StarTalk Radio - A Conversation with Andy Weir – Special Bonus Episode
Episode Date: November 30, 2017Neil deGrasse Tyson welcomes Andy Weir, best-selling author of “The Martian,” to talk about his new book, “Artemis” – a heist/crime novel that happens to be set on the Moon. Neil and Andy ex...plore the unique, science-infused creative process that went into the novel, and much more.Special thanks to Audible for making this bonus episode possible.NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to episodes commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/ Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.
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And Audible has the newest book from today's guest, Andy Weir.
Listen to Artemis, read by Rosario Dawson, today. And Audible has the newest book from today's guest, Andy Weir.
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Welcome to Startalk.
Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.
StarTalk begins right now.
This is StarTalk.
Today, in this bonus episode, you'll hear my extended interview with author Andy Weir.
Let's get right to it.
So, Andy, you couldn't leave it alone.
I just couldn't.
You just had to keep doing this.
It's a sickness.
Putting a dude on Mars was not enough.
Insufficient.
Insufficient.
I'm putting a city on the moon. Having a movie about the book was not enough. Insufficient. Insufficient. I'm putting a city on the moon. Having a movie about the book was not enough.
Yeah, no, I mean, it was a good start.
You just had to keep going.
Gotta.
That's my whole job.
Well, that original book was sort of battle-tested
because it was written in parcels, if I remember correctly.
Yeah.
And the internet would react, and you'd react back.
But this one,
not so much.
No, this was a traditional contract with Random House. And so
I didn't get to post it a chapter at a time
like I did for The Merchant because when a...
So you don't have everyone's buy-in in advance.
I don't. I don't, yeah. When a publisher
gives you a big pile of money to write a book, they don't
like it when you post it for free.
So they prefer that you
don't do that. I see.
So yeah, I was on my own this time.
So did anyone tell
you there's no air on the moon?
Did they tell you this in advance?
It's a really hostile place.
More hostile than Mars? No, it didn't
come up. No one told you?
I need to make some edits maybe. Is it too late?
The book comes out tomorrow as of the time that we're taping this.
But yeah, you know, of course, I'm a space dork.
Not that I have to tell you that.
People wear space dork titles with pride in this office.
Yes, absolutely.
This is a space dork safe space.
A space dork, a safe space dork space.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, of course, the moon's always been as fascinating to me as Mars.
So this required an entire other layer of thinking to make existence on the moon real.
Well, yeah.
I mean, so this time it wasn't just like a flags and footprints mission like the Martian was.
I wanted to make a story about humanity's first non-Earth city.
And so the first thing I had to figure out was
why would anybody build a city somewhere other than Earth?
I needed an economic reason for that to happen.
So let's start there.
Okay.
Why?
Tourism.
Tourism.
Very good.
Okay.
I'll go.
Yeah.
I would say, I did my own personal math on this.
I would say five years, maybe 10 years of vacation money to spend on one vacation on the moon.
Oh, that's your threshold?
That's my sort of equation there.
Well, I did a-
If you can't get it that cheap, just forget it.
Oh, well, okay then.
cheap, just forget it. Oh, well, okay then. Well,
I did my own math
on what I
think the commercial space
industry might get to in terms
of efficiency. By when?
Well, Artemis takes place in the
2080s. 2080s, okay.
That's like almost in reach.
Almost in reach. 2080s. Probably I won't see
it. But people alive today will.
Yeah, some people will. And you might see it if we do a little genetic thing.
Yeah, you know, CRISPR, yeah.
Well, here's the aging gene.
Let's swap that out.
I don't know why we didn't do that earlier.
No, it's based on the presumption
that the commercial space industry
would become as efficient
in terms of fuel-to-overhead ratio
as the commercial airline industry.
And I wrote a whole article on that,
which is actually coming out in Business Insider.
Yeah, and I wrote this whole kind of, you know,
very amateurish economic analysis,
but, you know, I'm not getting investors.
I'm just writing fiction,
so it just has to make enough sense for that.
What is the cost to send a person to the moon
in your 2080 future? Well, if you wanted to to make enough sense for that. What is the cost to send a person to the moon in your 2080
future? Well, if you wanted to go
to the moon for two weeks, which includes a week
travel time there and a week travel time back.
A week? Yep. That's three days. What are you talking about?
Well, if you go the Apollo route, but if you use
a lunar cycler... Oh, okay.
So this will save energy. A lot.
Oh. So your lunar cycler...
The Apollo is just, let's go straight there.
Let's go straight there. Yeah.
But the lunar cycler, I use just, let's go straight there. Let's go straight there. Yeah. Yeah.
But the lunar cycler, I use the Apoth Crouch cycler that those guys defined, I want to say, in the 80s.
Those guys?
Apoth and Crouch.
Okay.
Okay.
And I was really excited. These weren't just syllables spilling out of your mouth.
These aren't just random noises.
The names of two people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're the names of two people. Yeah, they're the names of two people.
