StarTalk Radio - Live at the Bell House, The Astronaut Session (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 28, 2013

At the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY on 12/18/2011 for our second show in front of a live audience. Co-host Eugene Mirman was joined by fellow comedians Kristen Schaal and John Hodgman, while Neil brought along his NASA astronaut buddy, Mike Massimino. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Hello everybody! Welcome to an awesome evening of StarTalk Live! It is my great pleasure to bring out the host from the planetarium, a fan of asteroids and dismisser of Pluto, ladies and gentlemen, Neil Tyson. And now...

No, no, wait. It's and now. I thought you might want to say hello. I guess not. I thought you might want to say hello I guess not Ladies and gentlemen You know her from the television And bit parts in films Kristen Schaal And he was once known

As that guy from The Thing But now He is just himself the right... Oh, this is a terrible intro. But it was fun to do. Ladies and gentlemen, the amazing John Hodgman! There's one empty seat. There is.

May I bring my guest out on stage? Yes. From outer space. Literally. No, he's from Long Island? Yes, from outer space. Literally. No, he's from Long Island, but works in outer space. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, two-time shuttle astronaut and hometowner, Mike Massimino. Welcome. It's Brooklyn in the house.

This is our second live taping of StarTalk Radio. And thank you, Eugene Merman, for the space, for your audience. We want to bring the universe down to Earth. And we've got an astronaut in the house. I said, where's your astronaut outfit? You can't wear that for us? It's hard to get around on Earth. And we've got an astronaut in the house. I said, where's your astronaut outfit? You can't wear that for us? It's hard to get around on Earth. Only wear it in space.

Maybe have like a NASA hat or something. I do have my flight watch. That's been in space. That's been in space. It's been in space. My wedding ring's been in space. Okay, your wife is actually in the audience. She's out there somewhere.

Okay. Yeah, so no flirting, Mike. No flirting with me. And you're about to show me something on your back. I do have an aviation-related shirt. Okay, so... I thought you were going to have like a shuttle, like weird slutty tattoo on your butt. No, no, no.

I thought you were going to have like Saturn and it's like, ah, I'm sexy Saturn. On Matt Cimino's back. Don't stick your butt out. Just stand up. I'm not. This is the way it is. I love the smell of jet fuel in the morning. All right. So this is StarTalk Radio.

You can find us on the web at startalkradio.net. Start with a Hubble Space Telescope. I'd love me some Hubble. Because Hubble actually was a man before it was a telescope. Right. Just so you know. Now, he was transformed into a telescope. His spirit energy became the telescope.

Well, he did like a nosy guy. That's not why we named it after him. A notorious peeping Tom. Yes, the peeping. Yes, he wanted to see people doing it in outer space. So he discovered that the Milky Way

is not the only galaxy in the universe. That we are just one island universe among many swimming in the cosmos. One. Two, he discovered that the universe that we are just one island universe among many swimming in the cosmos one two he discovered that the universe was expanding when this telescope was designed conceived and built we knew that it would give us the data to tell us exactly at what rate the universe would be expanding and that was the very first scientific experiment that it conducted. But there was a problem. The telescope got launched, and it had

a bad mirror. In fact, it was a good mirror, it was just the wrong mirror. It had a perfect shape, it was just the wrong shape. That's like the mirror in my bedroom. Oh, is that right? What is it? Like a funhouse mirror?

So, when you set up a $2 billion telescope, and it has the wrong mirror, every sentence in the paper that talked about Hubble mentioned its price. When stuff goes bad at NASA, they remind you how much it costs. The $2 billion Hubble telescope. And at that point, we said,

we've got to put in some corrective optics. But we need the right stuff. In comes Mike Massimino. Alright! So you strap like a two-way police mirror onto your back and you just put up there with some duct tape. Yeah, it's like a space

optometrist. Duct tape, yeah, we'll get to that in a minute. But let me just remind you of some of the things Hubble discovered. So it confirmed what we'd known all along, that there's super massive black holes lurking in the centers of galaxies.

It could find this out because it could measure the speed of stars deep within near the centers of the galaxies. And they were going really fast. And you look at something that's tugging on them and you don't see anything. And you infer how much mass must be there in that small volume. You get a black hole.

We have a black hole in our center. 600,000 or so times the mass of our center. Other galaxies have like bigger black holes. Some have a million times the mass of our sun. Others have like a black holes. Some have a million times the mass of our sun. Others have like a billion. And so I wanted a bigger black hole.

