Something You Should Know - Fascinating Mysteries that Baffle Science & The Incredible Story of Human Spaceflight
Episode Date: September 24, 2018You tip the waiter at the end of a meal for a job well done. But when it comes to tipping the maid and other people at a hotel, it is actually better to tip them at the beginning of your stay so you g...et better service in the days to come. That’s just one of the very savvy travel tips with which we begin this episode of the podcast. http://www.mensjournal.com/expert-advice/travel-mistakes-to-avoid-20131217/packing-for-the-long-haul Do we really have free will? Does the placebo effect actually work? Have aliens tried to contact us? These are some of the fascinating mysteries that still baffle scientists. Science writer Michael Brooks, author of the book 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time (https://amzn.to/2NvuAmO) joins me to explore some of these mysteries and explains what we do know and what we don’t know about them. Chewing gum may not be proper etiquette in many social situations but chewing gum does have some real benefits – particularly when you are stressed out. I’ll explain why have some gum in your pocket is almost always a good idea. https://greatist.com/happiness/does-chewing-gum-reduce-anxiety 2018 marks the 60th anniversary of NASA. And while space launches aren’t quite the big deal they once were, NASA is still doing a lot of impressive work. John Logsdon has been keeping his eye on NASA for a long time. John is the founder of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, former member of the NASA Advisory Council and he served on the Columbia Space Shuttle Accident Investigation Board in 2003. He is the editor of a new book that just came out celebrating 60 years of NASA called The Penguin Book of Outer Space Exploration (https://amzn.to/2DoYWmm) and joins me to discuss some really interesting stories about the US space program you probably never knew. This Week's Sponsors Robinhood. To open your free account and get your FREE stock like Apple, Ford, or Sprint to help build your portfolio! Sign up at something.robinhood.com Ancestry. To get 20% off your Ancestry DNA Kit go to www.ancestry.com/something Glip. To open your free, full-featured GLIP account go to www.glip.com/something Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Today on Something You Should Know, why you should tip your hotel maid at the beginning
of your stay and not the end, and some other great travel tips, plus fascinating mysteries
that baffle science, like the placebo effect, is there alien life, and do we really have
free will?
The idea that you make your own decisions and that your body is under your control is
actually not the view of science.
Even though it's the view of us every day, the idea is that we have free will.
Then, why it's a good idea to always carry a pack of gum.
And on the 60th anniversary of NASA, a peek behind the scenes of U.S. space exploration,
including the crazy red tape they have to deal with.
If you want to go to Mars, you have to get a government license to leave.
And yes, reproduced in the book was a customs form signed by the three astronauts
saying departure Florida, destination moon, return Hawaii, cargo moon rock.
All this today on Something You Should Know.
As a listener to Something You Should Know,
I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things
and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life.
I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about.
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Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know
have done TED Talks.
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Something You should know.
Fascinating intel.
The world's top experts.
And practical advice you can use in your life.
Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.
Hi, welcome.
Something happened the other day that was kind of interesting.
It's actually happened before, but it struck me differently this time and thought it was worth mentioning.
I was explaining how podcasting worked, and if you like a podcast, you can subscribe to it
so you get the episodes delivered right to your device.
And they said, well, how much does it cost to subscribe?
And it occurred to me that most people, when you think of subscription, you think of paying for it.
If you have a subscription to the newspaper or to Netflix or whatever, you pay a subscription fee.
But not so with podcasts, typically.
If you get your podcasts from iTunes or Google Play or Stitcher or TuneIn or wherever, they're free.
So it isn't really a subscription in the sense that you pay for it because you don't
pay for it, but it's a subscription in the sense that you get it delivered to you. So if you've
ever not subscribed to a podcast because you thought it cost money, generally it does not.
First up today, travel tips. I love good travel tips and these are some really good ones from
the travel experts at mensjournal.com. First, chasing the lowest
airfare is a losing proposition. When you see a cheap airfare
that you can live with, you should take it, because it's almost impossible
to predict when airfares will be at their lowest.