Unfortunately, I've forgotten their first names,
so I can't give them fully the credit they deserve.
But it's a paper I found that describes a lunar cycler.
Anyway, grand total, you would spend about $70,000 in 2015 dollars
to be able to go to the moon.
So you could easily, if you wanted to,
create a lottery
that you can send people all the time.
Sure.
Or I think a lot of people
would get a second mortgage on their home
to be able to spend two weeks on the moon.
Right.
Everyone's home is worth more than $70,000 now.
So you could easily pull that out
of the value of your house.
Possibly, yeah.
Or there could be financing.
Not everyone's, but I mean...
But it's not...
Yeah, it's not like...
Most people who own homes, their homes are worth more than $70,000.
But it's not like going to France.
It's considerably more expensive, you know, something like that.
And these are all in $20, $15, by the way, because that's when I did all the economic stuff.
Okay, so that's the money part.
All right.
And how about the food part?
How did you solve that?
Well, of course.
First, let me say in advance, I was at one of your launches at Comic-Con New York.
I saw you eating that.
And they had this green powder that was offered me.
And they said, oh, this is what Andy invented for his book.
I said, isn't his book fiction?
They said, yeah, but this is real.
Isn't his book fiction?
So it was some kind of powdered algae.
And just to show you how much I love you
and how much I trust you, I ate it.
Yeah, I saw that.
I saw the video.
It was real.
It was real.
I said, all right, Andy, he doesn't want me dead.
Right.
I don't think yet.
The name of the algae is chlorella.
Not to be confused with cholera.
You don't want to eat cholera.
Chlorella.
That sounds like a hair color.
Chlorella.
Chlorella hair color.
Chlorella.
It sounds like a brand.
Yes, yes.
It's chlorella.
And the reason they...
Was it actively alive when I ate it?
No, it was way dead by the time you ate it.
Way dead.
Yeah, it was a powder.
It was dead. Okay. Yeah, No, it was way dead by the time you ate it. Way dead. Yeah, it was a powder. It was dead.
Okay.
Yeah, no, it lives in the ocean.
It lives completely surrounded by water.
Okay.
And the way you guys ate it is actually, I watched you and LeVar Burton eating it.
That was awesome.
Both of us were on location for this event.
You were both like, oh.
Well, yeah, the way people in Artemis eat it is they add a little bit of water, so it's more like an oatmeal.
Your people didn't tell me this.
Yes, they did not.
I looked at it and I said, who eats powder?
Yeah.
Surely there's some water you would have to add to this.
Well, this is how they did it on the moon.
So I said, let me play along.
Yes.
Well, also they add flavorant.
The idea is that, so chlorella algae, algae in general, of course, it reproduces with doubling times.
So you can, in a fairly small volume, grow a lot of calories of food as long as you've got the energy.
And the energy is not a problem.
Artemis has reactors.
You're good.
Wouldn't all life have doubling times?
That's true.
If you have an open ecosystem for it, yeah.
Yes, but the doubling time of wheat is a little slower than you'd like,
and it takes a lot of surface area and volume to grow.
So that's what kind of the poor people eat.
The algae.
Yeah, the algae.
That plus flavorants, like artificial flavors that you import from Earth,
which are fairly cheap because it doesn't weigh a lot to bring a thing of extract up.
If you're rich... It's like vanilla extract it doesn't weigh a lot to bring a thing of extract up. If you're rich...
It's like vanilla extract at home.
Right.
It's in your cabinet for years.
Yeah.
You need like three drops to make a batch of cookies.
Right, right, right.
Yeah.
But then if you're a little wealthier or if you're poor but want to go out for a good meal,
then you eat food that's been imported from Earth.
Oh.
And that's good old-fashioned food although of course it
so this is not going to be fresh this reminds me of the early days when transportation international
transportation was expensive because we're old enough to remember a time when if you had
something imported you would tell people that this is my imported yes this is imported cheese
Yes, this is imported cheese. This is imported wine.
This is rich, real Corinthian leather.
Corinthian.
So, it was imported.
That was a mark of exclusivity.
Now so much goods and services, goods are transported across the ocean.
It's not a point of pride anymore.
It just is.
It just is.
And in terms of expense, it's, I mean.
In fact, I remember in grocery stores,
there'd be the imported section.
Oh, yes.
Right, right.
This is where you get imported goods.
And you go there for that.
For the goods.
Right, right.
Now it's like, what is it?
I forget what it is.
It's like something like they'll go lobster fishing
in the ocean, like off the
east coast. They'll go
lobster fishing. They'll send the
lobsters to China for processing and then
they'll have them sent back because that's
cheaper than doing the processing here. It's insane
how cheap it is.
Yeah, it's just the economics of it determines
the pathways
of consumption. Okay, it's just the economics of it determines the pathways. Not so much on the moon, though.
Of consumption.
Okay, so algae.
So it's either algae, which you can grow just by sunlight.
Right.
Well, they don't use sunlight.