I mean, I had like... You have black hole envy. Black hole envy is what really I've always had for our galaxy. How powerful is the one here? Well, no, I forgot the exact number. It's about several hundred. You don't want to go near it

no matter what. But Hubble confirmed that. And also it looked deep inside of gas clouds and confirmed that these are the locations where stars are being born, where they live out their lives, and they scatter the gas into the rest of the galaxy, revealing

their families of planets. So these are stellar... Are you flirting with the universe? Plus, Hubble nearby discovered extra moons orbiting Pluto. We thought Pluto had one moon. It's got two or three other moons going around it. And then that resurrected the Pluto people. Right.

He put the end to Pluto, basically, right? I didn't do it. I just had the hammer and the nails for the coffin. But how did the moons affect our appreciation or depreciation of Pluto? Not in the slightest. Oh, okay. Very well. People want to invoke the moon clause for resurrecting Pluto's planet status? Right.

Problem is, there are asteroids, very rocky looking, that they themselves have moons. So, moon is not the prerequisite. Venus, the size of earth our twin planet itself has no moon you can't invoke moon status for a planet I don't know, not convinced so

Mike they strap you onto the space shuttle okay on the outside? So, Mike, they strap you onto the space shuttle. Okay? On the outside? Sorry. They strap you into the space shuttle. Thank you. Thanks for that.

Thanks for keeping him honest. Jeez. Cold. I was going to go along with it. It sounded okay to me. All right. So you go up there. Space Telecom needs help.

Were you on the first servicing mission? No, no. The first servicing mission? No, no. The first servicing mission was back in 1993. And you were just a babe? I was just a babe. Other guys went up there and did that. And gals. I'm sorry, what was the problem with the mirror?

It had a beautifully... It didn't reflect anything? It was actually a piece of black velvet? It was the wrong shape. Like it was a rhombus? What was the shape? Was it like the spoons? Everything was coming in

upside down? I remember when that thing went up there and everyone on the news saying, those idiots did it again. They threw some junk up there. They can't reflect the thing. What was the problem exactly? What was the wrong shape? There's a shape for the optics of the telescope. To work.

To work. You seem to be dodging my question. They had a perfect shape, but it was the wrong shape. What made it wrong? You're using the word perfect wrong. Perkin Elmer. Perkin Elmer messed up. It was probably the grinding of it.

First of all, let me just say, thank you for answering my question. It was like an aberration, they call it. It was a slight aberration. It was slightly off. So the curvature of the mirror itself was wrong. Just by a little bit. But that's enough, right? It was enough to screw up the optics of it so that the visual spectrum, what you would see, what you were hoping to see, was clouded.

Did that creeper guy get fired? I don't know. It's a government operation. It's very hard to fire people. Thank goodness. But they had you fix it. You went up and repaired it. So they flew a $10 billion toilet up there to polish a mirror. Wait, wait. So, no, here's the thing.

In all defense of Hubble, just to put this in context, Hubble was ready to fly in the mid-1980s, okay? But then we had the Challenger disaster. So that put a delay. By the time it did fly, it had computer chips from three generations earlier. So not only did it have a bad mirror, it had computers from a generation you didn't even want.

It was like an Atari. Yeah, thank you. It was still Pong, and we already had Nintendo. Right, exactly. I get it. I get it, and we already had Nintendo. Right, exactly. I get it. I get it, Neil. So.

So no one ever thought in 1988, should we check the mirrors? So in the first servicing mission, they not only put in corrective optics, they swapped out the computer chips and put in, back then. They put it in Intellivision. Let's boost this up a little bit. And by they, we mean Mike. Let's make it a city. No, no, so Mike... This is 93.

Right, so now Mike came in later. He was eight years old. Hubble was designed to be serviced by the shuttle. Sure. Because when new technologies, new detectors, something goes wrong, you send up the right stuff. So one of these five servicing missions was his first. And tell me what you had to do. Well, my first one, we replaced the solar arrays.

We replaced a power control unit. We put a new instrument in there. You mean a PCU? You sound like a guy ripping, like a car salesman ripping people up. Really? Yeah, we had to fix the space belts. And there was this weird thing with the shifting. We checked the oil.

I really advise it. It's still around $800 billion. It needed new brake pads. But this true coat is going to protect it very well. That's right. And we added rust proofing. We got Congress to sign off on the rust proofing. What year did you go up, may I ask?

Your first year. It was 2002. Years early when they fixed it. You mean this thing wasn't fixed yet? No, it was fixed. They fixed it in 93. And one thing about this mirror, Neil, is that even though they had this little problem with it, so it was kind of screwed up when they got the images back.

