Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Star Trek at 60: What do we value the most? (Part 1)

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

Star Trek turned 60 on Sept. 8, 2026, and to celebrate, we're kicking off a special two-part series exploring the franchise's deep and lasting connection to real-world space exploration. In Part 1, Robert Picardo, the Emergency Medical Hologram from Star Trek: Voyager, now starring in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy and a member of The Planetary Society's Board of Directors, joins Sarah Al-Ahmed to trace the relationship between Star Trek and The Planetary Society all the way back to a 1980 letter from Gene Roddenberry himself. Bob talks about how playing a holographic doctor for 30 years led him to become a real-world space advocate, and what Star Trek's non-human characters can teach us about what it means to be human. Then, Bruce Betts, Planetary Society Chief Scientist, joins for What's Up and a discussion of solar sails in the franchise. Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2026-star-trek-at-60-part-1See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Star Trek turns 60. This week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah al-Ahmad of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. This is part one of a special two-part series celebrating Star Trek's 60th anniversary. On September 8, 1966, Star Trek premiered in the United States for the first time, though our Canadian friends did get it two days earlier. Sixty years later, the people who brought that vision to life are still carried. its mission forward. Robert Picardo, who played the emergency medical hologram on Star Trek Voyager and is now

starring in Star Food Academy is also a member of the Planetary Society's board of directors. He joins me today to talk about the deep connection between Star Trek and the Planetary Society and why Star Trek's vision of cooperation in space matters now more than ever. Then we'll check in with Bruce Bats, our chief scientist for What's Up, and a conversation about solar sales in Star Trek episodes. If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know

the cosmos and our place within it. For 60 years, Star Trek has imagined a future where humanity has made it, where we've survived our wars, our divisions, and our worst impulses, and come out the other side as people worthy of exploring the stars. It's a science fiction franchise that spans many television series over a dozen films and generations of fans. And at its core, it's always been about one idea that the best of what we are as humans

is enough to carry us into the unknown. Star Trek premiered five years after Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. But three years before Apollo 11 put the first humans on another world, it landed right in the middle of humanity's first steps off this planet. And what Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek's creator, imagined, wasn't just the technology that it was going to take to get there. The warp drives, the transporters, the tricorders. He imagined who would go?

People from every background, every nation, every species, all of them together on a ship exploring the stars. That vision has been pulling people into real world space exploration ever since, including many of the people at the planetary society. Our next guest is one of them. Robert, or Bob Picardo, played the emergency medical hologram, also called the EMH, on all seven seasons of Star Trek Voyager, beginning in 1995. The EMH was a holographic doctor, a computer program designed to run in medical emergencies for short periods of time. But in the story, when Voyager was stranded 70,000 light years from home and the ship's real doctor was killed, the EMH had to stay on permanently. Over seven seasons, what started as a temporary tool with no name, no rights, and no bedside manner grew into one of the most human characters in the franchise. He fought for the right to be

recognized as a person. He fell in love. He wrote hollow novels and spent seven seasons searching for an identity. Picardo also directed two episodes of Voyager, including one small step, which is a tribute to the pioneers of human space exploration. He appeared as the EMH aboard the Enterprise in the film Star Trek First Contact. He also played the doctor's creator, Lewis Zimmerman, on Deep Space 9, and voiced the doctor in the second season of the animated series Star Trek Prodigy. Bob is currently starring as the doctor, now over 800 years old, in Star Trek Starfleet Academy. But Bob's connection to space doesn't end on the screen. He sat on the Planetary Society's advisory board while he was still filming Voyager, and he's been on the board of

directors since 2015. He's walked the halls of Congress advocating for NASA science. He's stood in the control room at JPL during Mars rover landings, and he's still playing the doctor all of these years later. If anyone is proof that Star Trek's mission doesn't end when the camera stop rolling, it's Bob. Hey Bob. Thanks for joining us. Oh, my pleasure always, Sarah. Thank you. I know I've said this to you in person, but the doctor, the EMH, has got to be. be my favorite character on Voyager. And I think Tiny Sarah would lose her mind that I get to talk to you right now. That's good to hear. I remember when I first spoke to our producer of Scarfleet Academy, Noga Landau, the first thing she said to me was, thank you for helping to raise me.

She apparently watched enough Voyager growing up that she felt it was just part of her personal development. So I appreciate those comments very much. Yeah, I remember my mom when I was a little kid. You know, I watched Star Trek Voyager and she'd be like, you see, Captain Janeway can do it. You can do it too, right? And I loved that. You got the exact message we were hoping you would get. Well, without Star Trek, I don't think I would have gone into space science.

And I think that's true of so many people. Science fiction in general inspires people to pursue these fields. But Star Trek, I think, has produced more scientists than almost any show in human history. What do you think it is about Star Trek that inspires people to pursue space science? Well, first, it's capturing people when they're young, as you've just expressed, is very important. And it's also providing an entertaining window into the excitement of persuasion. pursuing a career in space science and exploration. Obviously, Star Trek is set way in the future and, you know, this amazing thing called

warp travel and covering huge distances in the galaxy and what presently it's impossible to do in even a fraction of in a human lifetime. But it's still, it just still makes you ponder what's possible in the future. And of course, famously, Star Trek had all of the... these technologies that seem to be introduced, a communicator that flipped open and that you could talk to someone wirelessly on, you know, non-invasive medical scanning, all of these things that were just a dream in the 1960s when they were first introduced that have come to pass within our lifetime, sometimes within as little as 20 years, 15 years of the original series.

