StarTalk Radio - Live at Awesome Con – To Mars and Beyond
Episode Date: February 10, 2020We explore the mission to Mars and beyond with Bill Nye the Science Guy, co-host Eugene Mirman, astrobiologist David Grinspoon, former NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman, and comedians Jo Firestone... and Hari Kondabolu, recorded live at Awesome Con 2017. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/live-at-awesome-con-to-mars-and-beyond/ Thanks to our Patrons Justin Adamson, Forrest Shepard, Andrew Wood, William Price, and Kynan Woodford for supporting us this week. Photo Credit: Elliot Severn. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.
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Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.
StarTalk begins right now.
Hello, everybody. It is my great pleasure to welcome StarTalk Live to the show, to AwesomeCon.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me bring on your host,
one of America's great science educators and communicators,
Bill Nye the Science Guy!
Eugene, Eugene, guy hug!
Hello!
Yes, good to see you!
Greetings!
Woo!
Wow, look at you guys. Greetings, greetings.
I imagine this is not the first time you've heard this this weekend.
This is awesome. So speaking of awesome, should we introduce our guests?
Let's do it.
Well, start out, where should we start? We'll start over here. The most hilarious woman ever, and you know her by her Twitter handle, at King Firestorm.
Ladies and gentlemen, Jo Firestone.
Hello, hello.
Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Next in this corner, or this chair, from the Astrobiology Institute, you know him by his
Twitter handle, Dr. Funky Spoon.
David Greenspoon.
David, David, David.
David Greenspoon.
David Greenspoon.
David, David, David.
Good to see you, sir.
Yes.
Good to see you, too.
Then in this corner, which is a chair.
And I'd give you his Twitter handle, but he said no.
Just Google him.
Hari Kondabalu. Welcome. Hari Kondabolu.
Welcome.
Hari Kondabolu.
And then lastly, everybody, somebody who really works in the business full time.
The second in command at NASA.
The deputy administrator, Dr. Dava Newman.
Give it up up here she is
hi guys
thank you sir
we'll do this
I'll be messed up on microphones
there it is
please everybody
please sit down
are there any questions
on what we've covered so far
no we're at Awesome Con
this is superhero time
and on stage here with me i claim
are the superheroes of space exploration
so so for me what i'm hoping for is to have superpowers right now what do you guys want
in superpowers main thing for me I want to be able to fly.
And then the next thing down that list for me
is to be able to have extraordinary vision.
What would extraordinary vision?
Like how far?
Well, I'd like to see other planets.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
And then I'd like to have vision that would find life
and stuff like that.
So to get this started, Dr. Newman, you are an expert in aerospace and biomedical engineering.
Yes.
Your research studies include advanced spacesuit design and dynamics and control of astronaut motion,
which is not trivial when you're in zero-g.
Right, or Mars.
Or Mars.
Or Mars.
Or Mars.
Or Mars.
Or Mars.
Or Mars.
Or Mars.
And you're the director of MIT's
Technology and Policy Program.
On leave to serve NASA.
And as well as your deputy director at NASA.
Now, Dr. Greenspoon.
Sir.
You're, of course,
you're regular here on StarTalk.
That's why you're beloved.
Oh, my.
And you are, I presume you are funky funky and you're good with a spoon.
I do my best.
Yeah, you're Dr. Funky Spoon.
But right now you're the senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute,
which is like an amorphous thing.
It's distributed.
Distributed because it's the modern world in which we now live.
And you're a co-investigator on Mars Curiosity Rover, right? And stuff like that. This is right.
So here's the thing, you guys. I want
to just ask you to start, because we're at AwesomeCon.
What would
be your favorite, let's see, we'll start with
David. What would be your favorite superhero?
So I'm going to combine a few.
So it's Elast...
You can do that? Yeah, I'm going to do it.
It's Elastigirl with
Spider-Man, because the suit is cool.
We came up with it first, you know, for a suit for Mars.
And I like to fly, too.
So Batman, so Elastispider Batgirl.
That's what I'm going with.
Yeah.
That's what I'm going with.
Cool.
And Batman just doesn't really fly as much as he falls incredibly well.
Yeah, yeah.
And he doesn't ever, seldom gets hurt.
What was Elastigirl's, I'm not familiar,
Elastigirl was just kind of bendy, or what was her thing?
Super bendy, cool.
Super bendy.
Around, yeah, nothing got in her way.
And fast.
What was the difference between her and say, Gumby?
Gumby, I think, is more Christian.
Oh.
And green, yeah. She's red red she's kind of more red oh so okay
gumbie's green and she's red right there okay just start with that just start with that but
seriously you made a you made an allusion to spacesuits that are resemble superhero costumes
there you go but the the technology came first, I think. Yeah.
The technology came first?
I think so. We've been working on the technology for a long time.
What technology are you talking about?
Advanced spacesuit design. It has to be, you know, lightweight, mobile, flexible.
We're going to Mars. Did you hear?
We're going to become interplanetary.
We're going to Mars. Not, you guys, we're not going to Mars during this short talk.
Surprise, we're going to Mars.
Pick a partner.
I hope you're with someone you love.
Strap in.
Well, what are we doing in Mars?
What are we doing?
We're setting up shop, or what's happening there?
Well, we're already there.
We've been there for the last 50 years with orbiters and landers,
and the next 50 years are even cooler. We're going with people. So first we're going out, space station that's in
low-earth orbit, phase one. We've been doing this for 16 years together with the world. Then we move
out to Earth, Moon in all the 2020s. Our rovers are still hanging out, doing Mars. We have these
great experiments. We keep popping off the robotic missions to Mars, and then boom, boots on Mars
with people in the 2030s.
This is like stuff.
Stuff will be there.
What's the year
that you think
that there'll be boots
with people inside the boots?
People inside the boots?
In the 2030s.
Because I can say boots
while we're in Mars.
It's the 2030s
and it's probably not all of us
but it's the Mars generation.
Nice.
Teenagers today.
Is there going to be
commercial flights to Mars?
Is that the plan?
When does that start?
Well, government and commercial.
So it's public-private partnership.
And it's the world, too.
I heard Southwest is doing specials.
I can't wait until there's some weird line
where you have to get into to get a Mars.
To get your seat.
Special TSA.
Great Southwest joke.
Terrible, terrible.
Watch out for the baggage charges.
Before we go too far along,
David, you have a favorite superhero?
Yeah.
I guess my favorite superhero is
Planet Girl slash Planet Boy because...
Planet Girl?
Slash Planet Boy because she's
transgender and interplanetary.
