Watching the Skies, with the US Space Command

Neil Tyson flies to Thule Air Base in Greenland to investigate the intersection of space exploration and the military. With Chuck Nice, Laura Grego, PhD, Prof. Priya Natarajan, Colonel Thomas Colvin, General John Raymond, General John Shaw, Tim Norton, and Bill Nye. Thanks to this week’s Patrons for supporting us: Renee Douglas, Ernesto Chavez, Julia Lyschik, Sydney Reising, Andy Green, and Cherrico Pottery. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/watching-the-skies-with-the-us-space-command/ Photo Credit USAF (Public domain).

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to the Hall of the Universe. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and tonight, we're featuring my visit to a remote military base in the Arctic. Where Air Force Space Command keeps constant watch for incoming threats from space. So, let's do this.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, my co-host tonight, Chuck Nice. Chuck, give it up. Hey, hey. What up, Neil? Chuck Nice. How you doing, buddy? Tweeting at ChuckNiceComic. Thank you, sir. Yes. Also joining us is space security expert... Whoa. Space security expert, Laura Grego. Laura, welcome.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a senior scientist, the Global Security Program, at the Union for Concerned Scientists.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what we need, more concerned scientists.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Yeah, not those guys that just don't give a damn.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You focus on national missile defense technology...

• 1:27Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And space security. And you have a background in physics, in astrophysics?

• 1:32Speaker 01

  I do. I was an astrophysicist until I switched over.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we'll need your expertise tonight, because we're going to discuss my recent tour of Tullie Air Force Base in Greenland. And it's the US military's northernmost base, 900 miles from the North Pole. Wow. 900 miles. That's, yeah, that's pretty far north. Yeah, that's pretty far north. You can see Santa Claus.

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a strategic location juxtaposed between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. It's now operated by the US Air Force Space Command.

• 2:03Chuck Nice?

  Space Command?

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Space Command. I recently had a special invitation from the Air Force to visit this remote base at the top of the world. Check it out.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Hello, sir.

• 2:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody. All right, it's good to see you. How are you?

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Dr. Tyson.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is, hello.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  Paul, and welcome to you.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 2:19Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You guys just live in this temperature, right? Is this balmy?

• 2:25Speaker 03

  It looks a little different than other air bases if you've ever been to one before.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  Everything's built uniquely for the Arctic up here. That's actually the sun rising above the ice cap.

• 2:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's beautiful.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ice cap is here. It's there. And it's almost a spiritual moment for me. We're well within the Arctic Circle, which starts at 66.5 degrees. So of course, we're so high in latitude, the sun doesn't get very high above the horizon. Even after it rises, it just stays very low. Plus, I'm intrigued by how much of a sort of Cold War legacy is there. Like, the enemy is there, the enemy over there, over the pole. So it's a, it's there. You feel it.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  All right.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what goes on here?

• 3:23Speaker 03

  So, welcome to 12 Swiss. This is our missile warning radar. We perform missile warning, missile defense, and space surveillance here. We're gonna take you inside and show you some of the interior, introduce you to some of the folks that are actually doing the mission up here. But as we walk inside, I need you, sir, to turn off your cameras.

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 3:41Speaker 03

  Cameras are not allowed inside.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, these guys will get really upset if we try to bring cameras inside.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're not authorized.

• 3:53Chuck Nice?

  Who knew that our space, that it was operated like a trendy nightclub?

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Little velvet rope.

• 4:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, little velvet rope acts is just like, yeah, you could come in, but your ugly camera people gotta stay out here.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but I had the security. That's security clearance.

• 4:09Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay. Wait, you have a security clearance?

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 4:13Chuck Nice?

  That's very cool.

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't tell you back?

• 4:15Chuck Nice?

  No, you did not.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that was a...

• 4:17Chuck Nice?

  That's part of your security clearance, right?

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Laura, what, um, why does the Air Force need a Space Command?

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, the military's been using space since the jump. You know, instead of having to fly a plane over the Soviet Union to see what was going on, we could launch satellites, right, which weren't so vulnerable. The military...

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can't just shoot down a satellite. It's the way you can shoot down an airplane.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely not back then.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back then, yeah.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. You know, you could use satellite-based sensors to make sure that missile, you know, you could catch when missiles are being launched. And even a navigation system started way back then to help nuclear submarines know where they were. That was the beginning of GPS. So military's been doing, you know, satellites for a long time and eventually...

• 5:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but the Space Force under the Air Force wasn't established until 1982.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  1982, I got, pulled those all together and got Space Command.

• 5:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So why do we need a base at the top of the world?

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that original location is really a Cold War relic, right? So we kind of think, politically, we think east-west, you know, Soviet Union, US.

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You go around the world this way, that, yeah.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  But the world's round.

• 5:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Right, so the shortest path...

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For most people, the world is round.

• 5:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Most of us.

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To make that clear, yes.

• 5:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yes, for this, so, you know, the shortest path for a missile, you know, will often come far north. Not, it doesn't go around east-west, it comes close to the pole. And so this was a place where you could watch for those things happening.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, because it's so far north, the Tule Air Force Base has months of daylight in summer and months of darkness in the winter. And many people don't, don't think about that. Because when you're above the Arctic Circle, that's the boundary between when you could actually have 24 hours of light or dark and when you don't. And so the farther north you go, every like inch north of the Arctic Circle, you get more and more days that are full 24 hours daylight or full 24 hours dark. Until you get to Santa Claus. And then you get six months day, six months night.

