The State of Space Exploration Now, with Bill Nye

Discover new ways we’re exploring our universe. Bill Nye the Science Guy and comic co-host Iliza Shlesinger answer fan-submitted Cosmic Queries about LightSail 1 and 2, artificial intelligence, Breakthrough StarShot, and much more. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/the-state-of-space-exploration-now-with-bill-nye/ Photo Credit: Josh Spradling / The Planetary Society, via Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

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.

• 0:22Bill Nye?

  Greetings Bill and I here. Welcome to another episode of StarTalk All-Stars. And I am joined today by my co-host, Eliza Schlesinger. Her special, Elder Millennials, is streaming now on Netflix.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 0:36Bill Nye?

  Turn it up really loud and your life will be redirected forever and you will be so much happier. And that's good for you. Just like the show. It's really good for you.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  It's really good for you.

• 0:46Bill Nye?

  So Eliza, let's start with a question.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  All right. Speaking of things that are good for you and things that make our viewers happy, we've got our first question from Renee Douglas. She says, "Hey." She wrote it that way. "What's the rule on who owns what as far as asteroids, moons, and other planets go? Is it finders keepers?"

• 1:04Bill Nye?

  Kinda. Right now, this is being discussed, outer space treaties. There's been discussion that no one can own these bodies like no one could own the moon.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13Bill Nye?

  But let's face it.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  It's gonna be us.

• 1:17Bill Nye?

  Well, not that so much as...

• 1:18Speaker 02

  It's gonna be China.

• 1:19Bill Nye?

  No, but if you get out there, if you have a spacecraft that can get there and get the ice off an asteroid and use solar energy to make electricity and turn the ice into hydrogen and oxygen, you know, H2O, and then use that for rocket fuel, who's gonna stop you?

• 1:33Speaker 02

  A crashed asteroid or a moving asteroid?

• 1:35Bill Nye?

  That's the trouble, moving. Super moving. When it comes to crashed asteroids, there's a couple of issues.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42Bill Nye?

  For those of you who have not been to Behringer Meteor Crater, Meteor Crater, Arizona, here in the United States, it is amazing. It's like this.

• 1:54Bill Nye?

  It's amazing. So

• 1:56Speaker 02

  What's it like? It's because you're in space, there's no sound?

• 1:59Bill Nye?

  Well, it's just because it's jaw dropping.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02Bill Nye?

  It also could be forehead slapping.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Like, "I forgot the crater."

• 2:07Bill Nye?

  No, just you look at it and you're amazed. And so the guy Behringer, who first found it, thought, "I got an idea," as you might, "that there must be a big rock at the bottom of this crater."

• 2:19Speaker 02

  That caused the crater.

• 2:20Bill Nye?

  Yeah. And so he started drilling for the rock. But it turns out that the asteroid is made of kind of the same material as the Earth.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  So you couldn't find it.

• 2:33Bill Nye?

  Well, so it shattered. When it hit the Earth, it disintegrated. And so you don't get a lump. You have

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Dust.

• 2:42Bill Nye?

  Dust, within dust.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Particles.

• 2:45Bill Nye?

  Particles that are very, very hard, very tough. Like trying to straighten a paperclip. You can never quite get it straight. So the Earth is quite hard, and trying to drill in it was hard. And the other thing that makes the crater, we might think it would be this ball going in, but it's a shockwave that disintegrates the Earth's crust, the material that is the Earth. And so it's really hard to recover that material.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I watched Broken Arrow last night, and the bomb went off, and the shockwave is what disrupted it.

• 3:17Bill Nye?

  Shockwave is trouble, people. And so you're going to catch up to a moving asteroid. And then who's going to stop you?

• 3:25Speaker 02

  The Earth.

• 3:26Bill Nye?

  Treaty schmitty.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Treaty schmitty. The answer is, who's going to own it? Probably Time Warner. Maybe Lockheed Martin, just a giant company, General Electric.

• 3:34Bill Nye?

  What about SpaceX?

• 3:35Speaker 02

  I don't know what that is. Is that who's paying for this?

• 3:38Bill Nye?

  Hold on, aren't you a Los Angelino?

• 3:41Speaker 02

  No. I mean, yeah. What is it?

• 3:43Bill Nye?

  Hold on, hold on.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Oh, Elon Musk, sorry.

• 3:45Bill Nye?

  Don't you have a sort of a crush on Elon Musk, or a thing for him, anyway?

• 3:49Speaker 02

  I mean, no, no.

• 3:51Bill Nye?

  Okay.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  But, you know, if he wants to, like, come to a party, or come to a show.

• 3:56Bill Nye?

  He should go to your show.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  I'm at the Comedy Store a lot. You can check me out on Twitter.

• 4:00Bill Nye?

  Yeah. So you should do that, check out our show. Anyway.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  I knew what the fire triangle was, by the way, in the last episode.

• 4:07Bill Nye?

  That was cool.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Sorry, I didn't know Elon Musk and his dalliances.

• 4:10Bill Nye?

  No, but you did. It was a lot to ask. So what I mean is, a private company. May go out to an asteroid someday and get some material from it.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:20Bill Nye?

  But the idea of mining platinum, or whatever your beautiful white gold rings are made of.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Platinum.

• 4:28Bill Nye?

  It's really difficult to bring that back. There's a lot of platinum on the earth if you know where to look.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  And I think the question everybody wants to know is, would you rather have it be privatized or run by the government? Long lines at the DMV, folks. I'm just saying, if you want more government.

• 4:45Bill Nye?

  Yeah, but as we say, there is no business for, let's say, exploring Europa, the moon of Jupiter with twice as much seawater as the earth. There's, nobody's selling tickets to go to Europa.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:00Bill Nye?

  So you use the government, the public sector, to do this extraordinary exploration. And then the private sector can, if I may, do what it wants within reasonable regulations. Not everybody's allowed to launch rockets anywhere they want all the time, because what if they land on somebody else?

• 5:16Speaker 02

  You hear that?

• 5:17Bill Nye?

  By accident. That's a drag.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Well, this is tangentially related to that. Ashley Aaron of Facebook, you know, of the Aaron's of Facebook.

• 5:26Bill Nye?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Ultimately, would people with the ability to reach space, millionaires, corporations, et cetera, be able to claim uncharted territories as their own? For instance, Amazon claiming part of the moon for commercial travel, or Virgin claiming parts of Mars for colonization, would this be a good or bad thing?