And she's got spectrometer eyes,
multi-wavelength imaging spectrometer eyes,
and she's got ion drives on her toes.
So she can go in orbit around any planet
and image just about anything you would want to.
Dr. Newman, you are the second in command at NASA.
That's like a superpower.
It is super cool.
I have the best job in the world. Maybe the second best.
I think it's the best job in the world.
Do you ever go like, get out of here, go to
outer space?
Not out loud.
Because if you
did, it would cost a lot of money.
Yeah.
So when you say Journey to
Mars, we spell that J2M?
I like that.
That's a good acronym, J2M.
That's my shorthand for it.
And so in order to make the journey to Mars, let me ask you a couple things.
What do we need to do?
We need a big rocket.
So we're designing and developing, and this is real.
Our space launch system is well under development.
How long will it take to travel from Earth to Mars?
So, you know, round trips, about eight months to get there,
but just think of it as about a two-year round trip in transit.
Hopefully we stay 600 days on the surface of Mars exploring.
And when you say 600 days, 600 Earth days, 600 sols.
Yeah, that's debatable.
Let's say 600 Earth days, since we're kind of counting in Earth days right now.
And 600 Earth days is also just 600 days.
I think anybody who's ever seen the movie 2001 Space Odyssey would say,
that is awesome.
And part of the reason it was awesome, it was spinning.
The space station is spinning, creating some artificial gravity.
But right now, the proposal is to punch it and go to Mars fast enough, exercise enough
on the way, and take the right medications to preserve bones, right?
Safe and preserve muscles and bones. Musculoskeletal, the bone, we lose, typically you lose
one to two percent bone mineral density per month. Here on Earth, that's per decade. But maybe we
have some small, you can do small short armarm centrication that fits in the craft.
That's a really interesting concept.
You know, like a spin in the gym.
You know, imagine instead of the elliptical,
it could be a spinning thing.
So we're still, you know, playing around with the concept.
Meaning you would be in a spinning thing and it would...
Well, say the spacecraft, you know,
you know what, you know, 2001, that was fantastic.
Engineers love it, but that's expensive
when you have a two-kilometer radius, right?
Tell me about it. So let's do a smaller one because, you know, we have great budgets, but that's expensive when you have a two-kilometer radius, right? Tell me about it.
So let's do a smaller one because, you know,
we have great budgets, but we could spin inside.
Hold on, just a second.
David, just a normal blank?
What?
A normal what?
A normal spacecraft, normal Mars spacecraft.
A normal Mars spacecraft.
That's what I think about every day.
And then we could have little,
think of like little spinning beds inside. See, that's cool. That's still I think about every day. And then we can have little, think of like little spinning beds inside.
See, that's cool.
That's still artificial gravity,
but within the constraints of a normal Mars spacecraft.
So let's say that problem is solved.
What is the biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge for getting people
to become interplanetary,
because we will become interplanetary,
I hope sooner than later.
That's what I'm working on.
Biggest challenge is the will. Biggest challenge is the will.
The will, deciding to do it.
We have to focus, just deciding yes.
The biggest challenge is just saying yes
and getting all of you,
getting all the people behind it say that,
first answer why.
Why are we going?
There are the enduring questions.
Are we alone in the universe?
Is there life?
Has there been past life?
That's the why.
Biggest challenge is just say,
let's just say yes. And stay the and don't get, you know, derailed and just focus, focus, focus. And
then we get there. So that's the biggest challenge. Yes. Who's saying no to this? Like people that
are afraid of aliens? It's not no, it's just, you know, apathy. Who gets to own Mars? Oh,
it has to be global. I mean, at NASA, we're saying, here's our planathy. Who gets to own Mars? Oh, it has to be global.
I mean, at NASA we're saying, here's our plan.
Here's what we want to lead.
We have all of our elements, heavy lift launch.
Ryan caps on top.
And then we're saying, world, come with us.
Even Estonia?
Estonia, yes.
Sure, sure.
Who wants to join?
It's global.
It's global exploration.
Isn't that a risk?
Because that's the way colonialism worked before.
All these different countries were going to a land and claiming it.
So won't that just happen again with different companies and different...
You know, you think...
Maybe we can get it right this time.
Ultimately, the Martians will probably own Mars.
Yeah, but we're going to kill them off.
I discussed this earlier.
We're going to become the Martians we're colonizing.
When we go there, we'll be the Martians.
Sorry, really quickly.
We're talking about Martians in this scientific form.
They're real.
What's happening?
Well, okay.
Earth and Mars, 4.5 billion years.
Sister planets.
Beautiful, wonderful.
And we think, because we have a lot of scientific data now,
Mars, 3.5 billion years ago,
was probably wet, wonderful, maybe a little wild.
Back in the day.
Back in the day, 3.5 billion.
Like Costa Rica?
Like a little like Costa Rica?
Maybe.
Yeah, Costa Rica.
And then something might have gone terribly wrong.
Well, what went terribly wrong?
Too many parties.
Too many parties.
We'd like to figure that out because that tells us a lot, again, about Earth,
about spaceship Earth.
And so if there's past life, it's probably kind of fossilized and, you know,
that's what we're looking for. Past life, probably. So a couple things, though, literally.
There is a space treaty from 1967. Signed by John Lennon.
The wording of it is a little bit vague,
of the space treaty, kind of deliberately,
because it talks about going to the moon and other celestial bodies,
like people, the Mars was a long way away.
Nevertheless, Mars is getting to be within reach.
It's getting to be a reasonable thing
that people might do.
And if we can really do this,
I just, my opinion, which as you know is correct, is that it's just not so easy to get to Mars.
It's just not, it's not like these guys came.
It's hard.
They came from Europe and they went across North America.
They came from Europe.
They went to South Africa and they started eating things and setting up tents and stuff.
But on Mars, it's a much more difficult deal.
Well, there's also a big difference, which is that there were people here when Europeans got here.
And they weren't always recognized as people, and that caused a lot of problems.
It seems as though there are no people on Mars.
So the setup is inherently different.
But what about protecting the role, let's say the objective, to protect Martian life if it's found?
Yeah, well, one of our big scientific objectives now, of course, is to find out if there is Martian life
so that we don't inadvertently do something really stupid to it.
So along that line, we're sending robots, right?
By robots, we mean spacecraft that land,
drive around, cool tires,
and to look for things.
But how do we know that those things are sterile,
those robots have been made clean enough
to land there without contaminating the Martian life
when we see it?
Well, we work on it.
We take it serious.
That's planetary protection.