They use artificial light.
Everything is like super.
They have these algae vats that they.
But where are they getting energy?
From nuclear reactors, ultimately.
Really?
The whole city is powered by two nuclear reactors.
So this is helium-3.
No, not fusion reactors.
Helium-3 is in the moon.
Okay, well, gold's in the ocean.
Go get it.
Okay, there you go.
It's 2080.
Yeah, that's true.
Go figure it out.
Go figure it out.
Go figure it out.
So there, snap.
Snap, snap, snap.
Oh, just one snap.
Not a Z-snap.
Okay.
Yeah, snap. Oh, just one snap. Not a Z-snap. Okay. Yeah, no.
I didn't want to invent any brand new technology for the story.
Everything's based on existing technology.
And so the reactors they have are good old-fashioned fission reactors.
Okay.
Where are you getting your uranium?
You get that from Earth.
But once again, not that heavy.
They are definitely...
For what it does. For what it does. Uranium
is actually very heavy.
Well, yes. It's quite dense.
With all those 92 protons
going on.
But it's...
Uranium, by the way, named after the planet Uranus.
It is. It is.
But what's Neptunium named after?
And Plutonium.
Plutonium also.
Plutonium. Plutonium isn't even Hmm. And plutonium. Plutonium also a question.
Plutonium.
Plutonium isn't even named after a planet, right?
That's right.
It got on there on false pretense.
Yeah.
Don't get me started.
So, all right.
So, is it just vaca... Does anyone stay there permanently?
Yes.
Well, Artemis is internal economy.
Artemis is the name of the colony.
Yes, the city.
The city, okay.
Its population?
Its population is about 2,000 people, not including tourists.
And its main income is tourism.
It's about 40 kilometers from the...
And we know that's a thing.
That's a thing.
Because we have cities that do that today.
Yes, absolutely.
Like Roswell, New Mexico.
Well, that's one option.
That's an example.
Or a Caribbean resort town is another example.
And I based Artemis' economy kind of the internal workings
after like resort towns in the Caribbean.
So you've got the really nice affluent areas for the tourists
and then the, shall we say, more austere conditions where the...
The working class people who sustain the enterprise.
Yeah.
And those are the people, those are like immigrants.
It's similar to like America in the early 1800s where, hey, if you can get here, you're welcome to make a life here.
If you can just, if you can get.
So how does a poor person get to the moon if it takes $70,000?
Well, that's if you're going to emigrate to the moon.
There's a worker immigrant program, I guess.
No, there's no, there is not.
Guest worker program. No, nothing like that. There's a worker immigrant program, I guess. No, there's no, there is not. Guest worker program.
Nope, nothing like that.
There's no policies even.
It's just like, it's kind of self-regulated
by whether or not people can get there.
It's the same as an immigrant's tale,
you know, back in the days of like the new world,
which is where, okay, I'm a, you know,
I'm a welder and I want to go work in Artemis.
I want to do that. So your family saves up the money for you to go. Yeah, I'm selling my house. I'm selling welder, and I want to go work in Artemis. I want to do that.
So your family saves up the money for you to go.
Yeah, I'm selling my house.
I'm selling my shop.
And you land with $10 in your pocket.
Right.
And then you make a living.
Yeah, and I'm going to start my shop here.
One-way trip makes it a little cheaper.
So how are they breathing?
Well, your diaphragm goes down, and it expands your ribcage.
No, so the oxygen is actually, there are lots of ways of managing oxygen in an atmosphere.
But the way things work out in Artemis is they have a thriving aluminum smelting industry
because they're constantly growing and they're constantly making aluminum.
And they refine the aluminum from a mineral called anorthite,
which is the most common mineral found
on the moon. About 85%
of the rocks in the lunar highland are just anorthite.
You can just scoop them right up off the
ground because there's no pesky dirt in the way. You don't
have to mine, you just go get it.
And anorthite is made of aluminum,
silicon, calcium, and oxygen.
And the amount of oxygen, it's
an enormous amount of oxygen. It's like Al2 and blah, calcium, and oxygen. And the amount of oxygen, it's an enormous amount of oxygen.
It's like Al2 and blah, blah, blah, 08.
So oxygen is a waste product of making, of extracting aluminum from this molecule.
Right.
From this mineral.
From this mineral.
And the moon is awesome.
It's made of disassembled moon bases.
It's just some assembly required.
Okay.
It's made of, anorthite bases. It's just some assembly required.
Anorthite is aluminum to make your moon base and oxygen to fill it.
Nice.
And so now we've got oxygen.
Okay.
And so we have food imported or grown on location with energy from... Cage-free algae.
Free-range algae.
Free-range algae.
And it's...
I think that's just called, you know...
Algae.
Algae.
Yeah.
And so you've got food, imported or otherwise.
You've got energy.
You've got oxygen.
Okay.
What is the governance?
The governance is practically nil.
So in terms of societies, it's very similar to a frontier town in the 1800s kind of thing in the U.S. during the westward expansion.
