StarTalk Radio - X-Prize - Beyond Space (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 21, 2014

In the conclusion of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s interview with Peter Diamandis, we explore how the X-Prize Foundation inspires out-of-the-box solutions to the world’s greatest problems.Read more and listen to the full show: http://www.startalkradio.net/show/x-prize-beyond-space/ 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 Neil deGrasse Tyson. Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist and director at New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. My co-host today, Chuck Nice. Hey, Neil.

Chuck, you practically have a fan club out there, you know. Practically. I'm almost there. We are almost at fan club status. Great having you on the show. Thanks for agreeing to do this. We're doing part two of my interview with Peter Diamandis, the founder of the X Prize. Yeah.

We spent a whole hour talking about the X Prize getting us into space. But the X Prize is more than space. The X Prize is anything that's just beyond our reach today. Wow. That needs to be invented, and no one is trying to invent it yet. I'm just saying. That's pretty cool. You need somebody to lead that charge. Yes.

Peter Diamandis is your man. And let's find out just about the general X Prize concept and what else he's doing with this thing. Okay. We ended up calling that specific prize the Ansari X Prize. The X stuck around because we had taken so long to find the Ansari family. And that enabled us to do further X Prizes. X Prizes got a brand of being a prize for a bold, audacious thing you actually had to build and demonstrate. You branded the phrase X Prize by what you've done with it.

Yeah. All right. So going into space is a natural extension of the aviation industry in terms of prize money to boldly go. Yep. All right. But from the homework I've done on you, this XPRIZE is no longer just space, which is very intriguing to me. So where else have you taken it? So on the heels of the XPRIZE being one, the question was, where could this model work in addition? And the thinking was any place that there was a market failure, any place that

stuff was stuck. It was a stigma. People didn't think it was possible. The commercial markets weren't doing it. So like that phrase, they're stuck. There's something in place. It could be regulations in place preventing it. There could be people's belief. They had a bad experience with something. I've always wanted to do, for example, an XPRIZE for cold fusion. No scientist will touch cold fusion because of the stigma that it had gotten. Just tabletop fusion without a nuclear reactor.

Yeah, and whether or not it's possible, sometimes putting out an incentive gets people to think about a problem in a brand new dimension and brings new players into the field that would not otherwise. If I can digress, one of the stories I love is the Longitude Prize. So the year is 1714. The British Admiralty are ruling the seas and they are able to tell latitude for navigation but not longitude and what's happening is that they're losing lots of their navy at sea because ships are crashing on the rocks and so they offer up this king's fortune for the team for the investigator for the scientist that can be able to tell longitude. And they were absolutely sure it was going to be done by an astronomer.

Because astronomers were the smartest dudes in the universe back then. And so they created... You still are playing me back then. Okay, well, they actually stack the judging board, the longitude board, with astronomers to evaluate the winning approach because they're sure it's going to be an astronomer who's competing for this. And this guy, John Harrison, who is a watchmaker, he's a tinkerer, he builds small watches in his lab, if you would, in his shop, comes up with this watch, the H1 as he calls it,

that is able to tell time accurate in a rocking boat. He basically shows how to do the longitude. But they're so sure it's going to be won by an astronomer, they refuse to recognize this guy's approach. And so sometimes, you know, I define the expert as the person who can tell you exactly how it can't be done. And it isn't many times the expert who's going to win these competitions. It's someone with a crazy idea.

Because the day before something is truly a breakthrough, it's a crazy idea. If it wasn't a crazy idea, it would be an incremental improvement. And so these competitions, these XPRIZES really encourage people to come out of right field with an audacious crazy idea that the traditional thinkers would discount out of hand. And that's where the breakthrough comes from. Yeah, you got to break the box. Yes. Rebuild the box. Yes. Rebuild the box.

Okay. Take the stuff in the box, dump it out, throw away the box, make another box, or make a bigger box. A box with no walls. Maybe a cylinder. Why does it have to be a box? Why can't it be like a can of Pringles? What? Potato chips?