• 6:16Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 6:18Chuck Nice?

  That sounds really bad. Like, those elves must be so very, very sad.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, especially in the winter.

• 6:25Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's wintertime.

• 6:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, that's the max, it's dark, all dark, all the time.

• 6:30Chuck Nice?

  Slave labor at night, damn.

• 6:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, what do you think of we like to station up there?

• 6:36Chuck Nice?

  Listen, all I'm gonna tell you is this, you will not find a frozen brother nowhere on this planet.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not the ones that're chipping out of the glacier that's receding.

• 6:45Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, you know what I mean? It's like, you might find Encino Man, you will not find Compton Man, okay? That's all there is to it. But, the temperature drops to forty below in the wintertime there. Forty below, okay? As I said, no black people.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what's good about forty below?

• 7:06Chuck Nice?

  What, please?

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is where the Fahrenheit and Celsius temperature scales cross.

• 7:12Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So forty below centigrade equals forty below Fahrenheit.

• 7:16Chuck Nice?

  Forty below centigrade is still forty below?

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Equals forty below.

• 7:19Chuck Nice?

  Equals forty below Fahrenheit.

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's where the two temperature scales cross.

• 7:22Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 7:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you can say forty below, and then leave it at that. It's always forty below.

• 7:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know that it's the same, and if people ask you, you just know.

• 7:30Chuck Nice?

  Right, I got you.

• 7:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, after my peek inside the base, Colonel Calvin took me to see how the missile warning system actually works.

• 7:42Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, let's check it out. So, being inside the building, you told me that there was big radar above our heads, so that's gotta be that right there.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  That is that.

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  So that is our solid-state phased radar radar. We call it the upgraded early warning radar. And there's actually another face on the other side of it. So what that, those two faces, it looks out 240 degrees, in our case, now towards the pole, to watch for anything that's gonna happen over the pole.

• 8:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is beaming out energy.

• 8:11Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 8:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Looking to see if any of it gets reflected back to you.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not only a transmitter, it's a receiver.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  Yes, it can look out about 3,000 miles. So if you think about somebody throwing up a basketball in Los Angeles, if I was in New York, this radar could pick that up.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here we are 900 miles from the North Pole, and looking north, if there's any missile launched from that other side of the earth, they will see it first. Rising up over the horizon.

• 8:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it headed for a city? Is it headed just for the ocean? Somebody's thinking about that. And that's a good thing.

• 8:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Laura, these are missiles that go from continent to continent.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 8:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're ballistic, which means they they move under the, purely the influence of gravity once they're launched. And so, they're intercontinental, they're ballistic, and they're missiles. I mean, ICBMs. I guess that's where we get the abbreviation from. How, was that a game changer?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  It really, it was.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Going back to the Cold War, I guess.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Back to the Cold War, right?

• 9:19Speaker 01

  One thing, they go fast, right? In, intercontinental, they can go 6,000 miles in a half an hour, 40 minutes, right? So you don't have to send airplanes with bombs.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and there's, and there's no time to do anything about it?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Right, they're coming fast, they're going so fast, you know, 30 times the speed of a jet.

• 9:37Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  So, yeah, really hard to defend against. And they're very precise. You know, you can send them that far and hit, you know, basically, in a city block.

• 9:45Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  You choose that's where you want it to go.

• 9:47Chuck Nice?

  With a nuclear device attached to it?

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, so ICBMs are nuclear.

• 9:53Chuck Nice?

  In the nose cone. In the nose cone.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:54Chuck Nice?

  I just thought of a new name for ICBM.

• 9:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 9:57Chuck Nice?

  I cause bowel movements.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Wow. But, but yeah, fast, deadly, accurate, it was, it was profound.

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And even though none, none has ever been used, we knew what their potential was.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Yes, right. So there, you know, there was the whole process of trying to figure out how to keep a nuclear war from happening, of course.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you don't even use these?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this would be the primary delivery mechanism for nuclear warheads, then? In an exchange, in a nuclear exchange?

• 10:30Speaker 01

  At one point, right, so, so, you know, today we have land-based ICBMs. We have submarine-based ballistic missiles. So they're launching, patrolling out at the sea, hunting for Red October stuff.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw the movie, yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, and then bombers. So you carry nuclear weapons on airplanes. There are, there's just, you know, we can talk some more about where that's going from here, but, you know, during the Cold War, there was, it was tricky to know. We didn't want to get a nuclear war. How do we communicate? You know, deterrence. How do we say, "I don't want you to use them on me." And I want to make it so, the result so painful, you'll never do that.

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I spent some time putting that in this book.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just came out.

• 11:13Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Accessory to War.

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I feel really crass, holding this up on my own show.

• 11:17Chuck Nice?

  Here, let me do it for you.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, check.

• 11:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, yeah, just how accessory to war. The unspoken alliance between astrophysics and the military.

• 11:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Probing all the ways that we've been sort of handmaidens to military conflict.

