extols the human exploration of space.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I also serve as director of the Hayden Planetarium, right here. And I've got with me, as my intrepid co-host, Eugene Mirman. Eugene?

• 0:29Eugene Mirman?

  Hi.

• 0:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Comedian, how you doing, man?

• 0:31Eugene Mirman?

  Good, good to be here.

• 0:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how's things? You're like a regular in Bob's Burgers.

• 0:35Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're like the kid, right?

• 0:37Eugene Mirman?

  Yep, I'm the little boy. We're recording the sixth season now.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, no, that's cool.

• 0:42Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If the StarTalk thing doesn't work out for you, you got another job.

• 0:45Eugene Mirman?

  Yes. I have a backup plan of being on another television show.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, today we're featuring my interview with Chris Hadfield.

• 0:53Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chris Hadfield's like, number-one Canadian astronaut ever. Ever. And...

• 0:59Eugene Mirman?

  Is there a second Canadian astronaut?

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, you know, I know some, a thing or two about space, but I've never been in space.

• 1:06Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I'm not...

• 1:07Eugene Mirman?

  Same thing with me.

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The same thing with you. So, uh, so I didn't want to tackle this alone.

• 1:11Eugene Mirman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I reached out to our portfolio of friends of StarTalk, and guess who I found? Mike Massimino. Mike, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:19Mike Massimino?

  Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

• 1:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mike, two-time Shuttle astronaut?

• 1:24Mike Massimino?

  Yes.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Each of those times you take care of my telescope?

• 1:27Mike Massimino?

  That's right. The world's telescope, the Hubble telescope.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My, I mean, the astrophysics community.

• 1:33Mike Massimino?

  Yes, yes, yours.

• 1:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Telescope.

• 1:34Mike Massimino?

  Everybody's, yes.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for doing that?

• 1:36Mike Massimino?

  It was a privilege, a pleasure.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's cool. So, are you retired now from NASA?

• 1:40Mike Massimino?

  Well, I'm too young to retire. Can you imagine that? They told me I was too young, but I left NASA.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You left NASA?

• 1:45Mike Massimino?

  Yes, I resigned.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now you're on the faculty at Columbia?

• 1:47Mike Massimino?

  I am.

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the Department of Mechanical Engineering?

• 1:49Mike Massimino?

  That's right.

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're an engineer dude from way back?

• 1:51Mike Massimino?

  That's right, yeah. That's what, that's what I was trained as, and I got to do a lot of hands-on engineering.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're an engineer that became an astronaut?

• 1:58Mike Massimino?

  That's right.

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not someone who was an astronaut out of the box?

• 1:59Mike Massimino?

  Right, right. I came in the, I would say, the academic route.

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 2:03Mike Massimino?

  You know, I got my PhD and did some research.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In engineering?

• 2:06Mike Massimino?

  As an engineer.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, cool, cool. And also, we have another... Another great museum here in New York, the Intrepid Air and Sea, Air and Space Museum.

• 2:14Mike Massimino?

  That's right.

• 2:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're an advisor to them in all things space.

• 2:17Mike Massimino?

  On their space stuff.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good space stuff.

• 2:19Mike Massimino?

  They have a Hubble exhibit there and I really enjoy, again, a chance to go there.

• 2:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool, I gotta come check it out.

• 2:24Mike Massimino?

  You should, yeah. I'll give you a private tour.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, nice.

• 2:26Mike Massimino?

  I'll show you my tools. They've got, they've got Hubble tools and stuff.

• 2:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Watch, watch your language here.

• 2:29Mike Massimino?

  Wrapping up your flirt.

• 2:32Mike Massimino?

  No, the tools are part of the tour.

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The tools, the tools that you use to fix the Hubble.

• 2:37Mike Massimino?

  Real space tools. The actual space tools? The actual space tools. Is it like a space wrench? Yes, and a, and a power tool and, yeah, it's, and you can... A space drill? We call it a power tool. Drill, you know, you can get, you might make holes that you don't want to with that one. We call it a power tool. And what does it do? It mainly, it mainly unscrews things. We don't do too much drilling. Right, you don't make a ton of holes in the Hubble? No, you don't make a lot of holes. This is not a good idea. But, but what we do is you, you use it to, to fasten things, to unscrew things, to move things around. That's what the power tool, it, it serviced the Hubble and also built the International Space Station. So you can see stuff like that.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you friends with Chris, Chris Hadfield?

• 3:15Mike Massimino?

  Oh, yeah, he's a great guy. We're very good friends.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chris was, uh, he was on the space station for five months. Is that a long time, a short time?

• 3:21Mike Massimino?

  That's about, right about, yeah, five, six months, uh, six month tours. Uh, Scott Kelly's gonna go up for a year. That's a bit unusual.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Since you went to the Hubble, it means you've never been to the space station.

• 3:29Mike Massimino?

  No, I have not. Can you jump from one to the other? Completely different orbit. I know, you can't. You can't do the George Clooney thing, zipping around on a backpack or using a fire.

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've gotten started. You have to get him started here.

• 3:40Mike Massimino?

  Oh, that's his thing. He's with the tweets with all of that stuff. Don't get him started in that.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to get him started.

• 3:44Mike Massimino?

  Forget I mentioned that.

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll come back to that.

• 3:46Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, no, you cannot jump from one to the other.

• 3:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll come back to that. So, so, uh, uh, one of the things that distinguished Chris Hadfield compared with the other ton of Canadian astronauts is that he was very social media savvy.

• 3:58Mike Massimino?

  He was.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you got that first. You...

• 4:00Mike Massimino?

  I was the first guy to tweet.

• 4:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  First person in space to tweet from space.

• 4:04Mike Massimino?

  Correct. Yes, that was my, that was my, uh, my, my contribution to social media. Thank you.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The first person to walk on the moon said, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

• 4:14Mike Massimino?

  Right, okay.

• 4:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So your first tweet said what?

• 4:16Mike Massimino?