• 5:42Bill Nye?

  So, there's a treaty about the moon.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  What's it called?

• 5:45Bill Nye?

  You can't, nobody, it's called, I think it's called Lunar, or Outer Space Treaty of 1967. You can't own the moon. Sorry about that.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:53Bill Nye?

  But, uh...

• 5:53Speaker 02

  What is it, Despicable Me?

• 5:54Bill Nye?

  And so, we also don't, we want to de-emphasize, we want to no longer use the expression "colonize", because colonies have got...

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Very white. It's a very white thing to do.

• 6:04Bill Nye?

  It's gotten a bad rap. Yeah, so we want to say "settle". We want to settle.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  The same thing.

• 6:08Bill Nye?

  Uh, but, well, so, the trouble with settling on these places is there's nothing to eat or drink and nothing to breathe. That third one...

• 6:16Speaker 02

  It's the last one that really...

• 6:18Bill Nye?

  It's really, you're really gonna notice.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Oh, fur trapping's gonna get you through that.

• 6:20Bill Nye?

  And so, speaking of European people and their tradition of wandering around the world and settling.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:28Bill Nye?

  Uh, we all have, many of us in, in Western Hemisphere, like, we're in the US or Canada, have this, come from, or South America, we come from this tradition where people from Europe showed up with superior technology and germs, smallpox. And just started taking over.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:46Bill Nye?

  Well, when you go to Mars, it's and they and they lived off the land. They they showed up, you know, um, my old forty-four.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  God glory and gold.

• 6:55Bill Nye?

  And but on Mars, there's nothing, there's no.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  There's nothing there. There's no food.

• 7:00Bill Nye?

  There are no nut trees.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  There's no Starbucks. There's no.

• 7:01Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  You can't soil, you can't till the soil, you can't farm.

• 7:05Bill Nye?

  It's really hard and so.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  It's like Arizona, the whole thing.

• 7:09Bill Nye?

  Well, it's like Antarctica. It's really a good model.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  For red.

• 7:13Bill Nye?

  If you want to think about it, is there's no, you gotta bring everything.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Is it its own country?

• 7:18Bill Nye?

  Antarctica? No, we are, there's slices that have been treaties have been.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  But it's just like its own thing. Is there a capital of Antarctica?

• 7:25Bill Nye?

  No, not right now.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  No one like, people don't know that.

• 7:29Bill Nye?

  It's an opportunity.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  It's an opportunity. It's a gold rush. If you live in LA and you're annoying, please move to Antarctica.

• 7:36Bill Nye?

  But it's, you guys, the word gold rush is quite relevant.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Is there gold in Antarctica?

• 7:41Bill Nye?

  If there were.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  We'd be there.

• 7:43Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:44Bill Nye?

  So here in California, the name of the National Football League team, if you're listening to this podcast somewhere thirty years from now, we used to play football.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  This is getting to someone in space right now.

• 7:56Bill Nye?

  Helmets, yes.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Far away.

• 7:58Bill Nye?

  Uh, with helmets and their brain injuries.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  We used to play football, period.

• 8:02Bill Nye?

  And and kids were now, no parents let them sign up. But that aside, the name of the football team is the Forty Niners, named after the gold rush of eighteen forty-nine. Yeah. And this tradition is still with us. So California is so out of hand. Do you know the state motto?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Uh, that's not a parking space.

• 8:25Bill Nye?

  That could be of California. That could also be Manhattan.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, no one drives.

• 8:31Bill Nye?

  Uh, the state motto is Eureka. I found it.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Which is what? Who said?

• 8:38Bill Nye?

  Well, I did say it. Eureka. I found it. And so people came from Europe, across North America, shooting everything, eating everything, growing food and farms in the Midwest and got to California and there's nuts on the trees, oranges grow like weeds, salmon come up the river bigger than your arm and there's protein everywhere and it's fabulous. And then it got so out of hand, the rocks are made of gold. Like, it's just nuts.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:08Bill Nye?

  Anyway, the gold thing kinda is done, but the 49ers are still a team.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  We saw it, just like Oklahoma has the Sooners, which is a little derogatory, but it was like a land grab.

• 9:17Bill Nye?

  Well.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  And Sooners were ones that went too, like, they went before the gun shop.

• 9:22Bill Nye?

  I've had some great times in Oklahoma. Some disclosure.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  I'm just saying, that's the name.

• 9:25Bill Nye?

  Uh.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  I'm from Texas, so I can't say I like Oklahoma.

• 9:29Bill Nye?

  No, in fact, I think a lot of what keeps you all going is the knowledge that Oklahomans really are not that great. That's a lot of what keeps a Texan going.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  But then when you meet one, you're like, it's fine.

• 9:41Bill Nye?

  Oh, it's really, it's fine.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  It's the main.

• 9:43Bill Nye?

  Talking about that great experience.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  It's the main export of Texas.

• 9:48Bill Nye?

  Is what?

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Hatred for Oklahoma.

• 9:49Bill Nye?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  It's our.

• 9:51Bill Nye?

  Understandable. You know, I used to work in an oil patch.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  In an oil patch?

• 9:54Bill Nye?

  In the oil field.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 9:56Bill Nye?

  In Snyder.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  I did know that.

• 9:58Bill Nye?

  Big Spring, Midland, Odessa.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Oof.

• 10:00Bill Nye?

  Uh, the Texas crossroads, Victoria. But that aside, let's take another question.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Okay. Um, we already said this one about the millionaire. So, moving, and I feel like this is kind of going back into it, but just so we can, people can get their questions answered. Um, how would private companies, everything physics on Instagram says, how would private companies help keep space travel affordable to the common man, assuming interplanetary colonization and travel becomes a common desire?

• 10:27Bill Nye?

  Uh, before the interplanetary travel and settlement, Elon Musk, by way of example, went to what we call the community and said, I want to go to Mars, how do I get to Mars? And scientists and engineers told him, told everybody.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Get out of our office.

• 10:44Bill Nye?

  Is, we're gonna lower the cost of getting to low Earth orbit. Cause everybody thinks that the best way to go to Mars, or any place, another planet, is to get fuel in orbit. Around the earth, go up there with your other spacecraft, refuel and then go the rest of the way.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  But?

• 11:03Bill Nye?

  Well, not but. So that's what SpaceX is working on. Ways to lower the cost of getting to low earth orbit as a step to go to another planet.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  To bring it to you, the consumer.