• 11:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, forever. So Laura, how effective is this system in Greenland at deflecting missiles? Suppose they come from South Korea, I mean, from North Korea instead of Russia.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  So, the job of those systems is not to deflect those missiles, but to detect them. And what they do is that they catch, just because we're going to come to the deflection later. They, they're sitting there and they're looking, they're waiting to see something come on over. Luckily, we don't see those happening. But between the radar and TUI and the other radars we have, and we have space-based infrared sensors that can catch that big plume from a launch.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The heat plume, yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  The heat plume, right? So, when an ICBM is launched, that the engine burning. The US can detect a missile as soon as it's launched. I mean, you can see everything, right?

• 12:24Chuck Nice?

  And that helps us how?

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Right, well.

• 12:29Chuck Nice?

  Because right now, you kind of sound like my alarm system. Because, you know, they give me a call and they're just like, "Hello, Mr. Nice, we've actually detected an alarm on Zone 5." And I'm just like, "Yeah, well, I'm in Chicago." So, what is going on, can you help my house, is what I want to know.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Well, it's good that we're detecting that they're not coming, right? So we know all the time that they're not coming.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, that's information.

• 12:53Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Knowing that they're not coming.

• 12:56Chuck Nice?

  I am going to sleep so well tonight.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sleep beautifully. Well, after I visited Greenland, I had a visit to my office, the commander of the Air Force Space Command, four-star General John Raymond. And I asked General Raymond about their presence in the Arctic. Check it out.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Those crews are on alert, fully ready for any threat that they may face.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I imagine that it may be hard to convince the American people that the fact that we haven't been attacked is not because no one wants to attack us, it's because we've had effective deterrence. It's gotta be hard, it's gotta be a hard stuff.

• 13:35Speaker 04

  So I lived in North Dakota once, and I was driving down the street, and I hit a deer, totaled the car. And I got back to my unit the next day, and I was telling my friends that I hit a deer and totaled my car. And one of the guys that I was stationed with, who happened to be from North Dakota, said, "So you don't have deer whistles on your car?" I said, "What is a deer whistle?" "Well, deer whistles, when you drive, make a sound and it keeps the deer away." And I asked him, "Well, how do you know if it works?" "You don't unless you hit a deer, and then you know it didn't work." So it's, but it's deterrence, and it's something that is hard to...

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't have a deer whistle.

• 14:09Speaker 04

  I didn't have a deer whistle.

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laura, how effective is deterrence as a national security strategy?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Right, well, if you're trying to deter someone from doing something by saying, "I'm gonna do something back to you," you gotta understand each other pretty well. And during the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union kinda struggled to understand each other. And to, you know, our idea of deterrence ended up being sort of more nuclear weapons, more kinds of delivery systems. We ended up, you know, in 1985 with 60,000 nuclear weapons.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And still none were used, so we can say it was working.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  But that presents a lot of risks, right? And even today, we've scaled back down, there's about an eighth of that number. We've got, you know, we don't have as many nuclear weapons today, but you'll see, you know, Vladimir Putin making announcements like, "We're developing these new kinds of delivery systems, underwater drone that can blow up coastal cities." And the US is considering some more smaller, usable nuclear weapons. So it's this game of, "I'm trying to deter you by saying the cost will be so high, but it has to be something that you think I might really do." It's tricky.

• 15:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it, will there be a day when we don't need the 2L Air Force Base? Where we say, "No, we know them, our enemy, our former enemy, well enough. It ain't gonna happen, we don't need them."

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Well, I certainly hope there's a day where we don't have nuclear deterrence, and we don't organize our society around nuclear deterrence.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It won't be happening right now. Well, coming up next, we'll have more of my tour inside the Arctic Base of the U.S. Air Force Space Command when StarTalk continues.

• 16:04Speaker 05

  The future of space and the secrets of our planet revealed.

• 16:13Speaker 05

  This is StarTalk.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk, featuring my visit to U.S. Air Force Space Command in Greenland. It's a crucial hub for the U.S. military to connect with satellites as they pass over the top of the world. Let's check it out.

• 16:44Speaker 03

  So here we've got two satellite dishes that are both transmit and receive sites, and they talk to more than 170 satellites that we have within the Department of Defense, the United States government, and some of our allied as well. Each of the different space operations centers in all the different places around the globe are actually piping into this and commanding and controlling their satellites through these shared-use domes.

• 17:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 17:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  Wow, this is right. Absolutely beautiful. Forty-two feet across.

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's track satellites?

• 17:19Speaker 03

  It does. It tracks satellites all day long.

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, it acquires them and tracks them?

• 17:24Speaker 03

  Yes. One of the neat things about this is it's an inflatable dome?

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not rigid.

• 17:31Speaker 03

  Correct. So in the high winds that we have up here, that's beneficial to us because the dome can sort of flex a little bit no matter what it's like outside.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How windy does it get?

• 17:40Speaker 03

  We've clocked winds at about 209 miles an hour out here.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it wasn't a hurricane?

• 17:45Speaker 03

  There was not.

• 17:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a regular wind at 200 miles an hour.

• 17:49Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  And that's not a missile warning. This is actually, we're gonna start moving the satellite dish a little bit here.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it looks like it just acquired a satellite.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  It did. And so depending on what they want to talk to the satellite about, you know, it depends on how long they're gonna track it. Sometimes they'll track it all the way across the sky. Sometimes they only need to talk to it for a little bit.