So settle with what you can afford and live to fight another day.
One veteran traveler has a rule that many people follow,
and that is, if it costs $10 to fix or improve a problem, pay it.
Travel stress can ruin your trip.
Saving a few bucks with a slow shuttle that makes multiple stops
probably doesn't make sense if a taxi or an Uber is available.
Buying food on board a plane is usually pretty expensive,
but it's still better than arriving hungry.
$10 or even $20 can save you a lot of stress.
Packing less is better.
A carry-on bag will meet the needs of most travelers on nearly every trip.
Like the $10 problem rule,
is it really worth the hassle to pack for every possible eventuality?
It's better to just pay the hotel to do your laundry.
It may appear expensive, but it's probably cheaper than checking an extra bag,
and it's definitely easier than carrying everything around with you.
Also, a mistake many people make at hotels is they
tip too late. Acknowledge the doorman and the housekeeper when you arrive rather than when
you leave and you will get better service for the rest of your stay. And that is something you should
know. Science is good at explaining a lot of things, but there are plenty of things science can't explain, not with our current technology.
It's really fascinating to look at some of the things that we know exist, that are there, but there's no explanation for why or how.
Michael Brooks is a science writer who has a pretty good reputation for explaining complicated things
so people like me can understand them.
One of his books is called 13 Things That Don't Make Sense,
the most baffling scientific mysteries of our time.
Hi Michael, welcome. So, tell me one of these baffling mysteries.
One of the things is that 96% of the universe is missing,
and that scientists don't know what most of the universe is made of.
Oh, what do you mean it's missing?
They know that there's something out there that has mass, but they can't see it.
So when you gather up all the information about stars and planets
and all the stuff that's made out of ordinary stuff,
it turns out that that can only account for about 4% of the universe.
And the rest of it seems to be in some form of invisible matter
that we just call dark matter.
And there's some kind of energy in the universe that we can't see,
can't get our heads around and find out anything about,
and that's known to scientists as dark energy.
Well, that concerns me a little bit.
It's a big subject, actually, in cosmology at the moment.
People who study the universe are just scratching their heads about this,
and they think that the dark matter must be out there.
The dark energy is more of a puzzle,
in that it's causing the universe to expand faster and faster,
but nobody really knows what this stuff is that's causing this to happen.
So to call it dark energy, I mean, that name is like a placeholder.
Until you figure out what it is exactly, we'll just call it dark energy.
Well, that's right.
Somebody has suggested that you might as well call dark matter pink space blancmange
because it's just so completely out there that nobody has an idea
what it is at all. But in human experience, if you have something that 96% of it is missing,
well, the missing part could be anything. So maybe all this universe that they can't see,
I mean, it could be anything. It could be anything. And one of the things that it might be
is an optical illusion or the equivalent of an optical illusion.
It may be that scientists have actually got their equations wrong
and have just kind of missed something about the sort of fundamental nature of the universe.
And that can't be ruled out.
And the longer we fail to find this stuff that's missing,
then the better that assumption becomes,
that somehow there's just something that we need to fundamentally readdress.
But I wonder if it could just be that it's something beyond human comprehension.
Like when we talk about the universe expanding,
well, what could it possibly be expanding into?
We can't conceive that. Maybe we can't conceive this.
That's a very good point.
It's very possible that we will
never know the answer to these things, which is what's so frustrating when
you're a scientist who studies this and, you know, you study the universe and
realizes that almost all of it is, you know, could be completely beyond our
understanding. So let's pick something a little more down to earth and closer to
home, the placebo effect, which you say really can't be explained.
There are people who study the placebo effect and can induce the placebo effect. But there
are other people who say that when they look through all the scientific literature, they
can't see any evidence that the placebo effect actually has any effect whatsoever. So again,
it's one of these things that seems to be there, but scientists can't agree on whether it actually is there. The funny thing is, I went to one of these
groups that researches the placebo effect, and actually had them induce it in me. They gave me
a series of electric shocks, and managed to make me think that the shocks were actually very mild,
when actually they were quite severe. So for me, it seems there is something there,
but scientists can't really get a grip on it at all.