So it's that combination of being based in real science, of presenting a very exciting window into a possible future, that people say, I want to be a part of that. I want to go into science because I want to help make that happen. And as I said, I think capturing young minds, Star Trek has always been an entertainment that generations in a family sit down and watch together. In the same way your mom said to you, you know, if she can do it, you can do it. That whole thing of parents who love Star Trek or love the optimism that in the future that Star Trek presents. We'll sit down with kids, sometimes grandparents, with children and grandchildren all at once and watch the show. And that, to me, is perhaps the greatest gift of having worked in the franchise more than 30 years now, is that feeling that it's a generational passion that now we've got to what we're into our third generation right if a generation is 25 years and star trek is turning 60 September 8th and we're into two and a third generations or whatever however it computes of of americans that have grown up watching star trek dreaming of a better future and perhaps even going into science technology engineering to help effectuate

that future that Star Trek promises. So I am prouder now than I've ever been to be part of this franchise. It's turning 60. I've been with it about 31 years, so I'm even, I'm in the game a little more than halfway. Have you gotten together with multiple generations of people who have been on Star Trek to actually celebrate the 60th moment? Well, of course, we have those things called Star Trek

conventions. We recently had a huge one in Las Vegas, just about, oh, just in early August. So the convention was timed almost exactly a month before the anniversary, what we now call Star Trek Day, the anniversary of the first broadcast here in the United States. Of course, it premiered two days earlier in Canada, which is pointed out to be by Canadian fans all the time. They were lucky. But we at the convention, I mean, predominantly the fans are older that come.

to the Star Trek convention, but often they come with their children now or grandchildren. So yes, I see generations of fans in person all the time. I haven't sat down and watched the show with them. More often than not, I'm just talking to them on the convention floor. But they make it clear that they have the ones that have been with Star Trek since the very beginning who watched the original series and its original broadcast. And then all of the other people that entered Star Trek with a particular show and I meet a lot of fans who said I started with Voyager. That was the show that was in

current broadcast when I started watching Star Trek and often they're as young. They started watching Voyager with their families at four or five, six years old. Sometimes I always ask them. I said, did you watch with your mom or dad? No, no, I watched with a friend at school or oh, I just found it myself. So your parents are not, well, they weren't really interested. But, you know, so I have, I've heard all different stories. And it's interesting to hear a fan's unique story of how they became captivated with the Star Trek saga. There are a lot of commonalities. Sometimes it's multi-generations and a family watching. But then there are a lot of really unique stories, a lot of guys in the military and women in the military, men and women in the military who said, yeah, I watched Star Trek when I was in

Iraq or when I was serving a tour here or there and it really helped me help get me through. Recently, I have met one of the great people I've ever met in my life, General Peter Pace, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the Clinton administration, is perhaps the biggest Star Trek fan I have ever met. Treats me. He treats me like royalty. And he said to me, Bob, he said there's a leadership lesson in every Star Trek episode. And then he went on to say, I mean, I'm, you know, I befriended him a couple years ago. I've seen him on a number of occasions. Most recently, when we were talking about the anniversary, he said that after a really hard day

when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the last thing he did before he went to bed was go home and watch a Star Trek episode because it helped him online. But more importantly, it taught him Peter. you know, we've had these problems in the past, we're going to have them in the future. So just, you know, you're having it right now. Get over yourself. You know, just that it meant that to him. And he's also told me that he still watches it to this day.

He watches Star Trek and reruns literally every day, every day of the week. So he's a passionate fan who went on to greatness in the service of his country. And to hear him speak so lovingly and meaningfully about our franchises is it makes me feel prouder than I already feel for being a part of an entertainment that means so much to so many different people around the world. So I am very mindful of its influence. And here's, he's a case of someone who did not go into science. You know, he's in the military, but in the highest of leadership positions. And his takeaway, from Star Trek was the leadership lesson, as he put in.

And I often speak about the high ethics that Star Trek promotes as well. The prime directive, don't get involved unless you're asked to help. Roddenberry's claim that Starfleet was the United Nations in space. It is, you know, we sometimes think of, because Captain Kirk was a rough and ready American. And it is not America first in space. It's a group of space capable planets in the future that have common ideals that band together for mutual defense and that are out exploring the galaxy just to learn more about their place in the galaxy. They're not out there looking to mine precious rare minerals to make cheaper cell phone battery. Star Trek has always been about.

pure exploration, not about commercializing any of your discoveries in space. And so the ethics of Star Trek, that's yet another reason I think to admire Roddenberry's vision. I know our listeners have some kind of intuition that there's a connection between the planetary society and Star Trek. But I don't think a huge percentage of people who are members of the Planetary Society know that connection to Gene Roddenberry. Can you tell us a little bit about how the Planetary Society and Star Trek became affiliated in the first place? I am happy to.