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it's tracking an object orbiting Earth that's going 17,000 miles an hour. Except it's several hundred miles up. So it moves at a very slow, sort of angular rate across the sky.

• 18:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This place feels alive.

• 18:30Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Laura, how important is satellite, the satellite communication network to national security?

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so what that dish was doing was talking to satellites. Saying, "Hey, how's it going? How's your fuel? Is everything working well? This is what I want you to do today. This is what I want you to look at. And hey, do you have those pictures I asked you for yesterday? I'm gonna download them." So it's that whole communications channel. It underpins basic modern militaries. Precision-guided munitions, weather prediction, long-distance communication, troops who are in the field. Like, that's how the United States does what it does, is use these satellites.

• 19:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the space support for what previously was only done by ground communication channels.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Right, there's been a real, a real revolution in the last couple of decades. And basically satellites underpin everything the military does.

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the risk of some rogue enemy state targeting our defense satellites?

• 19:32Speaker 01

  So one thing about being in space is that you're kind of vulnerable, right? It's not like you're dug in in a bunker in your own territory. And part of the reason you're in space is that you can see other people. You can communicate. So you're gonna go over their territory. So, and space is not all that far, you know? These low-Earth orbiting satellites are not any further than the train I took from Boston to New York today. I mean, that's...

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Couple hundred miles, yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's where the space station is. Some of these, they're a bit further, but it's kind of in the neighborhood, right? So there are ways you can kind of interfere with them. You can mess up their communications. It's called jamming. And of course, they're close by and you can think about actually physically destroying them.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Taking them out.

• 20:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Right, we haven't, we're not doing that, right? So no country's ever done that to another country.

• 20:22Chuck Nice?

  But the first country that does do it is actually gonna start something big.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, something bad, like, yeah, yeah, right.

• 20:28Chuck Nice?

  And I am just the person that, okay, I'm sorry.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I had the commander of the US Air Force Space Command in my office, again, because that's how I roll. And I asked General Raymond about securing our assets in space. I had to get some understanding of this, so let's check it out.

• 20:49Speaker 04

  The United States Air Force tracks all the objects that are in space. It started with Sputnik as object number one. Today, we track 23,000 objects in space. And we act as the space traffic control for the world. On average, about once every three days, a satellite maneuvers to keep from running into another.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 21:08Speaker 04

  And on average, about three times a year, the International Space Station maneuvers to keep from, to avoid a collision with a piece of debris. And we provide that surveillance of space to make sure that we keep track of all those objects and that we keep the domain safe for all.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laura, how crowded is that? Well, 22,000 objects is all satellites plus significant debris, I guess.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Right. So one thing we do at my organization is we keep track of the actively working satellites. So there are about 1,800. And then the rest is debris and stuff. And that could be, you know, an astronaut lost their glove, or a bolt broke off, or maybe a stage, a launch stage had some fuel left in it and it exploded later and it had a bunch of stuff there. So there's, there's a lot of stuff. I mean, space is big, right? So it's not, you know, super crowded, but it gets one more dangerous. You're not ducking it, but it's, you know.

• 22:11Chuck Nice?

  I would love to put that to music, is all I'm saying.

• 22:17Chuck Nice?

  I call it my space dance.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Maneuvers.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, would you have guessed there was that much stuff in space?

• 22:25Chuck Nice?

  You know what, I probably would have, and here's why.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 22:28Chuck Nice?

  Because I know that there are, you know, there's quite a bit of stuff in space. Okay, I mean, when you, at the lowest is the ISS, right?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:36Chuck Nice?

  Right?

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a zonal orbital fragment.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  Right, you got your ISS, okay? Then you go right above that, you got Hubble.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Chuck Nice?

  Right?

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 22:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay, then if you go a little bit above that, this is the stuff we know about with all the satellites right up there. But then the next layer, there you go, is all the kids that let balloons go.

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 22:55Chuck Nice?

  Right, right there, that's what happens.

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know that.

• 22:58Chuck Nice?

  Then the level after that is all the empty vodka bottles thrown out from the Soyuz.

• 23:06Chuck Nice?

  Which is the Russian transport to the space station.

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You act like they got a rolled down window to toss out the garbage.

• 23:14Chuck Nice?

  And then, of course, the final layer is frozen astronaut pee.

• 23:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. That's right, that's right.

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what, what's the worst case scenario? We also saw the movie Gravity.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where one satellite takes out two, takes out 10, takes out 100. This Kessler effect, I think it's called, is, how real is that given our current situation? Could someone set that off intentionally?

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 23:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And do you have a plan to fix it?

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Well, these are good questions, right? So the cascade effect you're talking about is, you know, you might have a satellite and then a smaller piece hits it, that breaks up and makes other small pieces that can hit other satellites.

• 23:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That themselves become lethal projectiles.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Become lethal projectiles, right? And, you know, we can track lots of these, 23,000 objects, but, you know, the stuff that's hard to track, these little things that are like marble sized, that can take out a satellite too, because they're going so fast, like.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  17, 18,000 miles an hour.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Five miles per second, that is, yeah.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  So you can't, yeah, so you can't track them, but they can, they can damage you. So you gotta be really careful about how much debris you make.

• 24:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's the resolution of this?

• 24:27Speaker 01

  So how do, where do we get?

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are you doing about it?