  Was a lot, lot less poetic than that. They made fun of what I tweeted on Saturday Night Live. They said, the first guy to tweet from space and it was... Launch was awesome. And I added something to it. Launch was awesome, I'm feeling great, eventual lifetime has begun. But they just said, "Launch was awesome." In forty years, we've gone from what Neil Armstrong said to launch was awesome. If this guy ever meets Intelligent Life, it's gonna be, "Jeez dudes, look, aliens." So I got made fun of on Saturday Night Live email from my kid.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You deserved it. We'll give you some poetry lessons. So, what my records show is that 541 people have been into space. This is a pretty exclusive club.

• 4:53Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're, so you're...

• 4:55Mike Massimino?

  I'm one of them.

• 4:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're one of them, yeah. Okay, 541.

• 4:58Mike Massimino?

  Right.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And aren't many lists anybody's on where there's only 541 of them? Just, right?

• 5:03Mike Massimino?

  I get it. Sure.

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying. 538 people went to only to Earth orbit, 24 traveled beyond low Earth orbit, and 12 walked on the moon. So that's the... So, my lament is that of the 541 people, only 12 stepped on something other than Earth.

• 5:21Mike Massimino?

  Only 12, right.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 5:23Mike Massimino?

  Only 12 of those dudes. And we're starting to lose them. They're getting older. We don't have as many of them around. Send them back?

• 5:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chris Hadfield...

• 5:31Mike Massimino?

  They'll live forever on the moon, no?

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. That's a different movie. That was a... So, Chris is, he's Canadian, we established. And it is rumored that when Canada changed their $5 bill

• 5:44Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  from initially having hockey players on the back, and I'm quick to note that Canada really did not need to be reminded that they like hockey, right? So that was prime, prime real estate to swap out. And they put the Canada arm on the back of the $5 bill. And there's a spacewalking astronaut there that he said is him.

• 6:04Mike Massimino?

  That's him, yeah.

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, let's check, wait, excuse me.

• 6:07Mike Massimino?

  No, it hasn't happened. There's other Canadians that are spacewalk, but I'm pretty sure that would be him. Why, is he have a mustache?

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take a look.

• 6:12Mike Massimino?

  We can say, he's got a really cool mustache.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hold on, let's take a look.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who is gonna say that that's Chris Hadfield?

• 6:19Mike Massimino?

  You can tell, look.

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you can't tell!

• 6:20Mike Massimino?

  If you can, can you zoom that in? It's him, it's him, I'm sure it's him.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. You know what's a little spooky to me about that picture? Is this menacing, out-of-focus maple leaf coming from space.

• 6:30Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, what the heck is that?

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he's trying to escape Houston! So Chris grew up on a farm, farm boy. And, uh...

• 6:38Eugene Mirman?

  He's just like Captain Kirk.

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, uh, he's from Iowa, yeah. Captain Kirk is like... Why do you know that?

• 6:44Eugene Mirman?

  What do you mean?

• 6:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, excuse me. I didn't know it was a stupid question.

• 6:47Eugene Mirman?

  Oh, sorry.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Captain Kirk isn't a real guy. Captain Kirk is a ma... Chris Hadfield's the real dude.

• 6:53Eugene Mirman?

  Sorry, I watch science fiction, so I know the stuff inside it.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so let's find out. I mean, not many people have walked in space, and he's been in space and the like. So, I had to ask, he came through town, and I nabbed him, stuck him in my office, and I had to ask him questions about what made him become an astronaut. Growing up in Canada, on a farm, let's find out.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  I decided to be an astronaut when I was a kid. And I'm a Canadian, and there was no, uh, no role model. You know, there was no Canadian astronaut, no Canadian astronaut program, you know? And I just thought, well, what...

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's kinda hard!

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Yes, I was thinking, well, what, you know, what do you do? How do you do this? Um, and I, just so I looked to the, uh, the American program. I looked at my heroes of Neil and Buzz and Mike Collins, and they were engineer, fighter pilot, test pilots. And I grew up on a farm, uh, you know, tractors and machinery, and so I thought engineering sounds...

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You relaxed the definition of what a role model was, to not have to constrain it to Canada.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  I, I expanded role model.

• 7:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Expanded the definition.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  But to me, it sounded interesting anyway. You know, I knew that they're geologist astronaut with Harrison Schmidt on the moon, and there were doctors and things, but, uh...

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't it sad that you, that that was all in singular? The geologist astronaut. We went to the frigging moon, and we count one geologist among them.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  I was nine at the time, though, so the numbers were really small, of course. And, uh, and so, you know, and astronauts fly, so I learned to fly, and it all sounded interesting anyway. And of course, the odds of being an astronaut are so tiny that I wanted to do something that would lead to other things that sounded interesting to me anyway. So, so yeah, test pilot was always the intent, and then see what happens.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Mike, how'd you become an astronaut?

• 8:38Mike Massimino?

  Uh, I, uh, I dreamt about being an astronaut as a little boy and watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz walk on the moon when I was six. Uh, but, uh, unlike Chris, I kind of forgot about that dream until I got older. And once I got out of college, uh, I, uh, I decided that's what I wanted to try to do. Went to graduate school, got my PhD and started applying while I was in grad.

• 8:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you'd be as a mission specialist, which is what they call the academic.

• 9:02Mike Massimino?

  Right, so Chris, Chris went the pilot route.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's the right stuff.

• 9:06Mike Massimino?

  He's like Hal Jordan.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then what are you?

• 9:08Mike Massimino?

  The wrong stuff, apparently. You're setting me up. What else would I say?

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's fighter pilot.

• 9:14Mike Massimino?

  He is.

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We learn about the fighter pilot.

• 9:16Mike Massimino?

  He's got a really cool mustache, too.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's, yeah.

• 9:18Mike Massimino?

  That mustache is clearly a disguise. It is a really cool, no, it's real. I've tugged on it. It's, no, it's a real mustache. He's Canadian.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find a little bit more about Chris's background.

• 9:27Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause he's into seriously dangerous stuff.