But doesn't it seem as if you should be able to test the placebo effect pretty accurately,
that you give, you know, one group sugar pills and tell them it does something,
and you give another group sugar pills and tell them it doesn't do anything else,
and see what happens?
I mean, it seems like there ought to be some way to definitively determine if there really is something there. Yeah, it seems
that way, except that the only place where you see placebo effects is actually when people are
reporting their own sort of state of mind, if you like. So if you have somebody in pain, you can
give them a pill and they'll say, oh, that's better. It's not hurting so much anymore. But you can equally give them a sugar pill and
they might say that. You can give them a real pill that might do that. And we like to think
of the drugs and pharmaceuticals that we take as actually producing chemical effects in our
bodies and helping us. But it turns out that it may just all be an illusion in our minds.
And you can do tests that actually show that some of these chemicals don't work
unless people know that they're taking them.
There's a classic study of diazepam, which is Valium,
that shows that it doesn't reduce your anxiety level
unless you actually know you're taking it.
When people get it in a hidden dose, they say they're still just as anxious as they were.
But what about more physical diseases like cancer and lung disease?
What about the placebo effect in those?
If the placebo effect is real and it works on things like pain,
it doesn't seem to have any effect on things like lung disease or cancer.
The power of positive thinking in that respect doesn't seem to be able to help you.
So if you're given a pill that you're told will help your cancer, it just won't.
Well, I think that comes as a surprise to a lot of people because there is
this idea that attitude and positive outlook will help with those physical diseases,
but you're saying that the belief that a pill is working, if it doesn't, doesn't do anything.
But there are plenty of other ways that if the placebo effect is real,
and we can get a handle on it, that we will be able to help people.
I mean, American doctors are already using this quite considerably, actually.
There's something like 45% of doctors
are saying that they kind of give people pills that aren't necessarily going to work exactly for
the condition they've got, but they will help the patient to feel better, and they will get better
because of it. So it's not like we can't use it, but we know so little about it at the moment
that we're really struggling to learn how to use it properly.
There has to be, though, some theory, underlying theory or belief as to how this works,
that the placebo effect in some cases does seem to work.
And when it does seem to work, I mean, it's not magic.
So what is it?
It seems to be that the placebo effect seems to kind of help your body to help itself in some ways.
It's like you raise your hopes and you raise your expectations.
And something chemical goes on that in some cases seems to have a positive medical effect.
I guess our bodies have learned how to fight lots of things
and maybe given a little help with a bit of hope, then they fight even better.
But it sounds like you're saying two opposite things, that it works, but it doesn't work.
Well, that's because there's a kind of split in scientific opinion on this,
that there's very strong evidence that shows no effect of placebo whatsoever
when you look at all the scientific literature.
And yet on an individual case-by-case basis,
there does seem to be a lot of evidence that placebo or the idea of helping somebody kind of feel more positive
actually does have an effect.
Yeah, it's kind of like those studies that say that sugar
has no effect on hyperactivity in kids,
but you ask any mother and they'll tell you you're crazy.
That's absolutely right. And I've seen those studies on sugar. And I've also carried out my own studies on my own children. And I think sugar has an effect.
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Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network.
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He's a science writer, and the book we're talking about is
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The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time.
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So, Michael, what's another mystery that baffles science?
Free will.
The idea that you make your own decisions and that your
body is under your control is actually not the view of science, even though it's the view of us
every day. The idea is that we have free will, that we can choose what to do and we're making
decisions all the time. Neuroscientists are saying that actually, really, we're just brain machines
and our brains are kind of making these decisions well before we're conscious of any intention to do something. So if you perform
a measurement on somebody's brain to see when the arm is about to start moving or something like
that, and compare that to when the person said, I'm going to move my arm, you find that the brain
has already started the movement well before the person has made the conscious decision to move, which is quite a scary concept.