And we think about forward protection. We bring life. We're looking for life on Mars. Well, we sure on it. We take it serious. That's the, you know, planetary protection. And we think about forward protection.
We bring life.
We're looking for life on Mars.
Well, we sure don't want
it to be our life.
So we do that.
And back contamination.
So forward contamination.
So it has to be,
you know, it's a whole area.
Has to be thought through.
There's no way to know for sure.
But it is taken seriously.
We do our best.
There are planetary
protection protocols.
We try to clean our spacecraft.
We don't sterilize them 100%,
so we know we've brought some microbes to Mars.
Well, when you say we don't sterilize them 100%,
I will ask the obvious.
Why not?
Because it's very hard to,
in order to sterilize a spacecraft,
you would have to cook the whole thing
to a point where you would destroy a lot
of the scientific instruments. You'd melt the electronics. So we kind of play this game where
we get them clean enough so that we know how many microbes are on there and we land them in places
where we don't think those microbes would survive. It's a little bit of a game you have to play.
And we don't, so we know there are some microbes on Mars that we've brought there, but we don't believe we've started colonies of Earth organisms on Mars.
I would love to beat everybody there and put a bunch of rabbits on Mars.
And then you go like, oh my God, there's so many rabbits.
What are we looking for as far as Martians?
Are we looking for like plants or worms or fossilizers?
Kind of like think about going to the beach and looking at those cool, you know, fossilized shells.
Kind of like that.
Like something like a mussel.
Like a mussel.
No.
Seafood.
Harder and flatter and 3.5 billion years old.
So you're looking for what was there, not what is there.
Past life.
There's nothing there.
What is there?
Well, what is there, we're finding out every day.
We know how Mars lost its atmosphere.
Our MAVEN observer just helped us figure that out.
And we know there's methane.
Mars is breathing, kind of saying hi to us with methane coming out.
I think it might be active methane.
So, when you find methane from what? Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo- Oh my gosh. People lighting mattresses?
We don't know.
In fact, the existence of the methane itself is somewhat controversial,
though it's looking better and better.
There probably is methane.
And of course, a long time ago, before we found the methane,
that was one of the things that scientists said would be a biosignature on Mars.
If you find methane, then there's gases that are weird gases
that shouldn't be in the atmosphere. Just like on Earth, there's oxygen in the atmosphere that comes from life.
If you find methane on Mars, we used to say, then that'll be a sign of life. So now we've found
methane on Mars, but we're not sure it's a sign of life because there's not much of it and it
behaves in weird ways. And there are some just chemical geological reactions that
can make methane inside the earth or inside a planet but most of the methane on in earth's
atmosphere does come from bugs from life just to clarify we're talking about space farts right
yes yes that's right and burps it could be propulsion you know see methane would be great
propulsion for us that's why it's a meaning if we could be propulsion. You know, see, methane would be great propulsion for us. That's why it's very interesting.
Meaning if we could use the methane to get back to Earth.
There you go.
Gas station, you know.
We've got to have that first gas station on Mars.
The first gas station.
How cute.
Is it going to have like a mini mart and stuff?
I guess we'd have to set that up.
But imagine this, everybody.
You land the right spacecraft on Mars
and you use the chemistry of the rocks and the atmosphere to make rocket fuel to fly back.
I mean, that is an extraordinary idea and very cool.
And we will talk about that coming up in the next segment.
You've been watching, you've been listening to StarTalk Radio.
We'll be back right after this.
Thank you. Welcome back to StarTalk Live.
We're at the Convention Center in Washington, D.C.
And I am joined by this fabulous panel,
which includes our beloved Eugene Merman,
Hari Kondabolu,
Joe Firestone,
David Greenspoon, and second-in second in command at NASA, David Newman. So, when we left, we were talking about life on Mars.
We were talking about what we'd be looking for on Mars.
How would we know whether or not we found something alive on Mars?
What exactly are we exactly looking for? Well, it's a puzzle, right? Because we don't know if there's any life
beyond Earth. By the way, what is life, man? Well, that's the puzzle. How do we define it
when we only have one example? You think there's all this biodiversity on Earth, but we know one
thing we've learned for sure is that it's all related.
So there's one example of life on Earth.
How do we know it's all related?
Well, chemically, of course, it all uses
DNA and proteins, and even better than that,
by looking at the sequences
of DNA and proteins, you can
tell what's related to what.
And you can
make this tree of life, and
we go all the way back
and we do not find any organisms
that we're not obviously related to
on a biochemical level.
Even my old boss?
Even snails are your distant cousins.
You and an escargot are just a few generations removed.
A little garlic away from being the same.
Yeah, yeah.
So we can't really define something
that we only have one example of.
It's not very scientific.
You want a bunch of examples of something
to say what it all has in common.
And yet we want to search for life elsewhere,
so we have these sort of provisional definitions.
We think we know what its signs will be.
We think we know what it is.
But in order to really know what it is,
we have to find it and then be able to compare it.
What would you speculate it would be?
Well, I just...
What would it take?
Present life and past life.
Right now on Mars, we really think that it's past life,
but we say, when you look for life,
the search for life, follow the water.
You know, that's kind of rule number one,
follow the water.
Now we have water on Mars.
Why do you say follow the water?
Well, because David was saying,
you know, we're kind of looking for carbon-based life. That's
what we know. Kind of carbon-based life forms, that's how life is on Earth now. There could be
something we haven't thought of, but right now we're saying, go for the water. We have water
on Mars. Mars has a carbon dioxide atmosphere. Pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, when we're talking
about Mars, we're following the water. We're going to make oxygen there. If we're talking
about just life in the universe, looking at exoplanets and such as well,
we tend to take a more general view of thinking,
well, life, at least we know,
is something that perturbs its environment chemically.
Sorry, what are, you said exoplanets?
Planets around other stars.
Oh, my gosh.
You know how many we have?
Which now we know.
They're super cool.
Now we know.
We didn't know this 20 years ago.
This is one of the revolutions of our time
is now that we know that all the stars in the sky,
almost all of them have planets, multiple planets.
So when I was in school, Joe,
people speculated that there might be a planet
around one in every hundred stars.
Now it's generally agreed
in sort of orders of magnitude factors of 10
that every star has at least 10 planets,
about 10 planets.
And then if you want to get in the argument
about Pluto, Sedna, Eris,
and these other very distant icy worlds,
then you're talking about hundreds of planets.
Thousands.
We just let out,
we just categorized and let out 1,200 new exoplanets.
But let me just say,
just to dog on them.