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Right, so there are, there are good rules being developed. Just kind of like, you know, to put your car on the road, you have to get inspections. We're starting to do that about space. You know, your satellite has to be, you know.

• 24:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are there that many people shooting crap into space that you can ask that, that you have to worry about the quality of what they're putting up there?

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's where we're at. Right, and so there's lots of just, you know, basic housekeeping and stuff. And when a satellite dies, you, you need to de-orbit it or put it in a great.

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they've got to have fuel for de-orbiting.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They've got to have death fuel.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Death fuel. You have to save the last of your tank in order to be a good citizen.

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I call that the Thelma and Louise.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you take it down. But, you know, all, all of that good work, all of that, you know, good housekeeping, all those good rules, you know, that can get swamped if you intentionally destroy a satellite. So we've, we've done a calculation using the NASA breakup model. So for a big spy satellite, like a 10-ton satellite, if, if, if an anti-satellite weapon destroyed that, it could break up and it could basically double or triple the pieces, the number of large debris in just those orbits that we use the most. So to have a really good solution, you have to deal with the space security question. Like, how do we not target other people's satellites? How do we not target satellites?

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just to be clear, a 10-ton satellite is weightless in orbit.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, I'm just saying. It don't mean it doesn't hurt when you get hit with it. Right. I'm just saying. It's just weightless. It's just weightless. It still has mass. Right. Yeah. The Newton equations have mass in them when you're calculating momentum and energy and that sort of thing. Right now, you are speaking Japanese to me.

• 26:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, up next in my visit to the Arctic, we check out a telescope that can peer into the depths of a black hole when StarTalk returns.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  This is StarTalk.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. We're featuring my recent visit to a remote base in Greenland. Check it out.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got another telescope to look at. I keep calling these telescopes. They just call them dishes.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's really, really, really cold.

• 26:56Speaker 06

  Well.

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hello.

• 26:57Speaker 06

  Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is.

• 26:59Speaker 06

  It's a pleasure. Welcome to the Greenland Telescope Project.

• 27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are Tim Norton.

• 27:02Speaker 06

  Tim Norton.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a pleasure to meet you.

• 27:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, excellent. So let's take a look at the telescope.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. Don't you need a coat or something?

• 27:08Speaker 06

  I'm up here all the time. I'm really used to this and I'm out of, uh... I grew up skiing in northern New England, so...

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 27:16Speaker 06

  It's not usually...

• 27:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a homegrown New Englander.

• 27:18Speaker 06

  This is not a problem.

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. You're just showing off now.

• 27:20Speaker 06

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what do you have here?

• 27:22Speaker 06

  So what you have is a 12-meter dish. And the telescope was a prototype for the Alma.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh.

• 27:29Speaker 06

  Array in Chile.

• 27:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:31Speaker 06

  And Academia Syndica came in with most of the resources to rebuild this...

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Code for money. Yes, go on.

• 27:36Speaker 06

  Money. The telescope.

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh.

• 27:39Speaker 06

  For the cold environment.

• 27:42Speaker 06

  So the neat thing is, right now, we don't have a picture of a black hole.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we don't.

• 27:46Speaker 06

  We've got a lot of great artist renditions.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's over there in that dark area.

• 27:49Speaker 06

  That's right. And it looks like this. Got some great pictures out there. They show up in movies, shows everywhere, but we don't have a picture.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm. So how does this convert to anything that's gonna contribute to our understanding of black holes?

• 28:03Speaker 06

  So, basically, you have to think about this as, what can we resolve? The best targets are in M-87 and in our galaxy.

• 28:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The huge elliptical galaxy, the M-87.

• 28:13Speaker 06

  It's considered a supermassive black hole, but from where we are standing, the size of that black hole is about 50 to 60 microarc seconds in size. So in order to see that, we need to be able to resolve at a fraction of that size. And the way to do that is to tie in radio telescopes from around the world. When they work together, they have the resolving power, essentially, of an Earth-sized telescope.

• 28:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you can resolve at that, this paints a much more detailed picture of the universe. All we know is black holes are black, and they got a lot of gravity and stay away from them. And they're honing in on them, and I can't wait till they come online. And they can tell us what's going on at the event horizon. Because that's the spot where black holes are eating anything that wanders too close. There's a lot of action there. So I'm gonna watch the space.

• 29:07Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, joining us to discuss what black holes might actually look like is theoretical physicist Priya Natarajan. Priya, welcome.

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. You're a professor of astronomy at Yale, and you specialize in studying the physics of black holes. So the black hole at the center of our galaxy is four million times the mass of the sun. Is that about right?

• 29:30Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 29:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've never actually seen it.

• 29:32Speaker 07

  Right, so first of all, I think black holes are pretty bizarre, crazy objects, and every rendition you've seen of them is incorrect.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, OK.

• 29:42Speaker 07

  So they're very complex. I think there's two simple ways to think about what a black hole really is. One is, we can think of the intense gravity that it has. So, for example, if you look at the Earth's gravity, to escape the Earth's gravity, we have to shoot rockets out at about 11 kilometers per second. That's the escape speed from the Earth.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Seven miles per second.

• 30:04Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, yes.

• 30:06Speaker 07

  That's about, you know, 30 times the speed of sun. So that's why we need rockets and boosters.

• 30:10Chuck Nice?