• 9:30Mike Massimino?

  Correct, he was a test pilot, yep.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  As a test pilot, I had, we had one friend die a year for like 10 years. Qualified people because that was a dangerous profession and we did it every day. Fly in space once every six or seven years, so at least the frequency of risk is lower. But when we look back now to what the risk was on my first shuttle launch, the risk of death during ascent was about one in 38. We thought it was a lot better than that, but now learning everything we knew, it was extremely risky thing to do. But you just, you go, okay, this is gonna be risky, but it's worth it. Now my job is to not die doing this. How could we spend the next three years learning so much about this? That no matter what happens, we have a plan and we're gonna react so that we improve our odds of surviving.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I take it that since you are here with me now, you didn't die in any.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  No, I came close a couple of times, um, but.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You had to parachute a few times?

• 10:21Speaker 03

  I've never had to jump out. Um, I've come close. I, I hit a, I was doing a test at Patuxent River, Maryland, just, uh, over the Chesapeake and we were calibrating this version on F-18, 50 feet above the water going 550 knots and hit a seagull. Um, and if, if he'd been an inch or two over, he would've come through the windscreen and killed us both. But he just went down the left side, did a bunch of damage to the airplane, but, you know, a couple of close calls like that, so I've been both.

• 10:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A seagull at 550 miles an hour.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a cannonball at that point.

• 10:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  It didn't do the seagull any good, but, uh, in the airplane and I survived.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why? So that's not even a fault of the airplane? I mean, when I think of the risk that fighter pilots take, I'm not thinking they might fly into a seagull.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  But it's a real risk. And you know, some of the riskiest things I did in spaceships are the random ones also. You know, the peppering of debris from natural and man-made from space. That's something you just can't do anything about, but it's a definite measurable perceptible risk.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Mike, what's the most dangerous thing you encountered?

• 11:28Mike Massimino?

  Um, launching into space was pretty scary. Would debris fly past you or hit you? Uh, I never saw any debris come at us, but there was evidence of it. Like, for example, on the Hubble, you can see this down at the Air and Space Museum, we pulled out the wide-field camera, and the wide-field camera has an exposed radiator on it. And when I first saw it, and when it, back on Earth, was at JPL, Jet Propulsion Lab, and it was peppered with little holes.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are micrometeorites?

• 11:55Mike Massimino?

  Micrometeorites, yeah. They cratered it.

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So while you're spacewalking, you could get hit by something.

• 12:00Mike Massimino?

  Why wouldn't you always be hit by something? Uh, because it doesn't, it's not constantly coming at the same place. It's not like a rainstorm constantly. But every once in a while, something will come.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did this scare you?

• 12:13Mike Massimino?

  Uh, no. Yes! What do you mean no? I mean, we, you worry, the thing is... Invisible bullets in space? Not at the time. So we talked about it a lot, about what might happen. We took, you take precautions, you practice rescuing each other. Uh, you go through your training and understand what that risk is. But when you're out there, you don't want to be worried about getting hit by a rock. You worry about doing your job, and then if something happens, you react to it.

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You knew it intellectually, but you didn't feel it emotionally?

• 12:38Mike Massimino?

  No.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you had to get the job done.

• 12:40Mike Massimino?

  No, right.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chris Hadfield was in the space station for five months, and during that time, he became hugely popular for sharing his experiences via social media. More on that when StarTalk returns.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. I'm here with Mike Massimino, shuttle astronaut extraordinaire. You like that?

• 13:09Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, that sounds good. I wasn't gonna say anything. Keep going. That was really good.

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I liked it. And Eugene Mirman, my co-host, comedian co-host, thanks for always being here. So, one of the things that distinguished you, as well as Chris Hadfield, in this episode we're featuring my interview with him, is that you are both social media savvy.

• 13:25Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He, perhaps, a little more than you.

• 13:28Mike Massimino?

  Way more than I was, yeah. I was the first to tweet and did some Twitter messages, but Chris took it to a whole nother level.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A whole nother level. So, I checked the, what the, your Twitter numbers, just before we began.

• 13:41Mike Massimino?

  Uh-huh.

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just, now, we agreed, he's the right stuff, because he was the fighter pilot.

• 13:45Mike Massimino?

  Cool guy, and he's got the mustache.

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got the stash.

• 13:48Mike Massimino?

  As you do as well.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got the stash. I got a stash. This is, people said this is like a 1970's porn stash, you know? That's what they all had back then.

• 13:55Mike Massimino?

  I don't know who's telling you that. I wouldn't know. Like, Hatfield has a cool one.

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got, so mine's not cool?

• 14:01Mike Massimino?

  I know yours is cool as well.

• 14:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fine. I used to have these big mutton chops. They were totally in style in the day, like, for a few years, but I had to say, I took them out for Star Trek pointies. But with, with the social media, he ended up accruing 1.26 million Twitter followers. So, I asked Chris, what's it like to have flown before social media and then fly in the era of social media? Times are different. So, I just asked Chris to reflect on the difference between then and now.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  When you're asked to do something on behalf of a lot of people, how do you share the experience? What's the right way? On my first flight, I would grab a camera, this is in 1995, a Hasselblad with 70mm film in it, right? Take a picture of someplace, and first thing is, well, was that a good picture or not? Did I get the F-stop? Did I get everything just right? I don't know. So, you bracket it, you hope, and then you get home, and a few weeks later, they have this big roll of film, and you look and go, what the heck is that? And you go, I think that picture's okay. And then they make you a print of it, and you go, yeah, that's a nice picture, I'd like a slide, please. And then they make you a slide, and now you have this little tiny slide of someplace on Earth. And now, how do you, how do you show that to the person that it's interesting to? Now, on the station, just with

• 15:13Mike Massimino?