If we're looking for life on those,
it would be great if we could detect water,
but even if we just see weird chemistry in the atmosphere.
So Mars has carbon dioxide atmosphere?
Yeah.
And then we can turn that into oxygen.
We're going to do that on our Mars 2020 rover.
Nice.
Can I have some of that oxygen?
You have to go there.
It won't be enough for a person,
but we're going to make oxygen on a planet for the first time ever.
Hang on, people.
Hang on just a minute.
Deva, you said, well, you know,
we're going to look for life that was once there on Mars.
We were back there, you know, back in the old.
Look, there's methane on Mars, people.
We have the MAVEN.
It's at Mars Atmospheric Volatile Emissions.
What's the N?
Atmospheric volatiles environmental.
Yeah, I think it's Nancy.
Yeah, we think it's Nancy.
Nancy, and she's fabulous.
She's fabulous.
If they're finding methane, there's got to be a source of it.
I'll give all of you chemists, and I love you all out there,
there's some inorganic chemical process that produces methane, right?
But everywhere on Earth we find water,
we find living things.
Even the tiniest dampness of nothing damp
in Death Valley,
there are cyanobacteria that live, right?
The green, blue-green things that live under the rocks.
Rains once every couple years
and something's alive there, right?
Right.
All right, so if we're finding methane on Mars with, what is it,
the Tracegrass Orbiter that's out there, and MAVEN,
and we're finding liquid water in these recurring slope lineae, right?
And geologists love the Latin.
Seasonal, yeah, exactly, seasonal.
So it's a little rivulet,
a little rill, a little drip
of water every year. And lots of ice on the poles.
Hari, I like it. You can't see it on the podcast,
people, but he is inquisitive man.
He's hanging on this.
How much water are we talking about right now?
Right now, just a small amount. Briny,
salty water. You don't want to drink it yet.
But the great thing is, we knew there's ice.
There's ice on the poles.
But now this is... Almost none on the
surface. Yeah. And this is seasonal.
So, you know, it's seasonal.
Oh, but look. Every Martian summer
there's a little waterfall. It's cool.
It's fantastic. I'm with you, Bill.
I am with you.
That's true.
That's not a thing you just lied about?
No, no. Not about that.
It's true. It am with you. That's not a thing you just lied about? That's a truth? No, no. Not about that. No.
It's true.
It's a Martian waterfall.
Well, or rivulet.
Rivulet.
I like rivulets better.
Flowing seasonal water.
Yeah.
We believe.
We know, actually.
So, you guys, I am open-minded, of course.
But you're telling me that we've got liquid water on Mars
and we have methane that we detect,
albeit in strange ways,
from billions of kilometers away
with these extraordinary spacecraft.
All right.
And you are not optimistically optimistic
about finding something still alive?
I am completely optimistic.
And I think it's going to be sooner than later.
I'm not.
I don't think there's life on Mars today.
By life, do we mean something?
And I think, actually, that's a good thing.
I'm optimistic that there's no life on Mars today. By life, do we mean something? And I think, actually, that's a good thing. I'm optimistic that there's no life on Mars today
because that makes it much less complicated
for us to do the things we were talking about earlier
and not be wiping out the biosphere.
Okay, just a minute, European immigrant man.
Yes.
It sounds like you might be saying,
well, I'm pretty sure there's nothing alive there.
We're not going to contaminate it.
Let's just show up.
No, because I very much support
our carefully investigating this question.
I think that right now our ignorance
vastly outweighs our knowledge.
But I am a skeptic as far as the methane we've seen
and the water we've seen indicating a biosphere.
Why are you skeptical of that?
Because I think that on a planet like Earth,
you look at, if you were a alien...
For instance,
this room. If you were an alien
looking at our solar system from afar,
there'd be this planet Earth
that has flagrant biosignatures.
This oxygen is off the chart.
Flagrant. You people are flagrantly
signing your bio-ness.
I don't think a planet like Mars
that has very subtle potential biosignatures
will ever be alive.
Because on a planet like Earth,
the biosphere is coupled to the active biogeochemical cycle.
For those of you watching the podcast,
your arms are just going way.
I'm waving my arms.
Because Earth has this active hydrological cycle with rainfall and evaporation.
It has plate tectonics.
The geology is alive.
The chemistry of the interior is in communication with the atmosphere.
He's still waving his arms.
I'm waving my arms.
And on Earth.
We can all dance.
On Earth.
He's out of his chair
to get to arms.
Do you think there's
like microbes in the water?
That's what I think.
I guess that there aren't
like squirrels.
What I'm saying is that
on Earth,
life rides the cycles
of an active geological planet.
Mars, in that sense,
is a pretty dead planet.
I think, as David was saying,
we will probably find signs
of life in the past
when Mars was a less dead planet.
But if I had to bet, I would bet that Mars does not have life today.
So speaking of betting, they won't take the bet now.
I'll bet a dollar and we'll figure it out in, what, 2032?
I say I would go with 2033.
Okay, 2033 it is.
And we'll be there.
When do you think we'll be on Mars? You're the most qualified. Well, 2033 it is. And we'll be there. We'll be there.
When do you think we'll be on Mars?
You're the most qualified.
Well, we are on Mars today with five vehicles in orbit and surface.
Sorry, with like a group of kids playing soccer.
Group of kids.
Kids playing Mars Generation, the 2030s.
So let's back up to the disco era.
My favorite time.
Yeah, good.
You're in the right place.
So the Viking landers had these scoops.
This was in 1976, July 4th, coincidence, 200th anniversary of the United States.
Viking 1 lands there, has a scoop akin to an ice cream shovel,
and scrapes into the soil and stuff.
Then it drops some of that soil into some
chemistry experiments that were spacecraft style there you can't see them from here but the scoops
drop the dust in there and something happened right and people for a couple days for those of
you who were not around in the disco era there were a few days or even weeks when people around
the world like totally freaked because it seemed like
something was bubbling on mars that might be alive right now can you comment on that thing
what happened there this gets back to this vexing question of how do we look for life when we really
don't know anything about life elsewhere and the viking biological experiments were were a wonderful
set of investigations but in hindsight they were maybe a little bit
naive in that what we were really- What did they really do, really?