Not in a bag? That's revolutionary. Think outside the cylinder. Think outside's revolutionary. Think outside the cylinder. Think outside the cylinder. Think outside the cylinder. Let's do that. Think outside the dodecahedron. Here's the thing, though.

When he talks about cold fusion, okay? If anything's got a stigma in this world, it's cold fusion. Because the dudes, were you around when Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman got together and had a press conference saying that they created sustainable fusion on a laboratory table without requiring a thermonuclear reactor? And it was page one story. And everyone said, well, where's your research paper? What does your experiment look like? Because in science, you have to duplicate the result before

it is an emergent truth. The press doesn't seem to care about that fact. Any research result, they will put forth as truth. Exactly. But there needs to be some kind of experimental observational consensus, which was not achieved by Pons and Fleischman. And so their work was

considered, I don't know if it was fraudulent, but it was certainly wrong. Right. Fleischman. And so their work was considered, I don't know if it was fraudulent, but it was certainly wrong. Right. Junk. And it required palladium. And the futures price for palladium skyrocketed over that time. Wow.

So the world was reacting to this one scientific result that was put forth that turned out to be false. So I don't think he literally means cold fusion, but he's our guy here. I think what he's referring to is, wouldn't it be cool if we had fusion that didn't require a nuclear fusion reactor, right? So now let me ask you this. Let's look at in your sphere of expertise, which is-

My dodecahedron. Your particular dodecahedron, which is the cosmos. The cosmos. Okay. So now all of that fusion that's happening up there. Yeah. Out there. Out there.

Yes. Not up there, but out there. Mm-hmm. That's also happening below your feet. So true. Up for the Aussies. Right. That all has heat as a

byproduct, doesn't it? Yes. That is the energy liberated by thermonuclear fusion. Right. Yes. So my point is, if nature does it this way. Easily, all the time. Then why, isn't there a reason for that? Isn't just heat the byproduct?

Yes, but we can do that too. When we do what the center of the sun does, it's called a bomb. Okay? We have no problems engaging in uncontrolled thermonuclear fusion. Exactly. That's what a bomb is. Right. What you want to do is control it and sustain it, and that's what we are helpless at this

moment of accomplishing. That's all. Got you. But fusion is like easy as pie. It's easy. In space. I mean, in the universe, got that moment. Okay. Of accomplishing. That's all. Got you. But yeah, but fusion is like easy as pie. It's easy. In space. I mean, in the universe, got that down. Right.

I'm just saying. Okay. When we come back, more of my interview with Peter Diamandis and the X-Priority. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Find us on the net at startalkradio.net. Find us on Facebook, StarTalk Radio. On Twitter, at, guess what? StarTalk Radio on Twitter at guess what StarTalk Radio

there you go Chuck I got Chuck with me here we've got my interview with X Prize founder Peter Diamandis the guy's a dreamer

the guy is a dreamer I don't say that in a great way in a great way thank you not in a the guy's out of touch way the guy's there

and he's on it and we were at a conference together at this huge conference hotel. And we're friends. I've known him from way back. And I wanted to make sure I got a StarTalk interview with him. So we got a quiet place over in the corner. I pulled out the microphone.

And we've got these interviews. You heard the first part earlier with the XPRIZE going into space. And now it's XPRI X Prize for everything else. For everything. Everything that we need, the X Prize has. Yes. So let's find out all the kinds of X Prizes that he has in mind.

At the X Prize Foundation today, we think about X Prizes in five different areas. Exploration Prizes, which is space and oceans. Right, because land is done. Well, land is well. No, it is. We've been to the top of Mount Everest. We've been to the peaks. We've been to the poles.