In 1980, the year that Carl Sagan co-founded the Planetary Society with Bruce Murray and Lewis Friedman, Roddenberry sent a letter out to his extensive mailing list. This is way before email.

So he sent out snail mail letters to the amazing list of Star Trek fans that he had because these same people had done letter writing campaigns to save Star Trek, its third season and its original broadcast. So we had this great list of addresses of Star Trek fans. He sent them a letter recommending that they join the Planetary Society and that the goals of our society were really,

could be summarized by saying to help create the future that Star Trek imagines. It's a beautiful letter. If your listeners are interested, you can Google search Robert Picardo reads Gene Roddenberry's letter about the Planetary Society because we made a special video about it where I read the letter. And in fact, my intention is to repost a little part of me reading that letter along with some of my other wonderful Star Trek colleagues who have joined me and recommending the people that they find out about the planetary. Society if they don't know it. If you are a Star Trek fan, you're really a space fan. You're a science fan. You may not know that.

So let me help you discover it by inviting you to visit www. www.planetary.org, find out about our organization, find out about what we really are doing presently in space, not just here in the U.S., and NASA, but in all space-capable nations across the planet. And you will be captivated by what we. are doing now, not just this imaginary future that Star Trek posits. So I will repost that letter. That just shows you that the friendship between the Star Trek franchise and the Planetary Society

goes back to the very beginning of the Planetary Society in 1980. That's 46 years strong. Some of our great supporters include Nichols from the original series. Nichelle was in a unique position being a black woman on the bridge in the 1960s in a period of leadership. The Reverend Martin Luther King told her what an important role model she was for young black women, but people of color in general. Nichelle was very, very instrumental in encouraging people of color and women in particular to aspire to be astronauts and be part of space exploration.

So there's a long history of Star Trek actors promoting the word STEM, before the acronym was even created, promoting STEM and promoting minorities, to aspire to be space explorers, to be astronauts, to be principal investigators at NASA. That's why I became involved with the society in 1997 or eight, I believe. Sadly, Carl Sagan had passed away, but the two surviving founders of our Planetary Society, Bruce Murray, Lewis Friedman reached out to me and asked me to be on the advisory board. And my initial reaction was, I'm not a scientist. I don't know enough.

And they were like, no, you are in a position to bring our message to the science fiction fan community. And that's what I've done. The last nearly 30 years now, I serve on the exact. I'm very proud of my association with the planetary society. It makes me feel, you know, sometimes you feel a little silly as an actor. You feel like, you know, I spend my whole life dressing up and making believe. So to have real anchors in your life, like my association with the planetary society, with inspiring real space exploration, to have that anchor makes my dressing up and wearing makeup and putting on silly costumes feel less stupid.

stupid or insubstantial than it can. Sir Lawrence Olivier said acting is not quite the occupation of an adult. So I would say that my long association with the planetary society makes me feel more like an adult and I'm grateful for that. That's so funny because I, from my perspective, like you dressing up and doing this thing has had such a profound impact. And I really, value that you took this position that was offered to you, right? You weren't necessarily deep in space exploration when you were invited onto that advisory council, but it created this love of space exploration that bloomed in you and you used that voice to then go on and become a space advocate. And I've heard so much from scientists that work at NASA and other places that they're not

necessarily able to advocate for themselves. And this position that you found yourself in allows you to be that voice and to be a recognizable voice within that. Does that make you feel like you have a need to do that or a responsibility? I don't know if it's a responsibility, but I now have a need to do it because it has been, it has added so much to my own life. I mean, years ago, Star Trek is celebrating its 60th anniversary. Well, it's 30th anniversary in 1996. We were all invited and flown by the network from California to space camp in Huntsville, Alabama. And we had many of the, we had Bill Shatner and Leonard Nimoy and many actors from all of the different iterations of Star Trek that were presently, that had been made, which include,

Voyager was the one that was, and Deep Space Nine was still in its initial run. NextGen was making its first movie or whatever. This is 96. And I sat on stage with five men who walked on the moon with one or two of my other actor colleagues. And I went, gee, this feels so weird. What am I doing here? This feels, I'm embarrassed that these incredibly courageous men are sitting up here with a couple of actors who, you know, who are making believe all the time. But it never, the odd thing is the audience never made me feel that way.

The audience could draw a line between science fiction and science way before I could. I just, I thought, I'm going to have this opportunity now. Because remember, I was newly involved in Star Trek. This is, you know, Voyager had only been on for about a year. And I thought, you know, I could spend the rest of my life feeling awkward about this strange juxtaposition of me next to the real people, the scientists and the astronauts and all that that I'm going to be meeting for the next several decades, I could feel awkward about that or I could embrace it. And I could try to use that, use the fact that the audience could draw a line between us that I couldn't see at that time

and try to be useful in that way to try to inspire young people. And then from originally being asked to join the advisory council, one of the early things I did for the Planetary Society, were to be the face of a couple of educational challenges for young people. Red Rover goes to Mars. In 98, when we had just landed the Sojourner Rover, our very first rover on Mars, and we were getting data back. the Planetary Society had a strategic partnership with the Lego Corporation and kids in high schools around the country could build their own Martian rover out of Lego materials. Then they would make their own Martian surface at their high school. They would, you know, they would take the science

lab and build this, you know, Martian surface that was so many feet wide that had peaks and valleys and obstacles and whatever. Then they would send the rover they made to the, competing high school, that high school sent their rover to your high school, and you would map the Martian surface of the other high school and send the data back via the internet. And this was, you know, in the early days, 98, early days of the internet. And it was a perfect analog for what we were doing in space at that very moment, right? We just landed a rover on Mars. We're getting the data back.