They were looking for life on Mars that was very much like life on Earth. Essentially,
they scooped up stuff, like you said, and they sprinkled it with what they called chicken soup,
which was water and nutrients. So right now, it's like rock, scissors,
papers. His fist has gone into his hand. Yes sprinkled up stuff they put it in this experimental
apparatus and basically they sprinkled it with water and what the scientists nicknamed chicken
soup which was a set of nutrients which earth organisms would have loved simple organic
compounds and they looked to see if anything happened and did it give off gases where the
carbon which it would if it were if you
put a scoop of earth yeah and they even labeled the carbon with radioactive uh uh carbon heavy
isotopic isotopically heavy carbon so you can see if the carbon in the chicken soup you can see if
you have the right instrument yeah you can with that instrument you could tell that the carbon
in the chicken soup was the same carbon that came out.
It was as if this stuff was breathing out carbon dioxide. So they said, aha, there's something in there that's eating chicken soup and breathing out carbon dioxide. It's alive. But then it didn't
really behave like living organisms. There was a big fizz of this carbon dioxide, and then it went,
it tailed off as if it was more of a chemical reaction. For those of you listening, his hand went way up,
like he was going to do a hook shot,
and then it came down like he was going to, like he was going to.
An exponential decline.
I feel like it would help the listeners
if you just picture one of those things outside car washes.
Yeah.
You know, like every time.
I feel like that's a great visual.
Oh, the inflatable guy that walks around.
There you go.
It first looked like it was behaving like life.
It breathed all this stuff out.
And then it looked more like pop rocks or something
where something fizzes or Mentos and Pepsi
where something fizzes all of a sudden
and then just dies off.
If it was organisms,
it would sort of perpetuate longer.
So it ultimately had a shape over time
where it acted like some chemical in there
was really excited to react with the stuff we gave it.
We brought Pop Rocks to Mars
and Pop Rocks were like,
we're Pop Rocks.
Exactly.
But they didn't find life.
So it fizzed,
but it didn't really metabolize,
unfortunately. The way we would understand it. Now, one should say there are still some holdouts.
There's this guy named Gil Levin, who was one of the original investigators on this. He's still
alive, and he's a smart guy. And he thinks that they found life on Mars with this experiment,
and he refuses to be convinced otherwise. And he a smart guy and there's still a little controversy about this is an indication of the fact
that we don't completely know what we're doing when we're looking for life which
is kind of what's exciting about this we're on the edge of our knowledge and
we're trying to investigate something that we can't completely grasp so Mars
is crazy cold yeah Venus is crazy hot We're the classic Goldilocks.
Exactly.
That's the word we use.
We are the Goldilocks planet.
You have convergence of a great scientific mind right here.
Way to go.
We got the porridge that's the right temperature to eat.
That's what we got.
Earth is the right temperature to eat.
Gobble, gobble.
It is.
No, it really is.
Beautiful planet.
Don't tell Galactus.
But isn't there okay listen i'm just my mind is sort of good this is good exos exos exos planets yeah it does seem like exo gossip girl okay but listen so exoplanets there must be around those stars a planet that's equidistant from those stars to Earth? What's happening?
I know. So that's it. So we have an instrument and the James Webb Space Telescope's coming up.
Kepler's out there now. But this telescope is going to look with such sensitivity, how sensitive
will it be, that people believe they'll be able to look through the atmosphere of a planet
Backlit by its star. Are you digging me?
Sunlight from a star is going to go through this planet's atmosphere and this telescope out in space
Will be able to detect what gases are in that atmosphere and what everybody's all hot for is
Water vapor and methane the
natural gas the stuff in your the blue flame of your stove and oxygen and
oxygen this would be like so cool and so this my claim everybody is these
discoveries if we were able to discover life on Mars on Europa the moon of
Jupiter with twice as much sea waterater as the Earth. At least.
Twice as much seawater as what?
As the Earth.
All of Earth.
Oh, really?
Europa has.
And maybe even a little more than twice as much.
Great place to go look for life.
Oh, wow.
Does Kevin Costner know?
He'd love it.
Don't tell him.
So, anyway, what we want to do,
my claim is if we were to find life,
if we were to find life on one of these places, it would change this world.
So let's say we were going to go do this.
David, at Dr. Funky Spoon, man.
Sir.
What is your dream scenario, finding life on Mars?
How would you go about doing it?
Well, I think that we're going about it the right way.
I would love to accelerate.
My dream scenario would be, you know,
we double or triple the NASA budget for exploration
and could do more.
I think we know what to do.
Thank you.
By the way, let me just say.
More sandwiches.
Who wants more sandwiches?
Yes.
Let me just say, as CEO of the Planetary Society,
I spend a lot of time on this stuff,
and we've gotten the planetary science budget now up to about $1.7 billion,
which I know doesn't sound like much.
But everybody, the NASA budget is about 0.4% of the federal budget.
Yes, 0.4. Right. federal budget. 0.4, right.
How do we get it to say 2%?
Well, so in the Apollo days, it was 10 times that.
It was 4% of the federal budget.
And so the planetary science line item within the NASA budget
is less than 10% of the NASA budget, 9 and plus percent.
We do a lot.
And so these were the extraordinary discoveries are made.
So your dream scenario starts with getting more money.
And then where do we go from there?
My dream scenario for Mars specifically is,
as I said, I think we're going to confirm
that there's no life on Mars today.
But I want to be really sure before we go into other things there.
So we got to check out this methane, figure out where it's coming from.
If it's not life, it's telling us something really interesting
about the geochemistry of Mars that we need to know.
But my dream scenario for Mars, as Deva mentioned,
the possibility of finding fossils.
There should have been life on early Mars, given what we know.
We'll either find fossil signs of life on Mars,
or if we study Mars really carefully and understand those early environments
and find that there was no life ever on Mars,
that is also a really exciting thing to find.
It tells us something about Earth, that there's something special we don't understand.
Everything we learn about stuff in outer space informs what we know about the Earth.
And I claim that the more we know about our solar system and other solar systems with other stars and exoplanets, Joe,
the more it informs ourselves and where we all came from.
This is the two deep questions.
Are we alone in the universe?
Here's the big question, though.
What would we do with life if we found it and we're going to talk about that when
star talk live comes back right after this
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Welcome back to StarTalk Live here in Washington, D.C.
I'm here on the fabulous panel with Joe Firestone,
Dr. David Blasphoom, Dr. David Newman,
Hari Kumbalu, and our beloved Eugene Merman.
So we're having nothing but fun here on StarTalk this week.
We're talking about life on other worlds.
We're talking about space
science superheroes. And this segued into this search for life. And now we're talking about how
we exactly would actually exactly go looking for life. We have some assets there on Mars right now,
right? We have the Curiosity rover. We have a lot of assets in
orbit around Mars. And the idea, let me just start by going back to begin to start with,
why are we all so hot to look for life on Mars? Why not life on Mercury or Venus?