But how is that possible?
I mean, how can your arm start to move before you've made the decision to move it?
Well, it seems that the brain, and the guy, interestingly, the guy who did this experiment
first, a guy called Benjamin Libet, he hated the result that he got so much that he spent the rest of his life trying to find ways out of it.
But it seems that our conscious will and our conscious intention of something
is kind of almost like a trick our body pulls on us.
And it kind of gives us the illusion that we're in control.
But actually, we just seem to be working as machines controlled by something going on in our brain
that isn't necessarily our conscious will.
I can't explain it and it goes against every kind of everyday experience that we have
but actually a scientific finding like that
and there was a more recent study that found that up to seven seconds
could occur between the brain starting a movement and the person becoming aware
of it. So it seems there's a lot to explore there in terms of, are we responsible for our actions?
Well, now, wait a minute. Wait, wait. Let's say I have an itch, and my inclination would be to
reach over and scratch the itch. But let's say I consciously decide not to scratch the itch, but if what you say is true, then maybe
seven seconds before, something decided that I should scratch the itch and I stopped it.
I didn't scratch the itch.
Is that free will?
Well, there are two explanations for that.
One of them is what this guy Benjamin Libet came up with, which he called the power of veto,
in that, okay, your brain has started these things, but your conscious will can stop them.
The other argument around this is that actually invoking your own will to prove that you have free will
is actually another sign that you don't have free will,
in that you're using your conscious will just to be
difficult and prove that you do have free will. But actually, maybe that's something that your
brain is kind of already doing. So what do you think? I mean, you've looked at the research
closer than most. Do you think we have free will? I don't believe we do. I don't think you can
defend the idea of free will scientifically.
And one of the examples that was given in the 18th century, in fact,
was when you get out of bed in the morning,
and you could be lying there under your duvet
and kind of trying to get yourself out of bed.
But actually, what happens is you just tell yourself,
oh, I don't really want to get out of bed.
And then you'll find, and try this tomorrow morning,
you'll find that somehow you actually have got up
and you're not really aware of having issued a command to get up,
but actually you're on your feet and you're up.
And this was kind of used as the first example of our lack of free will,
that actually there's something going on that kind of bypasses our conscious decision-making.
And although we have this general kind of feeling that we should get up,
the fact that when we do get up, it can almost take us by surprise,
is a show that our bodies are kind of a bit more out of our control than we'd like.
But we've all been told since as early as we can remember
that we are responsible for our choices.
We are the ones who choose to do what we do.
We can choose a life of crime, or we can become a priest.
These are our choices to make.
This is why this subject is actually becoming quite important now,
because neuroscience is finding these things about people's choices and intentions.
And some neuroscientists are being asked to testify in court
that somebody couldn't have chosen to do anything else.
You know, they effectively didn't choose
to do whatever it is that landed them in court.
And it's becoming a very difficult area.
I think this is one thing,
and this is what I describe in the book
as my only conclusion about any of these anomalies that we should ignore, really, is that our society is kind of set up
to deal, as you say, with people who make their own choices, and people have to be held accountable
and responsible for their choices. And even if neuroscience is telling us that they're not really
accountable, then I don't think we can afford as a society to take that too literally.
But it may not be all or nothing. It may not be all our decisions are free will or none of
our decisions are free will. Maybe we make some of them and maybe other decisions are made in
some other way. I think there must be some that we do make. I find it so hard to believe that
we're not making any choices.
The question we have to ask is which choices are we making?
And there was a famous case of a man who had a tumor in the front of his brain,
and he actually found that all of a sudden he had sexual feelings towards younger children,
inappropriate sexual feelings towards younger children, inappropriate sexual feelings.
And when this tumor was cut out of his brain, that went away completely.
Now, that suggests that something in his brain chemistry or the physical sort of shape of
his brain with this tumor actually changed everything to do with his personality.