  That's the old days.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  With social media, you can grab one of the cameras onboard, take a picture of someplace, go click, pull the chip out, stick it in the computer, and on Twitter, immediately say, not just to people from that place, but around the whole world, say, "Look at this. Look at this place." And the power of that was amazing to watch. Stuff happens so fast on a space station. You're going so quick around the world, there's on space flights, and often, you kind of go, "That was amazing, but I don't have time to think about it right now. I'm gonna, I just have to shelve my reaction to that thing. I'm gonna maybe take pictures of it or something, and later on, I'm gonna think about it." And I still

• 15:50Mike Massimino?

  So it's delayed emotional investment?

• 15:52Speaker 03

  You have to. You have to. You can't keep up. It would just overwhelm you if you tried to keep up emotionally with what's happening, especially during a shuttle flight. But even on a space station flight, if, if, if you and I were by the big window of the space station, and I, and we went around the world once together, what would I show you? What, what would, hey, you know, "Look at this. Look what's coming. Look up ahead at Mount Tanaka. Look, wait till we get to Tokyo. Or, "Look what we're gonna see of London and then France 15 seconds later."

• 16:17Mike Massimino?

  Cool. Would you say that social media has boosted public interest in space?

• 16:21Speaker 03

  I think, I think so, yeah.

• 16:22Mike Massimino?

  I look at these Twitter numbers, uh, most astronauts have a Twitter handle, right?

• 16:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, just about every one now, yeah.

• 16:27Mike Massimino?

  Just about every one. NASA, @NASA has 8.7 million followers.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:32Mike Massimino?

  Uh, the Mars Curiosity Rover, the rover has 1.8 million followers.

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More than Hatfield, or, I mean, not as many as you, I would think.

• 16:41Eugene Mirman?

  Most of them are bots.

• 16:44Mike Massimino?

  But it's, but the great thing about this media, as, as Chris said, is that, one of the frustrating things, uh, is, as an astronaut, there's not very many, but one is that you, it's, how do you share this experience?

• 16:56Eugene Mirman?

  Buzz Aldrin had to write a letter, give it to a horse, the horse had to run it back to Earth.

• 17:01Mike Massimino?

  It didn't work so well. Now, we can do it a lot quicker, and, and it's easier, and it's streamlined, because, uh... Photography, uh, cameras have gotten so great.

• 17:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Portable.

• 17:15Mike Massimino?

  Portable. He described when he first took those images with a Hasselblad.

• 17:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 17:18Mike Massimino?

  My first man. And you're trying, it's manual focus and we would goon up tho- goon is a national term. We would, we would mess up those pictures like, "Oh, man, that picture didn't come out."

• 17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We could have figured out what goon meant in context for that sentence.

• 17:30Mike Massimino?

  We gooned up a lot of photos with that.

• 17:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's terrible.

• 17:33Mike Massimino?

  Now we have these great, now we have these great digital cameras with a lot of pixels in them and you can take this amazing imagery for enjoyment, but also for science.

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not even an astronaut can mess up the photo.

• 17:42Mike Massimino?

  Not even an astronaut can mess it up. And a lot of the, a lot of the pictures you see of the, I think almost all of them now are coming from the space station. So many photographic objectives are hit by the space station astronauts.

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's interesting is not all the great fun imagery are pictures outside the space station. Some actually took place inside the space station.

• 18:01Mike Massimino?

  Yes.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, Chris Hadfield made a video on the space station that became a viral sensation on YouTube. More on that. When we come back to StarTalk.

• 18:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. Of, of course, I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Eugene Mirman, my comedic co-host, Mike Massimino in the StarTalk family, my favorite astronaut. I'm pretty sure of that. I should double check, but I'm pretty sure that's true.

• 18:31Mike Massimino?

  I'm the only one in the house right now, so it's okay.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's okay.

• 18:34Mike Massimino?

  You don't have to tell anyone else that.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A two-time shuttle astronaut. Uh, never been to the space station, though.

• 18:38Mike Massimino?

  No.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So, uh, the, the shuttle is not as large as the space station.

• 18:43Mike Massimino?

  No, not even close.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even if you wanted to do fun things, you're limited to just sort of the seated area.

• 18:49Mike Massimino?

  This is true.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, but Chris was on the space station.

• 18:53Mike Massimino?

  He was. He could fly.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we, we've already established that he was pretty good with social media.

• 18:58Mike Massimino?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he recorded a video.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That went viral. And it's the first music video from space. Let's check it out.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  This is Ground Control to Major Tom. You've really made the grade. And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear. But it's time to guide the capsule if you dare.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was a sample from his whole video.

• 19:46Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where it's, it's "Space Oddity."

• 19:49Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By David Bowie.

• 19:51Eugene Mirman?

  Right.

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you listen to the words of that, I mean, it's quite compelling and it's, and I remembered hearing that and I said, "This is an artist singing about a future we don't have yet." Right? And I, that was sort of a force operating on culture that I hoped would have continued and that we'd all be on Mars today.

• 20:08Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. Ziggy Stardust is the reason we would like to go.

• 20:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so here's the data. So it's obviously "Space Oddity" by David Bowie, first music video ever, filmed in space. Uh, 24 million hits on YouTube.

• 20:20Eugene Mirman?

  Wow.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  24 mil- not quite as high as Gangnam Style, but that's up to 2 billion, but it's a while before we get there.

• 20:28Eugene Mirman?

  Maybe if he'd only danced like a horse. We would have more science funding.

• 20:36Mike Massimino?

  That's a deep ref item for NASA.

• 20:37Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Mike Massimino?

  We need more of that.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do you think people, why, why do you think people resonated so much?

• 20:43Eugene Mirman?

  Because he shot a music video in outer space.

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what I wanted to know from him is, how the hell did he get a frickin' guitar in space?

• 20:53Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, did that cost like 8 million dollars?

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out. It's a really good guitar, though. Let's find out. How did this man get this guitar in space?