You know what's left, right? Well, there may be subterranean. Spelunking. Why not? As you well know, we've discovered a new, essentially, form of life, archaeobacteria, which represent the overwhelming mass of all life forms, all life mass. The biomass. The biomass of the earth is below the land. It's not in the oceans. It's not on the land. It's actually in the deep crevice of the earth. Maybe

it's powered by heat, maybe sulfur-based life forms. You know, there's still a lot of exploring to be done there. That's exploration, that's one. Life sciences, in which we include robotic enterprises and life sciences. Energy and the environment is the third. Education is the fourth. And then global development is the fifth area. What is global development? Global development is how do we use incentive competitions

to address the needs of the rising billion of the poorest people on Earth. We've just launched with Robinhood. Robinhood is one of the large billion of the poorest people on earth. We've just launched with Robinhood. Robinhood is one of the large organizations here in New York City that raises money to fight poverty. And they raised $19 million to launch a series of poverty alleviation enterprises. So that's in our global development space. So if you're really successful, you will supplant half the mission statement of the United Nations today politicians with a lot of hot air trying to solve a lot of problems well ultimately we're genetically bred to compete as humans we do it in sport we do it in finding our spouse we do it in business and my goal is to try and sort

of drive that human nature into solving the world's biggest problems. But they have to be described. So not all things are a great XPRIZE. You need to have something that's measurable. Give me an example of a bad XPRIZE and a good XPRIZE. So every time I speak, people say, hey, can you use an XPRIZE to reinvent the government? Yeah. A lot of frustrated people out there.

So that one is really a fuzzy XPRIZE. You need a concrete objective. Flying three people to 100 kilometers and bringing them back safely. You need metrics. Yeah, you need metrics. It has to be clear, concrete, and ultimately it should be something that a small team of people can do. And so it works really well around technology. technology. We are looking at behavioral prizes. So can we, in fact, use an XPRIZE to reinvent how we think about childhood incentives on food and exercise? Because as you well know, childhood obesity is reaching epidemic proportions, and it's driving a lot of healthcare disease, heart disease in kids, diabetes in kids, and it's terrible. Okay, so there's a social consciousness going on here.

Because otherwise, if you just say we can go 100 kilometers, it's not necessarily a socially driven mission statement. We're looking really to drive breakthroughs. So in exploration, in addition to spaceflight, we're working with Shell to look at mapping the ocean floor. What, is it non-mapped? Less than 1% of the ocean floor really is mapped at high resolution. Okay.

And we don't know what's down there. And so we're looking at can teams build technologies that would allow us to rapidly, robotically map the ocean floor? Wait, that's not an XPRIZE. That's just no one's done it yet. That's different from people think it can't be done. But the challenge is no one is doing it. When I'm thinking XPRIZE, I'm thinking people are naysayers out there.

They're saying, we don't know how to do it. We don't know what the technology is required. It is beyond our reach. Nobody's saying that about the bottom of the ocean. But no one's saying that about spaceflight. They were saying the government's done it, and it know, it's just not, it's just expensive. So it depends on the perspective. Our goal is to accelerate the future and bring about capabilities that are going to benefit humanity.

Our mission statement is… Okay, so sorry then. So in the, with your original XPRIZE, it wasn't that it couldn't be done technologically. It's that no one knew how to do it cheaply. That was an economic surprise. It was economics, and also no one thought it could be done by the private sector. So I was trying to change people's belief of what was possible. And our mission statement is driving radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.

And being able to understand and map the ocean floor floor which has resources uh which has life forms which has environmental implications is important for us you know we know more about the surface of mars than we do about the ocean floor and so in exploration we're doing that in energy the environment i'm very interested in driving battery technology accelerating battery is that one of the X-Piles? I'm tired of using 19th century technology to run everything in my house. It's crazy. Did I blame you? I got to blame somebody.

It's so yesterday. It's so two centuries ago. My gosh. It seems like it's the great Achilles heel of modern technology. It is. And liberating us from how we store energy today would change everything, right?