There is like one lawman who works there.
His name is Rudy.
He's a former member of the RMCP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Which makes him polite.
He's not that polite.
He's Canadian.
Come on now. He's Canadian. He's got that polite. He's Canadian. Come on now.
He's got that inherent.
You can't make a mean Canadian.
He's got the inherent Canadian-iosity.
No one will read the book if you have a mean Canadian.
He has a no BS attitude.
Let's say that.
But for the most part, it's just social norms or how the rules are enforced.
When you have a small society like that, it's a frontier.
They don't have the resources to have like a
large standing police force or a bunch of rules.
As they
grow, they would almost certainly develop
that. So in the series,
the book in the series Walking Dead,
what has sustained it
for so long is the
thought the author and the
producers have put into the
interpersonal dynamics that unfold
in the presence of this threat.
Of this complete collapse of society.
Complete collapse of society.
Who's in charge of resources?
Who has distribution?
Who gets weird?
Who gets power hungry?
Who gets submissive?
And so, do you explore this, this human dynamic?
Somewhat.
I mean, basically, you're always going to have greed, right?
You're always going to have people trying to work to their best advantage
and taking advantage of whatever weaknesses there are in the system.
Or of other people.
Or of other people.
Yeah.
And in Artemis, the case is that since it's so unregulated,
something you might even call like a libertarian paradise,
it comes with those disadvantages.
In other words, so our heroine is hired to do industrial espionage
because who's going to stop you?
And also organized crime likes to use Artemis as a means of laundering money
because Artemis has its own currency called slugs,
which stands for soft-landed grams.
Soft-landed grams.
Yes.
It's a reserve currency in a way.
Slug is a great word anyway.
Thanks.
Yeah.
in a way.
But slug is a great word anyway.
Thanks.
Yeah.
And so one slug can be redeemed for one gram of cargo
transported from Earth to Artemis.
So if you want to get a kilogram over from Earth,
that'll cost exactly 1,000 slugs.
And so on.
But they also end up using that as a currency.
And because it's this really completely unregulated, largely untracked currency,
organized crime loves to come in and use it to launder money.
So if I build a ship, I basically have manufactured some of your currency.
If you can transport goods.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, yes and no.
Actually, that's kind of fair because it increases the value of...
You don't want to print money if what it represents has not increased in value.
Right.
Well, think of it as being more like if you go back to the days of the gold standard,
if you pull some gold out of the ground, you have created money.
Way back in the day.
Way back in the day.
I still have a gold certificate.
Oh, do you?
Yeah, yeah.
Now it says Federal Reserve Note.
Yeah.
In that slot it says Silver Certificate, Gold Certificate.
I don't know if I can still cash it in, but.
I think you can, actually, by law.
Oh, yeah?
I can just go to Fort Knox and say, give me my.
Well, but they'll give you, what is it, a $1 bill?
Yeah, it's a $1 bill.
They'll give you $1 of today's money in gold.
So there you go.
Yeah. There you go.
It's like flake.
So how fast is this going to become a movie?
Well, I'd love it to become a movie right away.
But as a writer, I mean, your only job on a film is to cash the check.
And I've already done that.
your only job on a film is to cash the check.
And I've already done that.
However,
if your book is so popular,
then there's public pressure on how much latitude the filmmakers can take from them.
Like in the Harry Potter series.
Yes.
I'm not J.K. Rowling.
You can't mess with the characters but so much.
That's true. Otherwise, people mess with the characters but so much.
That's true.
Otherwise, people would be all up in your business.
They would be all up in the business.
But you've got to be, I think you've got to be a bit bigger than I am to have that kind of pull. To have that muscle.
To have that muscle.
I think you've got to be J.K. Rowling or Stephen King.
I'm quite a few steps below that.
Well, Stephen King now co-writes the screenplay.
Right.
So he's in it.
He's in it.
He's in it.
Did they keep you out of that room, the screenplay room?
Well, they haven't even made the screenplay.
Will they keep you out of the screenplay room?
I don't know.
Did they keep you out of the screenplay room for The Martian?
No, actually.
They consulted me a lot pretty much every day.
Drew Goddard, who wrote the marvelous screenplay for The Martian,
was calling me and asking me stuff, usually technical questions.
Good, good. Very good.
So, remind me, who produced The Martian?
That was 20th Century Fox.
It was produced by Simon Kinmer Productions and Scott Free.
It's always an alphabet soup of companies, but Fox.
And they have now also bought the same group
has bought the rights to Artemis.
And they have the directing
duo of Chris Miller and Phil
Lord lined up to direct.
So, the next step
is they're going to get a...
You couldn't keep Ridley?
Oh, Ridley. We're on a first name
basis with him now.
That's a weird thing about Hollywood, as I'm sure you've noticed,
is that everybody just calls everybody by their first name.
Yeah, yeah.
And it just seems weird.
I mean, Matt Damon.