• 21:03Speaker 03

  The NASA psychiatrist and psychologist put the guitar on board, because uh, there's always been guitars on space stations. The Russians had one on Salut, and then they had it on Mir. I brought a guitar to Mir in 1995.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you've been guitarin' in space for decades.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  Well, I've been a musician my whole life, but when I got to the International Space Station, they had already put a guitar up there. They brought it up on the shuttle in the summer of oh one. And so it's been up there for thirteen or fourteen years. And um it's it's just a little guitar. I had to fit, you know, it's a parlor-sized guitar, but it's a good one. And it gets played pretty much every night.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 21:35Speaker 03

  There's lots of astronauts here and musicians.

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 21:37Speaker 03

  And it's really nice to help.

• 21:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But not all of them had a twenty-two-million-hit video.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  No. That was just bizarre.

• 21:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta hand it to you, that's, you know, you picked the right song for that.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  As soon as people heard there was a musician in the space station, there was this social media clamoring for, well, you gotta cover Space Oddity. And I was thinking, who covers Bowie? Why would I ever do that? Besides, the astronaut dies at the end of the song. It's not a good song to play. But my son said, you've got to. Everyone really, you know, do it for everybody else, not for you. And I got him to rewrite the words so that the astronaut lived at the end. And then I made an audio of it and then got friends to put the instrument underneath. And then Evan weighed back in and said, it's gotta be video. You're on a space station. It's gotta be video. So one Saturday, I went around and made the video of it. And then he edited with a friend back on Earth, and as you say, it had a huge response.

• 22:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's beautifully edited and it's great.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, a huge response.

• 22:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's exactly what people wanted, what I think people needed. I think we grew up in an era where the astronauts were not that.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  But I think it's also an interesting crossover, you know, between fantasy and and sort of fanciful visualization and fiction with reality. And for the first time, they completely cross over onboard a spaceship. And seeing culture that way, it's not just robots doing experiments someplace weird. This is us in a new environment, looking at our own culture.

• 23:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Poetry, song, storytelling, science fiction.

• 23:03Speaker 03

  I think that's why so many people found it a little bit fascinating to see.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little bit fascinating?

• 23:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's crazy to see the result.

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not the first time music is been played in space.

• 23:14Eugene Mirman?

  No.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The golden record on Voyager has music on it. And so that's intended for aliens to go upon retrieving the spacecraft. In fact, it's one of these I wore my.

• 23:25Eugene Mirman?

  What do you got there?

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got everything. Every square is a different sort of space probe.

• 23:30Mike Massimino?

  You have a Hubble on that one? You must have Hubble on there.

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no, this is pre-Hubble. My ties go way back, but I have Voyager here clearly. It's this one, it's obviously that's Voyager.

• 23:40Eugene Mirman?

  Got it. Yeah.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Obviously Voyager. So it's it's got a record with sounds, music that from all around the world, eastern and western music and things like heartbeats and sounds of of life.

• 23:53Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, they're gonna be aliens when they come here, they'll be blown away by Radiohead and how far we've come with our music.

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so, so he plays music in his spare time. What do you do in your spare time?

• 24:05Mike Massimino?

  Uh, when I'm in space, uh, well, John Grunsfeld, you know, a good, a good friend of ours. As an astronomer.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Astronomer.

• 24:12Mike Massimino?

  An astronomer. John and I were more or less glued to the windows. The other guys were, I don't know what they were, they were like watching movies. Remember, they were like, listen, I'm up there looking out the window with Grunsfeld and my friend Drew Fossil yells up, hey, Matt, come on down, we're about to watch Nacho Libre.

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I would not believe that. You were watching Earth go by at 18,000 miles an hour. So these are badass other astronauts that don't have to look at Earth.

• 24:36Mike Massimino?

  Right, they're like, they're gonna watch Nacho Libre. Great movie, but not when I was gonna do it when I was in space.

• 24:41Eugene Mirman?

  Fine, great.

• 24:42Mike Massimino?

  But the thing I was gonna say, Neil.

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, great, no, no, yeah. I saw the movie, it was okay. Yeah, yeah.

• 24:48Mike Massimino?

  Not compared to what we were looking at, but what I was gonna say. Looking out the window with with Grunsfeld, it is the real stuff that you're looking at. There the the stars don't twinkle, they're perfect points of light.

• 24:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Atmosphere distorts the image.

• 25:00Mike Massimino?

  Right, you can see, you can see the magellanic clouds, you can see all the constellations. And I had John there, an astronomer, he and I just.

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, he can point stuff out to you.

• 25:08Mike Massimino?

  He was, I don't know if he was making it up, Neil.

• 25:09Eugene Mirman?

  And then you could.

• 25:10Mike Massimino?

  But he was saying, look, there's this and that, I'm like, that's great. It was just.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a legit astronomer.

• 25:15Mike Massimino?

  Right, so being up there with and being up there with your friends and doing stuff like that.

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 25:19Mike Massimino?

  Did not want to, did not. I don't want to move from that window.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Magellanic Clouds are the two nearest galaxies to the Milky Way, visible primarily from the southern hemisphere, not close enough to distinguish stars within them.

• 25:30Mike Massimino?

  Right.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just far enough so that all the stars make one puddle of light.

• 25:33Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To Magellan, who first recorded them, they look like clouds.

• 25:36Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I said, I see clouds in the sky.

• 25:38Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're still there, and then they're still there, and they're still there.

• 25:41Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 25:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so they came to be known as the Magellanic Clouds.

• 25:43Mike Massimino?

  I want to go to space with you.

• 25:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so next, we'll hear about something few of us ever get to experience. And that's living in zero G when we come back to StarTalk.

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're watching StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I got Mike Massimino, my favorite astronaut, and Eugene Mirman. Good, always good to have you here. Listen, uh, tell me about zero G. And why do, why do some people call it micro G? Because every calculation I've ever done in physics tells me if you're in orbit, you are in identically zero G. So what's this micro G stuff that everybody's talking about? I don't buy that.

• 26:32Mike Massimino?

  Well, there still is a little bit of...

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you're in orbit. You're in orbit. You're in orbit.

• 26:39Mike Massimino?

  But there's still a little...

• 26:43Mike Massimino?