• 11:13Bill Nye?

  And I flew the flight simulator of the Spaceship Two, the Virgin Galactic fabulous machine, just a few weeks ago. It's gonna be, it's gonna be wild. People will be able to go to space for a few minutes and come back and apparently, everybody who sees the earth from space is changed forever. The way you feel about our home planet.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  I was thinking about that.

• 11:35Bill Nye?

  It is cool.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  That perspective.

• 11:37Bill Nye?

  Yeah, that's what everybody talks about.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  All right, well, related to that, Sean underscore Falcon on Instagram says, "Do you feel that SpaceX is working toward the interests of the American people and of this nation compared to NASA?"

• 11:49Bill Nye?

  Hold it, so, everybody, SpaceX sells rockets to NASA. It's not one or the other. Their big business is NASA and the Air Force, the US Air Force.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Who else is gonna buy?

• 12:01Bill Nye?

  Well, once in a while, a company like the Planetary Society comes along.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  With donations from people like you.

• 12:08Bill Nye?

  Yes, thank you. And we are flying a spacecraft. But it's a consortium of us, NASA, the National American Space Administration here in the US, and SpaceX. It's every, it's business. All the money spent in space is really spent on earth. So SpaceX sells rockets to NASA, it's all good. It's all good.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  It's all part of a big machine.

• 12:33Bill Nye?

  It's all, it's commerce, it's what we do.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  So, piggybacking off of that, BlueJade127 of Instagram says, "As space travel increases, how will pilots cope with the growing cloud of space debris from old satellites that remain trapped in earth's orbit? Also, who will be responsible for the cleanup efforts? The polluters, governments, private enterprises, or volunteers?" Jade Tallis from Ringwood, New Jersey.

• 12:57Bill Nye?

  So that's a great question. Space debris is a big issue. If you can solve this problem, we love you, man. So people have talked about sending up spacecraft to catch debris and burn it up in the atmosphere. Easier said than done. I mean, everything's going in English units, seventeen thousand miles an hour, you know, ten kilometers, twelve kilometers a second, seven or eight miles a second. It's very hard to catch these things.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:23Bill Nye?

  But when you run one into the other, all this debris gets spread all over the place and there've been a couple of major accidents. Air Force booster blew up many years ago and the Chinese space agency ran things into each other on purpose and created a mess.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  What is their problem?

• 13:40Bill Nye?

  Well, it was just trying to show their capability and then the US or Navy shot down another Ucar satellite to show how this is how you really do it.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  It sounds like us.

• 13:51Bill Nye?

  It's a complicated issue, so let's have a big net and catch the stuff.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  I was gonna say a net. Made of a clay polymer.

• 14:00Bill Nye?

  Yes, the net has to be going really fast and so we have treaties, in communication industry especially, to de-orbit satellites after they're worn out.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  To bring them back home?

• 14:11Bill Nye?

  You burn them up. You burn them up.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Burn them up in the atmosphere and then we inhale whatever's in that atmosphere.

• 14:15Bill Nye?

  So, you know, so keep in mind the Earth has hit with hundreds, maybe it's a thousand tons of space dust every day. So, a few...

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Is that why I feel nauseous?

• 14:27Bill Nye?

  Yeah, a few kilograms or pounds of spacecraft is kinda in the lost. You don't even notice it.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Burn it up. Burn them up. Justin Stewartson of Facebook says, "How far could we advance our race?" Okay. "If we bring asteroids full of exotic materials to Earth with space mining."

• 14:48Bill Nye?

  So, this is a romantic idea, that you'd go catch an asteroid and drag it into Earth orbit and then lower it onto the Earth and get platinum or whatever the heck you want to make your wedding ring out of, but...

• 15:00Speaker 02

  I'd be overseeing this project.

• 15:02Bill Nye?

  Well, it would be cool to have a space metal thing. Like, I have a pin made of an asteroid. It's kinda cool, but...

• 15:11Speaker 02

  My heart stops every once in a while, but it's cool.

• 15:13Bill Nye?

  No, no, no. The thing is asteroids are made of the same stuff as the Earth, so...

• 15:17Speaker 02

  So, why bother?

• 15:17Bill Nye?

  Well, not that. I mean, it's cool, but it's expensive. The idea is romantic, but it's very difficult. These things are going very fast, they're very far from the Earth, and bringing them back here is rocket science turned up to 11. So, I'm not saying it can't be done, but...

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Why?

• 15:37Bill Nye?

  The big why now is take your rocket to an asteroid and many asteroids have a lot of ice.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Where'd they get that ice? Just from being cold?

• 15:46Bill Nye?

  Primordial solar system.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Well, that's the obvious answer.

• 15:49Bill Nye?

  So, one of the questions is, where did the ice come from in the primordial solar system? What are we doing here? What is?

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Primordial solar system means an old solar system that's

• 15:58Bill Nye?

  No, it means four and a half billion years ago.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  That's old.

• 16:01Bill Nye?

  Our solar system.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Because I think of primordial ooze is what like lizard's crawled out of.

• 16:05Bill Nye?

  Yeah, that's three and a half billion, probably three and a half.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  So recent, so since MySpace has been around.

• 16:10Bill Nye?

  Yes. God, I had to think that's an older reference, MySpace. Lost on many of the younger listeners.

• 16:18Speaker 02

  Google it.

• 16:19Bill Nye?

  It's just not so easy, but it's a cool idea. So, we'll see, there are companies involved and what they want to do is go to an asteroid that's got a lot of ice, use the ice for rocket fuel.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Is that a thing? Like, are we deciding that ice will work as rocket fuel?

• 16:33Bill Nye?

  Well, water works as rocket fuel.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Oh, well, there's your answer.

• 16:36Bill Nye?

  If you break the water into hydrogen and oxygen and recombine it really fast, in a fire.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  In that order?

• 16:44Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 16:46Bill Nye?

  And then you could, it's a lot of energy, but you'd, you'd convert sunlight into electricity, into chemical energy, into rocket fuel.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  So, what you're saying is we have all that we need right here, in this room, to make a rocket?

• 16:58Bill Nye?

  Yes, we do, if you had an unlimited supply of energy, yeah.

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Well, I, I don't know, I drink a lot of coffee. Somebody wants, this is kind of a whimsical question, this is from John Tweak.

• 17:08Bill Nye?

