StarTalk Radio - What's Exploration Worth?

Episode Date: August 17, 2009

When the economy takes a downturn, should we still go up into space? NASA missions aren’t cheap—sending astronauts into low Earth orbit or to the Moon, sending robotic spacecraft to explore the planets, and launching telescopes into space can cost millions or even billions of dollars. Lou Friedman, director of the Planetary Society, argues that even when the dollar is dear, the quest to explore our universe is priceless.NOTE: All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/whats-exploration-worth/?_sf_s=what%27s+exploration+worth Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Our universe is filled with secrets and mysteries, leaving us with many questions to be answered. Now more than ever, we find ourselves searching for those answers as the very fabric of space, science and society are converging. Here for the first time, these worlds collide as we give you the knowledge that breaks the barrier between what is science and what is merely pop culture. This is StarTalk. Now, here's your hosts, astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Lynn Coplitz. Star Talk. This is Indeed Star Talk. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Lynn Coplitz is in the field this week. Remember, she's a stand-up comedian and she's around town making people laugh. As a substitute co-host, what other choice did I have but to get my main man to join me as co-host of StarTalk Radio, Bill Nye, the science guy. Bill, welcome as my co-host to StarTalk. Oh, it is so exciting to be here, Dr. Tyson. So exciting. Welcome to StarTalk, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to talk about stars.

Well, the universe, really. The stars being a metaphor, being a shorthand. Shorthand, that's fine. And you know, Bill, I'm usually only accustomed to hearing a one-minute version of you as we slot into every show. It's great to get you here in person to see if you have more than one minute of content to deliver us today. Content. So content, just if I speak to that briefly, content's what we used to call the point. I don't know what that means, Bill.

Yeah, so yeah. So it's great to be here, everybody. We have many things going on. We have asteroids coming our way. Well, let me alert the audience. So, the subject of the day is, because I never cease to be impressed with the appetite that the public has for cosmic subjects. So, today's subject is going to be sort of this space and the public appetite for it and the public interest for it. And I got you here because you are man in the public who knows the pulse of the nation's Oh yes, on the pulse of the nation's, of the world's interest in space. The pulse of the nation's interest in science and in space.

And later on, we have a special guest, one of the founding members of the Planetary Society out here in Los Angeles. And who on earth would that be? That would be... Who in the universe would that be? Lou Friedman, the executive director of the Planetary Society. We'll be hearing from him a little later. So, Bill, you know, I feel like every time I have a guest host who's like a comedian, they got the hots for you. You know, it's just.

Could be a lot worse. I don't know why we don't interact with these people a little more ourselves at Nylabs. That's very nice. Nylabs. What are Nylabs? What do you do in Nylabs? Nylabs is my corporation. What is that?

Well, I picture you in a lab coat behind test tubes. Sometimes. Sometimes. We're at a workbench. We have soldering iron sometimes. Is this we as you? Yeah. Yes.

Is this how you refer to you, is the we? Yes. We refer to us as we. Okay. Yeah. I do some stargazing. I do some soldering. I do some-

So wait a minute. I can have the Tyson labs, because I do that at home, too. Yes. Yes. Knock yourself out. All right. I do that at home too. Yes. Yes. Knock yourself out. All right. All right. Just checking.

Just checking. So Bill, Sir William, may I call you. That's my affectionate term for you. It is charming. Sir William. Roger Tyson. You've surely gotten this question. I get it all the time.

People say, why are we spending money up in space when we have all these problems here on Earth? And I try to give the answer and I'm fatigued by it. And I'm wondering, I'll tell you what I give. You tell me if you've got something better so that I can add it to my repertoire. What I say is that if you spend all your time looking down, you'll miss the asteroid that'll come from space. That's right. Number one, okay.

And number two, the two planets that flank Earth. If we can say flank. Flank. What's to our left is Venus, all right? And what's to our right is Mars. Each of them is a planet gone bad. Venus having this runaway greenhouse effect, 900 degrees Fahrenheit on its surface, carbon dioxide atmosphere. And I did the math.

It'll cook a 16-inch pizza on the windowsill in nine seconds. That's how hot it is on Venus. Mars once had running water. It is bone dry today with all this evidence of water having cut its surface with meandering riverbeds and floodplains and river deltas. So similar. These are two planets to our left and our right that have gone bad. And here we are saying, I don't need to worry about space.

I'm just going to worry about what's happening down here. And we're turning knobs here on Earth where we could learn about those knobs gone bad on other planets. The knobs you refer to, these are climate knobs. Well, yeah, these are metaphorical knobs. Metaphorical knobs. These are as though... Could be a touch screen.

Okay. Could be a touch screen. The video game that we are playing with Earth's atmosphere. Yes. Right now. Yeah, yeah. Serious business. So this is, that's a fundamental justification is we have climate change happening on our planet, a worthy thing indeed to study the climates of nearby

planets that are in so many ways so similar in size in venus is considered our twin if not for the temperature difference you'd weigh about the same on venus as you would here were it not for the fact that you would vaporize vaporize and the rain which really is sulfuric acid rain on venus yes uh doesn't hit the ground because it's it's so hot it uh it evaporates before it gets to the surface. Evaporates the sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid rain.

It reminds me very much of the game I hope all of us have played as young people where you're in a room of your house and you can't touch on the floor. You can't step on the floor because the floor is like lava. I just did that with my kids like two days ago. I had to like carry them from the couch to the bed. And I'm thinking, aren't they too old for this? Were you in lava-proof shoes or something? Grownups don't fall into the lava apparently. That's my eight-year-old kid.