We're starting to map, you know, different areas of Mars. and kids were doing that same thing in high school. So that felt cool to help promote that idea. I believe I'm the only Star Trek actor still to this day who has taught the producers into shooting a public service announcement on one of their sets. Now, for the sake of the audience, it costs a lot of money to shoot a television show. So if you go to your producers and say,

hey, can we take 22 minutes of a work day? 22 minutes where a crew of 65 or 70 people are all being paid and the actors are being paid and the lights are on and all that electricity is happening. And then the film stock because this is pre-digital. We're going to donate the film stock, donate the time of these 85 people and spend 22 minutes of production time that's worth how many thousands and thousands of dollars to make a public service announcement to try to encourage kids to be interested in this. educational challenge related to space. It was called the Mars Millennium Project, and kids from kindergarten to senior year were invited to draw, to create their own imaginary environment on Mars,

to terraform their own little mars. So a kindergarter would draw a bubble with mom and dad holding their hands inside a bubble. But as you got into the 9th and 10th and 11th graders, it became more sophisticated. So the promoters, Rick Berman, thank you, Rick, still, 30 years later, said yes, we stopped production right before lunch.

I had my 20 minutes. I had to know that copy very well. There were no gutaways, no room for error. And you can find out all that. If you search for Robert Picardo Mars Millennium Project, you could still find it on YouTube. your predecessor, Matt Kaplan, said to me, Bob, we got an email from someone that I'm supposed to forward to you. This woman was a scientist at JPL.

She worked in the Rover data room, receiving data, I think, from spirit and curiosity. And the letter she wrote me, which was so nice, said, if you ever wonder whether that public service announcement that you made in the late 90s on voyage, had any effect, let me tell you that it changed my life. I saw it. I entered the competition. I was 14 years old. I got to travel, I guess, as a finalist. She traveled to Montreal.

She loved Montreal. She ended up going back there when she was of college age and going to school there. She met her partner there. Her whole life was changed because she'd seen that PSA. and now she was a PhD in astrophysics and worked at jet propulsion laboratory. So that one story alone made me happy that I had pushed so hard to do that public service announcement. And then I continued for a number of years with the advisory board. As I said, usually there were things about young people programs for young people,

most recently promoting planetary academy. Finally, after years of service on the advisory board, I was asked to join the executive board, I think, in about 2017. So I'm coming on 10 years now. And I sit around a table with mostly scientists with advanced degrees or people very successful in business or technology. I always refer to myself as the least credentialed, dumbest person at the table. And it's just fascinating.

I love our board meetings. I understand, depending on what the topic is, anywhere from 60 to 90% of what's being talked about. There's always someone during a coffee break who's willing to explain something to me that I don't understand. That was Scott Hubbard for many years. The Mars Tsar. I've made some incredible friendships through working with a problem. planetary society. And as I said, as a science fiction actor, it gives me a mission that has made life far richer for me. So I feel like I get more than I give. We'll be right back with the rest of

my interview with Bob Picardo after the short break. What if a salty frozen lake in British Columbia holds the key to searching for life in other worlds? That's just one of the questions Dr. Jacob Buffo and his team have been working to answer. Thanks to generous supporters like you. Dr. Buffo is a recipient of the Planetary Society's step grants. That's our science and technology empowered by the public program, which funds groundbreaking research driven by your support. They've been studying salty lakes with chemistry like ancient Mars, chemistry that may still exist in the hidden oceans of distant icy moons. Now it's time for the next phase. With your help, the team will build artificial intelligence

tools that let future spacecraft help find the most promising places to look for signs of past or present life and be able to do it all on their own as needed, even without waiting for instructions from Earth. They'll test it right here on Earth at Mono Lake in California and the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Since 1980, the Planetary Society's members and donors have supported science and technology projects crucial to future space exploration. Visit planetary.org slash step. That's S-T-E-P today. Your support will help fund the next phase of Dr. Buffo and his team's work. Thank you.