  There's still, well, there's actually, you know, there's a lot of gravity still pulling on you.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, of course.

• 26:47Mike Massimino?

  You're going so fast.

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gravity continues out too.

• 26:49Mike Massimino?

  Right.

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in, in free fall, there's no net force of gravity on you, and you're, you're in free fall. That's what orbit means. That's what Isaac Newton determined in Principia, 1587.

• 27:00Mike Massimino?

  So you're telling me it's actually zero G?

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm telling, now, I, I've yet to have someone convince me that there's some...

• 27:06Mike Massimino?

  They're trying to cover their ass. You know what I mean? Maybe a little bit.

• 27:08Eugene Mirman?

  What's the difference between zero and micro? I mean, I get it vaguely.

• 27:12Mike Massimino?

  Micro means there's just a little, little trace of gravity on you.

• 27:14Eugene Mirman?

  What's the debate? Why do you think one and you think...

• 27:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NASA calls it micro gravity.

• 27:18Mike Massimino?

  Right, exactly.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as a physicist, I call it zero G because that's what orbit means. I'll tell you what it is. Ready? If I cut the elevator cable in a, in a, in a, and you're in the elevator?

• 27:27Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You fall, the elevator falls. If I put a scale under your feet, the scale is falling, everybody's falling, scale reads zero because everybody's falling together. You're in free fall. Okay? You got that?

• 27:37Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got that? Okay. Let's do the Newton experiment. We're on the top of a hill. You send out a cannonball sideways, it falls. But, take the cannonball, drop it, it falls, right? Give it sideways motion, it still falls. The cannonball is weightless the entire time. Cause it's freely falling to the earth. You just gave it some sideways speed. Cannonball don't care. It's falling towards earth. You throw it a little farther. It goes farther away from you around the curvature of the earth. There is a speed with which you can launch the cannonball. Where it goes completely around the earth and hits you in the back of the head. And it is weightless the entire time.

• 28:12Eugene Mirman?

  So if you cut an elevator in space, what happens?

• 28:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In space?

• 28:16Mike Massimino?

  What about the, maybe a little bit of the drag maybe?

• 28:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The real issue here is if you're weightless for a really long time. What's it like to come back? Back to earth? Back to one G? I asked him.

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I always wonder what it feels like to come back. And now you're back in one G.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  It's brutal.

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So why ever come back? Go stay up there.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  Gravity is the ultimate oppressor. I mean, it, it, it literally grinds everybody into the ground, you know, and, and you real, you get used to it when you live here, right? You're used to balancing your head on top of your neck. It's fighting gravity all the time.

• 28:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what I'm doing? I'm balancing my neck?

• 28:56Speaker 03

  If you think about it.

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never thought, no, I never thought about it.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Think about doing a plank and the effort you do just holding your body.

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plank, the plank is where you're, it's a push up without a push up.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, when you're up. But, you know, after just a little while, your body starts shaking with the effort. And all you're doing is just holding yourself against the perpetual tyranny of gravity. And so when you've been weightless for half a year, you get so used to the, the effortlessness of that and the freedom of it. And when you come back down into gravity, it, it feels unfair above all. It's like, you know, like Gulliver with all the strings tied around him. But, but at the same time, your body's completely unadapted, unused to it. And your, your heart has forgotten how to pump the blood and lift it like a conveyor belt up to your head. And, and just lifting your arm and your balance system is shut down. And your, your body's just a mess.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  So it's like combination between maybe an illness and a car crash when, when you come back. It's not easy on the body.

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this is stunning.

• 29:56Mike Massimino?

  You know, there's a list of things you're not supposed to do when you return, and it's followed because someone did them and something bad happened. Like, you can't drive a car for three days. Right away. Yeah, you can't fly an airplane. Uh, your vestibular system is messed up. You know, your head-eye movements.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there's astronaut instructions like on the side of a medicine bottle. Do not operate heavy machinery after you come back to one G.

• 30:19Mike Massimino?

  Your spine is settling back in.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you told me that, I gotta hear it again. You have a different size suit for spacewalking.

• 30:27Mike Massimino?

  Correct.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Than you do for launching into space.

• 30:30Mike Massimino?

  That's right.

• 30:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you grow.

• 30:31Mike Massimino?

  You do. Your spine elongates in space. You gain about an inch to an inch and a half.

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you grew an inch to an inch and a half in space?

• 30:37Mike Massimino?

  Yes.

• 30:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you shrunk right back?

• 30:39Mike Massimino?

  It comes right back. So, all that is settling. Your spine is kept in place by gravity, right? Or help is kept in place, it's kept in place by the spine, but also gravity assists. And when it elongates, when you come back down, it all settles. So, that's why for three days, you're not supposed to do any heavy lifting.

• 30:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, when you come back, do you like, do you have a glass in your hand and just let it go?

• 30:57Mike Massimino?

  That has happened. I saw it happen. Uh, Scott Altman and I were having lunch at crew quarters right after we got back. And, uh, he's looking at me, and he does like this, and I think he realized, once he went like this, and I was like, "What are you doing?" He's like, "Uh, gravity." And I floated a, uh, a bag of groceries out of the minivan, because now astronauts drive minivans.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you drive a minivan?

• 31:21Mike Massimino?

  Chris Hadfield drives a Thunderbird, and he has a cool mustache.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you drive a minivan?

• 31:26Mike Massimino?

  I drive a minivan.

• 31:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so he really is the right stuff, and you're not?

• 31:29Mike Massimino?

  Now, you're getting the picture.

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 31:31Mike Massimino?

  But I took out a bag of groceries and just went like this. And it's like, as soon as you let go, you realize what you did, but it's too late.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh.

• 31:38Mike Massimino?

  Even on the two-week mission that I was on, I felt like I was gonna fall over, and that was only after two weeks. Six months, like, Chris, if you see the way those guys get out of the spacecraft, out of the Soyuz, they're more or less carried out.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, we don't have the record for most time in space. It's the Russians, isn't it?