  It's rocket fuel. Now that I've tried it, I don't think I could live without it.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Isn't rocket fuel like an energy drink? Or, isn't it like Red Bull and gin? It's like, okay. John Tweak of Instagram says, if you could purchase land, this is to you, obviously not me, because he doesn't know me, if you could purchase land on any other world, simply to brag about your real estate, which I don't think you would do, so it's not really for Bill Nye, but if you were a megalomaniac, simply to brag about your mad scientist.

• 17:37Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Simply to brag about your real estate, which world would you choose and why? World meaning planet, I'm assuming.

• 17:42Bill Nye?

  It would probably be Mars. It would probably be Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system. From there, I could see the world. This is StarTalk All-Stars, we'll be, I'm here with my guest, Eliza Schlesinger, we'll be back right after this.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  World, the world can be...

• 18:07Bill Nye?

  Oh no, we love world.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  I'm not saying it's a world.

• 18:09Bill Nye?

  Okay, so wait, wait, wait.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Relative to what you're saying.

• 18:12Bill Nye?

  It's Bill Nye with Eliza Schlesinger. Welcome back to StarTalk All-Stars. We have a little issue that we are discussing. Eliza, your concern?

• 18:19Speaker 02

  My concern was in the last question. He said, "Any other world." And I said, "Well, it's really a planet." World is sort of a fluid concept. Like, my world is this room right now. He meant planet. But you said, "We love world."

• 18:30Bill Nye?

  I love world.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  I said, "I'm sorry I showed up in Pasadena at 9:00 a.m. to do your show." I'm sorry.

• 18:36Bill Nye?

  No, you're not.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  No, I get paid to be here.

• 18:38Bill Nye?

  So, anyway, but that's not the only reason. We're having fun. So, the thing is, world is not bad. One of the striking things that strikes me, I am struck, when I look at a picture from Mars.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:51Bill Nye?

  It's a place. I mean, you can walk around if you were dressed properly.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:55Bill Nye?

  And so, it's a world.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  It's a world. I'm sorry.

• 18:58Bill Nye?

  It's romantic. The moon is a world-like thing. You know Buzz Aldrin, the second guy, that said magnificent desolation? Meaning, it's just, it's amazing. Because it's a place, but of nothingness. It's amazing. And it's out of our everyday experience. Most of the places...

• 19:15Speaker 02

  It's like Hollywood.

• 19:17Bill Nye?

  No, no. Here's the difference.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  There's a somethingness.

• 19:20Bill Nye?

  Well, there's a lot of people. On the moon, when he was there, there were very few people. Just one other.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. It makes a somethingness. Jay Rice APR on Instagram says, "Hi, Bill. In your opinion, what should take priority budget-wise? Planetary exploration or extrasolar system exploration? If planetary, where would you head first?"

• 19:44Bill Nye?

  So, it's a great question. This is what we do at the Planetary Society. We work very hard to advocate for what we believe are reasonable uses of our resources, our intellect and treasure.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Reasonable.

• 19:56Bill Nye?

  Our money and thinkfulness.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:59Bill Nye?

  So, planetary, I claim planetary science is where you get these extraordinary returns on investment. If we were to discover life on another world, like Mars or Europa, moon of Jupiter, twice as much ocean as the Earth, it would change the course of human history, which would be cool. Furthermore, you're living at a time where we have telescopes that can observe atmospheres of other planets orbiting other stars. If we were to find evidence of industrial pollution in an atmosphere on a so-called exoplanet, a long way from here planet, it would change the world.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  It would change everything.

• 20:37Bill Nye?

  So what you want to do is evaluate the NASA ESA European Space Agency budgets, Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA. Evaluate those budgets and allocate your resources appropriately. Here at the planetary side, we want planetary science to be at least over 2 billion a year, 2 billion US.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Get those Patreon contributions.

• 20:59Bill Nye?

  2.3, 2.5, 2.7.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  I mean, all it costs is like $5 to ask a question here, so you guys gotta pick up the pace.

• 21:06Bill Nye?

  No, it's great. Thank you.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  It's not enough. Trying to get to Mons Europa, whatever.

• 21:12Bill Nye?

  Olympus Mons?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Olympus Mons.

• 21:14Bill Nye?

  Largest volcano in the solar system.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  And Europa, the one's got all the ocean.

• 21:20Bill Nye?

  So are there Europeanians?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  No, we don't know, maybe under the surface.

• 21:24Bill Nye?

  Swimming under the ice?

• 21:25Speaker 02

  We don't, we won't know unless you donate.

• 21:27Bill Nye?

  Are there Europeanian comedians?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Definitely not. There's barely any comedians in this country.

• 21:33Bill Nye?

  Do we have Europeanian, maybe they're full of Europeanian comedians talking hilarious Europeanian fish person jokes.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Maybe. Maybe they're the funniest species in the galaxy. We won't know because you're not donating enough.

• 21:47Bill Nye?

  But...

• 21:48Speaker 02

  They hired me to come in and be the hammer and let you guys know. He doesn't want to, but...

• 21:53Bill Nye?

  It's like public broadcasting.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  I'm, I'll play the bad guy.

• 21:56Bill Nye?

  Yeah, we kind of beg for it.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Um, okay, this question, this is the big one. Here we go. It's time for a cosmic query presented to you by MyRadar.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  This one's from Mike B. and Mike wants to know... Did I already read this question?

• 22:15Bill Nye?

  See, they sound alike, but go for it. Go for it, Eliza. Go for it.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  This question is from Mike B. and Mike B. wants to know whether asteroid mining is really possible or only science fiction? He also wants to know if we are exploring the solar system, will we need to bring our own water or will there be enough water out there for us to mine? Don't forget Europa, the moon with a lot of water.

• 22:35Bill Nye?

  And, that's right, which is water like on Earth, under a shell of ice and the liquid water is maintained by the gravitational action of Europa going around Jupiter. Woo, woo, woo, except it's in space. And so, if there's... Some asteroids have a lot of water. So, people speculate, there's a company, Planetary Resources, believes there's enough water, ice on asteroids, you go there and mine it, use electricity to make it into rocket fuel. So, that's possible, but I don't know if it's gonna happen in our lifetime. And then, along this line, Mars has water if you can dig down deep enough and somehow harvest it. It's an extraordinary future, Eliza.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:16Bill Nye?

  It's extraordinary.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Do you think the world... Did I say this? The ReleO3 on Instagram, do you think the world can agree on non-privatization of the moon and similar objects, treating them like national parks, or better yet, international parks? The thought of advertisements on the moon terrifies and disgusts me.