Close by, Mars is the best place to look for life.
And then we get further out into the solar system and then we go to these ocean worlds,
which even look, you know, better.
But again, Earth and Mars really are sister planets.
And it looks like Mars was once wet.
It's the most Earth-like environment
on the surface of another planet that we know of.
And we have a lot of evidence that in the past
it was much more Earth-like.
So...
Do we have a sense of why it's so sad there now?
Yes.
It doesn't...
It's not as big as the Earth,
so it cooled off faster.
So it does not have the churning iron in the middle
that we have on Earth,
creating a magnetic field,
which makes the solar wind particles go downhill
when they get to the North and South Pole.
But on Mars, apparently,
these same particles scraped the atmosphere off,
scraped it into space.
So it lost its atmosphere.
It ablated.
We can see it.
It's still going on today.
Our MAVEN spacecraft is in orbit. Check out, you know. And you can see the atmosphere. We can see. We can see it. It's still going on today. Our Maven spacecraft is in orbit.
Check out, you know,
we can see the ions ablating.
It's only 1% atmosphere. Mars
has a 1% compared to Earth.
100% here has 1%
in its carbon dioxide. So we see it's
not protected by that magnetic shield.
Is there any way to put an atmosphere
back on? So hang on, so hang on.
How are we going to get there, you guys?
We just had a humans orbiting Mars workshop.
The Planetary Society pitched a humans orbiting Mars architecture, as it's called.
And along with all the many things NASA was going to do
was develop these solar electric propulsion spacecraft.
And how does that work?
And the solar electric was going to go out to an asteroid,
asteroid redirect retrieval mission, right?
How does solar electric propulsion work?
And how is it part of going to Mars?
Right, so when we go to deep space,
we get back Earth, Moon, cislunar, right?
That's the next step.
That's phase two.
First on space station,
low Earth orbit. 2020s will be on our space launch system. That's our
heavy lift launch. Space launch system is
a massive word for big rocket. Big
rocket. Big rocket. We haven't had one like this
for 40 years. Move over
Saturn V. It's more powerful.
More powerful than a Saturn V.
Are these rockets, these are made of
your standard metals?
Yes.
That's a great question, Joe.
Yeah, using aluminum, using additive manufacturing, though,
to make it as much more efficient.
So we're using high-tech but big rockets.
But we're basically using Home Depot stuff.
You know, we're using the screws and the... Yes, yeah, nice stuff.
Yeah, nice, nice, high-end, high-end.
Yeah, yeah, you got to go that aisle way at the end.
Imagine the fanciest Home Depot you can and double it.
Right.
And then we get out to Cicero.
So now we're in deep space, okay?
We're in deep space.
Not quite yet to Mars.
Yeah, that's phase three.
But in phase two, we're into deep space,
and we have to demonstrate some technologies
because you don't just get to Mars in one thing.
No, but here, let me just tie this in.
So space, electric propulsion.
You want to know, in space propulsion.
But here's the thing, as Joe just said,
Home Depot style rockets, chemical rockets.
You know what I mean, Joe?
You got a liquid oxygen, you got some other fuel,
you mix them with a fuse and they burn like crazy
and they make that cool noise and then they go into space.
The shh.
Shh, but it's usually.
Oh, right.
Yeah, yeah.
And then what happens after that? and then they go into space. The shh. Shh. But it's usually really, yeah, yeah.
And then what happens after that?
Then you're in space and there's some reason
you don't want to use
chemical rockets anymore
and that is?
Well, we need
breakthrough technologies.
We need new technologies.
So what we're investing in now,
now we're getting to the moon, right?
So your deep space,
our top technologies
we're investing in today
is in space propulsion. It's hard to carry all that much fuel, right? So your deep space, our top technologies we're investing in today,
is in-space propulsion.
It's hard to carry all that much fuel, right? It's hard to carry cargo and fuel.
It's got a gravity well. In-space propulsion,
so there's different ones, but so we're talking about
solar electric propulsion.
That can move big cargo,
lots of mass, heavy mass,
go slowly, but that's alright.
We'll get there. So it moves a lot of cargo, you know?
You're going on a camping trip.
And we're slowly.
We're rockets in space.
Yeah, we're more than 17,500, you know, miles per hour,
but still slow for space, you know, slow for space speed.
Oh, wait, so how fast is fast for space for us?
Well, you know, light speed is fast, right?
Yes.
Sorry, but meaning...
Joe, Joe.
When you say slow, you mean as fast as we can make.
Slower.
Let's say a little bit slower because you want to get your people there as quickly as possible.
So big rocket, let's go fast.
About eight months.
That's fast for us.
Punch it.
Eight-month trip because we've got to get boots on Mars.
We'll get in orbit.
But this in-space propulsion, solar electric, that's a nice candidate.
Constant acceleration, so just keep going all the way.
You know, let's carry your groceries, you know?
Carry the stuff you need with us.
We always bring a lot of stuff.
Does it arrive later after the people?
Well, we can be popping them off, right?
So we get this capability.
What we want to do is have stuff in place before humans show up
you want to land some tents and fuel fuel depots we said habitats so that's what we're investing
i just want to talk for a second about the rocket equation who doesn't oh i love the rocket yeah so
the the big thing that makes a rocket go and you've seen this joe is the stuff coming out the
back is going really fast classic the classic orange in the child's drawing.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
Afterburners, yeah, that's it.
Yeah, yeah.
The orange.
So it's going really fast out the back,
but it takes, you need a lot of fuel,
and you reach a point where you can't get the rocket
going too much faster,
because you can't get the exhaust going that much faster.
That's called specific impulse.
So that's what we call it in the rocket equation.
So in solar electric propulsion,
we're going to take a big tank of xenon.
Is that right?
For example.
So anyway, you get a tank of this stuff liquefied
and you get it by getting the atmosphere,
getting a big tank of air on Earth cold
and the xenon separates out in a layer like a parfait,
and then they extract it, put it in a tank,
and then they put it on this rocket.
Sounds delicious.
Oh, yeah, it's good.
It's nothing better.
Well, you breathe it all the time in tiny amounts,
and look, I've been doing it my whole life,
and I'm fine.
No, so then you have solar panels.
Is this right, Deva?
Yes, so far so good.
And they make electricity.
They need electricity. Then we have a panels. Is this right, Deva? So far, so good. And they make electricity. They need electricity.
Then we have a window screen looking thing.
And it electrically attracts the xenon from its little tank and shoots it out the back at super fast speeds.