Well, the doctor has been one of the most enduring figures over the arc of Star Trek. I think by the time you hit Starfleet Academy, your character is something like 900 years old. Is that right? Yeah, there was some discussion whether I was 800 or 900. I wanted to be older than Yoda. That was my only goal. I just, you know, I mean, I, I, I, I mean, I, I. I wanted to be an older and intelligence and taller and not green and not made out of rubber,

all sorts of things I had, I wanted to compete with Yoda. And I believe that I, I believe that, yeah, the doctor, because Yoda finally croaked, I think, when he hit 900 or something like that. So the doctor is still going strong in the future. Even we don't know at this point whether we'll hear, other than the second season of Starfleet Academy. We don't know what else we'll hear about the doctor. future, but he's definitely, I would say he's outlived Yoda. I think it's really interesting, though, that, you know, the doctor spent so many years

fighting to be seen as more than a program. And in this setting of Starfleet Academy, we're in an age where Starfleet is trying to rebuild itself. And because of the fact that the EMH is a hologram, this character becomes basically one of the last remaining characters that holds these ideals and pulls it in. of the future. So in fact, this character that was once dismissed and disrespected turns out to be the thing that saves these human ideals. How do you feel about that? I think it was Alex Kurtzman who called my character the bridge between old and new trek, meaning I was the character

from the original series to then Next Gen Deep Space Nine Voyager and Enterprise, that group of series that was in roughly the 23rd to 24th century that only my character, because he was non-human, would make sense if you were skipping ahead 800 years to the 32nd century. I didn't look at it as a burden. I kind of looked at it as an honor. Technically speaking, for me, as an actor, performing in Voyager, and then 25 years later, performing in Starfleet Academy,

the shows were different. In Voyager, we spoke, as all of the Star Trek shows from the original series through Enterprise. We spoke in this future speak. There were no colloquialisms. I called it mid-galactic English. And then, of course, the newer iterations, they made the decision to speak in the vernacular,

I think, to welcome a younger audience, you know, because you're flipping around on a channel. You see a character say, please stay the nature of the medical emergency, you go, what the heck is this? But if you see, you know, kids may be dressed funny, but they're speaking pretty much like kids in a college coming of age,

drama would speak in the present. I think they thought it was more welcoming. I think that Starfleet Academy was also influenced by the success of lower decks. So we had more humor in it and the language was a little more irreverent. I have to tell you, when I read one of the early scripts and my character said, chicken shit, I went, whoa, I said, it's a brand new day for me. I was a little surprised. and I kept thinking, will the audience, who knows me from Voyager, will they accept me in this new milieu and speaking differently?

And the way I treated it, the character in order to appeal to teaching to young people, he had to speak their vernacular. So if they're going to speak that way, then in order to capture their attention, I'm going to speak back to them that way. So it ended up working out fine. But the initial challenge was the language is different. then the character spoke for so many, you know, so many episodes in the past. And then beyond that, of course, medical had turned from blue to white. So, I mean, my costume on Starfleet Academy was great, but I told everyone, I said, you know, you don't put the chubbiest guy in a white costume. I said, I look like the, I look like the dining captain on a cruise ship more than I looked like, you know, a doctor in the 32nd century.

It all worked out. It all worked out, okay. I love that you bring up that please state the nature of the medical emergency. Just a few days ago, I was playing Starcraft Brood War. I clicked on one of the medics, and it literally said that, please state the nature of the medical emergency. This character has seeped into so much of the rest of science fiction war. It's everywhere. Do people say that to you all the time?

They used to. I mean, I have to tell you, if anybody's listening that's coming to a Star Trek, can mention in the future, please, please, don't make me write on an autograph picture. Please state the nature of the medical emergency. I mean, I used to get that all the time. And by the 60th person in one day, you kind of go, really? Okay. Did I just do please dot, dot, dot, emergency? No, I'll write the whole thing. No, right. Anyway, so, yes, I do get that a lot. a favorite thing for parents who come with young children is to show me how well their six-year-old says, please take the nature at their medical emergency, which is always adorable.

I often take a video with them saying it to me or competing with them to see who's better. It's funny. Even in Europe, even in Europe where English is the second language of that six-year-old, it's very cute. when they try to do my tagline. So, yeah, it seemed incredibly weird. All of the things that when I first read the Voyager script years ago, and I thought, I don't get the joke, I don't understand. How's the guy supposed to be funny?

My own children, years later, they were very young when I did Voyager, but they have since taught me that the key to my success as the doctor on Voyager is my resting bitch face. They said, Dad, when your face is at rest, you look unhappy, you look surly, you look uninviting. And basically, that's the way I looked the first two years before the character developed and started to make friendship and started to explore his entitlement as a member of the crew. When he was just an unhappy hologram who wasn't being accorded the respect by the rest of the, crew because they were treating them more like a first aid kit that came to life rather than an

individual who could adapt and learn and eventually develop personality. So I do, I had the feeling that I discovered what a great part I had won after I started shooting it. I didn't get it coming into the experience that I had landed a plumb role. In fact, when I got the part, I told all my friends. I said, I've been cast in the new Star Trek series. It'll probably run seven years. It'll eventually send my children to college, but I have to tell you, I got the worst part in the show. What do you mean? Well, I play this characters described as colorless, humorless, a computer program of a doctor. It doesn't sound like a bucket of fun to me. And boy, was I wrong. I just was wrong, but I didn't know I was wrong at the time. I didn't, I didn't see the