They're like, yeah, yeah, hi, Matt.
You know, it's just like...
Well, you need the Damon.
Yeah.
There's no Matt without a Damon.
You need the Matt Damon.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's weird.
But yeah, so we've got Ward and Miller lined up to direct,
and they are right now,
I think, picking a screenplay writer to do the adaptation.
Okay. And again, forgive me for not having read the book before this interview. That's
why my questions are so blank.
No, no.
But I'm deeply intrigued.
That's very hurtful.
No, no, no, no, no, no. You have the wrong attitude. It is, I'm the only honest person to tell you that in all of your interviews.
Literally no one else.
I read your book.
I loved it.
So tell me about it.
It takes place on the where?
The moon?
So a day lasts a month on the moon.
So how does that work in the bio cycles of people?
Well, Artemis doesn't get any natural light onto the inside
except for one little part of it called Aldrin Park.
Wait, so you're underground?
No, they're in spheres, which they call bubbles,
that are, well, one of them is 100 meters across
and all the others are 200 meters across in diameter.
They're spheres, and they're half underground, half above ground.
This is a geometrically literate audience,
so when you say it's a sphere 100 meters across,
you don't have to say then in diameter.
In diameter.
Well, I just need to draw the distinction
between radius and diameter.
I don't want to be making
a false impression.
So these are habdoms,
basically.
Well, they're spheres. You're giving a false impression. We're here. So these are habdoms, basically.
Well, they're spheres.
They're not domes.
A dome is a hemisphere.
All right.
I mean, your literate utterance would know this.
Literate utterance?
Utterance.
So tell me about the 1-6 gravity. I'm more of a writer, not a speaker.
I got you.
Tell me about the 1-6 gravity.
Just to finish up on the previous question,
they're made of aluminum.
The hulls are six centimeters of
aluminum followed by a full meter of
crushed lunar rock followed by another
six centimeters of aluminum.
This protects you from radiation?
There's no sunlight getting to you.
Everything's artificial and it's based on
Kenya time.
It's what they do for their scheduling and time of day.
Kenya.
Kenya as in Africa.
Kenya as in Africa, yes.
Kenya is where the Kenya Space Corporation,
which actually owns Artemis, is based.
And that's where they do all their launches from.
Remind me of the Earth latitude of Kenya?
Latitude? Zero.
Yeah, so very nice.
Yes, that's part of it.
Nice pickings there.
Kenya had two things to offer the global space community.
My fictional Kenya had two things to offer.
Number one, the equator.
The real Kenya would do that if it's actually on the equator.
Yeah.
Wouldn't have to be fictional for that.
Wouldn't have to be fictional.
But the other thing they did is they set all of their policies
to be as friendly as possible for space travel.
They said, we'll give you a launch license.
You don't have to follow these stupid rules
that the other countries make you follow.
We'll make special tax breaks for you.
You can go ahead and bust unions.
We don't care.
I mean, this is not, you know, it's not kindergarten.
It's like they did everything they could to draw.
So they earned the privilege.
They successfully drew in the global space.
Investment.
Yeah. Not just investment, but actual, you know, companies relocated there.
They may still be owned by Belgium consortiums or whatever else,
but it's centered in Kenya.
So being on the equator,
you get the benefit of the high-speed movement
of the equator in Earth's rotation
going into orbit, Earth orbit.
So these missions to the moon
first go into Earth orbit,
and then they leave?
Well, you have to first go into LEO,
and then you'll have to transfer
low Earth orbit.
LEO.
I thought we agreed that this audience...
I've never heard anyone say LEO before. LEO? Yeah. Really? LEO. Oh, okay. LEO, GEO. Leo. I thought we agreed that this audience... I've never heard anyone say LEO before.
LEO?
Yeah.
Really?
Leo.
Okay, Leo.
Leo, G-O.
Okay.
Mio.
Leo, G-O, Mio.
Yeah.
Mm, Mio.
Yeah, middle Earth orbit.
Oh, okay.
Not the middle of the Earth.
Middle Earth orbit?
So you're like orbiting Sauron?
Right, right, exactly.
Okay, good.
Exactly.
So you go into Leo, and, you'll take a transfer.
You need to catch up with the lunar cycler.
There, there you go.
Yeah.
Um, because lunar cyclers are, uh, the, the, the cycler just goes back and forth between,
it's actually way more complicated, but, um, ultimately it comes near earth and near the
moon at regular intervals.
And you do have to accelerate the people to catch up with the cycler,
but at least you don't need to accelerate the cycler anymore.
So you can have this big, comfortable, basically space hotel
that only ever needed to be put in that orbit once.
And then so you have a nice, luxurious cruise.
And once you catch up with it, you're just on a moving vessel.
Yep.
As it is, yeah.
And then you also need to be,
you also need to then be decelerated
or accelerated, depends on your frame of reference,
to be able to go then
land on the moon when the time comes.
Tell me about the 1-6th gravity. How's that working for people?
