StarTalk Radio - StarTalk Radio: Space Chronicles (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 12, 2013

Why did the US really go into space? Why did the Apollo program end early? Find out when Neil deGrasse Tyson digs into the history of space exploration with Prof. John Logsdon. 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. Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophys deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History right here in New York City. Today I'm joined by my co-host, comedian Chuck Nice. Hey, Neil. Chuck, are you nice today?

I am very nice today, my friend. Are you nice all the time? Well, no, I'm not going to go that far. Sometimes Chuck is naughty. Exactly. That's when we like him best. There you go. So, Chuck, I think you're the right age to be my co-host for this. I'm not saying how old I am, but I know how old you are.

I'm a space baby. You're a space baby. I'm a space baby. Today, we're talking about the history of space exploration. Right on. And that has a birthday, like anybody does. What's the birthday? Let me think.

Would that be July 21, 1969? No, that's the birthday uh let me think it would that be july 21 1969 no that's the birth of when we stopped going to the moon no that that's when i love the way you say the birth of when we stopped yeah the birth that was the beginning of the end of the end yes of the space uh program it wasn't even the end of the beginning it was the beginning of the end so when is the. It wasn't even the end of the beginning. It was the beginning of the end. So when is the actual birthday? Would that be Luna 2? No, no, Sputnik, for goodness sake.

Oh, okay, so it's Sputnik. Of course. Sputnik, if you want to say it right. Well, I have slotted today an interview with Professor John Logsdon. He's Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. He's one of the founding, he's the founding director of the Space Policy Institute there. Cool.

And he's one of the world's experts on the history of space exploration. So I just had to get, I just had to extract all I could out of him. Very distinguished. He came to my office for it. And let's get right to some of those clips. Sounds good. And then we can react when they return. So this first clip, I asked him about the origins of the space age. Let's see what he says. The origins of the

space age go, I mean, there was a Russian Tsiolkovsky, a German Oberth. These are famous, these are key people in the early 20th century. Early engineers. Yeah. And did we have one of those? And we had Robert Goddard. Robert Goddard. Good. All right. So, I mean, there were traditions of thinking about space in all of these countries, and then rocket clubs, space clubs in all of these countries.

So, Russia, Germany, America. Yeah. Okay. World War II led to the development of a functioning rocket, the V-2. The V-2. But it was used as a missile, not a rocket. And after World War II led to the development of a functioning rocket, the V-2. The V-2. But it was used as a missile, not a rocket. Right. And after World War II.

Because missiles are the first things human beings think to do with rocket power. Right. Is blow somebody else up. It's long-range artillery. Okay. So the Germans obviously were defeated. obviously were defeated. Von Braun and his team moved themselves at the end of the war from Prussia, northeastern Germany, to Bavaria in order to surrender to the United States and not Russia. So had they surrendered to Russia, we would have had nobody.

We would have had a few people. The people that started Jet Propulsion Lab were our rocket scientists. One of the NASA centers, Jet Propulsion Lab. Now, but not then. It was an army center, and they were doing rocketry. So von Braun said to the U.S., you will let me realize my dreams to go to the stars. So he didn't trust the Russians? No, he didn't trust the Russians. Why not? The Russians had a fine space program. But they were nasty people. If you say so yourself. The aristocracy, and von Braun was very much Prussian aristocracy, knew well what's happening to the German population. He had insider information in that relationship. Get out.

Okay. So the Russians came in later. Even though we were sworn enemies with the Nazis, he still preferred us to surrender to. Yes. Presuming that he wouldn't be put on trial. They didn't put him on trial in Nuremberg. No, there was a very special operation called Operation Paperclip to move all these people more or less illegally into the U.S., give them special status. Bypassing all the war crime trials and all the rest of this.

All of that. Operation Paperclip. Yep. Well, how quaint. Look at that. Man, Chuck. Fascinatingclip. Yep. Well, how quaint. Look at that. Man, Chuck. Fascinating stuff. Man.

I have learned something. Well, that's what we do. That's the motto of StarTalk. Learn something for a change. Learn something for a change. What I just learned there was, it pays to be really smart to the point where you can get away with war crimes. Yeah.