He beat me in chest three times. Travis. He beat me in chest three times a month ago and I got to carry him over the lava floor. Well, it's dangerous. Now, what about monsters? No, no. I train them to not be afraid of monsters. The thing is that monsters do not like light.

So if you turn on the lights until you're under the covers, the covers, as you know, provide a force field. That's true. Very similar to a force field of gravity or a force field from a static electric charge. But this force field from bed covers repels monsters. That's very well documented. But that aside, we do not have anything like that on Earth. We do not have covers we can slide under. We do not have a light we can turn on that will repel the monster that will be climate

change. So in New York this summer, didn't get to be 90 degrees until the day before yesterday. A couple days ago, yeah. Remarkable thing. Is that evidence of climate change? Probably not. That it's flooding in Thailand, eight feet of rain. Feet being an old unit referring to length.

Look, regular people use feet. Two and a half meters. Maybe not in Nye Labs. Not everywhere on Earth except this one country. No, we're the last country. As a metric system, it's a big thing with me. And Dr. Tyson has this old deal where he embraces Fahrenheit. It's crazy.

Because it's tradition. Excuse me. There's enough. Actually, America is almost entirely metric, if you hadn't noticed lately. When was the last time you bought a quart of Pepsi? Never, sir. So that's the one industry, the beverage industry, embraced it. Not only that, you're the displaced.

I want to talk about climate change, but let me ask us this. You almost got me started there, because you know you would have lost. Go on. Wherever there are four astrophysicists, there's a fifth. Not funny, unless you're of a certain age to remember liquor or spirits being sold by the fifth of a gallon. Now, wherever there are four astrophysicists, there are 750 milliliters. Sure. Not quite as funny.

Neither was funny. The first one was hilarious if you're of a certain age. Okay. So, the problem we have with climate change is it doesn't happen very fast, and there's so many variables in the Earth's weather. Wait, but we're trying to decide whether we spend money in space. You're making the argument to spend money on Earth. No, stay tuned. To observe, to have so-called comparative planetology, which I believe you started in on, that is to compare one planet to another.

All right. A very, very worthy endeavor. We're there. Furthermore, I defy anybody, and this person may exist, I have never met her or him, who can look at the moon, the Earth's moon, through a telescope, or through, if I may, a pair of binoculars. You may. And not be just plain astonished.

At how pockmarked it is. Yes. So what? What does that have to do with why people should spend money? First of all, that's remarkable. And it's the kind of thing you want to know about as a human. That a nearby thing in space looks like it's got its face riddled with bullets. Yeah.

And if you stop and think about it, it's worth a pause for thought. Sure. But we've known that we have this blanket of atmosphere to protect us. And so nobody's worried about asteroids at the level that you'd have to worry about it if you were on the moon that has no atmosphere to protect you. I want to address a larger point. What? It's not just the asteroids and the cometary impacts, the impactors. Yes.

Or impactrices. Should there be impactrixes? Should there be female impactors, yes. Very reasonable. I don't know how many women you've, never mind. We won't go too far there. But it's just something that is remarkable that you can start wondering about your place in the universe

by looking at the moon. And I know that you preach this, you're being devil's advocate. I'm still waiting for the money part of this, by the way. By the way, let me remind the listener, you're listening to StarTalk Radio, and I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. And my guest co-host this week is the one, the only, Sir William, Bill Nye the Science Guy, who's right now pontificating on how and why it is we can and should spend money in space when people might otherwise think to spend that same money here on Earth. An ancient question among humans, or at least humans with governments. Well, ancient in the era of space exploration.

Yeah, just so. The Sumerians were not worried about spending money in space. It's funny you should bring up the Sumerians. Funny to me. Yeah. No doubt the Sumerians had some pretty good astronomy. Sure. Didn't they?

They all did, because what else were you doing at night? Well, not just that. Your life depended on it. Sure. Didn't they? They all did, because what else were you doing at night? Well, not just that. Your life depended on it. Sure. And not only that, what else were you doing at night? Yeah, well, your life depended on it in the sense that you wanted to raise crops. You wanted to have food. You wanted to eat. You raise children, you grow crops, but go on. Okay. It's just a point.

I'll claim that you haven't done a lot of farming. Okay. It doesn't take care of itself. All right. So in other words, I claim that the modern interest in asteroids that came to be, the interest came to be on account of looking at dinosaur fossils, at dinosaur fossils, is akin, is relevant to our survival in the same way that knowing the motions of the planets and the moons was relevant to survival of people in... In prehistoric, I mean, ancient times.

Let's say, well, I didn't, I was reluctant to say ancient. Let's say a few thousands of years ago. Yeah, all right. That your life depended on it. And so it very well may be that the asteroids could take us out if we're not vigilant. And this comes back to this thing, you just want to know what's out there. This is what you preach. I know you're playing devil's advocate, but this is what you preach. You just want to know what's out there.

So it is reasonable for any society that wants to know its place in the universe to ask the two fundamental questions of all humans. Where do we come from? Are we alone? Yeah, but I agree with that. You spend a little money. And I'm after you to find reasons beyond the ones I gave you six minutes ago. Is this another invoice I'm going to get? You gave me reasons and I owe you that.

I invoice you. You owe me reasons beyond the ones I gave for why we should spend money in space and not on Earth. Hold on. All the money should spend money in space and not on Earth. Hold on. All the money that's spent in space is spent on Earth. Sure. On space-related things. Yeah, yeah.

But you want to know your place in the universe. You want to know if you're alone. And now we have what may be a life-and-death question associated with an impactor or impactrix. I would claim that the people who are at war and the people who can't pay their next month's rent and the people who can't find food are not worried about our place in the universe when they're faced with those problems. I'll bet you they are.