It works great.
1-6th gravity, Artemis
is all set up for that. First off, it makes
construction a lot simpler because you don't need
nearly as much load-bearing. You't need nearly as much load-bearing.
You don't need as much
load-bearing on the individual floors
within the bubbles.
The people who live
there are very good at moving around
in 1.6G. Tourists are
generally not as good.
Surely you've seen the
videos
from the Apollo missions where they're kind of stumbling around.
Of course, tourists in Artemis aren't wearing bulky spacesuits, so they have that going for them.
Stairs, like stairs, can be about half a meter high because it's that easy to go up a riser.
So this sounds like an
ideal place to invent
new sports. Could be.
Space is limited.
But there is... Excuse me. Space
is never limited. Space is not limited.
Space on your freaking colony is limited.
Yes, that's true. I'm sorry. My colony.
Space inside of Artemis.
Habitable volume is limited.
However, there is one of the bubbles.
The bubbles are named after the Apollo astronauts.
And Aldrin bubble has the top four floors of it are just called Aldrin Park.
And it's all glass on top instead of the other kind of hole that I was describing.
And that's all locally sourced glass because one of the other things that anorthite gives you is silicon.
And so it gives you a bunch of silicon
and a bunch of oxygen.
Mix those together, you get glass.
SIO2, yeah.
Yes.
And so they have that.
And so there's a big park there.
Theoretically, you could play some games there.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
So, all right.
Frisbee is a challenge.
Why?
Well, you've got two things
that are kind of working against you.
Well, working for or against.
First off, one-sixth gravity.
So it's not going to go exactly the way you expect.
Right?
That would be true for pretty much anything.
Pretty much anything.
But second off, the air is only 21% of Earth's atmospheric pressure.
Why?
Because it's a pure oxygen environment.
Okay.
All right.
So you need just the right amount of oxygen.
Just the right amount of oxygen.
Because why over-design?
Why go out of your way to make it so much harder on the pressure vessels?
All right, so this makes...
So I guess you've done the math on this.
If it is one-fifth air pressure here, even if it's 100% oxygen,
things should not be more flammable.
They're the exact same amount of flammability.
Because it's the same density of oxygen.
Same partial pressure of oxygen
at Earth's sea level.
So humans would be perfectly comfortable breathing
and stuff like that. However,
it does cause a few other little problems.
Like? Like water boils
at 61 degrees Celsius,
which means coffee tastes like crap.
Because it can't properly brew
or steep. So you need to
boil coffee
in a pressure cooker.
You could make it
in a pressure cooker
or you could go cold brew.
Right.
That's a thing.
That's a thing.
People pay top dollar
for that on earth.
People pay,
yeah,
but earth people
are really stupid.
You know this. Okay, so this is a science fiction movie
that takes place in the future in space.
All right.
And the only thing that every science fiction
movie ever produced in the history of the universe
has in common with one another,
with each other,
is that people go into space and then something goes wrong.
Okay.
Okay.
That's the plot of every
single science fiction movie.
In space.
Something goes wrong.
So what goes wrong?
Well, this is more of
a problem having to do
with people in that the heist
that our hero, Jazz,
gets hired to do
doesn't go right, and
she angers
some pretty powerful
and very dangerous people that she was not aware
were associated with the company that she was sabotaging.
Okay, so this is a...
It's a crime novel.
It is. It absolutely is.
It's a heist story.
A heist crime novel that happens to be on the moon.
Right.
I gotcha. Gotcha.
So what's the coolest thing to look for in the book?
Let me ask that differently.
What's the most inventive thing you came up with for this book?
Most inventive thing?
Because in The Martian, you know, poop potatoes.
That was good.
Potatoes?
That was good.
That was a good one.
Okay.
Coming up with that.
We're going to get that one.
Yeah, that was good.
That's not getting cut.
Okay.
So, boy, well, there is a twist toward the end of the book,
which you would know if you'd read it, you know,
where some...
I'm sorry, the universe is like a big place,
and I, you know, can't read everything at all times.
Grant, you know, broadly speaking, Neil,
you spend your whole life in a very, very small part of that universe, right?
That's true.
I mean...
But the rest of the universe calls to me.
Oh, it doesn't.
And you're a cog in that turning universe.
Hey, if you take a cog out of any machine, the machine stops working.
I'm just saying.
No, you can break some cogs.
You can break some cogs.
You have redundant cogs.
That's good.
That's good.
No, there is a thing at the end
that I don't want to give too much away on
because of spoilers,
but there's some, shall we say,
unexpected chemistry that happens at the end
that causes a real problem.
And I'm kind of proud for having come up with that.
I'll tell you about it after we're done taping.
Okay.
Or maybe I won't.
Maybe you should read it.
Okay. done taping. Or maybe I won't. Maybe you should read it.
So is there
dairy or farm animals
or this sort of thing?
Oh no, there's nothing like that.
So it's a complete plant-based life?
Plant-based diet.