Basically, even your enemy wants a piece of your mind. That's right. Yeah, because if you were that good, I mean, just think of the V2 rocket in Nazi Germany. This rocket, I think, is remembered, it gets under-remembered for what role it actually played in the history of everything. Right. It turns out to have not been important strategically. I mean, it was sort of a terror weapon and it would come out of the sky.

You wouldn't hear it. You wouldn't know where it was coming from. And a whole block would be destroyed. It was hard to aim them because they went so far and they went out of Earth's atmosphere. And if you look at the total casualties from it versus other ways people were killing each other, it was small. Pretty ineffective. Well, yeah. But it was an exploration in how to drop a bomb from something that was practically in Earth orbit.

Oh, those Germans. I tell you. They are something else, aren't they? Ain't they something? So, yeah, as John Logsdon correctly noted, the V2 was a missile, not a rocket. But the fact that it would leave Earth's atmosphere, travel most of its distance in the vacuum of space, and then drop out of the atmosphere told everybody, wait a minute. If we ever go into space, we better look closely at what's going on with this V2 rocket. And that's why all rockets from science fiction movies

from the 1950s, what'd they look like? They look like missiles. Yes, yes. They look like missiles. And they looked specifically like the V2. Like the V2. They had big fins. They looked like bullets.

Right. There was a ladder you climb up into them. And that's the only way people could think about going into space because that was the only thing that had any chance of actually accomplishing that. Wow. So here we are humans with the whole universe to explore and the first thing

we think of doing with our possible ways of exploring is like let's kill some people first well of course of course i mean that's human nature isn't it i mean seriously when we when we discovered fire it was discovered by a comedian everybody knows that and the first thing he did was set some other dudes put on fire. This is in the comedy journals. You read of this research, I'm sure. And, you know, most people think of NASA as a civilian agency because they, you know, they got a space station and they're doing science up there. But, of course, it was born in wartime.

Right. Born in reaction to Sputnik. I mean, this is. It's kind of like an early version of the arms race. Yeah, essentially. Well, I mean, the arms race was going on at the time. Well, the arms reaction to Sputnik. I mean, this is. It's kind of like an early version of the arms race. Yeah, essentially. Well, I mean, the arms race was going on at the time. Well, the arms race was still going on, but a derivation of the arms race. It's an aspect of the arms race, and hence the space race.

Right. And this is where you get the phrasing space race as a takeoff on arms race. Right. And so it's an extraordinary period. And what most people don't know is that the Air Force that the Air Force has their own budget for going into space. People said, we don't want war in space. It's already, excuse me, it's like been there, done that, and they don't tell you about it. There's a secret war in space.

Well, in terms of what the Air Force sees as needs to protect us from enemies that might want to influence us on the ground or our assets in space. That's the code word for our satellites. Chuck, we got to take a break. But when we come back, more of my interview with John Logsdon, who is a professor of the good of all men. There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind. We choose to go to the moon.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win. Kennedy, ain't that something? Yes.

That's a speech for you. That's very inspiring. You know what I like most about that speech? What? Is that he said, there is no strife, there is no prejudice in space as of yet. In other words, when we get there, buddy, we're going to make sure all that crap is there. Because we're going to find some alien species that are going to be our slaves. That's right.

So that was a speech given by John Kennedy in Rice Stadium in 1962. And many people remember him saying, we'll put a man on the moon, return him safely to Earth. That was in a joint session of Congress a year earlier. Right. This speech put it all together. And I chatted with John Logsdon about this and just sort of the politics of the space race and Eisenhower, which preceded Kennedy and transitioned to Kennedy. How did all that work? I asked him about it. Let's check it out. Cool.

Sputnik 1 had only one purpose, which was to be in space first. Apparently they knew that that would matter. Sputnik 1 had only one purpose, which was to be in space first. Apparently they knew that that would matter. Well, Khrushchev didn't. The Russian leadership was surprised by the world reaction. So was President Eisenhower. Eisenhower's reaction was, it's no big deal. He's alone thinking that, apparently.

Well, he and his close advisors. What was Eisenhower's reaction to all this space stuff? His first instinct is that this shows we can launch satellites to spy on the Soviet Union. He's a military general. What else could he possibly be thinking? He's not thinking, oh, I can explore the universe. Well, more than that, he's a veteran of the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor. And say, never again will we be surprised like that. By anything.