And if you say to them, would you be willing to buy one extra cup of coffee a year to know this stuff? Almost, no, no. Everyone you meet will say, sure. And if they say, I don't like coffee. Pick your beverage. One extra luxury beverage a year.

Would you do it? And people say yes. Yeah. All right. So it's a money thing. It's how much money is not being spent that they don't know about that allows them to say yes to that question. Whoa. Whoa.

You're saying they'll agree once they learn how cheap it is, not if it was expensive as they thought it was, that that would still work. Yes. Let's say I agree with that. Sir William. Can I ask you this? Maybe. Go. Isn't it break time?

Yeah. Didn't I... We're going to take a break in a minute. Didn't I kind of sow it at break time? Yeah. Sorry about that, everybody. I was trying to give a dramatic flair. Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Bill Nye the Science Guy reminding you that space exploration is not only fascinating, but may also save your life. We'll find out more about that after the break. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. See you in a moment. Whether you're a space cadet or a rocket scientist, we want to hear from you. The phone lines are open. Call now. This is StarTalk.

Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist. Lynn Coplitz, my usual co co-host stand-up comedian and actress is in the field doing what she does best and that's making people laugh in her stead i yanked from the ether the one the only sir william i call him bill nye the science guy bill welcome as my co-host to start talking it is an an honor. I'll do what I can to fill Lynn's shoes, and I mean that only figuratively. I saw some shoes she was wearing recently. It would be very challenging.

Very interesting if, in fact, you coveted those shoes. Well, I'll tell you. As a human, as a result of evolution here on Earth, I am a huge fan of women's shoes. Okay, that's a different show. I don't, I don't wear them, but I'm kooky for it. We'll come back to that one in another show. Well, it's evolution. So, uh, By the way, you can track us on the internet at startalkradio.net.

It's your homepage. I'm sure it's your homepage, ladies and gentlemen. So just, just turn it up loud during this segment. So, so, so Lou, I want to bring in, we got a special guest today because, uh, It's on your homepage. I'm sure it's your homepage, ladies and gentlemen. So just turn it up loud during this segment. So, Lou, I want to bring in, we've got a special guest today. Notice that Dr. Tyson just called me Lou. Did I call it? No. I find thoroughly charming. And there's a reason he called me Lou. Bill, we have a special guest today. We have Dr. Louis Friedman.

Dr. Lou Friedman, welcome to StarTalk Radio, Lou. Well, it's a delight to be here, and I've got to say I'm enjoying it very much. Lou Friedman is one of the three founders of the Planetary Society based in Pasadena, California. The other two co-founders include the then head of the Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena. It's a branch of NASA responsible for seeing, building, conceiving, and designing, and tracking missions to the planets. His name is Bruce Murray. And also, the third member of that trinity was the one and the only Carl Sagan, the late Carl Sagan. So, Lou, you founded the Planetary Society. Why? Well, the idea was that the public was fascinated by this exploration, the adventure of going to other worlds and discovering things there.

And at the same time, the federal government was canceling the planetary program. So they had this great dichotomy, public interest and political killing the program. So when you say the government, what does you mean? They were withdrawing money from NASA to send probes to the planet. They were actually going to cancel all planetary missions in the 1980s and eliminate planetary science as a discipline in NASA. So you said enough is enough. And Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray said enough is enough. We're out there every day finding all this public interest. Let's do what you do with public interest, form a public interest group.

And they said, Lou Friedman, what are you doing these days? Not much. So they brought me in. This is is in 1979, 1980. That's right. Yeah, exactly. And I had just come from a stint working as a congressional science fellow in the U.S. Congress. And I saw the same political dichotomy there. And so I was very anxious to work with them on this problem. How do you know that the interest wasn't genuinely there? And it wasn't just because Carl Sagan was just this amazing popularizer who got people interested who would not have otherwise have been. Because Bill, you spent time at Cornell while Carl Sagan was a

professor there. Did you not take courses with the guy? I did. Yes. Did you not like the courses he gave? I was kooky for him. Kooky for him or them or the course? For both. All of the above. For M, apostrophe E-M. And he was a riveting lecturer. And I'll say this. You meet these people from time to time. He was another guy at the top of his game. He went on to win a Pulitzer Prize, but he insisted on teaching Astronomy 101. He wanted to get the peeps from the get-go.

Right. And let me say to the radio audience, so does Dr. Tyson. I have seen him teach Astronomy 101 at a school back east someplace. Princeton. Wasn't it Princeton? It was Princeton, yeah. So this passion is shared by all these guys, these three people that started the Planetary Society, and the other people who work there, Charlene and on like that.

They're all passionate about space exploration. And I just want to throw this credential in about Dr. Bruce Murray. He was called the admiral of the solar system. This is the third in the triumvirate there. Yeah. And so we have here today our guest, Lou Friedman. I read, just to talk some more about me, I read Dr. Friedman's book about solar sailing. Ooh. And it was written in 1975, I believe.

And so the solar sail is still a dream. So the concept of admiral of the solar system and sailing the space, this is an old metaphor now applied to the universe. Go to planetary.org and you'll see our logo has a sailing ship, not a spacecraft. Which gives the misleading impression that there's like wind in space. There is a solar wind, but it is not what is used for the force for solar sailing. And it's certainly not what's used for that Spanish galleon that you have in the iconic image for the Planetary Society. Very small effect.

Solar wind on the sea surface. It's evocative, Neil. Okay. It's evocative. You have Okay. It's evocative. You have to look at it with your right brain. So the website is planetary.org? Yes, planetary.org. All right, so look at it with your right brain, people,

not your left brain. So, Lou, so you took it upon yourselves to capture this public sentiment in favor of space exploration and shove it in the face of the government. Did it work? Absolutely right. It worked. Planetary exploration wasn't canceled.