And that's really an ion drive like in science fiction.
But anyway, the solar electric propulsion idea is going to be used to go to Mars, right?
Now, what are we going to do with that?
We're counting on it.
Solar electric propulsion, we're counting on that.
Let me tell you a few other ones we're investing in right now.
Deep space habitats.
Incredible.
You know, public, private, again.
Industries working with us.
Deep space habs.
We're sending people.
What goes on in a deep space hab?
Life support systems.
You've got to figure out to get, you know,
we're going way beyond low Earth orbit,
so we need deep space HABs.
Beam, Bigelow's Beam,
just inflated,
expanded this week
on the space station.
Beam is an acronym.
Yeah, for the Bigelow
expandable module
on the space station.
A nice one.
Expandable habitat.
It's a big inflatable thing
attached to the
International Space Station.
You've got me doing it
with the hands.
But not too big.
I mean, Space Station is big, a football field size, right?
These are smaller halves.
We need to test them out.
Now, number one, radiation.
What about radiation protection?
What about radiation?
I was, years ago, people said if you tried to go from the Earth to Mars,
the radiation would kill you.
But now people have rethought that, right?
It is a problem.
The radiation is one of the serious physical problems with sending people to Mars.
And we know a lot more about this now because of the Mars Science Laboratory,
which is our Curiosity rover, which is on Mars now doing wonderful things.
But on the trip to Mars, this instrument called RAD, the Radiation Assessment Detector.
Radiation Assessment Detector. Yeah, and I'm actually a co-investigator on that instrument, so it's near Radiation Assessment Detector. Radiation Assessment Detector.
Yeah, and I'm actually a co-investigator on that instrument, so it's near and dear to my heart.
I'm a co-I on the RAD team.
And one of the things that was cool we were able to do with RAD, it was designed to measure
the level of high-energy radiation on the surface of Mars, on the rover, which it's
doing in a wonderful way.
But we realized that we could
also turn it on before we got to Mars. It's the one instrument on the rover that we turned on
while it was still in the spacecraft on the trip to Mars, because it allowed us to measure the
amount of radiation in interplanetary space and basically simulate what a human would experience
in terms of radiation on the way to Mars.
And so it's the first time we ever did that,
and now we really know much more than we did before this mission.
So will it kill you or not?
It will not kill you, but it will put you at greater risk of getting cancer,
which could ultimately kill you.
But it's not like just going to Mars is going to fry you
and you'll be dead when you get there.
But it will by a few percentage points.
You'll die when you get back to Earth.
Well, it's
equivalent to, you know,
you go to the doctor and you get
like a CAT scan.
So, and that, you know,
if you do that. It'd be like getting an eight month CAT scan.
If you do that a lot, you're
slightly increasing your chances. So you don't want to
do that all the time. Chances of getting cancer.
So your life's...
Yeah, from radiation.
It's as if you did that once a week on your way to Mars.
We look at total life dose, total life radiation dose,
and we're going to protect the astronauts.
That's what we're mapping.
We're taking this data.
Now we're looking at the Mars radiation environment,
and then it's our job.
How can we protect the people?
How can we protect the spacecraft?
Don't want to fry your instruments either.
So we protect the people, and we we protect the spacecraft? Don't want to fry your instruments either. So we protect the
people and we have some interesting ways to do
that. The kind of people that want to be
astronauts, if you say, well
you got an extra 1% chance of getting
I'm in. I'm going.
But you still want to protect them.
So what are some of the ways that we...
Is it similar to like when you go
to the dentist and they take pictures of your mouth,
they put the thing over your... Yes. There you go.
That's the shielding.
So high density is very good for shielding,
especially for, you know, galactic cosmic radiation
that we're going to see on Mars.
That created the Fantastic Four, for instance.
Right.
But we're in this...
There you go.
Superheroes.
So, but in the craft, water, because we like water to drink.
It's pretty high density.
Yes, I'm a big fan.
Yeah, it's a pretty good radiation shield.
So, there's interesting concepts in the vehicle,
high density materials.
We're going to take water anyhow.
It'd be nice to kind of live in the water walls.
That'll really help the astronauts in the hill.
And does it harm the water for it to be radiated for you to drink it?
No, the water doesn't care at all.
Water?
Meaning the water doesn't care,
but when you drink it, it doesn't matter to you.
No, no, no.
You're okay. That's a great question. If anything, if there were any little? Meaning the water doesn't care, but when you drink it, it doesn't matter to you. No, no, no. You're okay.
If anything, if there were
any little bugs in the water that you didn't
want there to be, it would, you know, make it nice and
clean. So you'd have a jacket,
you'd have a ball, a sphere,
a shell of water around
your space. Like a water bed.
A water bed. Like a water bed to space.
It's a good concept. Great MTV Cribs.
When we get to Mars, you know, don't want to put it in the suit because you want to be mobile, lightweight.
But, you know, lava tubes and there's a lot of, you know, volcanoes.
So where are we going to hide?
Where are we going to live?
Yeah, underground, caves, things like that.
These are all actually amazing shields.
So hang on.
Is there space underwear?
Has that been discussed?
Like what are the sexual side effects of radiation?
I'm just getting to the question.
I'm sure you were all considering from the get-go.
Like, what happens, you know, like, is there extra protection in those areas?
How is Scott Kelly's long-term, long-distance relationship?
I'm sure he asked that question.
There was no way he wasn't asking that question.
I think if you're going to have children...
Do it before you go to Mars? Or at least
put some in the freezer. You know what I'm saying?
You know what makes sense?
No, that's a good idea.
Have one before and then have one after
and see if the second one's a mutant.
Oh!
That's the scientific approach.
I think here at AwesomeCon,
let me rephrase that
friendly amendment. If the second one has superpowers. scientific approach. I think here at AwesomeCon, let me rephrase that, a friendly
amendment, if the second one has superpowers.
Because that's what you get.
If you're a superhero, a lot of times
you were irradiated. Maybe you were
bitten by a radioactive spider.
Maybe what's been irradiated is just
your father's ding-dong.
I like how
you used the scientific term for penis.
I'm a gentleman.
So, just as far as I know,
ding-dong is not an acronym.
No, it's just the thing it is.
You know, when you say ding-dong,
I'm looking over at the interpreter here
and just wondering what...
But anyways.
Or if you're a lady, you're Doodle.
That was so worth it.
That was good.
That was good.
She explained.
Where were we?
Where were we?
I think we were going to Mars.
We're on our way to Mars.
We're on our way to Mars.