potential. Somehow I thought, well, you know, we've got a Vulcan. Tim Russ is playing the Vulcan. He'll have the interesting part. He'll be the Spock character. But I didn't understand Star Trek deeply enough to go, no, Spock was unique because he was half Vulcan and half humans, so that the two sides of his nature were always at war, and that's why he was the outsider character. And that you, Bob, have gotten the new outsider character role. I didn't put it together, you know, that I'd gotten the date. I mean, I knew I'd gotten the data role, but then I thought, well, that's a negative

because Brent Spiner was so popular playing an Android, and now I'm the next generation of artificial intelligence, and now I have to compete with his popularity in the mind of the fans. But the character was conceived so differently. Data was so childlike and inquisitive. and my character was such a curmudgeon and such a crank, that the great thing that Star Trek always does

is that it shuffles the deck from series to series. And not only may, all right, the captain this time is going to be a woman. Oh, no, the captain's going to be a black man. You know, they reshuffle the ideas and move around. And I just lucked into the outsider character this time, will be the doctor character because he's an artificial intelligence. He's the one that, like data, he'll aspire to be human, but unlike data, he has the capacity with these emotional subroutines to adapt and learn not just intellectually, but emotionally.

And that was the big twist that my character had that made those same entitlement stories. that data had that made them the same but very different. And I think the producers do that in a brilliant way, where they take something the audience has liked in the past and then mix it up a little bit. So you literally like a wedding. You get something old, new, borrowed, and blue, except I was white.

In my uniform went from blue to white. So I was something old, something new, something borrowed, and something white. in my newest iteration, you know, in Academy. So I think that they're very smart that way. But the core values of Star Trek that remain intact through every series are its optimism and the fact that it treasures diversity. That characters of all different, famously in the original series,

at the height of the Cold War, we saw a Russian standing next to an American on the bridge of the enterprise. So our former enemy is now our friend. But creatures of all different, not just, I mean, it's a metaphor, obviously, for different races here on Earth, but creatures of different alien background and different color skins. Every member of the crew is judged for the content of their character, not the color of their skin, not the person they choose to love. Everyone is respected and welcome if they share the same mission.

the same values, and they're a valued member of the crew, it doesn't matter what you look like. Those values of Star Trek, which we all feel sometimes are under attack in the present cultural and political moment that we are all in, those values will maintain in the future. How do you think the future of space exploration would be different if we came at it from a purely commercial way of thinking about it and not from this emotionally intelligent way of thinking about it, this valuing of our diversity as a core principle? Well, I mean, yes, obviously we're competing in space right now. We're competing with China,

but we also have allies. I mean, historically NASA has worked with ESA, European Space Agency, and other agencies of allied countries. Our missions are models of cooperation, where different parts of the craft are built or different parts. You know, we have a whole plan to gather those, all of the samples that have been encapsulated and are laying on the surface of Mars waiting to be returned here to Earth. We had a whole cooperative mission designed with the European Space Agency to bring them back.

But sadly, a lot of those missions are in doubt. Now, the future of those missions are in doubt because of budget cutbacks. And what's short-sighted about that, of course, is we've invested so many billions to get to the point we are. I mean, to get this far in the mission, we have all of those samples waiting to teach us whether there was ever, you know, microbial life on Mars.

All of those things that we could learn from those samples that are sitting and waiting for us to retrieve them if they don't happen because we go, oh, we don't want to spend any more money there, then what you're doing is you're wasting all of the money up to that point. You're wasting the billions of dollars that brought you to the point to get those samples

to send the rovers there, to have the rovers go to the interesting places, to drill down and encapsulate and have it all. You've got everything ready for these amazing discoveries we're going to make, and now we're in danger of just cutting the cord and saying, no, you know, we're not, going to do it. We're going to spend the money in other ways than find out if there's

ever been life off this planet, even though that'll profoundly change the way each and every one of us looks at ourselves and our place in the cosmos. As our leader, Bill Nye, has said many times. It'll profoundly change everything, the moment we discover evidence of life off our planet. And we've come so close now. And hopefully, those other emissions that we have to the icy moon of Jupiter and all of the things, you know, to look for life elsewhere in our solar system, hopefully they will all stay on track. And that's why the planetary society is so important. That's why I feel my outreach to science fiction fans to say, hey, you know, if we want to build the future that Star Trek imagines,

we've got to keep making this investment. We need to support. space science. It's all the same picture. So if you just go, I want to commercialize space, I want to get something back. Every dollar I put into traveling in space, I have to get money back. I think that that's a small-minded way to look at it. I was just interviewed recently on a related subject by someone from the Guardian, the famous British paper and news website. And he quoted a famous billionaire, I won't mention the name, who said, oh, I like Star Wars much better than Star Trek, because Star Wars is based on paying back a debt. So Star Wars is about money. And Star Trek is not, so I'm not interested in.

Well, Star Wars, Star Wars might be paying back a debt, or it might be about a personal mission of redemption. But Star Trek is about values. Values. what do we value the most? Do we value learning and understanding, or do we value a cheaper cell phone the most? Or a bigger profit margin for whoever's making such and such that we're going to make cheaper by going out in space?