We've had a great influence on increased Mars funding, increased near-Earth object funding. What a polite way to say asteroid that might hit Earth when you say near-Earth object. That's true. Is that correct? Fair enough. Absolutely. Very euphemistic there. Maybe you'd get even more money if you said near-earth object. Is that correct? Fair enough. Absolutely. Very euphemistic there. Maybe you'd get even more money if you said species-killing rock.

Exactly right. Exactly right. Death to all rock. No, it's what it is, everybody. It's really these objects, which are very hard to detect, could- Because they're little and dark. Little and dark, but big enough. Big enough.

And especially going fast enough. Little enough so that Earth will just shake it off, but our ecosystem wouldn't. Yeah, just so. Yeah. Right, so go on, Lou. So we became the fastest growing public membership organization of any kind in the country during those years. Now, I have a vague memory of receiving a letter in the mail back then that said, dear

citizen of planet Earth. You were, right? That's correct. I didn't feel that that was a very personal letter when I received it. I did. I joined. I joined in the spring of 1980. I didn't say, who's this to? I mean, I didn't feel like it was to me.

You know, one of these things that happens when you build a large organization, a public interest group, you make these things. Carl Sagan used to be criticized for going on the Johnny Carson show because that was popularization. I know a fellow named Neil deGrasse Tyson who's criticized for going on the Stephen Colbert show because it's popularization. It reaches out to people who are not necessarily in our discipline. One of the things we had to do as an organization is say we weren't writing to our colleagues.

We're writing to everybody, and we need to have these mass mailing techniques, underlined sentences, short paragraphs, reply now, and that's not all, folks. Do more. So these are tactics. You use mass mailing tactics to drum up interest in the cosmos. That's right. And not to

drum up interest, but to appeal to people who had that interest and wanted to join something. Now, in the 80s and the 70s, we joined something. You're listening to Dr. Lou Friedman, the executive director of the Planetary Society, talking about the birth of the Planetary Society, now going on 30 years, almost a 30-year anniversary. That's right. Having been founded back in 1979, 1980.

And I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, on StarTalk, joined by my one-day co-host, Sir William, Bill Nye the Science Guy. Who's vice president of the Planetary Society, you should point out. I assure you that's a coincidence of this show, right, at this moment that I have. If a bomb went off here, boy. So, Lou Friedman, so now

you've got this interest. You get the government to reinstate the monies for the exploration of Mars and the monies for the planetary – Exploration of Mars. Exploration of Mars and the like. So can you declare that you have a finger on the pulse of public sentiment for space? I can declare it. Whether I can prove it is a much harder question, of course.

You have – a lot of things have to come together in public interest. You have to have the right time. You have to have the right time. You have to have the right excitement. It's really an easy argument to make. People have wondered since the beginning of time about their place in the universe. I claim if they're hungry, they're not wondering that. And so we're in a serious economic strife right now. Because just the metaphor of the family is what works here.

No matter how poor you are, you have to worry about food, clothing, and shelter first. But you still want to educate your kids. You still want a little money to go to a book, even in a poor home. And that's what we do as a society. Even though we have to worry about the basics. We have to worry about all the crises of health care and agriculture. But what it says. And global warming.

I agree. We still have one desire to know. And global warming. I agree. We still have one desire to know more about our place. I agree. But it's by the very way you gave that explanation, you've prioritized it to come after the family solves the food shelter. Of course it comes

after. Of course I want to build my home before I want to get a book for my children. But that doesn't stop me from working on it all. That's right. You have to do everything all at once. Including get a book for my children. But that doesn't stop me from working on it all. That's right. You have to do everything all at once, including buy the book for your family, even though you're hungry. So what's the status of it now? How's it going now?

It's going pretty good. NASA has brought us incredible results from all over the universe. And what the missing part of it all is- That's a great sentence, by the way. They say, look what Mommy and Daddy got me from all over town. And you're saying NASA's brought it in from all over the universe. It's just so remarkable to think what we're learning about hydrocarbon lakes on Titan and these channels on Mars and the evolution of Mars and Venus that you pointed out earlier.

Hydrocarbon. These are methane lakes on Mars. Methane like the gas that comes out of your stove if you live in the city. Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. Okay, it's all there. But what's missing is the human element. We don't know what to do with humans in space, and we haven't known what to do with them since the Apollo days. And right now, that's the big issue gripping NASA.

So where are you going to land there? What are you going to do? I'll tell you. The reason why I ask is because if your original point of advocacy was to get us back to explore the planet, we're doing it. So you've succeeded. We're doing it with robots. So close up shop and go home. We're doing it with robots. We have bigger visions.

We have bigger visions. It's not just sending machines to other worlds. In some way, we're projecting ourselves, and we have to go. We have to go. So here's a technical argument or a scientific argument. Just to back up, Bill Nye, the science guy, if you didn't otherwise know, has a professional background as an engineer. So the guy, when he speaks and he says, first, some tech background, it's time to listen. Go.

Sure it is, because I was the best engineer ever. No, I've given it a lot of thought, and I understand the technical problems associated with putting people in space. It's an expensive business, because people have to eat and so on. Breathe. Breathe, that's another thing, and so on. So studies have been done. They're very reasonable.

on. So studies have been done. They're very reasonable. A human does in a minute what a robot does. Our very best robots built by the very best people we can find, those robots do in a day what a human does in a minute.

So if we have a very cool thing to go study, for example an oncoming asteroid, it would be very reasonable to send people there and chip around. Chip around with rock hammers. That's correct, Bill. And I think it is. That means a human is 1,440 times better than the robot.