Oh, man, this is terrible. They were able to measure how bad it was. Now, even if it would never actually been perfect, no matter how hard you try, it wouldn't have been exactly perfect. But now they knew how bad it was. Now, even if it would never actually been perfect, no matter how hard you try, it wouldn't have been exactly perfect. But now they knew how bad it was, so when they made the correction,

the correction was pretty close to perfect. So if you want to be an optimist about it, because they were able to get this opportunity to fix it, they were able to make it better than it really

ever could have been. And what they did is an instrument, what they did, they took one of the instruments out about the size of a refrigerator. Have I lost you yet? Or what's the... No, refrigerator! So we pull this thing... of the instruments out about the size of a refrigerator. Have I lost you yet? That's not an instrument.

No, a refrigerator. So we pulled this thing. We pulled the refrigerator. About the size of a refrigerator. We're out of the mirror. We get it. I'm not selling the refrigerator. There are a lot of things the size of a refrigerator.

Was this the PCU? Was this the power? No, that's something else. You like that acronym, though, don't you? I do. I do. What was this? This was, the instrument they pulled out was, I can't remember the name of it.

It was a refrigerator. It was a refrigerator. They established that already. They didn't need it. Oh, you know what it was? It was the TCB of it. It was a refrigerator. It was a refrigerator. They established that already. Oh, you know what it was? It was the TCP. No, it was the food. But then when they put in was something called CoStar, which had corrective optics. OnStar?

Just a second. CoStar. And what it did, it put a bunch of lenses in the light path and corrected, just like those glasses you're wearing now, corrects the light that goes inside your eyes to your brain right now. What are you, a witch? That's right. So that corrects the light coming into your head. And that's what we did with CoStar, corrected the light going into the telescope. So they sent up a refrigerator called CoStar that shot a bunch of contact lenses in front of this thing? Yes. Perfect. Yes. All right. That's all I wanted to know.

We got to bring this segment to a close. You are listening to StarTalk Radio live at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're continuing the broadcast of our second live show recorded at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York on December 18th, 2011. Joining me that night were my co-host, the comedian Eugene Merman, the comedians Kristen Schaal and John Hodgman, and Mike Massimino, a NASA astronaut who flew on two space shuttle missions to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. 2002, a young man named Mike Astronaut. Did you walk to the spaceship in slow motion before you got on it?

Yes, because it was very scary. You came out of the hangar, like the right stuff. That's it. You try to look cool. They're going to take your picture, like the right stuff. That's it. That's what you did. Yeah, you try to look cool. They're going to take your picture, but you're actually shaking in your boots. So which shuttle were you in? The first one I flew on was Columbia before the accident. That's the one we lost. We lost that one.

That was the next time it flew. We lost it. Right. Right. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. The mission after us, it didn't come back, unfortunately. The second mission I had was on Spatial Atlantis.

So let's talk about the first one, if you don't mind. I just want to know, your mission, what was your role on the shuttle? I was a space walker. Star captain? Star captain. Yes, I was a star captain. I like star captain better. Why don't they call you Skywalker?

I was a star captain. Why don't they call you Skywalker? They could. You were a space walker? That was on your business card that year? No, it wasn't. You have all these great ideas now. Where were you years ago?

This is a good idea. I never knew. But your role in the mission was to walk in space? That's right, yes. And otherwise you just sat back and read a book? Like, I can't help you with any of this stuff. Let me know when it's time to walk in space. Everyone has their job.

You don't want to intrude on it. You're an astronaut. Why do they call it walking? You're floating. Why do they call it space floating? It doesn't sound as cool as... What do you think sounds cooler? Space walking or space floating?

Space floating sounds like a lack of control. Right. We really don't walk. The guys on the moon got to walk. They did the moonwalk. We don't really walk. The guys on the moon got to walk. They did the moonwalk. We don't really walk. The moonwalk. You're treading space.

You move around with your hand. You could try. That won't work so well. You've got to grab stuff. Gravity's not working. Space grabbing. That doesn't sound as good as space walking. Cosmo grabber. What was the first thing you said?

You said star captain. You should have stopped there. Star captain. Because the rest of this stuff now, it's not working. All right. So you train, I understand, you train in a huge swimming pool in Houston. Yes. Because that's your kind of buoyant, neutrally buoyant, as they say.

And you learn how to kind of move around. You're floating, but you're neutrally boring. I've been in a swimming pool before. You got the idea? I know what it's like. Okay. Okay. All right.

So you know what that's like. Yeah. I don't want to brag, but I've gone snorkeling before. Right, yeah, all right. All right. But we're in a big space suit. You've never been in a swimming pool in a space suit, probably, have you? I don't want to brag, but I've gone snorkeling in a space suit.