• 23:32Bill Nye?

  I think so. I think we can work that out. This idea, oh, let's just go to the moon, you know, set up a tent, it'd be great. It's not that easy. You need billions of dollars, or euros, or yen, or yuan, to try this.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:47Bill Nye?

  And then, once you're there, what exactly are you gonna do?

• 23:50Speaker 02

  It's not like going to the beach.

• 23:52Bill Nye?

  It's not like going to the beach.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Although, what do you do at the beach?

• 23:54Bill Nye?

  Well, I watch the ocean.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I watch the ocean.

• 23:57Bill Nye?

  And I like to jump in the ocean, or walk into the ocean. I like to surf.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Really? I watch all the garbage come in.

• 24:03Bill Nye?

  And that's fun, too.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Alright, well...

• 24:06Bill Nye?

  But, in other words, it's not so simple. So, yes, I think we can work this out to your question.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  This is related to the last couple of questions because if you're talking about colonizing, you're talking about funding, obviously, politics come into play. Nataraj of Instagram says, if we already underfund the space budget... In the USA, what are the chances that politics will actually affect the progress of space travel for independent companies?

• 24:29Bill Nye?

  Well, these are all related, and when you say "underfunded," it depends. There are some people who resent the heck out of NASA spending $18 or $19 billion a year. Other people think it should be twice that. And so this is why we vote, everybody, is to figure out what's the best thing to do with our resources, our intellect and treasure. And so when it comes to, is it private, is it public? It's both. When NASA sends a space probe to Jupiter, did you see the amazing pictures of the swirling atmosphere of Jupiter? It was all over the news.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  That spot?

• 25:04Bill Nye?

  The spot, and then nearby the spot, the word "nearby," a few Earth diameters away, are more swirling, amazing swirlingnesses.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Jupiter is a gas giant.

• 25:14Bill Nye?

  That's right. And we discover this because we sent spacecraft there, and the spacecraft were sent there on rockets and with equipment and materials and technicians and engineers and scientists who work for private companies.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  This is going to be, I don't mean to politicize this, but I think this is an interesting question I want to ask you. You ready?

• 25:37Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Roger Warren of Facebook says, "How do you feel about this administration," you have to be more specific, "about this administration's gutting of all things climate-related, including low-Earth-orbit observation?"

• 25:48Bill Nye?

  So, I don't think it will last.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Because the administration is only four years?

• 25:53Bill Nye?

  Well, the administration's only four years. In fact, I've spoken a couple of times with Jim Bridenstine, who's the new administrator of NASA, this controversial guy, because he was nominally a Trump supporter, but he's a Navy pilot who wanted the job of NASA administrator.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Turn it around.

• 26:12Bill Nye?

  Well, and he got, well, NASA does pretty well, everybody. Everybody just wanted to go to the moon for free, and, okay. So, Bridenstine is there, it's just you, you have to have somebody in charge just to sign checks by law. All right, that aside, I think when you, if, if you look at the US Constitution, we are here in the United States.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  That's what we're broadcasting.

• 26:37Bill Nye?

  Yes. The US Constitution was become a model for progressive democracies around the world the last couple centuries. Right there. Section 8, Article 1, Article 1, Section 8, refers to the progress of science and useful arts.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Useful arts?

• 26:55Bill Nye?

  So useful arts to me was an 18th century word for engineering.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Or paintings of Christ.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Because that was like all you could paint for a very long time.

• 27:05Bill Nye?

  But, but by these guys, I know what you mean. The founding fathers were...

• 27:09Speaker 02

  I'm just kidding.

• 27:10Bill Nye?

  I know.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  It's pretty funny.

• 27:11Bill Nye?

  But they were nominally a-religious.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  I know that, Thomas Jefferson, yeah.

• 27:15Bill Nye?

  This old Unitarian.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Wasn't into it.

• 27:17Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 27:19Bill Nye?

  And so, they realized the value, the economic value of investment in science and protecting so-called intellectual property, patents and trademarks. They realized the value of that in the 1700s.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  They knew back then, before they even knew how to cure polio, how come we can't get a grip?

• 27:37Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  They were also geniuses.

• 27:40Bill Nye?

  Well, here's my claim, Eliza, that they were nerds who sat around thinking about how to design a very good government and built in, just like science, built in to the US Constitution.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  A provision.

• 27:56Bill Nye?

  Is change.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Change.

• 27:58Bill Nye?

  Change is built in.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  I don't know if they were nerds, because I've seen paintings of those, and they look pretty in shape.

• 28:05Bill Nye?

  So you're saying nerds are out of shape?

• 28:08Speaker 02

  You can send your hate mail to my Instagram.

• 28:11Bill Nye?

  So, you know, I consider myself...

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Pretty in shape. Pretty live.

• 28:16Bill Nye?

  Pretty nerdy.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  You're very nerdy.

• 28:18Bill Nye?

  Yeah. And, and I'm okay in shape for, especially a guy with this many decades. So, you can't stay economically competitive in the world today without science. You will not be able to maintain your economy. So I think this anti-science movement's gonna go away pretty quickly. Furthermore, as the old joke goes, I am not the first guy to... Bring this to the microphone. Science advances one funeral at a time. Ha, ha, ha.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  It's true, trial and error.

• 28:51Bill Nye?

  Well, not just that. The old ways, the earth is flat.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Is that old? I feel like a lot of people still think that.

• 28:57Bill Nye?

  Actually, that's comeback. Yeah, that's a bad example. Good point. That you can't maintain your international commerce presuming the earth is flat.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:05Bill Nye?

  If you get on a boat or an air, a ship and an airplane and think the world is flat, you will get lost and die.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Can I say one thing to those flat earth people?

• 29:12Bill Nye?

  Please, please.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  If you want to prove to yourself that the earth is not flat, all you have to do is watch a ship disappear over horizon, over horizon. If the earth was flat, you would watch it go on forever. But by virtue of the fact that it disappears, it's not flat.

• 29:28Bill Nye?

  Eliza Schlesinger, ladies and gentlemen.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 29:30Bill Nye?

  That's it.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Because I was like, oh, it's totally flat. No, I'm just kidding. I never thought that.

• 29:34Bill Nye?

  So you will not be able to compete economically if you don't embrace science. And so people will realize that pretty soon. And the anti-science movement will disappear. Along that line about climate change, not always, but almost all climate change deniers or contrarians or extreme skeptics, whatever they want to call themselves, are old.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Really? Interesting.