If we have the capability to see what's on the other side of denied areas behind the Iron Curtain, let's do it. We had 13 failures of the first intelligence satellite before the first success. Couldn't do that today. Okay, so Eisenhower, it's a militaristic activity. What he wanted to do was military on one side and an open civilian program on the other side that the U.S. could show to the world and cooperate with the world. So he had a very sophisticated strategy. So the open side was geopolitical posturing then. We have peaceful uses of space. Right. That phrase originated in his administration. Okay. So NASA gets founded under Eisenhower. Eisenhower. 1958. Yeah. But Eisenhower

said, let's do a modest, scientifically driven, open program. Put a person up to see what happens. But I, Eisenhower, don't think there's much value to human spaceflight. So at the end of his administration, December of 1960, what Kennedy would do was not at all clear as president. Right, because NASA gets founded and there's no real mission statement for it, right? It's just kind of there. Well, do everything. Explore space. Do whatever that is. Yeah, be a leading nation in space. Okay. So Kennedy's up.

Kennedy's up. We're already supposed to lead the world. Why do his speeches have any value at all? We're supposed to do that anyway. Well, because he saw within three months of taking office that space was an area of visible achievement, which the Soviet Union was winning. Right, because he takes office January 1961, and Yuri Gagarin goes up April. April 12, 1961. Three months. Three months later.

In his face. Before that, he was very uncertain about what his posture would be. You know, people talk about Sputnik moments. It was really a Gagarin moment that drove the U.S. in space. Gary Gagarin, the first human in space. Right. And eight days later, April the 20th, after the Bay of Pigs, which kind of reinforced the inclination to do something positive and dramatic, Kennedy wrote a memo and asked his advisors to find him a space program that promises dramatic results in which we could win. And the answer came back, moon.

Go to the moon. Go to the moon. So that was Gagarin in your face. That's it. So basically, the United States was shamed into going into space. I think, in fact, we don't remember it that way, but that's exactly what it was. We reacted. We reacted.

To Russia. And I studied carefully, because I have a book recently, Space Chronicles, Facing the Ultimate Frontier. And in it, I try to put the stuff on the table and say, you want to remember America as pioneers in this, but in fact, almost every decision we made was reactive to what Russia did or reactive to what Russia said they would do. So instead of space, the final frontier, these are the voyages of the... It wasn't that. It was, oh, crap! Oh, Jesus, the Russians are in space! Oh, what are we going to do? It was more that.

Thank you for that. That's the history through the lens of Chuck Nice, ladies and gentlemen. No, but I have to say, literally, that's what, you know, there's the outward appearances and then there's what's actually going on. And there's really the underlying motivation. Inside of what people are doing. Because, so I had not appreciated how big a role the Yuri Gagarin step into space was because we all remember Sputnik as the birth of anything going into orbit at all. And so you remember the moon landing, right?

Of course, yeah. I mean, because you were big. I was a kid at that time. I was a kid, but I do remember it being a big deal because let me see, what grade was I in? I was young enough where they, I believe they bought in either a television or a radio. I'm not sure. So they had TVs back then. They did have TVs. I do know that. No, no, actually

it was a big deal to have a TV that was on wheels. Right. And that's what it was. It was on a, it was on a cart or something. Yeah. Yeah. That was the thing. You had, there was one cart in the whole school and you had to do it. So it's interesting that the space race would begin in this hysterical, reactive way, but then we kind of aligned our ducks and said, let's actually go to the moon. So do you think that the lack of competition, as it were right now, to do something big in space is really what the problem is with America, or is it more political? It's all of the above, but let's find out what role Kennedy played in this now, because Kennedy was not president when Sputnik was launched. That's right. And like

I said, Sputnik. Sputnik. Yes. Sputnik. Let's go to my next clip with John Locke and see what he says. So Kennedy's assassinated. We go to Johnson. What guarantee does anybody have that this epic adventure is going to continue under different leadership? Well, the first thing to know is that Kennedy wasn't sure what he wanted to do right at the end of his life. People totally forget he went to the U.N. September 20, 1963, and said, why not do it together? Really? Formal proposal to the Soviet Union. And he was serious.