And so we should be willing to pay 1,440 times. It's closer. In astronomical terms, it's around 100,000. It's a factor of 100,000. So we should actually, well, I was thinking we'd be willing to pay 1,440 times more for a human mission than a robot mission. Just to confirm, Lou, 1,440 minutes per day. Yeah. Just to confirm.

Okay, so that would be a ratio of effectiveness of the human brain versus the best human robot the human brain designs and builds. So, Lou, I've got to change subjects because we've got a lot to still do in this hour. What is your next project to get people interested? Well, I think all projects in space exploration somehow relate to this key question about what is life. Where did it start? What is the origination?

Life as we know it. Life as we know it. Where did we come from? And what we're doing. In that case, you mean everyone, Lou. I mean, Bill, not just you. I've got you know it. Where did we come from? And what we're doing at the Planetary Society. In that case, you mean everyone, Lou. I mean, Bill, not just you. I got you doing it. What we're doing at the Planetary Society is we're actually sending life for the first time on a purposeful experiment out from Earth into interplanetary space.

We're going to bring it back, these microorganisms, and see how do they survive the journey. Can life go between the planets? Did it originate someplace else and come here? These are really great questions. This is the panspermia concept, right? It's not crazy that life started on Mars. There was an impactor or impactrix there 3 billion years ago, and that thing got in a so-called complementary orbit

and found its way to Earth, and we are all actually Martians. Descendants of Martians. That is not a crazy thing. So, Lou, you're trying to test this idea in reverse, taking Earth life. Yeah, it's called LIFE, the Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, and we're putting it on a round trip. What a cute acronym. I like it.

Give you applause for that acronym. The LIFE Interplanetary... Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment. Flight Experiment. All the kids are doing it. And what we're going to do is put it on a Russian mission, which is going to a moon of Mars, sampling that moon of Mars, and coming back to Earth. Sampling means reaching down, grabbing a piece of it, and bringing it back. And they're going to take a round trip, which is very rare in interplanetary space, and bring it back here.

And then you're going to see if that trip had any odd effects on the bugs that you sent out. Or could they even survive? There's the coal and there's the radiation. Are you getting the hardy bugs or are you getting ones that we'll see? No, no, no. We know they're ones that will survive. We are picking ones that we think have a chance to make it. Yes, we are picking ones that should be

radiation resistant. You've got to give them a running chance. Yeah, we have to give them a running chance because any life that makes it is really the first demonstration of that. So could the high energy rays in space deform the DNA of these bugs so that it comes back as some super

virus or some super bacteria? Are you worried about this? No, I'm not worried about it. Could it happen? Anything could happen, but am I worried about it? Lou is not worried about this. We will have to wait until this break to find out why Lou'm not worried about it. Could it happen? Anything could happen, but am I worried about it? Okay, Lou is not worried about this. We will have to wait until this break to find out why Lou is not worried about a bug being altered in space, with genetic identity altered in space, and coming back, destroying life on Earth, as it did in the movie, The Andromeda Strain, which we all have seen.

That was a different form. That wasn't life from Earth coming and going. We'll talk about that when we get back. Oh, that's why we'll be safe. Okay. We'll see you in a minute. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Welcome back to StarTalk.

This is StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, with my guest co-host, one day only. That's you only get him for one day, Sir William Bill Nye the Science Guy. Bill, we're back on StarTalk. It's exciting to be back. Monday, Sir William, Bill Nye, the science guy. Bill, we're back on StarTalk. Exciting to be back. And we're here also with Dr. Lou Friedman, who's the executive director of the Planetary Society. And if you just joined us, we were discussing the life mission, the living interplanetary flight experiment from the Planetary Society.

Full disclosure, I'm the vice president of the Planetary Society. Dr. Tyson is on the board of the Planetary Society. But here's the thing. We're going to send living things from Earth. These are bacteria and a piece of the tundra to Phobos. A piece of the Russian tundra? No, actually, it turns out we're sending all three life forms, not just bacteria, but also the archaea and the eukaryotes, as well as a colony of tundra. But it turns out we got our tundra from the Negev Desert.

What does a colony of tundra mean? Well, it just means that you've taken a soil sample and you have different microbes in them. So whatever is... Isolating each one of them in addition to the individual isolators. So whatever's native to that scoop of soil is what's going. I got it.

Because you want to see interactions as well. The ecosystem, yeah. Yeah. So then the question came up right before break, Dr. Friedman. What if one of these organisms mutates and comes back able to kill us all? Well, in point of fact,

they'll be handled very, very carefully in laboratories. That doesn't sound convincing enough. I need more. People handle smallpox. They handle bubonic plague without killing us all. And in science, you can never say

it cannot happen. You can't just go and say, so I can't tell you, no, that won't happen. I can tell you that we know these, characterize all these microorganisms very, very carefully. We know what they are. We think we know that this kind of genetic engineering along the way won't happen.

But even if it does, that's something to be dangerous. Even if it does happen, that's something to study. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And it's the reason that we're actually conducting this activity to see if there's any effect on the survival and the growth or development of these things. This is an unshielded spacecraft so that general cosmic radiation can hit it as it would any bacteria that stows away on a rock that was flung from the surface of the planet. Well, that's the key. You said the key point. Inside a rock. So in general, bacteria, even when it's coming from another planet, is shielded.

It's inside the rock. And we sort of have an artificial rock by having it in a capsule inside the spacecraft. So it's sort of simulating the idea of how you'd make the journey. They don't make it. So it's not encased in lead, but it's encased in something permeable. Well, it's encased in the fabulous aerospace metal. Well, yeah, but not enough to block the radiation. And there'll be radiation environment, and they're encased, and it's a vacuum.