I mean, we have 5,000 times more energy that hits the Earth's surface than we consume as a species in sunlight. It's just not stored. It's not usable. And imagine having 10 times more energy on Earth than we could possibly use. It would liberate society in an unknown way. We'd finally get jetpacks. Is that all you really want? I want the XPRIZE jetpack.

Chuck, he's got five categories here what do you want you're you're a man about town i am what are we missing that you think we should have personally i would like to see um sex bots i'm sorry but i'm just gonna be honest sex bots i think okay okay just being honest i'm being honest here. I mean, just think about what you would do for humanity if you were able to create a fully functional sex bot. That would be awesome. I'm sorry. I mean, you know, first of all, are you cheating if you were the sex bot? You could be married to your wife.

Baby, she's not even human. She's not even human, baby. What you talking about? You know, I'm not cheating on you. This is my sex bot. But you got to make a sex bot who is awesome. I'll call Peter Diamandis now. Please do.

Let's get to something important here. Mapping the ocean floor. Okay, so you come up with a sex bot that no one will go to work in the morning, right? Yeah, I'll send my sex bot. I can't make it today. He's worn out. Okay, so you got that out of the way. Yes, I got that out of the way. Anything else?

You know what I would love to see is advancements in brain disorders, because I've got a feeling I suffer from several. You mean advancements in cures of brain disorders. In cures of brain disorders. Not advancements in brain disorders, because. In cures of brain disorders. Not advancements in brain disorders. Because that would be kind of counterintuitive, right? Let's advance brain disorders.

And you'll get a brain disorder. And you'll get a brain disorder. That would be cool. Some device where you don't, perhaps where you don't have to cut open the skull. Right. And you repair it. They did this in a Star Trek movie, Star Trek IV. Okay. I think it was Zulu had brain damage from falling on his head.

And they're ready to cut open his skull. He goes back in time, so it's 1984, which was the present day of the film. And they're ready to cut open the dude's skull, and Bones comes back, and he's like, he's freaking out. I'm a doctor, not a butcher. Look how they butcher. And so he puts some thing on this head, and it goes, and it's rebuilding the, wee, wee, wee, wee.

And it's rebuilding the neurosynaptic, the broken neurosynaptics. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I'd love to see something like that happen. If you could do that, then you can make someone smarter. Oh, God, would I love to see that happen. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That'd be cool.

Because we live in a world of idiots. I'm sorry. You know, listen. Just line up the idiots first. I'm sorry. Line up the idiots and get line up the idiots first. I'm sorry. Line up the idiots and get that little brain device on them, and maybe people will start believing in climate change. I'm just saying.

I'm just saying. If you don't believe in climate change, you're an idiot. I'm sorry. And he talks about energy liberating society. There's a whole episode of Cosmos where we address that very theme. Yeah, exactly. You know, you did a great thing online where you were talking about how we basically don't have the political will to use the most available resource that we have, which is the sun. I mean, seriously, the answer is there, people.

We look at it every day. Well, I joke about it in my Twitter stream. I say if an alien came to visit, which is the sun. I mean, seriously, the answer is there, people. We look at it every day. Well, I joke about it in my Twitter stream. I say if an alien came to visit, I'd be embarrassed to tell the alien, look, you know, we're getting energy out from under the ground after we fight a war to gain access to it. They'd be laughing, slapping their knee.

Exactly. If they had a knee. That big yellow thing in the sky. How about you use that? Duh. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. When we come back, more StarTalk interview with XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis. We're back. StarTalk Radio.

Chuck Nice. Hey, hey. Chuck Nice. Thanks for being here. Always good to be here, man. What, do you take Barry White lessons overnight? Always good. And I was drinking scotch last night.

And this is my residual scotch. Scotch the day after. Well, we've been catching up with my interview with Peter Diamandis, founder of the XPRIZE, originally conceived for going into space. He said, let's just break it open and just get an X Prize for everything.