And then we're getting into the science of, you know,
are we making choices or are we just, you know,
a function of what our brains do to us?
Another one of the unexplained mysteries you talk about is the wow signal.
What is that?
This was a signal that was received by a telescope in Ohio in 1977. And it looks exactly like a signal that we were expecting from aliens.
In the 1950s, scientists worked out what an alien signal might look like and how they might
communicate, as in what kind of frequency of radio signal and how long it would last and all the
aspects like that. And this signal that we received in 1977 turned out to be exactly that.
And so because it's been the only signal of its kind,
nothing else like it has ever been found or seen,
we might have this one contact with aliens.
Unfortunately, we've never had another one,
and we don't know what to make of
this. But it seems that the wow signal, and it was called the wow signal because the guy who saw it
on the printout wrote wow beside it because he was so amazed at what he'd seen. And this has never
been resolved. And people have looked for all kinds of other explanations. Maybe it was reflections
of our own radio signals that we're broadcasting from Earth, or something from space rocks, or space debris, or spacecraft or aircraft, and nobody's ever been able to
find any other explanation other than it came from some alien civilization.
So what do you think?
Do you think this was aliens?
Do you think there are aliens?
Do I believe that?
That's a good question.
I don't see any reason why there
shouldn't be something else living somewhere in the universe. I find it hard to believe
that we're the only thing in the whole universe that's kind of conscious and intelligent.
Arthur C. Clarke once said, either we're alone in the universe or we're not, and either way,
it's staggering. So if you think that we're alone then
that seems inexplicable that there should just be this one planet in the whole universe that's
inhabited by intelligent beings on the other hand if you think there are other intelligent
beings out there wouldn't it be the greatest thing in human history to make contact with them
and for me i think there must be other civilizations out there somewhere. The universe is a vast place,
and I find it hard to believe that the conditions for life and intelligent life have only occurred
here on Earth. Well, but those are two different arguments. There may well be other intelligent
life somewhere in the universe, but that doesn't necessarily mean they've tried to contact us.
It doesn't, but it may mean, I mean, we have sent signals out from the Arecibo telescope
in Puerto Rico, for instance.
We've sent a signal out into space, you know, hoping that somebody might intercept it.
And it may be that another race has done the same thing.
And to be honest, we wouldn't know if anyone has intercepted our signal, just as this other
civilization might not know whether we intercepted theirs.
It's a possibility. One of the most important things is, for science, contact with another
civilization in the universe would actually prove to us a lot about, you know, the nature of life
and what it means to be alive and whether there's life on other planets. So it would be an enormous
thing to be able to say we have made contact with another civilization.
Well, most of the time on this podcast,
we try to answer questions and explain things,
but you've answered no questions and explained nothing.
You've just raised more questions,
but they're really interesting ones.
Michael Brooks has been my guest.
He is a science writer, and his book,
one of several he's written, is 13 Things That Don't Make Sense,
The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time.
There's a link to his book in the show notes.
Thanks, Michael.
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People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world,
looking to hear new ideas and perspectives.
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Throughout the 1960s and 70s, and even into the 80s, NASA and space launches were a big deal.
When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, that was a huge deal. But today it all seems to have died down.
Now there's SpaceX and other private organizations that are launching rockets into space and selling tickets to the moon.
And it seems maybe that NASA has just become less relevant.
In fact, maybe space exploration has become less relevant. But the fact is that even with all this talk of private companies going into outer space,
NASA is still the only organization in the U.S. that has actually launched people into space.
No one else.
In fact, to date, NASA has put 460 people into space,
and all the other organizations collectively combined have put exactly zero.
This year is NASA's 60th anniversary,
and there's a new book out called The Penguin Book of Outer Space Exploration from Penguin Publishing.
And the book was edited by John Logsdon.
John founded the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University,
which he directed until 2008.
He is a former member of the NASA Advisory Council,
and he served on the Columbia Shuttle Accident Investigation Board in 2003.