Now, this sounds very cool. And is this drumming up public interest and public support? Well, it's the first time it's ever been done. And we've been a little cautious about how we advertise this so far because it's on a Russian mission, and the Russian mission hasn't launched yet. far because it's on a Russian mission and the Russian mission hasn't launched yet. And until it launches and until we can be sure that we're keeping the schedule and all the different engineering constraints are met, then we'll probably publicize it a lot more. Why is it on a Russian mission and not an American mission?

Because there's no American, you know, the only country that's ever done a sample return from another planetary body is the Soviet Union. No, it's Americans because the astronauts brought moon rocks back from the moon. Sir. Did I say automated sample return from another planetary body is the Soviet Union. No, it's Americans because the astronauts brought moon rocks back from the moon. Sir. Did I say automated sample return? No, you didn't. Okay. It was automated sample return.

I should have said automated. All right. All right. First soft landing. The first pictures of the far side. And so the Russians are the only ones now planning a sample return mission. The Japanese are doing one. It's a very interesting one to an asteroid, and it's a Hayabusa mission.

We should have gotten on that. It was a mistake by us not to think of this. We, the Planetary Society. We, the Planetary Society. But we didn't think of this experiment in time. We're hoping to do it with the Japanese later. But let me just clarify. The Planetary Society is not some renegade space nuts.

There's a premise that— Are you saying that there are renegade space nuts? There are plenty. We're a non-governmental organization who gets along with all governments. Largest non-governmental space interest organization in the world. Okay. But the point I'm making is you're not just a bunch of space nuts inventing stuff to do- Insisting that we, it's our manifest destiny to live on Mars.

These are things that would not have made peer review science activity. We do them because they're publicly interesting and engaging, and yet they're well conceived scientifically. Well, so they wouldn't have made peer review because they're not advancing a science frontier as much as they're, in the interest of the Planetary Society, advancing a public interest frontier. Right, exactly. Okay. And another example of that. Would this be like, Bill, didn't you put something on a Mars rover, if I remember correctly? There's two things.

You did this. And you say Bill Nye did. It's a little bit of an exaggeration. There are two sundials on Mars, on Spirit and Opportunity rovers. The two rovers that are there now, they've been there. And they are casting shadows. Spirit and Opportunity rovers. The two rovers that are there now, they've been there.

And they are casting shadows. And as we sit here in this meeting, this radio show, I want to remind everybody that sundials should have a motto. Our motto on two sundials on Mars is two worlds, one sun. That works. And the man who created that motto is Dr. Lou Friedman, sitting right here with us. But Bill Nye is the one who answered the question. Bill, we know how to tell time. Why did we put sundials on this spacecraft? So this would be an experiment that would not survive a peer-reviewed science panel?

Absolutely, yeah. Why did we put sundials on Mars anyway? First of all, we need to have a shadow casting feature on the photometric calibration target. That is to say, you cast a shadow on another world so that you can look at the light that comes into the shadow from that planet's sky. If you've never done it on Earth, look at something very white and cast a shadow and you will see a little bit of light blue on a sunny day. Because that's the blue that's not the sun.

That's the blue that's not the sun. The blue sky. If you do a little thought experiment, if you're on the moon and you look away from the sun, the sky is absolutely black, jet black. Then if you do that on Earth, you look away from the sun, the sky is a beautiful blue, azure. So on Mars, it's this orange or taupe or salmon or mocha or something. And so we're going to have a shadow. It's not mocha. Stop a tope.

Stop a tope. You can get in a fist fight in the planetary sky coloring bar over that. So we're going to have this shadow casting feature anyway. And I said it was a wonderful opportunity to reckon time on another world. And it had great public interest at first. We had a lot of sundial pictures. And it still has a background. And then we set up the Earth Dial Project, where we had about 50 10-time-sized sundials around the world with webcams on them. And we could then compare

the length and direction of shadows around the world on a single website. It was big fun. This became a human participation activity. And it led to another thing called Voices, which was what people sound like around the world who built these sundials. It was these earth dials. It was big fun. And the sundials are needed to calibrate the cameras. Just so you know, that's Bill Nye the Science Guy talking to you right now.

Oh, sorry. And you're listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. And our guest on this program, Bill Nye is my guest co-host. But our guest in this program is Dr. Lou Friedman, Executive Director of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. Non-governmental. Non-governmental. He's been telling us about what activities they've been involved in to drum up community, public, national, international interest in space

activities. And so, Bill, so you've got these sundials on Mars, and they would bring a level of public interest that the normal experiments on these rovers would not have. That's the point. Furthermore, there's one more detail, which I think is important to realize. We put an inscription on there, on both of these Mars dials, as they came to be called, and they are a message to the future. And they are inherently optimistic.

What do they say? Among other things, people of Earth built these in our year 2003. It says our year, to get around who's in charge of calendar reckoning. Okay. Our year 2003 arrived here in 2004. We built these instruments to study the Martian environment, learn about Mars' past, and prepare for our future. And then it says— That's not a very pithy statement.

Then it says—well, it goes around four edges of this thing that would fit in the palm of your hand. And then the last panel says, to those who visit here, we wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery. And that is the essence of this enterprise, my friend. Wouldn't you also wish them a safe return home? Well, I hope they thought of that. By the time those are found, it may not be an important thing to have a safe return home. Not for you, because you're, you know, how old are you now?