Have you really? Okay, all right. So kind of like what he did. That's what in a spacesuit. Have you really? Okay, right. So kind of like what he did. That's what we do. That's what you did. But at the point... All right. Do I have to understand? It's not just a hangout in a swimming pool. There's a mock-up of the shuttle

and the Hubble telescope submerged in this pool. Yeah, but he knows that. He did that too. That's why he went snorkeling in his... No, I didn't know. But I didn't know that there was a phony shuttle down there. A phony shuttle and a phony... That's got to be a big pool. It's big. It's 200 feet long. It's the largest pool

in the world. 200 feet long, 100 feet wide and 40 feet deep. So what's the name of the shuttle that's on the floor of the pool? The Nautilus. Is it? We don't have a name. We're looking for one, though. You come up with so many good names.

What would you call it? I can't come up with anything better than the Nautilus. That's a good name for the shuttle. That's fantastic. Sally. Space shuttle Sally. But see, here's the thing that... Davy Jones.

Here's the thing I have to speak to, and then I'll let other humans speak. You're trying to spin this like i went swimming in a giant space pool with the nautilus did i ever say that no sorry you guys are spinning like they have a huge swimming pool as though that's exciting you went into space that's more exciting and terrifying to me so as someone who's getting there i'm just trying to find out how he figured out what to do in space no i understand okay go ahead all right so now so now you're in space right and there's your task at hand but meanwhile earth is floating by yeah that was not happening in the swimming pool no right okay so there's earth how do you

concentrate on fixing the hubble when earth is going? When at 17,200 miles an hour sideways, you get how many sunrises in a day? 16. So... Yay! Six... Sunrise, sunset, light, dark... Sounds very romantic. Heat, cold. And you have to be the repairman. sunset, light, dark, heat,

cold, and you have to be the repairman. How does that work? You really have to try to focus and not look around like, oh, jeez, look, there goes Madagascar, and there goes the telescope. You know, there goes your tool. You're not allowed to look? No, you are, but you have to pick your moments.

So my first spacewalk, I didn't look around very much, but my second spacewalk, I did, and looking at the planet is what you really remember. But you have to also get your job done. So you have to pick your moments. Is it beautiful or what? It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. That's the stupidest question I have ever heard in my life. Wow.

How was he going to answer that? Oh, it was ugly. My gosh. Earth from... He might have said it's the second most beautiful thing. Maybe he has children. He'd be like, it's the fourth most beautiful thing. Yeah, baby Venus is awesome. Okay.

Mike, I happen to know that Hubble is higher than the space station. That's right. It's like 300... How many am I? It's 350 up. It's 100 miles higher than where the space station flies. So space station, they got nothing. No, it's like an airplane.

They're down here low. They can hit clouds. No, they can't really air above you. But what we can see at the Hubble altitude is you can see the curvature of the Earth. You can see it in its entirety. It takes up your whole field of view. You're not that far away from it, but you can still see the curvature of it. It looks like a gigantic planet, and that's pretty overwhelming.

That's a good thing, that it's round and looks like a gigantic planet. And that's pretty overwhelming. That's a good thing. That it's round and looks like a planet. It sounds to me like you were skeptical until that moment. Apparently I was right. I guess they were right. I was. That whole flat versus round thing, you know, I was a little skeptical. But it is round. It is a planet.

So just to summarize, from space, Earth looks like a planet. It does. And it's beautiful. So just to summarize, from space, Earth looks like a planet. It does. And it's beautiful. You know what? My buddy. Do they factor in? Yeah.

Because I would imagine your mission is timed down to the minute. Yeah. Do they factor in gawking time? Like, we know this guy's going to goof off for probably about 10 minutes. They do add about 20%. Do they? Yeah. You're going to be a little slower. You're going to be looking around. But when I did, my first spacewalk, my

buddy, the pilot on the flight, his name is Digger. We were classmates together. We trained together as astronauts, but he was a pilot, so he wasn't going to get the spacewalk. And he asked me, when you come in, I want you to tell me exactly what it's like, you know? So he came running the airlock. He took my helmet off and he looked at me, goes, what was it like out there? And I go, Digger, you never imagined the earth is a planet. That's what I said to him. But what I really meant, everyone knows it's round. But what I found that day was that my relationship with the earth had changed because normally what I had done, just like we did today, we drove here to Brooklyn or took the subway or walk, whatever you did to come here. It's kind of like a two

dimensional relationship with the earth, you know, go to a ball game, watch TV, whatever. And when I got to space and I looked and I could see the earth like that and I could turn my head and sometimes if you're lucky, you'd see the moon and you'd see the stars, see all this other chaos, the sun. You can feel the heat as you talked about, the heat, the cold, all these changes. You realize the earth, we're not in this safe little haven that we think we're in. We're really out there in the middle of all this chaos. And so for me, that was proof that, wow, we really are out in the middle of space, traveling around with all this other stuff, and Earth really is a planet. And so they pump THC into the atmosphere.