• 31:52Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, if you look, that's another thing you can go and Google. But if you look at the number of people with time in space, the Russians,

• 31:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Russians lead that.

• 31:57Mike Massimino?

  They don't have as many astronauts. They have cosmonauts. They don't have as many people that they send, and they send them more often for longer periods of time.

• 32:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, times have changed since the Cold War and the space race. And we'll find out what it's like to be an American onboard a space station full of Russian cosmonauts when StarTalk returns.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. We're featuring my interview with Chris Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut, who's got a mustache that you admire.

• 32:32Mike Massimino?

  I do.

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Never say anything about my mustache.

• 32:34Eugene Mirman?

  It's like a young Walter White.

• 32:35Mike Massimino?

  I like yours too.

• 32:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, when you were in the Big Bang Theory, they put you in a Soyuz mock-up.

• 32:41Mike Massimino?

  Yes.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you never been in a Soyuz capsule, though?

• 32:44Mike Massimino?

  Uh, I've been in training. I mean, yeah, I've been in a Soyuz capsule before.

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you might have to escape.

• 32:47Eugene Mirman?

  In case you have to go to it to land on Earth.

• 32:49Mike Massimino?

  Well, yeah, more or less, but even though my flights were to Hubble, most of my training, before you get assigned to a flight, you don't know what flight you're gonna get assigned to.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, it's just an all-purpose astronaut.

• 33:00Mike Massimino?

  So, a lot of my training was space station-related. A lot of my spacewalk training, a lot of my systems training, and so on, was station-related, which included a little bit of Soyuz for me.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we don't like to remember, I mean, it's there, it's not hidden, but we don't reflect on the fact that we have a space program entirely because of the Cold War. We think, "Oh, we're Americans, and we're explorers, and we're discoverers." No, we were at friggin' war with Russia.

• 33:23Eugene Mirman?

  We wanted to be able to throw things from them, at them, from space.

• 33:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, this is a man speaking who was born in Russia, so which "we" is in that sentence.

• 33:30Eugene Mirman?

  America. I'm a US citizen. I would, yeah.

• 33:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where were you born?

• 33:35Eugene Mirman?

  In Russia, but then I escaped here to throw things at Russia.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Chris Hadfield was once up in the space station, and everybody there was a cosmonaut.

• 33:44Mike Massimino?

  He always had an American with him.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He always had an American, just for safety?

• 33:46Mike Massimino?

  Tom Marshburn. I know, I think, him and...

• 33:48Eugene Mirman?

  A drummer?

• 33:49Mike Massimino?

  I think he was a drummer. No, Tom was a medical doctor, but he had, yeah, he always had Russians with him.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it's interesting to know, what is it like to work with Russian counterparts to who and what you are in space? Let's find out. How do you compare, like, American astronauts with cosmonauts? Now, you were tired, and you can tell me now, so you don't have to hide this anymore. I know you were party line for a while, but now you got a book out, you can tell the story.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  I was NASA's director in Russia and helped build Mir on my first flight.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mir, the Russian space station.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  The Russian space station, and so got to know the place pretty well. The filter that selects astronauts, um... You know, so many people apply and they, you know, right size, right weight, right education, right operational understanding of how things work. That filter, no matter what country it's in, tends to spit out fairly similar people. People with a with a similar sense of things, you know, people with the right mental horsepower, the right sort of physical attributes, but also the same sort of attitude. And it was interesting to see when I meet the Japanese astronauts, or the German astronauts, or the or whatever, the Chinese astronauts. The the similarities way outweigh the nationalities. And and so whether you're a cosmonaut, or a taikonaut, or an astronaut, or a spaciotronaut,

• 35:06Speaker 03

  depending on the language, there's there's all a kinship.

• 35:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I can I share a story with you? I don't know if I've ever told you this. When I was on the Presidential Commission to study the future of aerospace in the United States, we went around the world to look at the competition and what people are doing. We went to Star City, Russia, which is where they train the astronauts. So we're commissioners, right? And we happened to have Buzz Aldrin with us, so they gave us, that made them think a little more highly of us, perhaps.

• 35:34Eugene Mirman?

  Always bring Buzz, that's what I say.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring Buzz Aldrin, it helps every time. But in any case, we go in there, meet the head of the of the the center in the morning. It must be ten thirty in the morning. And we're all crowded around a table, and there are translators there. And we had been to many other cities, sitting around tables with aerospace people, and even places where I spoke their language. I don't know Russian from from Greek, but in that room, when it's ten thirty, he looks at his clock, say, "Time for vodka." And he opens up this cabinet, and glasses, you know, it's one of these like James Bond kind of things. Vodka comes out, we all get get pour the vodka, and I'm ready to like, apparently, my pinky

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  went out, and that's not supposed to do that when you're sipping vodka, it's not manly, I'd learn. They should have briefed you on that, Neil.

• 36:26Eugene Mirman?

  That's literally the first they they teach in Russian at our school.

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I'm saying is, I felt a connection to this man that I did not feel to any other official meetings that we had all throughout Europe and the world. And I got to the bottom of it, and it's simply, we as a country valued space.

• 36:47Mike Massimino?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we put people in orbit.

• 36:50Mike Massimino?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So did they.

• 36:52Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm echoing Chris Hadfield's comment, that there is something that bonds people with that level of ambition, that transcends whatever might be a national boundary.

• 37:04Eugene Mirman?

  Russians are very fun, don't get me wrong.

• 37:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's what I found, and I, and to the, I'd never forgotten that to this day.

• 37:11Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, I thi- I think it's true.

• 37:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought I could hang with these people.

• 37:13Mike Massimino?

  You have a common goal.

• 37:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was in Belgium, I was in France, I was in England, I could speak their language, and I wasn't thinking, let me hang with these people.

• 37:20Eugene Mirman?

  They are-

• 37:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Russia.

• 37:22Eugene Mirman?

  The British are boring until after 5pm. Then they go, then they go, uh, ape-

• 37:29Mike Massimino?