So seeing whether there was a possibility to turn Apollo into a cooperative undertaking, he was worried about the money, a lot of reasons. By his death, though, Apollo became a memorial to a fallen president. And that was the one space priority of Lyndon Johnson, was to finish Apollo. All right. So that actually constrained then what might have been a broader space program. Indeed. Overwhelmingly, the focus was only moon by end of the decade. And there was very little planning and certainly no money for future programs. For anything after or even beside that.

No. Yeah. So it became a one-trick pony, really. Yeah. So they basically wanted to just go, like, hey, man, it's kind of like a swan song. Let's shoot something up there for Kennedy. You know, like the way they pour something out for the brothers who ain't here. Right, right, yeah.

Usually alcohol. Right. It's never milk. Right, let's shoot a rocket up there for the president. Yeah, let's do one for the Gipper. Right. And so that's interesting. I don't believe, I mean, you know, John Logsdon is the historian, not I.

But that doesn't mean I can't have an opinion. I don't think Kennedy believed that Russia would join us in going into space. And knowing that he didn't believe it, he still goes on record for the olive branch offering. Then they say no, and he say, well, F y'all. We're going in. We're going to go our own route. And that's a way to politically set yourself up for reacting to something without looking like the bad guy.

Yeah, because you know your opponent's going to say, screw you. They're the commies, for goodness sake. Exactly. You know, this is after the dude hit his shoe on the podium. Right. You know, so. How could we partner with you capitalist running dog bastards?

So maybe for the appearances it looked honest, but I think politically it was actually a pretty clever move on his part. That's pretty brilliant, actually. So, you know, after that there was Johnson, and then, of course, Nixon comes along, and then we stop going to the moon. And, you know, all the Kennedy supporters like to blame Nixon for that. But, no, it's more interestingly subtle and complex than that. I love the moon. He made the first really expensive phone call to outer space. He called these dudes, you know, AT&T set up the phone call.

And there's the gap. You know, it takes light time, radio waves time to get to the moon and come back. But we'll talk more about that after this break. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. We'll be right back. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I've got Nice Chuck Nice here. That's right.

He's being nice today, as he is most of the time. But I don't want to see him when he's not nice. No. No one does, to be honest. I even cover the mirrors. That's good. So, today we're featuring my interview clips with John Logsdon. John Logsdon's an old friend of mine.

And he's professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. That's not why we have him on StarTalk. We have him on StarTalk because he's former director of their space – he's founding director of their Space Policy Institute. He's a space historian extraordinaire. Cool. And I write about a little bit of the history of space, but more as an observer, not as

the academic professor. You're not the historian. I'm not the historian. I just observe it and just riff on it and so you know we we were talking about the apollo program as a focus of the american space program and it's what drove everybody it drove their spending it said anything nasa did it was to get to the moon every next dollar they were handed in their budget it was to get to the moon we need hookers to get to the moon if i don't spend a night with a hooker, I can't think clearly.

If I can't think clearly, we can't get to the moon. So, you know, so we can ask, well, was it worth it? What are the benefits? Now, people like talking about spinoffs. And, you know, who doesn't love a good spinoff? Everybody loves a good spinoff. You know, they've got astronaut ice cream. Exactly.

I prefer mine cold. But if I'm in space, you know what they should do? Because space is cold. That's right. When you're not facing the sun, add some milk back to it or water and put it out in space and stir it. Get my ice cream cone again. It's real ice cream. Don't hand me this room temperature stuff that my saliva reconstitutes. stuff that my saliva reconstitutes.

But, no, but what it did was it forced us to think about food, food preservation. Right. Life support systems. I mean, there's a whole, all the surrounding thought that had to go in. Astronauts, mental health. What's it like to be cooped up in a tiny little capsule for days and days and days with one other

person or two other people? Are you friends? Are you, do you you have an attitude? I call that marriage, truthfully. So you get the marriage dudes to help you out. Things like filtering air with carbon dioxide poison. You can be carbon dioxide poisoned if you don't do that right. And so a lot of this was how to make use of materials that you have that you can't swap

out. So recycling becomes a big issue in space exploration. If you're not otherwise going to go someplace and, and hew out of the mountainside, uh, materials that you had just consumed on route there. So there's a huge side of this that, that matters. So astronauts are like the first hippies. Ah, basically. side of this that matters. So astronauts are like the first hippies. Basically. Yeah. Except they had crew cuts instead of long hair. But there's a whole other side of the spinoff that I don't think people talk about.