I was waiting for you to go, and that proved to me that the one true God is Allah. I don't know. I don't know. What is he talking about? Tetrahydrocannabis. Yeah. Yeah. Are you allowed to have wine in space?

Are you allowed to drink in space? No, it's a dry shit. You can tell us. You can tell us what you smell. I felt bad because I made a joke about your beautiful statement. I think that's incredible. Yeah, thanks, Mike. Yeah, Mike.

Mike. Mike. Mike. about your beautiful statement. I think that's incredible. Yeah, thanks, Mike. Yeah, Mike, Mike, Mike. It must be astonishing to feel that you are a part of a very small community

of people who have seen the Hubble telescope in person, who have seen the planet from that distance. I mean, I went to Yale. You know what I mean? Wow. Yeah. And you snorkel.

So I know what it's like. And I was a member of the Yale spacesuit snorkeling team. So I know what it's like. And I was a member of the Yale spacesuit snorkeling team. So I know what it's like to belong to an elite community. But that must be very strange to know that there are only a very few people alive who have ever seen what you have seen. Well, we feel very fortunate. Sure. Because there are a lot of people that would be very happy to go and qualified to go, but we're the ones that won the lottery. You guys included.

Yeah, and it's not like you guys worked that hard for it either. No, we got lucky. Do you ever argue with someone and just like when you're frustrated, just go like, I've been to space. Doesn't work. It would on me. If I ever disagree with you, feel free to yell, I've been to space. And I'll be like, you win.

That won't work. And you'll just say, I've been snorkeling. Or whatever you come up with. It won't work. Wait, so Mike, so apparently you're not allowed to bring alcohol legally into space. But I have it on good authority that you smuggled your mom's biscotti. I got it from Michael's Bakery right here in Brooklyn. Michael's Restaurant and Bakery.

So you took biscotti up into orbit. I did. And did you bring it back or did you eat it? We ate most of it and we brought some of it back. And then what did you do with the, is it in a display at the deli now or what? Actually, I'm going to hopefully see Michael from Michael's Bakery while we're here in town. I'm going to give him a piece from SDS 125.

That's been in space? Yeah, that's been in space. Space biscotti. Right. Everyone applaud until two weeks from now, that's been in space. Space biscotti. Sure. Everyone applaud until two weeks from now when that guy becomes an alien. When StarTalk Radio comes back, we'll have more of our live show

at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York with the comedians Eugene Merman, Kristen Schaal, John Hodgman, and NASA astronaut Mike Massimino. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio Live at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York. I'm here with my co-hosts, Eugene Merman. Eugene, thanks for again being on StarTalk Radio. You're very welcome. Can you introduce your guest?

Yes, and we're here with Kristen Schaal and the delightfully mustachioed John Hodgman. Hello. John, that's a real mustache? It is. I can't just rip it off your nose. Well, you could probably find a way to do it. Since you look like a bouncer from the movie Roadhouse tonight,

you could probably... I'm just trying to... You could probably tear off my mustache if you wished to. No, I won't. And my guest, Mike Massimino, two-time shuttle astronaut. So, Mike, your space suit,

if you've got to go to potty, do you have diapers? Diapers, yeah. We wear diapers when we watch. I was just waiting for them to say something. I'm waiting for you to clarify whether it's a diaper or it's part of the suit. Because right now I'm like, really? It's not like a suit.

No, we don't pee our pants. We wear diapers. You don't get a catheter? No. That's the least they can do. Really? Yeah, you know, it's not like if you go up in one person, it's like, no, that's horrible. You know what?

Because you're walking out of the hangar in slow-mo. You say, wait, let me change my diaper. It doesn't go with the... Do you have a table and then you cry? You change each other's diapers? That sounds fun. That sounds like a weird, naughty space party. This went from

We Fix Telescope to Can we do some shit? Systematically. You get a call from front of the shuttle saying, okay, it's time for you to go walk in space. I think they both saw the intercom. Time to walk in space. I thought you were going to say, time to wet your diaper.

That's what I thought you were going to say. So you have to change from your jumpsuit or whatever, your speed suit, into a space suit. Is someone recording this? This is pretty good. Layer by layer, what do you put on first?

You put on your diaper. And then, like, what, a cotton t-shirt? What else do you put on? Like, what's on underneath that thing? What else do you put on? Like what's on underneath that thing? I'd rather you describe it. No, I'm actually curious. You think I'm making fun, but I want to know.