I think values are bigger than just corporate profits. So I think that all of those that Star Trek's core values will survive and will flourish again. There's this beautiful thing happening here where the people who are fans of Star Trek are the people who then advocate for space. And then the people who love space because they got into Star Trek,

advocate for Star Trek. So it persists. It's the reason that it's been going on for 60 years. And I think that this is how we are going to get to this space future together, not just because of the space exploration, but because of this hopeful vision of the future. It's sort of this mystical circle of support. But it is important. You know,

the whole thing about commercializing space and the inherent competition that involves in every country wants to win, I just remind everyone that Gene Roddenberry said himself, it's the United Nations in space, which to me means it's not America first in space or any single company in space. It's really it's a cooperative thing. It's humanity. It's the same reason we now recognize Yuri Gagarin

as the first human in space, whereas we were so competitive back in the 60s, you know, that Americans barely learned his name because he wasn't an American who had, you know, who had gone up there first. So you know, we weren't happy about that. But now

the fact that we can say, hey, we're all humans. And this is the first human with the courage who had the success to do this. So we should honor him, even though he was playing for the other team. We're all on one human team together on this one little planet and a vast universe that hopefully maybe we'll get to see some day together. But until then, I'm hoping that we can keep building this space future here in our own solar system.

And who knows, maybe another 60 years of Star Trek to look forward to. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show, Bob. I really appreciate it. And I hope you have a beautiful September 8th. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sarah. I wish you a happy Star Trek Day myself. Thanks.

Cheers. Live long and prosper. Now it's time for what's up with our chief scientist, Dr. Bruce Betts. And I have to warn you, if hosting a space exploration podcast for a living didn't already prove that I'm a total nerd, this conversation is definitely going to remove any remaining doubts. Hey, Bruce.

Hey Sarah. Happy Star Trek Day. Happy Star Trek Day. So next week we're going to be talking all about Star Trek technologies that were just kind of a dream when the show started. But because this week I wanted to focus on Planetary Society related connections to Star Trek, I figured we should talk about solar sales. So we, of course, the Planetary Society, thanks to our members and donors, flew the first small spacecraft controlled solar sailing and still only the second spacecraft to do that with the Japanese having done it

before that with a much larger beast. And so you ask, what did you ask? What episodes of anything? Was there a mention or a drawing on the wall or someone even had a thought about solar sales? I think you documented it. It's true. I mean, so there are some moments in Star Trek where they met.

I mentioned solar sales or they're off-screen, but there are solar sales all throughout Star Trek, and so I dug really deep. I wanted to pull out some cool ones. Man, I even went back into the animated series. I was going to say, the first one in your chronological list is Star Trek, the animated series. Yeah, Star Trek, the animated series. It was season one, episode 12, called The Time Trap. That was the first solar sale that I could find in Star Trek. But of course, if we're going to be talking about animated Star Trek, we also have to mention Star Trek, Star Trek, lower decks, which is much more recent. And they have an episode, season

five, episode two, called Shades of Green. And in that episode, Lieutenant Tendi, who is just one of my favorite characters, gets into this Orion ritual race that uses the solar sailing spacecraft to do this kind of space regatta. Wow.

Yeah. Anyway, of course, most of these were presented as the valid concept of solar sailing, but not necessarily the actual reality of solar sailing. But I didn't review them all, so maybe some do it quite well. Yeah, I mean, every single one of them is going to assume that you can speed up some larger craft than just something small to a speed that makes sense, right?

Right. You've got races or you have people traveling to other star systems, and that's not as viable. And you can go really fast conceptually, but you can't accelerate or decelerate really fast. I mean, without making some wild assumptions on sail compared to the mass of your bodies. Basically, it's the area of the sail divided by the mass of your spacecraft that defines the acceleration with the few other factors. But that's basically the dependent. So anyway, this is great. I mean, speed through them if you want, or we can just point people to your new website covering solar sales and Star Trek.

I should build that website. Nah, let's just give them some examples because, man, there's a lot of cool solar sailing and Star Trek all across every single season. I should also mention, it was really funny. It was the first interview that Matt and I had after I got this position on planetary radio, and it was for a Star Trek show, and they gave us trivia questions. And it was specifically about an episode of Deep Space Nine called Explorers. That's Season 3, Episode 22, from 1995.

Captain Cisco and his son go on this solar sailing adventure together. And they asked us a trivia question about what they were trying to prove doing that solar sailing trip together. I said something about the bonding between father and son. But the actual answer was that they were trying to prove that the Bajorans achieved interstellar flight long before anybody expected. And neither one of us got that trivia question right in that broadcast. And I felt horrible about it. Another one that I really loved, because Next Generation was like my first Star Trek when I was a kid. Like I'd seen episodes and movies of the other ones, but it was the first show that I'd seen all the way through from beginning to end.

And there's an episode of Next Generation in season seven called Emergence. And in that one, an AI uses the holodeck to build a solar sail to harvest energy. Which, you know, you can't really harvest energy using a solar sale. You probably want to build like a solar cell instead of a solar sail. Another common confusion. Because you have the propulsion, which you get from the sail, but the even our, I mean, most of the spacecraft actually use solar cells to generate electricity or just store like, you know, electricity, that thing, that thing that electricity batteries, power, the stuff. There were engineers on our spacecraft, not just me. What's your favorite example?