And I've been talking about it lately. In fact, I was in front of the House of Representatives, members of the House of Representatives recently talking about this very thing. Did you know that here we are in the 1960s, a turbulent decade. It was bloody. Kids were getting shot on campuses. It was a cold war in Southeast Asia. I mean, a cold war in the

world and a hot war in Southeast Asia, Vietnam. And we were losing 100 servicemen a week, yet we found time to go to the moon. Man, you know what's funny is that nothing has changed with what you just said, except that we don't go to the moon anymore. Everything you described is happening right now, except we don't go to the moon. So that's bad. So that's bad. So what I found was not only is that just a crowning achievement, technologically, scientifically, emotionally,

but in those years that we went to the moon, you know what happened? And the year plus one year, so from 1968 to 1973, that five, six-year period, we created the Environmental Protection Agency. That happened after we saw the picture of Earthrise over the lunar landscape. We went to the moon looking to discover it, and we looked back and we discovered Earth for the first time. Yeah, much to the chagrin of Rick Perry. And all of a sudden, the modern-day environmental movement began. Let's find out what—I've got another clip with John Logsdon, just to see what—did Russia try to go there, too?

Let's find out. Russia decided in August of 64 to go to the moon. Built moon rockets, built a lander, trained a crew. And wasn't their moon rocket more powerful than ours? It's just about the same. Okay. Except it didn't work and ours did. Small detail.

There were four launches of the N1 rocket, four failures. Okay. And we had been to the moon. So the program got canceled, but there was a very real Russian program. When did it get canceled? In 72, I think. Oh, so we kept going through 72. Two, right.

Apollo 17, they cancelled their moon effort. 72, 73. Then we're done. We're done. We don't even do Apollo 18. Right. I mean, we had cancelled. There were supposed to be 20 Apollos.

20 Apollos. And we stopped at 17. The enemy was defeated. Well, the problem is, the reality is, if you make something a race and you win it, there's no reason to run it over. Right, yeah. There wasn't a strong scientific rationale. You've won. You're done.

A lot of people in NASA were scared to death of the risks of the program, and Apollo 13 showed that. We won. Look at that. Yeah. Who knew? So had they still been at it, we probably would have had Apollo 18, Apollo 19, Apollo 20. Yeah. And maybe beyond.

So once again, we were reactive and not proactive. So there is no accounting of the history of this that says we are explorers, we are discoverers. That's why we went to the moon. We're reactors. We're reactors. That's what we are. We are're reactors. We're reactors. That's what we are. We are emotional reactors. More

when StarTalk Radio continues with my interview with John Logsdon and I got in studio Chuck Nice. See you in a moment. We're back on Stark Talk Radio. Chuck Nice. Yes. My co-host, comedian co-host. And you're tweeting at Chuck Nice.

Comic. Comic. Funny. That works. I'm a comedian. You came from a comic strip. Yes, exactly. Chuck Nice Comic. Funny. I'm a comedian. You came from a comic strip. Yes, exactly. Chuck Nice Comic.

All right. I follow you. It's me and Doomsbury. There you go. Chuck Nice Comic. We've been talking about the space program, the space race, and how we won getting to the moon, but we actually had lost almost every other metric of space exploration.

Russia had the first satellite, the first living anything, which was a dog, like a- I didn't know that. Now, so you know the popular convention is that it was a chimpanzee. No, no, no. First thing was a dog. That dog was a mutt running around the streets of Moscow, and they put his behind up there in space with no plans of bringing him down alive. And so all the animal rights says, that's not right.

He didn't have choice. And he didn't. I said, look. He's alive. Look. I said, look. All right. This dude died in space.

He is the most famous dog since Lassie. That's true. All right. And if you got, they're going to die anyway. And you're going to die in space. That's how I'm, instead of Hungary on the streets of Moscow. Excuse me. Exactly. That's how I'm going. I'd rather die in space than just be in Moscow. That's how I'm, instead of hungry on the streets of Moscow, excuse me, that's how I'm going.