So, Dr. Tyson, are we supposed to include, we're supposed to include, we hope you brought your favorite candy. I mean, we're supposed to like, we hope you brought your favorite candy. We're supposed to like, we hope you're not hungry. We hope you brought a fuel to get your butt home. And this whole idea of sending messages to other worlds. By the way, you can go to planetary.org and read messages from Earth. Planetary.org, the website of the Planetary Society.

Yeah, you have messages from Earth. It's a wonderful way to get people involved. And we're doing it at the moon. We're doing it at Mars. We did it at Titan and Saturn. We're doing it at the Moon, we're doing it at Mars, we did it at Titan and Saturn, we're doing it at Pluto, you do it throughout the universe. Speaking of the Moon, why not,

there's a lot of talk about going back to the Moon as the next step. You got issues with that? I have a lot of issues with that. I have an issue. First of all, we did, we should go to the Moon first, and we have. We did it 40 years ago. So you're saying, let's go to the Moon first. Hey, wait a minute, we already have, let go somewhere else now and and and the whole idea of the moon hasn't caught on and it's not inspiring people because they know it's not the next step

it's the last step we did and the second part of it is congress listening to you i think so i actually think it is weren't you just in the white house a couple of weeks ago and the uh whole thing yes i was but i was a tourist. Oh, okay, okay. I was a tourist in the White House. But I did see the president. He got into the helicopter while we were there. That's fun when they take off on that thing. Yeah, it really was great.

But the other aspect is Mars is the only world we can reach. Sorry. Mars is the only world, the only accessible world that has oxygen, water, atmosphere. It's a place for humans. By the way, it's oxygen bound with other atoms, so you have to extract it. Yeah, it's in the carbon dioxide, it's in the underground ice and so forth. But the fact is, it's the only world we can reach where we have those things. And so it's the only world that humans... And not get vaporized on landing, as you will on Venus.

Yes, right. And my friends, there is water there. If we go to the right place, it is reasonable that there is some sort of evidence of life. Maybe there are even Martian microbes, Mars-crobes, and maybe we're even descendant from them. That, my friends, is worthy of knowing. Bill, you're spooky excited at that possibility well if we find life on mars it will change the big upper about the whole idea of the universe being full of life and if we don't find it that's also interesting downer but that's why isn't that also

interesting no it's interesting it's fascinating but you make it it makes it sound like we're alone you sound upset about that possibility i i don't know. I've pondered this for a long time, whether or not we're alone is a kind of a downer. Are we unique? To me, it feels a little negative. We're going to take a break in a few minutes. But when we come back, what I want to ask the both of you is, what is the top 10 list of things that must happen to create and sustain public interest in space exploration, lest the entire program get canceled and everyone just goes back to worrying about where they get their next meal? You're listening to StarTalk Radio. We'll see you in a moment.

Welcome back to StarTalk, StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, with a substitute one-time only co-host, Sir William, I call him affectionately. He's Bill Nye, the science guy. Bill. Neil. Welcome again to StarTalk Radio. It's so good to be here. And we have as our special guest the executive director of the Planetary Society,

based in Pasadena, California, founded nearly 30 years ago with Carl Sagan as one of the trinity of founders. Another is Dr. Bruce Murray, then head of the Jet Propulsion Labs, and Dr. Louis Friedman, engineer. And I happen to know a big fan of something called solar sailing, a way to sort of fly without fuel, I guess. Is that right, Lou? Yes, it is. And the lure of solar sailing is because it's the only known technology that can take us to the stars because you don't have to carry the fuel. Everything else, you have to carry something along. Well, you have to carry it provided

there's no filling station along the way. You're assuming there's no filling station. That's right. I'm assuming there's no filling station. As there are as you drive across the country. You don't have to bring all the gas you need to drive from L.A. to New York. But somebody has. Somebody did it before you. With solar sailing, actually, it would be light sailing to go interstellar distances because you'd have to use laser light powering you. Because the sun gets too weak as you get too far away.

And all the starlight is just too weak. So solar sailing is the way that we're going to someday go to the stars. And we're trying to take the first steps in that by just demonstrating how it works here in Earth orbit and then moving out into interplanetary space. So this is not metaphor for some new way to propel yourself. It's an actual sail. That's right. A surface that's receiving the pressure from light

from some source, if not the sun, then some laser that you've set up either in deep space or from Earth's surface. It looks like a giant kite or a sail, and you use sunlight pressure, not the solar wind, reflecting off the solar sail and transferring your momentum from light energy into spacecraft energy, which then picks up speed and goes through the solar system. This sounds like it would be very slow.

It's very slow acceleration, but it's continuously acting. So every day, every second, you're picking up speed. And so by the time you start getting out to the distance of Mars and Jupiter, you're going hundreds of thousands of miles per hour, and you're starting to get out of the solar system really quick. That's a good point, because what most people don't know is that our spacecraft we send to the moon and to Mars or anywhere, they're basically coasting the whole way. They're not actually firing their engines.

You go on what's called a ballistic path. You're coasting under the force of centrifugal gravity. So before we went into break, I wanted to know from the both of you what you felt were the 10 hottest public interest things to do in space that might stand a chance of guaranteeing either good funding for NASA or space commercialization or whatever it would take to make sure, to ensure that we are a space-faring nation in our future. Two things.

Not 10 things. Two things. Yeah, I was going to ask you. Adventure and discovery. We have to keep up the sense of adventure. Wait, that's like mom and apple pie. I need details. We have to keep up the sense of adventure. Wait, that's like mom and apple pie. I need details. We have to do adventures and we have to

send humans where they haven't gone before. Everyone agrees. We have to do solar sailing technology. We have to discover things that have never been discovered. Everybody agrees. That's not specific enough. You can't go into Congress and say, discover and explore and then they write your check.