  You keep your commonest measurements to yourself. This is America, damn it.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  America.

• 30:16Speaker 07

  So if you can imagine that the gravity of an object is so intense that the speed of light, so 300,000 kilometers per second, is what you would have to exceed to escape its gravity, that's what a black hole is. So not even light can actually escape a black hole. So that's like one way to think about the intense gravity of it. The other way to think about it is the packing, the density of how compact it is. So for the Earth to behave like a black hole, to be packed like a black hole, and you know, we astrophysicists like to think of black holes actually as objects because they're end states of stars. So it's kind of a convenient way to think about it.

• 30:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a thing.

• 30:59Speaker 07

  As a thing. In reality, they're much more complex because, you know, there are sort of pockmarks in this four-dimensional spacetime and so on. But if you pack all of Earth's mass into less than 10 millimeters, that's the kind of density and packing you have inside a black hole.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now, but how do we know we have a four million times the mass of sun black hole in the center of our galaxy?

• 31:20Speaker 07

  So we've inferred the mass.

• 31:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you been there?

• 31:22Speaker 07

  No, I wouldn't stray close.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it'd be totally bad for you, yeah.

• 31:27Speaker 07

  So it's from the gravitational influence that a black hole exerts on its vicinity. So it impacts the motions of stars that are right around it. It sort of, you know, slings them and brings them back, has captured them in orbits. So now astronomers have actually tracked the speeds and the orbits of stars that are right around the center of the black hole. The only way...

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh wait, so the center of this thing?

• 31:51Speaker 07

  Of our galaxy.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, no, but they tracked the orbits, they don't know what's there yet.

• 31:55Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 31:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They look at the speeds.

• 31:56Speaker 07

  They look at the speeds, they map the orbits.

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Calculate.

• 31:59Speaker 07

  Yeah, they calculate, they map the orbits, they close. So that tells you, à la Kepler's laws, you need to have something quite massive that's at one of the foßides.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And small.

• 32:09Speaker 07

  And small, very compact, and that, sitting there. And so from the motions of these stars that have been tracked now for 20 years, we actually know that there's a very dense, compact object, quite massive, that's sitting there.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the general public's exposure to this kind of information, I think, hit a peak recently with the film Interstellar.

• 32:33Speaker 07

  Ooh, I love that.

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they brought on Kip Thorne, Caltech physicist, not only to help write the storylines, but as one of the executive producers. And he modeled a black hole for scenes in the movie.

• 32:44Speaker 07

  So that, in the movie Interstellar, so what was modeled was a black hole called Gargantua, which was actually spinning very rapidly. So the other way in which you infer the presence of black holes is the extreme light bending, because the gravity is so intense and space is so seriously warped around a black hole, that light gets trapped in a very, very particular shape and you can sort of see this shadow.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The path of light gets trapped.

• 33:11Speaker 07

  The path of light gets trapped, yeah.

• 33:13Chuck Nice?

  So it is actually taking the path of light, bending it.

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 33:17Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 33:17Chuck Nice?

  So that now the light itself is almost like orbiting the black hole.

• 33:21Speaker 07

  Absolutely. And in fact...

• 33:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black hole's a badass.

• 33:24Chuck Nice?

  That's really, that's hot.

• 33:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's hot.

• 33:27Chuck Nice?

  That's hot.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, was that what you thought a black hole might look like, do you think?

• 33:31Chuck Nice?

  Now you know, there's no way. I mean, that was, that was based on math.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Phia, thank you for joining us tonight in illuminating black holes. Up next, more on the science of space defense. We're going to start talking with Terrence.

• 34:10Chuck Nice?

  Hey, we want to say a special thank you to the following Patreon patrons who are helping us in our little journey through the cosmos. Sydney Reising, Andy Green, Cherrico Pottery. Hey, guys. Thanks. And if you'd like to get a shout out, make sure you support us on Patreon.

• 34:30Speaker 05

  The future of space and the secrets of our planet revealed.

• 34:39Speaker 05

  This is StarTalk.

• 34:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History. We're featuring my recent visit to a remote base in Greenland, where the US Air Force Space Command keeps a constant eye on the sky for an incoming missile attack. Let's check it out.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  All right. So come on in. This is our simulator. I've got Staff Sergeant Snyder and Second Lieutenant Milligan. They're going to be running through some scenarios with you today. Okay?

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is, what is this, this room is what?

• 35:30Speaker 03

  So this room is our simulator for the missile warning radar. So most of our weapon systems have a simulator where the operators can come in and they can learn how to run the system without actually getting on the system first. So we'll get better, we'll get smarter, we can run different scenarios. It's part of what we call the Space Mission Force. And if there's a missile launch, if it's a threat-based launch, it's the type of thing that you're not gonna know it's coming, right? So it's gonna be launched in aggression. So that's really what they're there for.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're not gonna see the launch, cuz you're only seeing what comes over the horizon. It's already been launched.

• 36:00Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you might combine that with satellite data that says, hey, something's suspicious.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm, right. So, and I think you'll see that a little bit in this scenario as well.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's take a look.

• 36:10Speaker 08

  So the first thing we get is the launch notification. See a launch notification? And it tells us exactly where that launch is coming from. And now we see here, we're getting these X objects. These are what the missile launches, indications will come on our screen looking like. And we get the constant beep until we acknowledge that we've actually got it. So he'll call the techs.