Well, I mean, if you're talking about
locally made stuff, then yeah.
Anything that's imported from Earth, well, it would have to be something that can be frozen or freeze-dried or something like that.
But for wheat, so what?
Yeah.
It's a seven-day trip.
So like fresh meat would be challenging, right?
But like frozen meat, frozen chicken, you know, eggs can last seven days, sure.
Fruits and vegetables?
Yeah.
You can get those?
Yeah, you can get those.
And, you know, eggs can last seven days, sure.
Fruits and vegetables?
Yeah. You can get those?
Yeah, you can get those.
And some people would grow them themselves in very small quantities,
but not at a scale for everyone to eat.
It would be a luxury item.
And you can forget about, like, fruit tree fruit, at least not local stuff.
Now, for me, the allure of going to the moon would be frolicking on the landscape.
Okay.
Well, you get to do that.
As part of the experience.
Yes, absolutely.
So you can go for these excursions.
They're EVA masters.
Basically, going out onto the surface of the moon is...
Let's be clear.
EVA is NASA's multisyllable...
Yes.
That's spacewalks, basically.
Yes.
Extra vehicular activity.
Moonwalks. Yeah, moonwalks. Moonwalks. Not vehicular activity moonwalks yeah moonwalks
moonwalks
not the Michael Jackson kind
but yeah
and you can
you can do this
in a similar way
that you can go diving
when you're on vacation
in a nice ocean place
where you have
an EVA master
who is out there
kind of keeping track
of you
and maybe
eight other people
and but
he or she
will be wearing wearing the big complicated
suit with articulated
fingers, everything kind of like you
imagine an Apollo suit, but a little
more advanced. You will be in what
they call a hamster ball.
It's basically just a big, clear,
inflatable,
airtight ball
that's strong enough that if you roll it over
a rock, it won't pop or anything.
And you're inside and you wear a backpack
that they call a scurry pack,
and it regulates all the air on the inside.
And you're limited to about two hours on any given EVA
because, I did the math on this,
that's about as much heat rejection
that you can handle by having a big block of ice in a backpack.
So basically...
So you ran the thermodynamics on this?
Yeah.
Very nice.
Thank you.
We should remind ourselves of your academic pedigree.
I have no degree.
That's my academic pedigree.
You are Dr. Tyson.
I am high school graduate Andy.
So no.
Then let us not call it academic, but let's call it academic passions.
Ah, yeah.
Yes, that would include science and engineering.
Oh, yeah, big time.
I love that stuff.
There you go.
There you go.
But I'm what you call a gentleman scientist, not an educated one.
gentleman scientist, not an educated one.
So,
I have told people that
the highest compliment I've ever gotten
from anyone at any time
was from you.
When you said that you were riding the
Martian,
laying down some science to track
and you imagined I
was looking over your shoulder.
What if Neil deGrasse Tyson reads this?
On the brink of tweeting about some mess up in your book.
And you didn't want that.
I didn't want that.
You didn't want that.
So, am I still there?
Oh, yeah.
Am I still there on your shoulder?
Oh, yeah.
No, no.
You're still there.
You're still there on my shoulder.
In fact, Artemis is even more scientifically accurate than the Martian.
The Martian projected forward some technologies like ion propulsion.
Sure.
And I completely ignored the effects of radiation.
I just made this magical HAB material that would stop radiation.
I offered no explanation.
In Artemis, I didn't even do that.
I said like, all right, you know, Artemis has the, the, the whole thickness to protect people
from radiation. When you go out on an EVA, I calculated, uh, let's say you're a tourist and
you go out on an EVA and one of those hamster balls, you don't have a bunch of like protection
from a traditional EVA suit. How much radiation do you get? Turns out over a two-hour EVA
during the lunar daytime,
you would get about the same amount of radiation
as getting a set of dental x-rays.
So that's fine.
That's the measure.
But I checked.
And the reason I checked
is because I knew you'd check.
But, you know, I get misunderstood
in many of my...
I'm there to just enhance people's appreciation But, you know, I get misunderstood in many of my...
I'm there to just enhance people's appreciation of the book or of the movie.
Yeah, sure.
And I get characterized as a buzzkill.
No, that's not...
But I'm really just keeping everybody...
Keeping them honest.
Just keeping it to the song.
See, I guess I'm in some...
I don't know if I'm in a minority or whatever.
I'm in the opposite camp.
I love that. I love what the opposite camp. I love that.
I love what other people apparently consider a buzzkill.
I'm like, yeah, you tell them, Neil.
Because it drives me crazy.
What really bugs me in the story isn't so much physics and accuracies.
I can accept a warp drive.
I got no problem with that.
For suspension of disbelief, no problem.
What bothers me is inconsistencies.
So if you can go faster than light,
I remember there was one episode of Star Trek
where they're in the, you know, classic Trek,
they're in the Enterprise, right?
It can go warp, I forget what classic Trek
Enterprise could go warp.
Ten-ish, at least ten.