I'd rather die in space than just be in Moscow. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have said that. It was wrong. So here's what happens. So we get to the moon and we discover Earth for the first time. And in a short period of years, even while there was turbulence, the most

violent decade of American history since the Civil War, 100 years earlier, we take the time and the interest after we see Earth, spaceship Earth, aloft there in the darkness of space. We found the Environmental Protection Agency. We banned DDT. We banned, we said in regulation to get rid of leaded gas. The catalytic converter gets introduced. The whole Earth catalog gets formulated. We saw Earth not as the schoolroom globe would reveal it with color-coded countries.

We saw Earth as nature intended it to be viewed with oceans, land, clouds. On HDTV. That was later. nature okay then we stopped going to the moon because the russians stopped going to the moon so that's the evidence that we were not explorers we were just reactors i like that we're human reactors and then you know nasa needed another thing to do and so what do we do next uh let me go with Space Shuttle. Space Shuttle it was. And let's go back to my interview with John Logsdon just to get a sense of that transition and why we did it and what its point was. Check it out.

Nixon made the decision that characterized the program for 40 years, which is to build the shuttle. Okay. And the shuttle decision also meant we were going to build a space station. That gave the shuttle something to do. They were conjoined at the hip from the get-go. Okay. And the shuttle decision also meant we were going to build a space station. That gave the shuttle something to do. They were conjoined at the hip from the get-go. Conjoined at the hip. Okay.

And so then the shuttle gets launched and the space station gets initiated under Reagan. Under Reagan. Yeah. 1984. Yeah, yeah. And basically that's all we've done in human space flight from 1981 to 2011 is fly the shuttle, build the station. How many shuttle launches were we supposed to have a year?

When the... Yeah, when it was proposed. 30 to 50. So one every week and a half. And it became how many a year? The most ever was nine. I didn't even know it was even that many. Yeah.

What did it average out about? Well, there were 135 flights over 30 years. So do the math. Yeah. What's that? So it's three to four a year. It proved to be an experimental craft, a remarkable technical achievement, but an experimental, very touchy, very difficult operation.

I remember when the first launch, the news announced, America has now launched the most complex vehicle ever to go into space. And they said it with bravado, and I said, is that really what you want? Complexity? I mean, we on the board said, too complex. Replace it with something simpler, which is what's happening. Something blunter, something simpler, something like the Russian, the Soyuz in spite of the early failures has been remarkably reliable for a long time. Because it has three moving parts or something. What's with the Soyuz? They're all built out of cast iron

I think. Iron? Well, it's an exaggeration, but it's a very sturdy, robust spacecraft, not a temperamental prima donna. Like a Lamborghini. You know, when it's working, it's great, but when it's not working, it's in the garage. Right.

Yeah, so the Russians, it works. That's all. It doesn't look good. It works. Looks like a. It doesn't look good. It works. Looks like a bunch of oil drums welded together with a rocket strapped to its back. But it works. It worked. And so that's what's fascinating to me is the space age gets born in 1957, and we land on the moon how many years later?

12 years later. We go from no space anything to footprints on the moon in 12 years. And from 1981 to now, what we've been doing is driving around the block. Right? Just, just, there it is. And so people complain that, well, there's not much interest in the manned space. Well, they're not actually going anywhere. Right. If they were the ones going to Mars instead of robots,

then you know we'd be talking about them. What music are they listening to along the way? But in the interim, we wanted to advance at least the science frontier. We sent robots. Let's find out more about robots when we get back to StarTalk Radio. We're back on StarTalk Radio, and we're talking about the history of the space program. Chuck, you're a space baby, right? I am a space baby. Yeah, yeah. This whole thing started kind of like when I was born.

Well, it didn't start when I was born. It ended when I was born, apparently. No, no. There are chapters. There's we're going to the moon, and then we're going to drive around the block. Right. But in all fairness to the shuttle era, it showed that we can like build huge structures in zero G.

The space station is the size of a football field. I mean, it's huge. Right. And we can live and work in space, not quite to the numbers originally imagined. In fact, there was a prediction in the 1980s, by the year 2000, 50,000 people will be living and working in space. Wow. They were just a little bit off.

Three orders of magnitude off. There were three on the space station at the time. So there's some failed dreams there, but you can't fault people for wanting to try. And remember, of course, there were two tragic shuttle disasters. We lost Challenger on the way up. We lost Columbia on the way down.