• 36:33Speaker 08

  We're seeing missile launches? This is Thule, we are receiving missile data. So now we're passing this information of the launch predicted and impact of these missiles and say, this is valid data.

• 36:47Speaker 08

  That's the end of our observation.

• 36:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shouldn't sirens be going off or something? Shouldn't, there be like flashing red lights?

• 36:55Speaker 08

  That's our beep.

• 36:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That little tone?

• 36:58Speaker 08

  That tone.

• 36:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That tone?

• 37:00Speaker 08

  It won't stop until we acknowledge it.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what you're saying is, you guys are badass enough, you don't need a loud siren. That low tone is, that'll get you, get you going.

• 37:10Speaker 08

  Yes, sir.

• 37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  And one of the things about this simulator down here is to get them ingrained in how to use the system all the time. So they continually practice and practice and practice. So when they're on the, so when they're on shift, they're able to go all the time.

• 37:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, cool. Thank you, gentlemen.

• 37:31Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 37:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 37:33Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying that I'm really happy that those guys are there, but I got socks older than them dudes, man.

• 37:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 37:41Chuck Nice?

  Those are some young, young guys. And they are responsible for the missile defense of our entire nation.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Chuck Nice?

  They probably think like Radar is a dating app. That's crazy, man.

• 37:55Chuck Nice?

  You see how young those dudes were?

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but they, you know, they play video games their whole life. They're probably better at that than you will ever be.

• 38:01Chuck Nice?

  This is true. I gotta get, no, you know, you make a good point there.

• 38:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 38:04Chuck Nice?

  My son, you're his hero right now. And now you gave him an excuse, just like, Dad, but I wanna save the country.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Laura.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We detect incoming missiles. What happens next?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Right, so if a ballistic missile is launched somewhere on the earth, you are right, satellite-based sensors will see that bright signal. And there might be forward-based radars, like around North Korea, for example. We have radars that are ready to catch that. And they'll cue radars like TUI and tracking radars. And those radars will take a look and they'll figure out where it's going. Because we talked about ballistic missiles, right? Once you figure out where it's going, you got the whole track. It's not maneuvering, it's not an airplane, you got the whole arc. It's like hitting a baseball.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what ballistic means. It's just following the force of gravity.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Exactly. So that information goes to command and control. And they make a decision, is this something we're gonna intercept? And so you wanted to talk about missile defense systems. So we have one system, which is you launch what's an interceptor. Those are in Alaska. So the way it's supposed to work is that it, is that this interceptor sort of hurls what's called a kill vehicle. It's basically something the size of like a file cabinet. And its job is to maneuver itself and run into an incoming nuclear warhead and destroy it with the force of impact. That's what it's meant to do.

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A kinetic kill.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  A kinetic kill, right, destroys it. That's really hard to do.

• 39:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, don't they call that shooting a bullet out of the sky with another bullet?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, hitting a bullet with a bullet, right? It's really hard, and that's, that's hard to do. And we've been trying to do that for 20 years. And the test record is about half, right? And this is a really difficult job that, you know, it's probably one of the most complex military systems. Ever built in, certainly one of the most expensive.

• 39:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasn't that, I think the number was a $6 billion ticket on that, is that right?

• 40:01Speaker 01

  $67 billion.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, excuse me.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  67 will be the price tag, yeah.

• 40:06Chuck Nice?

  We have that in our couch cushions.

• 40:10Chuck Nice?

  It's America. $67 billion, go look in the sofa.

• 40:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, do you trust the detection system there?

• 40:18Chuck Nice?

  Ah, you know what, I gotta tell you, um, to be honest, you know, I just, I didn't appreciate that alarm system that they had.

• 40:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like me, I didn't, I couldn't.

• 40:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I couldn't get over that.

• 40:29Chuck Nice?

  Like, you could have gone with a much better alarm system, all right? Like, even like the annoying alarm clock, you know that?

• 40:38Chuck Nice?

  Would have been better than what they had, that little, you know, so, I mean, yes. You know, what is that? Like, that's ridiculous. I have some better alarm systems.

• 40:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you?

• 40:49Chuck Nice?

  I do, for them, all right? Here's your standard alarm.

• 40:54Chuck Nice?

  Inside the room, right?

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:58Chuck Nice?

  Right? Then, of course, there's the AI, the crowd pleaser, you know, like, just the...

• 41:08Chuck Nice?

  Right, right, you know? Uh, and of course, like, this is my, one of my favorites, is just a goat, you know what I mean?

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A goat?

• 41:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the goat, like, here you go.

• 41:22Chuck Nice?

  That's a great alarm! All right? And, and, and, and here's the thing, if you really wanna make it, like, for those young dudes.

• 41:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:30Chuck Nice?

  Right?

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something they would...

• 41:31Chuck Nice?

  Something they would really get into, just put it all together and put a club beat under it, check it out, here you go. There, look.

• 41:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah!

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good. That's the best alarm I've ever heard.

• 41:51Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, up next. Up next, Bill Nye the Science Guy, my good buddy, shares his thoughts on sending weapons into space when StarTalk returns.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk.

• 42:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. Featuring my visit to US Air Force Space Command in Greenland. I've visited an abandoned part of that base, which shows the past and the future of protecting America from high up in the Arctic. Check it out.