Diaper first. The diaper goes first. That would make sense. I presume you... If the diaper went last, it would be a little silly. The diaper goes first. But adorable. And then do you wear... It wouldn't be as effective.

You wear some sort of jumpsuit or something underneath or an undergarment? Well, when we go spacewalk, you're asking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We put the diaper, then we put a pair of polypropylene underwear, you know, like you wear maybe when you're... Yeah, hiking and stuff. Hiking. Sure, okay. Bike shorts.

Undergarment. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, very thin, but that's going to absorb the sweat from your body. Sure, keep you warm. And it was the early 2000s, so you could still get away with that. Okay. And then you also put on some biomed detectors, which is to know what your heart rate is doing.

So we have holes. It's very specifically cut inside of that. And are you doing this yourself in a changing room, or is this like Tony Stark in Iron Man? You got people walking all around you, getting all this stuff ready. Or not walking, obviously, but floating all around you. For the diaper, you're pretty much going to do that on your own. Do you call it a diaper, or is there a euphemism?

No, there actually is. It's the mag, maximum absorbency garment. See? That's a good question. Those who thought husband was... Because just about everything we have has a special name. We're getting somewhere now. Let's quantify that.

So if the diaper weighs a half a pound, how much blue liquid can it hold? Yes. It can hold a lot. A lot of liquid. That's very technical for you. We're definitely making it sound like he's going to spacewalk to go to the bathroom,

which is not the case. Before you put the diaper on, the first thing you do when you wake up on the day you're going to spacewalk to go to the bathroom, which is not the case. Before you put the diaper on, the first thing you do when you wake up on the day you're going to spacewalk, and you know you don't get an announcement. You know this is coming. It's planned out what day you're going to go. Yeah, Mike, what are you doing back there? Can we, uh... We're going to pull over.

Like when you're out there, like when you did the trip. Like four hours, right? The spacewalks themselves, the ones I were on were a bit longer because we were kind of slow, apparently, about eight hours or so. Do you get snacks in your soup, right? The spacewalks themselves, the ones I were on were a bit longer because we were kind of slow, apparently, about eight hours or so. Do you get snacks in your soup, then? No, we get a drink bag. We get to drink water.

So you're on a juice diet while you're on a spacewalk? Not even just water. Like a master cleanse, I get it. I've been doing the math. I've just been doing the math. So the eight hours, so that's six sunrises? Here's the funny thing, Neil. No one knows.

It's impossible to figure it out. No, you can figure it out. Math! There are no calculations that can do it. You know when you're going. So morning of the spacewalk, you first use the facilities. Eat a good breakfast because you're not going to be able to eat anything when you get out in your spacesuit. We have a good breakfast up there. Freeze-dried ice cream, right when you get out in your spacesuit. What's a good breakfast up there?

Freeze-dried ice cream, right? Do you want to try that stuff? Yeah, you know why? Because we won't eat it. That stuff's terrible. That's why it's all for sale down here. Tell me if I'm wrong, but mostly it's dim sum. Yeah. We're an international program now.

Yeah, exactly. And we have food from all over the world. Mostly like the juicy bun with the soup, and you're like, oh. That's right. Got to get the vinegar on it. Shopsticks, I guess a little messy. What's a breakfast for a spacewalk, though? Seriously.

For a spacewalk, I like eating peanut butter. Sure. Peanut butter on a tortilla. We don't have regular bread. Why? Because it makes crumbs. You know, crumbs aren't such a good thing. Oh, that'll punch through your chest.

Close. You can inhale them. Oh, really? Yeah. You can get in your eyeball. If you ask for it in. Oh, and that'll punch through your chest. Close. You can inhale them. Oh, really? Yeah. Or get in your eyeball. If you ask where you're from, that could be it for you. The biscotti was very hazardous. So these are food hazards in space?

Food hazards. Biscotti in the eyeball. Yeah. Anything that a little particle in space can... Okay, so when you said tortilla, you mean soft tortilla. Soft tortilla, correct. Soft tortilla and peanut butter. So the peanut butter sticks to the tortilla.

Right. There are no crumbs, and it all goes down your throat right and it's still real food though it's not food from a tube yeah no i had yogurt you know it's in a bag but it was yogurt because anyone ever had pop rocks or is it too dangerous pop rocks are too dangerous we have m&ms i've never thought about the Pop Rocks. That would kill you. I mean, a Pop Rock popping in your eye. Can you imagine? You can't get it out. And you have the big clumsy gloves, and you're poking it.

It would be terrible. Oh, that sounds... That's an extra kind of propulsion. It's like a sabotage thing. Yes, that's how we'll get the Russians. One bag of Pop Rocks and a space shuttle. That'll take care of it. Spill, spill, spill.