• 29:54Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  And stupid.

• 29:56Bill Nye?

  Well, very few young people are climate deniers. Once in a while, you meet one. So when these people, the example I think about these days, you know, Stoneman Douglas High School, his kids, students, lived through this extraordinary experience. Though, when people of that political motivation come of age and become part of the voting cohort, as it's called, things will change. Three presidential elections, things are going to get done. The war, the future, everybody, shoot the messenger. But the future is much more likely to be a progressive democracy than a regressive totalitarian thing. Those totalitarian governments are just not going to stay in business. They're surrounded by the internet.

• 30:40Bill Nye?

  They can't, they can't, it's not going to last.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Will not sustain. So then, this is kind of a fun one. You don't have to answer it. Daniel Junius from, Daniel, sorry, Junius, I made you a girl. Now you're a boy, from Facebook, says, "When do you think President Donald Trump will claim Mars?" Is that a waste of time? Should we ask a real question?

• 30:58Bill Nye?

  Well, what do you, what do you think?

• 31:00Speaker 02

  He's not, I mean, I claim it right now, like, whatever.

• 31:03Bill Nye?

  Done.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Like, and now, and who's going to honor that? No one.

• 31:06Bill Nye?

  They're changing the name from Mars to Schlesinger.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  To Mars-a-Lago.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  There you go. I don't know which camera I'm supposed to be looking at. Okay, here's a real question. The question for you is, in your opinion, this is from Eric Varga from Facebook. "In your opinion, what is better for the future of space exploration? Countries and their governments working together to explore space, like currently on the ISS, or private companies competing against each other? In other words, competition or cooperation?"

• 31:35Bill Nye?

  So it's both. The answer is it's both. A space agency buys rockets that perform the best for the least amount of money. As the old saying goes. And I think, I think it was Alan Shepard who's credited with this quotation. If I'm getting it wrong, I apologize. He's an astronaut, standing on the moon.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:56Bill Nye?

  He said, "You know, it's so bring to realize that we got here on equipment built by the lowest bidder."

• 32:05Bill Nye?

  That's a charming insight. Yeah, so, so, space agencies buy rockets and spacecraft and support, ground support from private companies. I mean, that's how it works. When NASA buys electronics, they're from a company. It's not a bad thing.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  When we buy weapons, it's from a company.

• 32:26Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 32:27Bill Nye?

  It's a thing. It's a feature. How else would you do it? And so, it's not one or the other. And just, I'll tell you, as the CEO of the Planetary Society, World's largest non-governmental space organization empowering you

• 32:39Speaker 02

  Can donate.

• 32:40Bill Nye?

  to be connected with space.

• 32:47Bill Nye?

  The fundamental thing is, it's not one or the other. It's everybody working together. And when you use international cooperation, you, in general, raise the cost of the overall project. Let's say, sending spacecraft, Huygens, into the atmosphere of...

• 33:08Bill Nye?

  Titan, moon of Saturn.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  It's a moon of Saturn.

• 33:10Bill Nye?

  Let's say you work together. You raise the overall cost, but you lower the cost for each space agency. Each space agency has to contribute less. And so that's of great interest. International cooperation, as I like to say.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:24Bill Nye?

  Space exploration brings out the best in us, Eliza.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Well, I think what you're also talking about here, Bill, is basic economics.

• 33:30Bill Nye?

  I am.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  (laughing)

• 33:32Bill Nye?

  So, working together, we can do wonderful things.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  A lot of these questions sort of circle around the idea of, is space exploration, is it a good thing? Brett, Gabe's dad, I guess you're Gabe's dad from Facebook, says, what will be the consequence of privatization of the space station?

• 33:48Bill Nye?

  So, if we could privatize the space station, you know, the space station, that would free up, let's say, around $3 billion to do something else. And the private space station owners, or leasers, lease-ors, would maybe do extraordinary things.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 34:05Bill Nye?

  That aren't being done right now. The big value of the space station, it came up early, is really diplomatic. When you get people from all these different countries working together, it's extraordinary. So, it would be great if we could sell the space station to somebody like you, Gabe's son.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Gabe's.

• 34:21Bill Nye?

  It would be a fantastic thing. And we could change the world. And then we'd, then with that money, and refocus of the world's largest space agency, perhaps we could get to Mars in my lifetime and find evidence of life that would change the course of human history. Yes!

• 34:39Speaker 02

  That'd be great. I feel like we're right on the precipice of doing that.

• 34:41Bill Nye?

  Yes!

• 34:42Speaker 02

  So close.

• 34:43Bill Nye?

  What makes you feel that way?

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Just because we talk about it a lot. It's in the ether.

• 34:46Bill Nye?

  There you go.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:47Bill Nye?

  Since, speaking of, of the ether, and radio, and electronic internet, you are watching StarTalk All-Stars, and we'll be back right after this.

• 35:01Bill Nye?

  Greetings, greetings, everyone. Bill Nye here. Welcome back to StarTalk All-Stars. I am joined by my co-host, Eliza Schlesinger.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Hey, guys.

• 35:10Bill Nye?

  We're having the time of our lives here. If it's on before July 24th, please watch her special, Elder Millennial, and that's you.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  That's me, and please rate it five stars, even if you don't watch. Five stars for Christmas.

• 35:23Bill Nye?

  Is that asking so much?

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Is that so hard?

• 35:26Bill Nye?

  Now, hold on a second. You said for Christmas?

• 35:28Speaker 02

  I was just trying to do a pathetic voice, like she doesn't have any Christmas...

• 35:30Bill Nye?

  It was pathetic.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  For Christmas, please, five stars.

• 35:33Bill Nye?

  So, do you have a Christmas tradition in your family?

• 35:36Speaker 02

  No, because I am fully Jewish.

• 35:38Bill Nye?

  Yeah, that's what I thought. Not that it's a bad thing, it's a thing.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  But, that being said, I love Christmas, and I have a Christmas party every year.

• 35:45Bill Nye?

  And so, what we do here in the, um, on the non-believer community, we have Isaac Newton's birthday, also on the 25th of December. Newtonmas.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  What's that, what's that party like?

• 35:56Bill Nye?

  It's, it's, no, we have Isaac Newton's birthday tree, we have Isaac Newton's birthday decorations, we have Isaac Newton birthday gift exchange.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  I mean, technically, the main decoration would be gravity.