• 42:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This feels like Cold War Rust Belt, right here.

• 42:33Speaker 09

  Sure is.

• 42:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So where are we?

• 42:34Speaker 09

  So this is one of four anti-aircraft sites that were built here on Tule in 1957 to 1958. There's a Nike Ajax site. And it was, what it was is anti-aircraft defense of Tule Air Base.

• 42:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This area here?

• 42:48Speaker 09

  This area right here. That's right. There are multiple launchers here that were underground that could bring missiles, elevate missiles up for launch and then launch them at any enemy aircraft that might be attacking Tule Air Base. And the missiles were stored underground. And then if a threat emerged, then they would emerge. They would, a missile would be erected upward and then fired at its target.

• 43:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I see there's a lid open over here. What is this?

• 43:12Speaker 09

  That's the, one of the entrances to the, to the underground part of this facility.

• 43:18Speaker 09

  Couldn't go down there. But at least you can see, get a feel for, so that's ice right there. That is not the floor.

• 43:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Holy cow.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this is a relic of our need to defend what was going on at the Air Force Base.

• 43:36Speaker 09

  That's right.

• 43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And today, those needs are different.

• 43:41Speaker 09

  Yeah, so now our space capabilities are under threat today. And we consider space to be a warfighting domain, just like the other domains of land, sea, and air.

• 43:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the common denominator from 1958 to today is that this latitude on Earth, in this position in the northern hemisphere, remains of strategic value to the United States.

• 44:03Speaker 09

  That's absolutely true. This is a strategic position. And I think it'll be instrumental in deterring attacks and winning as necessary in any wars to come. And those wars may extend into space.

• 44:18Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Laurie, he talked about, the general talked about extending war into space.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would this be part of the mission objectives of a space force that has been recently proposed by the administration?

• 44:33Speaker 01

  So that's a good question, space force, you know, um, I...

• 44:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A new branch of the military.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:40Chuck Nice?

  Totally new, never seen before.

• 44:44Chuck Nice?

  Space Force.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  So that, you know, space force could be the stuff that we're doing already, which is trying to keep satellites working as, you know, without interference and potentially interfering with other countries' uses of it, right? That's, that's a possible model for it. And whether a space force is really what you need to do that, you know, that's a bureaucratic change and, you know, I start to glaze over. I don't think people saying "space force, space force" are saying bureaucratic change, you know, better acquisitions. I don't think that's what people are, are talking about.

• 45:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That wasn't in the speech.

• 45:19Chuck Nice?

  You've never been to one of my rallies.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Right, right. Basically, what you have to do is figure out, you know, how do you create rules and agreements? And we have an influence we can use to shape that. In a peaceful way.

• 45:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Bill Nye, the Science Guy, is a dispatch for us tonight on the legacy of opening the domain in space. Let's check it out.

• 45:43Bill Nye?

  Rockets like this one can slip the surly bonds of Earth, pass right through the atmosphere and land pretty much anywhere we want, for good or for otherwise. And while space exploration in many ways brings out the best in us, it's also enabled us to build weapons that can be delivered from one side of the globe to the other in about 41 minutes. That's not very much time for a government to react. So militaries on both sides have built up extraordinary inventories of these very, very powerful weapons that can cause total destruction in the hopes that neither side will ever use any of these weapons. Now, something has always fascinated me about doomsday machines like this one,

• 46:27Bill Nye?

  is oftentimes the shortest distance between the adversarial cities goes over the North Pole. Very few people live up there, so we've established extraordinary air bases to provide us early warning in case of an attack that would cause a very fast, massively destructive war. But I'd like to thank the men and women of our military who've turned the Air Force into the Air and Space Force. Thank you for watching the skies. Thank you for your vigilance. Carry on.

• 47:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all this talk about branches of the military, each defending us in one regime or another, be it land, sea, air, space. The premise is always, we are going to prepare for war and fight a war if we have to. Now, that's actually sensible, given the conduct of our species ever since we've been human. So I get that. We don't always get along. But when I look at what role space exploration might play in the future, I kind of want demonstration that we treat each other nice on Earth to then believe that an outer space treaty is going to work at all. So I'm a little skeptical on those grounds. But you know what gives me hope?

• 47:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some fraction of all wars that have ever been fought, I don't know the number, a third, maybe a half? Have as their foundation conflict based on access to limited resources. Fighting over access to something that you need as a culture, as a tribe, as a nation.

• 48:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I look in space, an asteroid has huge supplies of gold, silver, platinum, iridium, cadmium, raw ingredients that we use to drive our modern technologies. There are comets that have basically unlimited sources of fresh water. We have the Sun beaming down 24/7/365, providing energy. So much of why we fight each other here on Earth comes from limited access to resources, yet space has unlimited resources. So dare I suggest, dare I hope, that all this effort to go into space, and we turn

• 49:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  space into our backyard, lassoing comets and asteroids, and there's an asteroid for everybody. When that becomes our actual backyard, there are no more wars over limited access to resources. So the very act of the exploration of space may be the greatest source of peace ever introduced into our species. That is a cosmic perspective. You've been watching StarTalk. I want to thank Laura Grego, Chuck Neves.

• 49:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I bring you a host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.