And he's basically been watching NASA work from the very beginning.
Hi, John. Welcome.
So it's great that NASA is celebrating its 60th anniversary,
and no one can refute the incredible accomplishments that have been made in those 60 years,
but it does seem that things have died down, and why do you suppose that is?
Well, we're not launching people, and haven't been since we retired the shuttle in 2011.
Hopefully that's going to change in the next 12 to 18 months. And so the launches of
robotic spacecraft don't get the kind of public attention. Kennedy Space Center, between NASA,
military, and private launches, is talking about 100 launches this year. There's plenty going on.
It's just not of the character that we got used to during the
Mercury-Gemini and Apollo and even space shuttle periods. But do you think, you know, when you
talk to people who were around during the Mercury-Gemini and Apollo, you know, everybody
crowded around the TV set, you know, school stopped what they were teaching and brought
television sets in. Do you think that we've just kind of become a little more ho-hum about it?
Well, I think it's hard to sustain public attention to anything.
Attention span is notoriously short.
And certainly the shuttle was supposed to be routine.
That once you say spaceflight is going to be routine, it's hard to get excited.
People are excited about it happening.
That's true.
You know, the people that attend a launch with people aboard still are very excited.
But you're not going to sustain a space program on public excitement.
It has to have substantive value.
As somebody who's been involved in looking at and watching what's been going on at NASA
almost the entire time, if not the entire time,
what do you think are some of the big key moments?
What are the important things, whether we are maybe familiar with them or not,
that you really think changed everything?
Well, I think the first was the decision to create NASA. There was a
debate inside the Eisenhower administration of how to organize for space. And Eisenhower's first
inclination is to let the Department of Defense run everything and just take orders from the
scientists for scientific undertaking. The decision by President Kennedy to use the space program
as an instrument of national leadership,
as an element in the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union,
there was some of that under Eisenhower, but much more under Kennedy,
and I think it set the tone for almost everything that followed.
In a negative sense, the decision by Richard Nixon that winning the space race was enough,
we didn't have to continue a fast-paced space exploration program.
And so turning down the priority, trimming NASA's budget,
and settling for keeping people in low Earth orbit,
where they've been since Gene Cernan left the moon in 1972.
You've seen the various presidents, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan even rhetorically,
but Mr. Bush after him, George W. Bush, 2004, Obama in 2010, and now Donald Trump say, we're going to go explore.
So, I mean, there's a long history of ambition and vision that has fueled the program and hasn't been matched with resources since Kennedy's time.
Which must be frustrating for the people who work there.
Indeed. Does it seem to you,
like it might seem to someone, that with all the private space flights going on, Elon Musk and all,
that NASA is perhaps a little less relevant than it used to be?
Well, I mean, when you're the only game in town, it's hard not to be the relevant game in town. So, you know, you say a little less
relevant, sure. But is it still relevant? I think certainly. First of all, NASA, no private company
is going to carry out the robotic exploration program that NASA executes of going to visit all the planets and peer into the universe.
Only NASA can do that.
I think NASA's reservoir of experience with all aspects of spaceflight, including human
spaceflight, neither SpaceX nor Blue Origin nor anybody else has put anybody in space
yet. NASA has put 4 has put anybody in space yet.
NASA has put 460 different individuals in space.
So I don't think we give up on NASA.
Yeah, oh no, no, I would agree with that.
And that's an interesting thing to point out,
that NASA's the only one that puts people in space so far,
that that is, you know, that's a feat that no one has touched yet. And now,
is the reason that we haven't been back to the Moon in so long is just lack of interest and
resources, or did we learn everything we needed to learn and it would just be redundant?
Certainly not the latter. The Moon is basically unexplored territory. I mean, the six Apollo landings were basically demonstrations of engineering capability with a little science thrown in.
So there are people that think that there are valuable resources on the moon, water and accessible deposits of water that we could use for rocket fuel.
But we don't know that.