• 36:06Bill Nye?

  Well, it's always there.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  It's always there.

• 36:08Bill Nye?

  Every Christmas I've been to. And so, uh, it's just something to think about. So, Isaac Newton was born on the 25th of December, as reckoned in Britain.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Really?

• 36:16Bill Nye?

  Yeah, as reckoned in Britain. That's, I'm not just jamming here, GF.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  You're not just jamming here. What'd you call me, Jeff?

• 36:22Bill Nye?

  Girlfriend.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Oh, GF?

• 36:24Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so...

• 36:25Speaker 02

  Oh, a book of the laws of physics you shouldn't have.

• 36:28Bill Nye?

  And so, uh, but he was born on the 4th of January, as reckoned in Italy.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  So, no one knows for sure.

• 36:37Bill Nye?

  Well, yeah, we do. And so...

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 36:39Bill Nye?

  It's a cool and amazing thing, and I know it's come up on the show in the past, that it wasn't that long ago that people weren't exactly sure exactly how long it took the Earth to go around the Sun.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:52Bill Nye?

  We all take it for granted. You go to the office supply store, you buy calendar with puppies, calendar with kittens, puppies and kittens?

• 37:02Speaker 02

  No.

• 37:02Bill Nye?

  Firemen, whatever, with their, that sort of thing?

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:07Bill Nye?

  That kind of thing. And you all trust everybody...

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Who buys a calendar?

• 37:12Bill Nye?

  But you've seen them.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  I've seen them.

• 37:15Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, anyway...

• 37:17Speaker 02

  I've posed for them.

• 37:19Bill Nye?

  Really?

• 37:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 37:20Bill Nye?

  Comedian calendar?

• 37:22Speaker 02

  It's a lot of, it's 12 months of gross outs with issues.

• 37:26Bill Nye?

  Wow, great.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Somebody wants this.

• 37:28Bill Nye?

  Because then you feel better about yourself looking at the calendar.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 37:31Bill Nye?

  Anyway, it wasn't that long ago that people didn't know how long a year was. And so Pope Gregory XIII commissioned some very skilled astronomers to wreck, to re-reckon the calendar, and they did, and we use it to this day.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:46Bill Nye?

  People say, well, Isaac Newton was not born on the 25th of December. That's wrong. It's totally wrong. He's born on 4th of January. Here's my claim. His mother thought it was Christmas Day. And so, you're wrong. No, you're right.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  Argue with his mom.

• 38:00Bill Nye?

  It's all human construct, anyway. And as far as changing the world, the discoveries of Isaac Newton, which we've all embraced, have changed the course of history. All right, so you were saying, read a question, Eliza.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Big question for you. John L. Marie McGee from Facebook says, what are your thoughts on the Space Force?

• 38:18Bill Nye?

  Oh, so it's everybody...

• 38:19Speaker 02

  And what is it?

• 38:20Bill Nye?

  So, it's been proposed by certain congressmen here, member of congress, rather, here in the United States, to add a sixth branch of the US military. So you'd have the Navy, the Army, or the, let's start with the Army, the Navy and the Marines, the Coast Guard, and the Air Force. He wants to add a sixth one, the Space Force. Now, we're not supposed, as the head of this, CEO of the Planetary Society, it is not recommended that I express my political views in this regard.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  You kind of already did.

• 38:56Bill Nye?

  Well, the thing is...

• 38:57Speaker 02

  The Mars question.

• 38:58Bill Nye?

  Well, the space, if you go to, you don't go to the Air Museum here in the US. The second most popular museum on Earth is not the Air Museum, nor is it the Space Museum. It's the Air and Space Museum. And so, what the US Air Force does now is largely space. So maybe you could think of the US Air Force as the US Air and Space Force.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Just added on to the badge.

• 39:22Bill Nye?

  And we'd all move on, maybe. Don't, I mean, I'm not in charge. But what is clear... Is Russia is having a space force. And so that's probably what's motivating somebody thinking we need a space force. But it would be new stationary, new uniforms, a new song, a new everything.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  I think that's the big hiccup is the new song.

• 39:44Bill Nye?

  And so BT dubs, from my personal experience, myself personally speaking for myself, Eliza. I worked briefly on what's called the Joint Strike Fighter. This was an airplane, as an engineer, this is an airplane. That was going to be bought by the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines. And it was going to do all these great things. And the great things it was going to do was lower the cost of fighter planes. That was going to be the great thing it was going to do.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  What happened?

• 40:12Bill Nye?

  Well, it didn't, I mean, instead of 70%, this is a great noun, 70% commonality.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 40:21Bill Nye?

  That this, the parts would be interchangeable between the Air Force, the Marines and the Navy.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 40:25Bill Nye?

  It ended up to be about 30%. In other words, instead of 70% common, it ended up 70% uncommon.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:32Bill Nye?

  So it was, you guys, I'm all for it, but the, what everybody's trying to do is integrate the services, not add another one. But I want you to be happy, congressmen and senators. If you can show voters and taxpayers that you're saving money and doing a great thing and knock yourselves out.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Let's see the Venn diagram, let's see that commonality. Show it.

• 40:51Bill Nye?

  Let's see the Venn diagram.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Let's see the Venn diagram, because I will believe anything on a Venn diagram.

• 40:56Bill Nye?

  Really?

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yep.

• 40:59Bill Nye?

  So give me an example.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Okay, uh, the reasons I love puppies and reasons I love small dogs. And they overlap, um, because they're both dogs. And I believe it.

• 41:11Bill Nye?

  So, so you, is the ultimate a small dog puppy? Or is that taking it too far?

• 41:16Speaker 02

  You can't have a small, uh, well, I guess all puppies are small to start. So that's the ultimate, that's the goal.

• 41:23Bill Nye?

  So I mean, the so-called teacup Yorkie?

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, what about it? I don't know, it's too small. Maybe I changed my mind, it's too small, it's too fragile.

• 41:31Bill Nye?

  So let me talk briefly as a guy who's written a book about evolution. I wrote a book because I was concerned about people's literacy with respect to evolution.

• 41:40Speaker 02

  So you wrote a book to taunt them?

• 41:42Bill Nye?

  No, to in, to enable them to understand the most, the fundamental idea in all of biology.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:47Bill Nye?

  Or at least discuss it.

• 41:51Bill Nye?

  They're all dogs.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:53Bill Nye?