All right. What does he want to do? Lou. I mean- Bill. Steve. Henrietta. Lou. Lynn.

You get a demerit. Bill, tell me. So we're going to go- When we get arguing, I notice everybody calls everybody by the other name here. So what we're going to do, Dr. Tyson. Yes. We're going to go, and my fellow viewers, listeners, we're going to go to Mars with people. And we're going to go to a place that is very exciting in terms of life.

So you think you can just up and do that and then say that that's an exciting thing to do when that itself might cost $100 billion? Stand by. So what we're going to do first is go to someplace where no one has gone before. And let's start with the Lagrange points. Now, you have probably loyal viewers. And this is a guy. This would be listeners, yeah. This is radio, Bill.

Viewers, listeners. I know you're a TV man. Well, it's the most visual medium. No one can see you now. It's the most visual medium. So we would go to the Lagrange points. And Lagrange did this fabulous analysis where you don't have to do the equations of motion. You just have to do the total energy, kinetic and potential energy.

And so these are places where the gravity is in balance. The gravity of the sun, the earth, the moon, and the spacecraft are very nearly in balance. This is in a point in empty space where everything balances, all right. The middle of nowheresville, except it's not quite. So we would go up there and see if we can get there and back easily. Park some stuff there, maybe some fuel. And then we go from there to an asteroid. easily, park some stuff there, maybe some fuel, and then we go from there to an asteroid.

And we will make the same discoveries on the same level that the humans made walking around on the moon compared to the robots made on the moon. That is to say, the discoveries will be made, but the adventure will be there. Okay, so Lou, what Bill just said seems, at least as a first step, a little more affordable than what you're... Absolutely, and that's quite right. I use the example as if you have to get to New York in the old days, not now, you go to Cleveland first because it's on the way. Wait, what?

Wait, what? Are you talking about stagecoach? I am. I'm talking about stagecoaches. You don't go to Cleveland. And we're at the stagecoach stage of exploring the solar system. So we have to have interim milestones. Sorry, I didn't work that analogy in too good.

You go to Philadelphia on the way to New York from Washington or the other way around. So you do need milestones. And Bill's quite right. You've got to have those interim steps to make it on the way to Mars. San Diego to San Francisco. You go through L.A. You never lose sight of the destination. Mars is the exciting place where the whole future of the human species, as far

as an extraterrestrial species, as far as a multi-planet species, as far as life on other worlds is going to be determined. You know what I worry about? If Mars is a destination and then we land there, then no one thought about going anyplace else and that would end the program. That's what happened in the Apollo program. Yes, but that's because

the moon is basically uninteresting. Mars will never be uninteresting. You mean you go to the moon? It's like building New York. It's like building Paris. You don't stop because you got one building up. You'll keep working at it. Lou, you're saying that we land six places on the surface of the moon and you're done. Yeah.

With good reason. The United States and the Soviet Union spent $200 billion on today's terms to prove that there was nothing of significance on the moon. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. That was the voice of Dr. Lou Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, based in Pasadena, California. My co-host for this show only, in lieu of my other favorite co-host, Lynn Koplitz, the comedian, we've got Bill Nye, the science guy. Bill, what do you say about what Lou just said?

Well, bear in mind that we continue to explore the nearby planets and distant stars with our spacecraft. We continue to explore them with our telescopes. And people say, what are you going to find there? We don't know. That's why we're exploring. That's why we're exploring. So what we will do is explore a place on Mars that looks very reasonable to have liquid water extant in early times, or maybe even liquid water there right now.

As there's some evidence to show. A lot of evidence. There's some seepage on the sides of ravines. It's an evidence farm down there, yes. And then we will go there with sophisticated spacecraft, and we'll go there eventually with people to see what's going on and we may be discovering our origin. This is not something we're going to spend billions and billions of dollars to compete with another

Cold War government. It's what we're going to do for the sake of all humankind. But I would maintain that that's a naive outlook. I want to feel what you feel. But we all know we went to the moon because we had to beat the communists. OK, it was like kill the commie land back then.

And so that's what wrote the checks. That's what signed the checks. Kennedy says, oh, we're discoverers and I'm a leader and let's go to the moon. But the other part of that same speech is the commies are bad. Free world is good. We got to do this to show them up without anybody to show up what incentive can you possibly imagine to drive this because i can tell you it's not simply to explore that's never been a good enough driver in the history of human species but the

idea of nations doing great exploration has been very important was important throughout the 16th 17th 18th 19th century. Yes. Because it was a sign of national leadership of Britain, of Holland, of Spain. It wasn't just leadership. It's because now half of the Western Hemisphere speaks Spanish because Columbus couldn't get Italy to pay for his voyages. But the idea that the United States would quit exploration while China, India, and Japan and other Asian countries are coming up. We'll be the Portugal of the future if we quit exploration while they're coming into the future.

Oh, okay. So what you're saying is you agree that it's not a good enough driver to do it because it's fun or interesting or enlightening to do. You're saying we should do it so that we don't come in last. I say it because we want to do the best. We want to be the best at what we do. You just said that China, everybody else is doing it and we don't want to be left behind. You don't want to be last. I say it because we want to do the best. We want to be the best at what we do. That's euphemistic. You just said that China, everybody else is doing it and we don't want to be left behind. You don't want to be last.

We want to do our best. I don't fully agree. Don't agree fast because we've got like a minute left. I know. Well, so we'll see what comes up in the last, with the next few years, but exploration of other worlds could change this one. Are you sure about that? Certain.

Lou, are you sure about that too? I absolutely agree with that. Alright, alright. We're running out of time here. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your host. StarTalk Radio is funded by the National