Yeah, nine, something like that.
But then at one point they're like,
okay, we need to get from Mercury to Earth.
And it took them a while.
And I'm like, wait a minute.
Okay, no.
Mercury is like seven light minutes from Earth
and you're going many, many times the speed of light.
It's not going to take you a while.
So yeah, that one that slipped by.
Yeah, that slipped by.
There was the other episode where they wanted to magnify the sound of people's heartbeats
to find out where the alien was in the spacecraft.
And was it Spock or Kirk said,
this device magnifies the sound by one to the twelfth power.
One to the twelfth power.
Yeah, yeah.
Excellent.
Yeah, one times one times one times one.
All the way to the twelfth power.
Yeah.
And then I thought, okay, they just misread it.
And then there's a similar error in another episode.
Yeah.
Where it was like one to the ninth power.
So somebody just didn't remember that.
Just doesn't get that.
Yeah.
Well, I remember in a book, now that's not fair bagging on Star Trek books because there's so many.
But I remember one of the Star Trek books, Kirk says, Scotty, I want every ohm of power to the shields.
Ohm of power.
Yeah.
So to which I imagine Scotty saying, well, he wants maximum resistance,
so I guess I'll just turn him off.
Let me get astronomical on you,
see if you thought about it, okay?
Moon, of course, looks the way it does
because it doesn't have an atmosphere
to protect it from meteoroids.
Right.
How do you protect yourself from meteoroids,
especially during meteor showers?
You...
Did you think about that?
I did.
Okay.
And the odds of any object hitting something the size of Artemis
are literally astronomically low.
Okay, good.
And it would have to be going, and even if it did,
if you're talking about like a micrometeorite, something like that,
even if it did, it would have to be going very, very fast,
like maybe 50 kilometers a second kind of thing to make it all the way through
both holes and the sand.
Okay.
Good answer.
Good answer.
A couple more.
Are there occasions where people get to see total solar eclipses down on Earth?
Yes, absolutely.
Literally every time there's a total solar eclipse, we'll be during a full Earth.
And so you'd be seeing that.
Unfortunately, a solar eclipse from space is lame.
Yeah, it's fuzzy.
It's just like this little kind of blurry blob.
Fuzzy, dark thing.
Yeah, it's not as exciting.
But do you talk about it in the book?
I don't.
Oh, it doesn't come up in the book.
That's what I'm getting at.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm getting astronomical on you.
No eclipses in the book.
No eclipses in the book.
You said you're getting astronomical, me. No eclipses in the book. No eclipses in the book. You said you're getting astronomical, not literary.
Okay.
So, full Earth on the moon is 60 times brighter than full moon on Earth.
Yeah, nice, huh?
So, do you have any evening Earthlight walks?
The Earthlight mattered for some of the EVAs they took.
Oh, good.
But once again, it only matters when you're outside because inside you get the light.
It's 60 times brighter.
60 times.
That I didn't know.
See, there's astronomical stuff.
That's astronomical.
I'm here.
Well, my favorite thing is that earth is in a fixed position in the sky.
Yes.
Well, there's lunar vibration.
So it wobbles, but it's there.
And so one of my characters is a devout Muslim.
but it's there.
And so one of my characters is a devout Muslim.
And so he made like a ramp with a prayer rug on it so that he could pray to Mecca
because since earth is in a fixed position,
that direction is always correct.
He never has to change his direction.
He doesn't have to change direction.
Right.
Very good.
Very good.
Yeah.
So dude.
Dude.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And so you're on tour now for the book, and there's an audible version of it.
Yes.
Narrated by?
The lovely and talented Rosario Dawson, whom you met.
Gosh.
Oh, yeah.
Just to hear her, because in the exhibit that I attended,
it was an audible exhibit at a setup where you got to hear some of the-
The Lunar Museum.
Yeah, the Lunar Museum at Comic-Con, New York Comic-Con.
I got to hear some of the passages read by her.
It's great.
She's really fantastic.
Oh, man. Oh, yeah.
Couldn't ask for a better narrator.
Very good.
So, cool.
And nowadays, since everyone is stuck in traffic,
audible versions of books matter.
Yes.
Yes, they do.
Yes, they do.
In my latest book, I decided I would narrate that because it was short enough.
Well, you've also got, and I'm not kissing up here, you've got a great voice.
I don't hear my voice.
I don't even think about it.
You've got a really good voice.
But here's how I thought about it, because it's not a long book.
So I said, well, how many days stuck in LA traffic would get through this book?
And I figured two days.
Yeah.
Two days, yeah.
So that should be the metric,
the new measure of how long a book is.
Yeah, commute days.
Commute days.
So, Andy, congratulations.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for coming through town.
Thanks for having me.
And you're based where again?
I am based in California near San Jose.
San Jose, okay.
Well, thanks for coming to New York,
your first time.
My first time, my first visit to New York City.
Welcome to the universe.
Dude, we'll see you again.
Thank you.