We have to go back and explore and find out whether that's real or not.
I think there are perfectly good reasons to go back to the moon.
And Mars is a fascinating object.
So we go there to find out whether there was ever life there.
And yet, and I may be wrong about this,
but it doesn't seem like there's much going on in terms of getting us to Mars, getting a person on Mars, and you would think that all the
technological advancements that have happened since we put a person on the moon, that we would
be further along, that there'd be some more momentum to go to Mars? I don't think a leader since John Kennedy,
with one exception, I'll put it in the footnote, has been willing to... A number of the presidents
have talked the talk about going back to the moon, but have not been willing to back up their
rhetoric with adequate resources. George H.W. Bush, back in 1989, called for a return to the moon, this time to stay,
and began the buildup to do that, but then he was defeated in his bid for re-election.
So it's interesting to speculate what would have happened if Mr. Bush had had a second term.
Well, that brings up something interesting, and you've mentioned it a couple of times,
that NASA seems to blow in the presidential wind,
that whatever the current president wants it to do, it does,
but no other federal agency operates that way.
Why does NASA seem to perform at the whim of the president? Because Kennedy made it a presidential instrument
by choosing to enter and win the space race. So it becomes a presidential issue of what you're
going to do with NASA. Human exploration, at least government human exploration, is pretty much a
discretionary activity. And so it falls to the discretion of
the president and Congress, whether we're just going to mouth the words or actually put adequate
resources. And that may be changing. I mean, ever since George W. Bush said in 2004, we're going to
resume exploration, we've been very slowly putting several billions of
dollars a year into preparing for exploration. It's been excruciatingly slow, but we're moving
in the direction of building the capabilities to go once again beyond Earth orbit without some
grand presidential declaration or war-like mobilization. So let's see whether over the next five to ten years we end up,
we're building the systems, we've got to use them.
If we use them, we're going to end up on the moon.
Is it excruciatingly slow because that's the nature of the work,
or is it excruciatingly slow because there's not enough money, or what?
Oh, I think because there's not enough money.
One of the things Nixon did would say that the space program
has to compete for budget priority with everything else.
And in that competition, NASA has gotten still a fairly significant amount of resources year by year,
but not enough to match its ambitions on a, I would say, a reasonable pace.
And so it's been, I say, excruciatingly slow-paced, but still moving forward.
If you had to guess, when do you think we'd get to Mars?
We could be in Mars orbit by 2033.
That does not require the very expensive job of figuring out how to land on Mars.
Probably the late 2030s, early 2040s. How long does it take to get there? Eight or nine months
each way with current chemical rockets. And again, if we had a sensible program, we'd develop
nuclear propulsion for space systems, which could cut the travel time down to a couple of months.
But there's this kind of negative aura about nuclear, the whole term programs, that those were the glory days of NASA and there's kind of a longing for that?
Well, I think there's a kind of institutional culture of nostalgia.
There's nobody left or virtually nobody left in NASA that dates back to those days. I mean, that was a long time
ago. It's been 46 years since the last mission to the moon. So we've been through two generations
of engineers since then. But I think the institutional culture views that as the good
old days. In a sense, that's the barrier or a barrier to partnering with the private sector, with these fresh entrepreneurs who dare to invade NASA's area of expertise.
Are there any laws that restrict people trying to do what NASA does or is it all up for grabs? Anybody can go anywhere. You need a license from the government to launch because by international treaty, the U.S.
government is responsible for any damage occurred that is a result of launching into space.
So if you want to go to Mars, you have to get a government license to leave. But once you're
off the Earth, I think it's pretty much open season or a wild west frontier, with the exception,
again, by international law, you can't claim territory. You can't go up and plant a SpaceX
flag and say, this is not now my company's backyard. I remember I thought I read something
in your book or in the material about the book that,
and I don't know if this was a gimmick or a joke,
that when the astronauts came back from the moon, they had to fill out customs forms.
Yeah. Going into space is leaving the territorial boundaries of the United States.