Goodbye, program. You just go to the International Space Station. You do your whole tour of duty with the Russians as you're leaving. See you, suckers. Just to clarify, Eugene Merman is Russian, okay? Yes. Oh, yeah, if you're listening to this, I'm not a terrible racist person. Sorry.

Yeah, but you're not getting back into Russia. Not with my Pop Rocks joke. That will be Putin's last straw. So Mike, they dress you. You put on your own panties. Mike. M-A-G. I like that you've walked in space and we're like, but do your nipples get cold?

We're asking you questions. So you're in space. You got your space suit on. Right. What do you do if your nose itches? With my nose, it's a problem. I've got a big nose, so it can be a real problem. Yeah, you can't see this on the radio, but this guy.

It's like Cyrano de Bergerac. Thank you. It's like Cyrano de Bergerac. The scratching of the nose is, once they put your helmet on, you don't have access to your face. And so any itch or anything like that is problematic. We do have a Valsalva device because you have to be able to clear your ears, right? And you can't get to your nose to clear your ears when you're snorkeling or scuba diving.

You know about that, right? No, I understand. Okay, so you can't clear your ears because you can't get to your nose to clear your ears when you're snorkeling or scuba diving. You know about that, right? No, I understand. Okay, so you can't clear your ears because you can't get normally like you would do to squeeze your nose. So we have a device where you can actually ram your nostrils into this pad and create a seal. So it's built into the... Yes, like a little pad that you put at the right place where you want it. So you have a built-in nostril pad in your home. It's a built-in nostril pad to help you valsalva.

A B-I-N-P. That's great. So when you look at the earth and it's so beautiful and you start crying, then it can soak up your snot? You got to be careful with that too. But yes.

Do you want to go to the moon, Mike? And are you sad that you can't? Well, you know, I feel like I'm in therapy. Do you want to go to the moon, Mike? And are you sad that you can't? Well, you know, I... I feel like I'm in therapy. No, let's leapfrog that. Do you want to be on the first mission to Mars? No.

Do you want to go to the moon? Was I asking you? Let her. We've been to the moon. Eugene, we've been to the moon. You and I have, but Mike hasn't. You know what, Neil? A lot of people have been to Costa Rica, but maybe he wants to go, too.

I haven't been there. Okay, Mike, you take, answer however you want. Someone's been to Japan. Why send a second guy? Yeah, you're right. Mike, go where you got to go gotta go wait so tell us tell us okay be quick so we can tell you about mars yeah i'd love to go to any of those places that would be that'd be really cool but it's probably not going to happen for me but you know i i would like to

see someone go i think we should go back to the moon and onward to Mars. And I think we will, actually. I don't think it's going to be me, but I would love to go. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio, live at the Bell House in Brooklyn. This evening's topic has been all about space, about Hubble. To my right is Mike Massimino, two-time shuttle astronaut at Hubble Repairman. And Eugene Merman, my co-host. Tell us who you've got here. And Kristen Schaal and John Hodgman.

All right. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're continuing the broadcast of our second live show recorded at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York on December 18th, 2011. Joining me that night were my co-host, the comedian Eugene Merman, the comedians Kristen Schaal and John Hodgman, and Mike Massimino, a NASA astronaut who flew on two space shuttle missions to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. We're done servicing the Hubble.

You gave it a new lease on life. It's got about five more years. No warranties, by the way, on the labor. No more warranties on the labor. You didn't get the Best Buy thing for like 90 bucks. We'll replace your Hubble. That's where the sales pitch stopped. All right, we've got another telescope ready to fly. It's the James Webb Space Telescope.

It is bigger. It is better. It will go farther. The Hubble was 350 miles up. James Webb is going to be a million miles on the other side of the moon in one of the Lagrangian points. Wait a minute. Say that again. How far is the Hubble?

How many miles? 350 miles up. 350 miles up. A short walk. A short walk. A short space walk. You could drive that in six hours. The second one's going to be on the other side of the Hubble? How many miles? 350 miles up. 350 miles up. A short walk. A short walk. A short spacewalk. You could drive that in six hours. The second one's going to be on the other side of the moon?

Yes. So James Webb Space Telescope, we found a spot, a nice cozy spot. It's in one of the Lagrangian points of the Earth-Moon-Sun system. A Lagrangian point. These are the places. What does that mean, Lagrangian? It's true. What does that mean? I'm true. What does that mean?

I'm building to say what that is. All right. Everyone. Do you feel it coming out? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's coming out of me. Yeah. Okay?