  Russia in the morning, England in the after-

• 37:31Eugene Mirman?

  Exactly, that's, that's how you took it with the world.

• 37:34Mike Massimino?

  I think it's right, I think, I'm thinking it extends to other things though, too, is, too, Neil, is that if you have a common interest, scientists around the world, uh, maybe comedians too, I don't know. But you have a common goal, a common interest, and it, and it does transcend all the political issues.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, could space exploration be the unifying thing for all of humanity?

• 37:51Mike Massimino?

  I think it, I think this is one of the great advantages of space exploration.

• 37:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Mike Massimino?

  Is the international nature of it, and you become friends with these, with, with your comrades, with your, your, your fellow astronauts, your fellow explorers, scientists, engineers, because you have this common goal.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're already on Mars, but not with people, yet. When we come back, we're gonna hear from my friend Bill Nye, who's gonna tell us why it's important to put humans on Mars. You're watching StarTalk.

• 38:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. We're talking about going into space, in a big way, maybe even going to Mars. We're already there, we got the Curiosity Rover, but for some people, that's just not enough. For some people, like my good friend, Bill Nye, he wants to send people there. Let's find out why.

• 38:49Bill Nye?

  For me, it's all about exploration. Just going out there and seeing what's up, up there in space. Space is where we seek answers to those two deep questions. Where did we all come from? And are we alone in the cosmos? We're talking about looking for signs of life on another world. Now, the next logical place to look is the planet Mars. Oh, we've sent spacecraft, to be sure. Plenty of them. But what our very best robotic spacecraft can do in a week, a human explorer does in about a minute. So we have to go, and the sooner the better. Now, since humans are doing the exploring, we'll make discoveries and we'll have an adventure. We'll bring our joy and our fear. We'll also bring our art.

• 39:34Bill Nye?

  In the old days, we celebrated the singing cowboy. He rode the range along a new frontier. Well, now we have a singing astronaut who takes us on his adventure along a new frontier, the edge of space, beyond the new horizon.

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Phil, you can never sit that guy down. We're chasing him all over the city. So I, you know, this thing about going to Mars, I think that it's in all of our dreams. And I had to ask Chris Hadfield the same thing. Mars is, it lurks in our hopes and in our imaginations. And so, let's see what he says. If there's a sign-up list, are you there? Are you on the list?

• 40:11Speaker 03

  Well, I want to be involved in the vehicle design. You know, there are no vehicles that can take us to Mars right now. And we don't go for rides as astronauts. We are intrinsically involved with making spaceflight safe. And so, go to Mars. Sure, conceptually, it's easy to say, "Yeah, sure, I'd love to."

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got the orbit, I can plot it out, I'm there.

• 40:27Speaker 03

  Just go 40% faster on our way. But, but I want, I would want to be really involved with the vehicles and making sure that we had a reasonable shot. I don't want to die on the way to Mars, but I would love the opportunity to be part of that exploration.

• 40:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Mars, that's, of course, would be a very long journey.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  With the engines we have now.

• 40:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, certainly. And if it's a sort of a free energy transfer, there was nine months or something there. Then you gotta wait till we line up again, Earth and Mars.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  We're never gonna go that way.

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this, these are years.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so... They would, you would need many guitars and many songs.

• 40:59Speaker 03

  Many, many cans of tuna, I think. Yeah, I really, we, we, my prediction, we will never go to Mars with the engine technology we have right now. It's like trying to set up airline flights to Australia in nineteen twenty.

• 41:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Impossible, unthinkable.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  We just, we don't have the technology to make it safe enough that we can ever do it. Uh, we need, we need to go from propellers to jets. We need to go from string wings to, to metal wings. We get, we got to invent a bunch of stuff first. And there's no rush to go to Mars. There's no, there's no urgency. The earth is a concern, but it's not horribly threatened that we have to abandon it. I think it's going to be incremental from station. That'll be a, that's a thirty year project. From station to the moon, that's probably a fifty year project. And then eventually.

• 41:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Station, International Space Station.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then eventually to Mars.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Mike, you want to go to Mars?

• 41:48Mike Massimino?

  Uh, yeah, I'd love to. Wouldn't you like to go?

• 41:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd like to go. I'd bring the whole fam, yeah.

• 41:53Mike Massimino?

  It'd be, it would be.

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get like a Netflix account, that'd be good.

• 41:55Mike Massimino?

  But yeah, no, I, I think it's, it would be an extraordinary.

• 41:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a slightly different reason for sending humans to Mars than Bill gave. Bill's absolutely correct. The human brain eye connection can figure things out way faster than a remote controlled robot.

• 42:10Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 42:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's some, there's a point of efficiency there. Plus, we can discover things that we're not programmed to have to notice, the way a robot.

• 42:17Mike Massimino?

  The rover goes really slowly on Mars, doesn't it? I mean painfully slow.

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Painfully slowly. And it's got to be semi-intelligent because if it gets to a cliff.

• 42:25Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a twenty minutes communication time for, at the speed of light. To say, watch out for the cliff.

• 42:29Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it's.

• 42:30Mike Massimino?

  That's why it has to go so slowly.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 42:32Mike Massimino?

  So, yeah.

• 42:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I, I say we need to go because that is, well, if it's only for pure science, you might not need humans, but that's, I don't think that's why we ever went into space in the first place.

• 42:45Mike Massimino?

  I agree.

• 42:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a, it was advancing a frontier of discovery. And the people who did that, we build statues to them. We, we honor them. We name schools after them. And I don't know any statue built after a robot or high school. I can't wait. I can't. Till we do. I, I, look, that, history of statues, they're statues of explorers. Also politicians and, and military people. And some eagles. In there, in there are explorers. And I, I don't think our urge to honor explorers is any different as humans today than it has ever been. And so I value that as an enterprise, in addition to the science that we would conduct. So that's my two cents. Eugene, Mike, thanks for being on.

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chris Hadfield, what a guy. I am Neil deGrasse Tyson. I've been your host. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.