These are the two tricky parts of any mission. Same with flying an airplane. I was going to say, it's the same thing when you get on a jet. Take off or land. Take off and land. That's where all the problems are. Going 600 miles an hour at 41,000 feet never hurt anybody. Nope. Not a problem. You don't even know you're doing it. You don't even know you're doing it. So by the way, all the while, the scientific community is conducting science. There's always been a fraction, emphasis on fraction, of the NASA budget given to science.

The long-term average is about 20 to 30% of its budget has gone to science missions. So in fact, we had, there were like landers on the moon before humans went there. Did you hear about it? No, because we were sending people. See, when people go,

you don't pay attention to the robots. Right. Because nobody gives ticker tape parades to robots. And, you know, I hear the robots are a little upset about that. In fact, they might, you know, what's the net in the Terminator? Skynet. Skynet might take over, baby. They've been notified, has been duly notified.

Rise of the machines. Watch out, people. But there's a long string of missions. We sent missions through the 1960s and into the 70s. We sent Explorer 1 was the first U.S. satellite. But we had Mariner, right? And we had, you know, there was the Russians went to Venus. And those were called the Venera spacecrafts.

That sounds good. Oh, by the way, the genitive form of Venus is venereal. Venereal. Yeah. But we said we're not going there. So we invented like – You keep my shuttle away from your venereal. That's all I'm saying.

So we had sort of missions that went to Mars, robotic missions that were flybys, a couple of landers and Viking. And we have reconnaissance orbiters that photograph the Martian surface. Good stuff. And we continue, not only with rovers, but with telescopes launched into orbit by NASA. And the top of that list would be Hubble, of course. And so what's interesting is in the face of these disasters, you always ask, well, that'll end the program because we have seven dead astronauts. But each time that happened, it didn't.

The widows and the widowers of the spouses of those who died would stand up one by one in front of microphone and said, it is a reminder that the frontier is a risk. And often you put your life at risk. Right. But if the act of losing a life meant you should never go further we would still be in the cave exactly so i mean i'm paraphrasing but that's basically what every one of them says to a person it's like you're allowing me to die in vain now right exactly that's basically what it comes down to exactly chuck that was the perfect uh analysis

of how all that happened and so so, basically, the space program not only serves a geopolitical purpose, an emotional purpose, a technological purpose, a scientific purpose, there's also a symbol. It serves as a symbol for who and what we are and who and what we can be.

Let's find out John Logsdon, who studies this professionally. Let's get his reaction to this notion. Cool. All things considered, when you add up all the disasters versus the achievements, how do you view that? How do you? Oh, I think on net, the space program has had multiple great benefits for this country. It's been a symbol, remains a symbol of something we do well. And so when we don't do well, we're surprised and disappointed. I think it is a symbol of American excellence. You think, what are our symbols of American patriotism?

The flag, the bald eagle, and some sort of space image. Human on the moon, shuttle launch, Hubble image. Those are the things that make us feel good about being American. Yeah, symbols. So let me ask you, of the whole space program, what rises up in your heart and mind? I think I'm most astounded by— I just realized I'm asking a comedian this. I know.

You could be finding the most comedic moment. When they tripped on the moon or something. I wish I could. No, for me, it's Hubble. Really? To see in such clarity the places that are unimaginable. The universe was brought

into our backyard. Exactly. And I'm still astounded by the pictures that I can see. I love you for it. You know something? The Hubble images

are so extraordinary. Even as scientific record of our exploration of the universe, it was so extraordinary that they did not require captions in order for you to embrace all their majesty. I know, but I took the liberty of writing some anyway. Oh, you wrote the captions. Okay. For me, it was Apollo 8. It was an uncelebrated mission. Yes, it was celebrated.

But it was the first time we ever left Earth en route to any place else in the universe. They went to the moon, went around it, photographed Earthrise. Nice. And that's what birthed our entire environmental movement. It enabled humans to care about who we are and what our relationship is to this universe. Nicely done. This is part one of two parts of StarTalk. We're going to get back to the space program,

but we've got to sign out right now. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Chuck, thanks for being on. A pleasure. You're listening to StarTalk Radio, funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.