Everyone relax. He's flexing his biceps. It's going to happen. The Lagrangian point. Okay. So consider the Earth-Moon system. If you travel to the moon, you feel Earth's gravity for a while, but there's a point where you begin to primarily feel the moon's gravity,

and you fall towards the moon. There's a point exactly between the middle. That's Lagrange point one. Who's it named after? Lagrange. Okay, so. Who was that guy? Okay, so... Who was that guy? Okay, so now you have to...

Wait, that's the only part we knew, Neil. He's a French mathematician. So the Earth and the Moon both revolve around a common center of gravity, which happens to be about 1,000 miles inside Earth's surface in the line connecting the center of the Earth to the moon. So it's not that the moon goes around Earth, it's that both the Earth and the moon go around their common center of gravity.

And so, I'm just saying, how does it go? So now, since they both orbit, there are places which will want to fall towards the moon and want to fall towards Earth, but because the system is rotating, there's an extra sort of centrifugal force out there pushing it out. So when you want to fall this way and that way, there's another balance point.

And Lagrange did the equations for all, and he found five balance points. Lagrange, one, two, three, four, five. So wanted the last one to be six. Sorry. Lagrange would be a mystery. All orbiting pairs of objects have five Lagrangian points. So is the Earth-Moon system of Lagrangian points?

There's the Earth-Sun system of Lagrangian points. One is exactly in between. One is on the far side. One is at a 60-degree angle, leading and trailing the orbit that you're in. These are cool spots. What's good about them is that all the forces of gravity balance. So you can build structures there

that can be stable on huge scales without gravity destroying its integrity. How does gravity work again? So the James Webb Space Telescope is at the Sun-Earth L2 point, which is a million miles on the other side of the moon. And there it is tuned to see light emanated from the birth of galaxies in the early universe. That light, when emitted, was visible to the human eye.

But since then, the universe has expanded, stretched the wavelength of visible light, so that it is now out of the range of the visible and deep in the infrared. of the visible and deep in the infrared. So, this telescope is tuned to the infrared so that it can see objects being born at a time when it was emitting visible light. There it is. That's what I figured. So, Neil, you're telling me that it was visible to humans back in cave back in caveman days, and they, like, drew it on the wall, and that's how you know?

Okay, so caveman was, like, 30,000 years ago or so. It was about 4,000, but whatever. We differ. Depends on what book you read, yes. The King James Bible. No, caveman was not long enough ago for any of this to be relevant. They were just 30,000 years ago. That's nothing.

That's a trillion seconds ago. Okay, so there wasn't humans that saw it. Oh, no. If humans were around at the beginning of the universe, you would see these bright, beautiful, visible light galaxies being born. But over the 13.7 billion years that have elapsed since then that light has been red shifted from the expansion of the universe and if you want to see what's going on there you need a telescope tuned to look where the action is and that's what

the james webb space telescope will be designed to do and is it named for the senator jim webb from virginia because he made it himself? Who's it named for? Yeah, so, it's a little odd. James Webb was the head of NASA during most of the Apollo era back in the 1960s. So it's an homage to when we actually used to leave low Earth orbit.

Right. I'm glad we're done with that. What? Come on. We saw what's out there. It's boring. So, Mike, let me end with this. What? Come on. You miss it? We saw what's out there. It's boring. So, Mike, let me end with this. Mike, if it's a million miles out, you ain't going to repair that.

No. No. I don't think. No. A million miles, we never send anybody. How long would it take to run that far? In a spaceship. Do you have to send out a generation ship?

Like astronauts raised on a ship? Yeah. For those kinds of things, you need really fertile people so that they can produce generations that will follow. It's not really that far. You get there in a couple of weeks.

It's not far at all. You were saying to Mike that he would never fly out to the James Webb telescope. It being a million miles beyond the moon. So explain why not. Well, because we're not equipped to send astronauts that far. First of all, we don't have a spaceship

that can leave low Earth orbit, and we haven't had one since 1972. That is 40 years ago. That we know of. Yeah. And another problem is

the telescope costs some X number of dollars. Sure, we'll just say X. X. It may cost more than that to send a human being to fix it. So you might as well just build another one and send it out there too. This is the economy of space travel at the moment.

So forgive me, but how are we getting the James Webb telescope up there? The telescope is not carrying a human being. We easily get other things out of low Earth orbit. We have a mission going to Pluto right now. Why? I make fun of it.

Just tell it it's not a planet. Yeah. Commence mocking sequence. Yeah. You'll be like, yeah. Commence mocking sequence. Go. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio, brought to you in part by the National Science Foundation. Tune in next week for the second half of our live show, recorded December 2011 at the Bell House in Brooklyn.

Until then, as always, keep looking up.