Every satellite has to get an export license, even if it's not coming back. And yes, reproduced in the book was the customs form
signed by the three astronauts saying departure Florida, destination moon, return Hawaii, cargo
moon rocks. I'd love to know where the original of that document is. Oh, I bet that's worth something.
That would be worth something indeed. So are you hopeful for the future of that document is. Oh, I bet that's worth something. That would be worth something, indeed.
So are you hopeful for the future of NASA?
I am guardedly optimistic.
I have that phrased down very carefully,
that if we can stay on the current path,
we will resume travel beyond Earth orbit in the next five to ten years.
We will be back to the moon and then on to Mars.
And that NASA will continue to be the lead in doing that, at least for the next generation.
Is it your sense, when you look at the people at NASA, does NASA still attract the cream of the crop,
or are those people, those brash entrepreneurs, trying to do it themselves?
Well, NASA certainly has to compete with the Blue Origins and SpaceX's
and the other smaller entrepreneurial firms for technical talent.
I don't think it has to be the cream of the crop, by the way.
I think it has to be people who are good enough and have the motivation to excel by what they're
being asked to do.
But just as one example, I mean, it's a kind of facetious example.
NASA named recently 12 new astronauts.
They had 18,000 applications.
So there are a lot of people that want to be associated with what's going on.
And if you're a new astronaut at NASA, what can you hope to do,
given the fact that there isn't a lot of people being launched into space?
There are two NASA astronauts and one partner astronaut on the space station right now.
There's been an American living and working in space on a constant basis since the year 2000.
We don't need as many astronauts as we did during the shuttle era,
but we're planning to send a crew on a mission around the moon in 2022 or 2023,
which is not that far away.
What goes on at this International Space Station these days?
What are they doing up there?
Research.
A variety of both government-funded and privately-funded research
across a whole range of disciplines.
I mean, that's not camera worthy.
I mean, a person turning knobs on an experiment is not something that's going to be on the
evening news.
So if you see anything at all, you see the floating around in zero gravity sort of stuff.
But there's a whole line of research, because that's what the space station
is, is a research laboratory. A lot of that research is learning things we need to know
if we're going to commit people to go to Mars. Well, you have been watching NASA, following NASA,
you've been involved with NASA from the beginning, and I know you said you're cautiously optimistic for the future,
but what final thoughts? What's in your heart? What do you see?
Well, I think we're at the cusp of a new era of space exploration.
We're building the momentum to once again travel beyond the immediate vicinity of the home planet. And I hope it's the start of something that, unlike Apollo,
is sustained and leads us into an exciting future.
Well, we shall see.
John Logsdon has been my guest. He is the editor of a new book out that is celebrating NASA's 60th anniversary.
It's The Penguin Book of Outer Space Exploration,
NASA and the Incredible Story of Human Spaceflight.
There's a link to the book in the show notes.
Thanks for joining me, John.
Okay, take care.
The next time you get stressed out, you might want to grab some gum and start chewing.
It seems that gum chewing is a fast way to reduce stress, and the harder you chew, the more relief you get.
In fact, just three minutes of sustained gum chewing lowers hormones associated with stress,
according to a study.
People had their saliva tested after chewing gum.
They were looking for the compounds associated with stress that are easy to measure in saliva,
and the results were pretty conclusive.
Now, exactly why chewing gum relieves stress is not so certain.
There are several theories as to what's going on,
from increased heart rates to higher insulin production,
which could affect the brain.
But it does seem clear that gum chewing cuts stress quickly.
And that is something you should know.
We're on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.
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I'm Micah Ruthers.
Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.
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Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know
called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen,
of course, every episode many times,
we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again.
And we can't do that alone.
So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride.
We've got writers, producers, composers, directors,
and we'll of course have some actors on as well,
including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic
brothers."
It was kind of a little bit of a left-field choice in the best way possible.
The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent
Duchovny type."
With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes, so
please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.