Now, you mentioned the radiation detection instrument.
What other instruments would you take?
Why would you take them?
And then fundamentally,
everybody, everybody,
would you go to Mars
if you had a chance to go to Mars?
What instruments would you take?
If I was going to Mars.
Yeah, or what are you going to send?
What are you going to do?
I want to,
the thing that I most want to do
if I were going to go to Mars
is look for fossils.
Fossil life.
These would be bacteria
in a mat.
I would take rock hammers
and drills
and a microscope.
A scanning electronic microscope
if I can get away
with making one small enough
to carry there.
Because right now,
scanning electron microscopes
are big,
four or five desks.
But one thing
that NASA's really good at
is making things small
when we need to
and put a little technology development into it.
I would want, on my Mars laboratory with my astronauts there,
I would want to be able to go out and drill and find samples in the most promising sites.
And I want to look for the isotopes,
so I'd want a really good mass spectrometer to look for isotopic signs of life,
for signs that life had altered the chemicals in the past. And I would really want to look
actually for physical fossils in the right kinds of deposits. So let me say, my father was a rock
hound, like the rocks. Every rock tells a story. My uncle was a geologist. And the way you're describing this to me, David, is
geology tools. Yes. But what non-geologic instruments would you take?
Oh, I thought, so, well, first, we're taking the people. That's what I'm about. We're taking the
people and our rovers and machines, because that's how we work better. We will explore
tens, a hundred times more
of mars if we get there and we're mobile and we're working in teams people i've heard this said that
what our best rovers do in a week a human would do in less than five minutes maybe even less than a
minute so it's order of magnitude we're much more you know mobile and quicker so we're all in this
together and what are the instruments and our people and our people. Our robots and people.
Yeah.
What instruments would you take?
What are their instruments?
Well, actually, back to life support systems and bioregeneratives,
I actually would make sure I could make oxygen.
Yeah, once you start on that.
And water, you know, things like that.
There's not enough there for us yet.
So I'm kind of worried about staying alive.
So I'd like some water, like some oxygen to breathe. But let's say you got that problem solved.
But Bill, you know, it's funny the way you phrased the question, non-geological instruments,
because the word geological has geo, which means earth. So any of these instruments on Mars are
areological, right? Which Aries is Mars. And anyways. I was going to say that as well. Okay.
So if we want to understand the ancient story of Mars,
then we're going to apply a lot of the same tools we use to understand the ancient rocks
and the ancient story of Earth.
So we look at ancient sediments
because they're what capture the atmosphere too,
the bubbles, the bubbles of air.
Okay, but hang on a sec.
The Viking missions had some chemistry
thing that everybody got excited about right uh because it was wrong though right well one guy
says maybe not so wrong okay so but that was a biology experiment that was uh the spiritual
equivalent of a of a petri dish sure right so what is the spiritual equivalent of a Petri dish, right? So what is the spiritual equivalent of a, let's say Mark Watney has it all figured out.
He can breathe and grow potatoes
and whatever he's going to do to take care of himself.
How is he going to find, or she going to find,
evidence of life on Mars?
What instruments do we need?
Okay, do the instruments, but let me tell you,
I want to say, you know, who are the people?
Because you asked about, is it the astrobiologist?
I hope not. I hope it's not a single discipline of anyone because to say, you know, who are the people? Because you asked about, is it the astrobiologist? I hope not.
I hope it's not a single discipline of anyone
because we need, you know, a whole new education.
So this is, you know, a point you need
know a little astrobiology, right?
You want to know your geology?
You know, I'm thinking an MD might be, you know,
a little medical knowledge.
So we really need cross-disciplinary trained folks.
So I hope it's not just an astrobiologist.
What you just described is astrobiology
because astrobiology is
a sort of polydiscipline. If you
go to an astrobiology meeting, there's people
talking about geology, people talking about
astronomy, chemistry, glaciology,
philosophy.
But not botany. So you do need
a few different people.
A few different people. But I'm all about
STEAMed. I'm all about STEAMed.
I agree with what you're saying.
But the artists have to be there.
The designers, we're all in.
We need everyone.
Also psychics.
Psychics.
Comedians, you're going to need some laughs.
This is a psychosocial.
This is a tough trip.
But if we really think we're looking for extant life,
then we want to bring, you know, Petri dishes
and we want to try to culture stuff, Petri dishes and we want to
try to culture stuff. Now, what are you going to use for your agar and your Petri dish? You don't
know what Martian bugs like, so you got to get very clever there. And that's why I'm, I'm drawn
more towards microscopes and things where you don't necessarily assume too much about what
that stuff is doing. You just want to see if you figure if there's a bug, you're going to recognize
it. The geologists all want to bring back samples.
They're crazy for it.
And if you take a geology course,
you've got a rock hammer,
you go to the rocks and you knock them open
and you bring them back to your dorm room
and your friends think you're having issues.
And they want to bring back a sample.
It'd be three steps.
2020 rover drills in the soil,
picks them up.
2022 flies them up into Martian orbit,
then 2024 or 5 brings them back to the International Space Station and we open them up and take a meeting.
Right?
Take a meeting.
But is there any concern that we're going to bring back the Martian microbes of death?
There's not so much.
What are you going to do about that? There's a slight concern.
But I would say very, very slight.
Very slight.
Is it worth the risk, Mr. Bond?
Yes, because here's the thing.
You can't explore with zero risk.
If we wanted to be perfectly safe,
we would never bring back a rock from Mars.
If you wanted to be perfectly safe,
you would never leave the house in the morning, right?
So anything interesting involves a certain amount of risk.
But we're not going to...
Like befriending scorpions.
Yeah, exactly.
There could be nasty things.
But this is why we're doing the precursor missions.
And this is also why we have protocols.
If we do bring back a sample of Mars,
there are requirements to keep it very carefully isolated. and this is also why we have protocols. If we do bring back a sample of Mars,
there are requirements to keep it very carefully isolated.
And like Area 51.
Even, there's like Area 52, man.
You haven't even heard of it.
It's really secure.
So you guys, I just want to thank you all.
This has really been a cool discussion.
Everybody had these terrific insights asking these fundamental questions
about the nature of life on another world.
How would we find it?
What would it be like?
How would it affect us?
How are we going to get there?
Even how are we going to pay for it?
We talked about all this.
This has been like the greatest StarTalk Live ever.
Give everybody a hand.
This has been a great panel.
Joe, David, Deva,
Hari, and
Eugene, I've been Bill Nye, your host.
This has been StarTalk Live. Thank you all
so much.
Thank you.
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