Oh, man, that's really hard. I want to say in the more recent Star Trek Strange New Worlds, there's this episode in season one. It's episode five called Spockamuck. And they use this ceremonial solar sailing vessel that has this giant Federation emblem on the front. And as soon as I saw it, my first thought was like, wow, that looks like light sail. So that really sticks in my mind.

A ceremonial solar sail, that's, um, that's an interesting concept. Right? It was a way of showing respect between different species during a diplomatic negotiation, so that was pretty cool. It is interesting, though. Like, people ask me sometimes if Star Trek is the most accurate science fiction. And I can't say yes, because there are a lot of misconceptions that get wound up in it

or technologies don't fully make sense like warp drive, right? Right. Although notably El Coupier literally tried to create the El Cubier drive because he saw warp drive in Star Trek. So, you know, it all kind of loops together. And I think even though all of this technology isn't necessarily always right, it kind of puts the science and the public zeitgeist in a way that just, you know, other shows really don't.

And Star Trek has been doing that for 60 years. Right. No, and that's wonderful. And a lot of our membership are big, big trekkies. And they get people excited about space, which is what we do. We focus and try to make it very real space with very real. accomplishments by the people doing space exploration. But the concept is the same of space is cool and we want people excited about it. Right. Speaking of our members on solar sales, although this is slightly tangential, but we actually have a member who works on the show Rick and Morty.

And there was an episode of Rick and Morty, season eight called Valcharic that had a character called Spacebeth that she's wearing this kind of, what do you call it, like a sky gliding? type of outfit, but the entire outfit is made out of solar sale material. And that member told us in our member community that he designed it that way. He fought for the design of that outfit because he wanted it to look like light sail. So I think solar sales have been working their way and everything. I thought that was so cool. That was very cool. I just want before we move on, I want to make sure you mention or I mentioned your last segment of how deep you went. She had honorable mention for off-screen mentions of solar sales.

They just mentioned solar sales, and Sarah documented it. It's really impressive. You know, to be fair, the one in Deep Space Nine in The Way of the Warrior was a callback to that previous episode where they solar sail, where they're trying to remake the Bajoran technology

for solar sailing. But I only kind of noticed the mention of the solar sale in Star Trek 4, The Voyage Home because I got to go meet George to Kay to go see that movie just a few months ago. And I noted it as I was watching it. They mentioned an off-screen solar sale that you don't actually get to see. Wow. That's very cool.

Yeah. I had to hang out George Sakey. Oh, that was so cool. I don't know. There are a lot of things on Earth to be nerdy about, but Star Trek gives you so much depth to go into. So, I don't know. I just, I love it. And this was a fun research project for me.

I did want to mention there's one other episode that I didn't bring up, which is actually from Star Trek Enterprise, season for episode 14, called The Anar. They built a deep space relay station that had solar sailor reflectors on it. So I think, I think that's all of them. But if anybody can think of a solar sale that we haven't mentioned here, I would love to add it to my list, just, you know, in case I build that website someday. You could. Well, you can put a page on our website. Oh, yeah.

And in fact, now I think you can just move on to categorize solar sales and all science fiction in the history of the universe. That would be a really cool project. So shall we move on? I know it's hard for you. All right. We move on to... Transfer of data is complete. Most illogical. You're out of your Vulcan mines, Spock. So, International Space Station, you've heard of it.

People are in it. They orbit only about 400 kilometers or 250 miles altitude that far up. So if you could drive a car straight up, it would take you, you know, about four hours at freeway speed to reach the height of the ISS. So a lot closer than people realize. By the way, of course, we do not encourage trying to drive your car straight up. And leave it to the professionals. There you go. Man. I mean, imagine you can jump the car high enough to reach the ISS.

I think the Fast and the Furious already did that, but maybe we can do something more. We can talk about that later. All right, everybody. Go out there, look up the night sky, and think about Star Trek and the voyage to space stuff. Go, woo. Thank you. Good night. We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio. but we'll be back next week with part two of our celebration of Star Trek's 60th anniversary. If you love the show, you can get Planetary Radio t-shirts at planetary.org slash shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. Help others discover the passion, beauty, and joy of space science and exploration

by leaving a review and a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback not only brains are day, but helps other curious minds find their place in space through Planetary Radio. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email, Planetary Radio at planetary.org. Or if you're a Planetary Society member, leave a comment in the Planetary Radio space in our member community app. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and has made possible by our members, those that love Star Trek and those who simply love the idea of humanity reaching the stars. You can join us as we work to make the visions of Carl Sagan and Gene Roddenberry. reality at planetary.org

slash join. Mark Hilverta and Ray Palo Letta are our associate producers. Casey Dreyer is the host of our monthly space policy edition and Matt Kaplan hosts our monthly book club edition. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser.

My name is Sarah Al Ahmed, the host and producer of Planetary Radio. And until next week, live long and prosper and add Astra. Thank you.