  If you're Blanche.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  You're a dog.

• 41:56Bill Nye?

  Interacts, Blanche is a dog.

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Hold on, I'll get you an example.

• 41:59Bill Nye?

  Yeah. If Blanche, who is not especially big, and we're talking about SpaceX.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  But she is dense.

• 42:07Bill Nye?

  Okay, if Blanche were to interact, can I say interact?

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:12Bill Nye?

  With a Great Dane.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:14Bill Nye?

  All you're gonna get is a dog. You're not gonna get some new thing.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  You're still gonna get a dog.

• 42:19Bill Nye?

  It's all you're gonna get is a dog.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Fun fact.

• 42:22Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Did you know that a baby horse is not a pony?

• 42:26Bill Nye?

  It's a.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  It's a colt.

• 42:29Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Most people don't know that.

• 42:30Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's a colt.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  A pony is a pony, it's its own thing.

• 42:33Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's not the Indianapolis ponies, by way of example.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  It's Indianapolis colt, so it's baby horses, that's your team.

• 42:40Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  And Colt 45 is a baby beer.

• 42:43Bill Nye?

  Well, the other thing about a colt, I've spent a little bit of time with colts.

• 42:47Speaker 02

  (laughing).

• 42:48Bill Nye?

  I have.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  I thought you meant like, got brainwashed.

• 42:50Bill Nye?

  No, no, no, they're rambunctious.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  As babies are.

• 42:54Bill Nye?

  Yeah, and so, that's not a, not a totally unreasonable name for a football team.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  Okay, fair enough, fair enough. Um, Frost Jarvinen, Frost Jarvinen on Facebook says, "As much as I love NASA," and it's a lot, he wants you to know, "it seems as though they're beginning to fall behind private enterprise in terms of pushing the envelope, so to speak. I'd love Bill's thoughts on this, hopefully to ease a bit of my doubts about the challenges NASA might be facing now and in the future."

• 43:26Bill Nye?

  So I think what you're talking about is SpaceX and Blue Origin. So these two crazily rich guys, Elon Musk, who have invented PayPal, or was involved very early on in PayPal, and Jeff Bezos, who.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  Invented Amazon.

• 43:44Bill Nye?

  Yeah. These guys are so wealthy, how wealthy are they, they're so wealthy, they wanna make rocket ships. But bear in mind, NASA buys rockets from these companies. NASA is building an even bigger, bigger rocket because it was believed that there wasn't a, a business model to make a bigger, big, big rocket called the Space Launch System, the SLS, and whimsical, uh, wags, I think is a political term.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  It's not Wives and Girlfriends, like that show.

• 44:16Bill Nye?

  No, no, these are, unless they all are critical of Congress, then they'd be wagwags.

• 44:21Speaker 02

  I doubt they have opinions.

• 44:22Bill Nye?

  Yeah. Uh, anyway, uh, they called it the Senate Launch System, because it seemed like it was a political thing. However, if the space launch system can be built successfully, this big rocket, it will lower the cost of going to deep space, and that'll be good.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  And this is the thing you're touching on for all of these, is like, the more we funnel our energies into this, and the more there is, then the, we can trickle down, and there's less of a cost.

• 44:46Bill Nye?

  And let me say, it's very cool and showy that SpaceX is landing the rocket boosters, and reusing rocket boosters, and trying to catch the drogue, the, the, the, block the windmobile nose cone on a ship. It's all very cool. But it's not clear that you're not losing money doing that.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  Not clear yet.

• 45:09Bill Nye?

  So, if they can get up over thirty launches a year, it'll be economical. That's what people speculate. So, we'll see. It's, competition's good, and just remember, the space agencies buy stuff from contractors. It's not one or the other, it's all at once. All the money's in space, it's been on Earth, as I like to say. Eliza, take it.

• 45:28Speaker 02

  That's where we spend our money.

• 45:29Bill Nye?

  And you should watch her special.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  Because it covers all of these topics.

• 45:32Bill Nye?

  It does. She is the elder millennial.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Yes, I am. Uh, so my question, Matthew McDaniel says, my question is, if Space Force becomes a workable branch of the military, which you prefer it not be a thing.

• 45:42Bill Nye?

  Well, I mean, if somebody can show it's worth it, I'm in.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  If it's worth it, scientific proof. Could the first step to actual colonization of the moon, and possibly, could it be the first step in colonization of the moon, and possibly Mars, or at least manned orbital observation posts?

• 45:57Bill Nye?

  So, a couple things. Uh, no.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Great, we'll be right back.

• 46:01Bill Nye?

  Because it's military. That's not the military's business. Military doesn't go to establish colonies. In the good old days, you hired, like, General Custer, George Custer.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  We all know what happened there.

• 46:13Bill Nye?

  Well, here's what happened. Uh, he was defeated because the natives had better weaponry. Strangely enough, they had traded for better guns. But after that happened, that's when the US said, okay, that's it. We're taking over. We're knocking, we're, we're wiping these people out of here.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  Here's your blanket.

• 46:32Bill Nye?

  And so, there was an example where the US military was involved in colonization.

• 46:37Bill Nye?

  That wasn't good, probably. Historians generally think that was unfair and troubling. So you will not use the US military to establish settlements on other worlds. The way to think about it is NASA, ESA, European Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, Australian Space, they look up and out. The military looks down and in.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  Oh, two different jobs.

• 47:04Bill Nye?

  Two different things.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, different perspectives. Looks down and in to keep the peace.

• 47:09Bill Nye?

  Well, what we call situational awareness. We used to call spying.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Oh, I like that term. That's interesting. Situational. So it was situational awareness that helped you find out your boyfriend was cheating on you?

• 47:19Bill Nye?

  Well, that's right. And situational awareness also tells you where the weather is. It's not bad. I was, I went a little, I got a little edgy there.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  I felt it.

• 47:27Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:28Bill Nye?

  I'll pull back.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Rated R.

• 47:30Bill Nye?

  Thank you for tuning in here to StarTalk All-Stars Edition. I want to thank especially the wonderful insights of my co-host, Eliza Schlesinger.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Thank you for letting me answer all your questions.

• 47:39Bill Nye?

  It was fun. Her special, Elder Millennials, is streaming now on Netflix.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can catch it now, right now. Next click.

• 47:48Bill Nye?

  And turn it up loud. Thanks for watching, everyone. I'm Bill Nye. We'll see you next time on StarTalk. Keep looking up.