Everything. Everything you need. And I wondered if there are any X Prizes that had been awarded so far. Because maybe all the goals are a little bit out of everybody's reach and people are just ascending a mountain that has no top. And he said, no, no, there have been a couple that came through. So let's find out. Let's find out about one.

Quickly, what are the four that got awarded? Unstarrer X Prize for Space Flight, the Progressive Automotive X Prize for 100 Mile Per Gallon Cars, the Northrop Grumman Lunar Landing Challenge for Vertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing Vehicles, and the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Prize. Oil Cleanup X Prize. So on the heels of the BP oil spill, when that spill was going on and on and on, James Cameron had just joined our board. He's a big oceanographer, as you know. And he said, you've got to do something about this oil spill.

And when we looked at what we could do, we realized that the technology for cleaning up oil spills had not changed in 21 years since the Exxon Valdez. And we said, let's ask teams to compete on how you clean them up. And if you have to, if you at least double the oil spill cleanup rate of 1,100 gallons per minute, which had been the standard, you can qualify to win, whoever did the most. So 350 teams entered, 350 teams around the world entered. We had 10 finalists go head-to-head in the world's largest oil spill cleanup facility located here in New Jersey. Of course, New Jersey. I wasn't going to go there. And the seven of the 10 teams actually doubled the oil spill cleanup rate. Seven. And these are all small teams under 100 person in size.

The winning team did a six-fold increase. Whoa. And one of the teams that doubled the oil spill cleanup rate, I kid you not, was a team that met in a Las Vegas tattoo parlor. The tattoo artist was the designer, one of his customers. This is like you're saying. It's people who are not the folks you'd otherwise look to. These are people way outside the field with a crazy idea who say, I'm going to give it a shot.

They built a scale model in the guy's swimming pool. And the first time the full scale model saw oil and water was in the test facility. And they still doubled the oil cleanup rate. Now, you would have never backed a team that met in las vegas tattoo parlor and so the beautiful thing about x prizes and these incentive competitions are they really crowdsource innovative approaches um and you automatically back the winner no matter how crazy the idea might have sounded well i have an issue i must an issue. I must take issue. Okay. Okay. You're putting out an XPRIZE for oil cleanup. That's like putting out an XPRIZE for an acid rain-proof umbrella. Shouldn't you put out an XPRIZE for tankers that don't spill oil in the first place?

Is that really the goal here? Yeah. Or independence from oil entirely? So let's think about that because it informs us on what a great XPRIZE is. oil entirely so let's think about that because it informs us on what great XPRIZE is you know I'm looking for something that a team of 20-30 guys gals could do that could be funded by themselves so reinventing and building an oil tanker well that should be what the oil industry does with the shipping industry but there's lots of platforms out there lots of tankers out there that

are going to have accidents and we we just said, you know, the cleanup industry, that's something that we can attack. Well, at least he's doing something practical on the spot. Yeah. But what I want to know is this. Why is it that, honestly, when you see an oil spill on the news, they're like using bounty paper towels? What's up with that? And dishwashing liquid to clean the ducts. It's Dawn and bounty.

Stuff you can find at the supermarket. Why aren't we using these advancements that he has actually made? Actually, when I was in college, I took a couple of, sorry, graduate school, I took a couple of walks along the Galveston Beach. And you get tar on the bottom of your feet. There's oil just there. Yeah. I mean, and it doesn't come off. You need like turpentine or something to get it

off. Right. Which takes off your skin. That's how you get the oil off. Well, that's one way to clean it off. You remove. Right. Remove your outer layers of skin.

To skin yourself. So what's weird is that that oil spool went for long enough to like set up a prize and then have someone win the prize and then use the, if I understood this story correctly, I hope I'm wrong. But I mean, that's how long that oil spill lasted. Right. I mean, come on now.

That people could actually come up and compete to clean it up. Ridiculous. Now, apparently the government concluded that only 3% of the 5 million barrels of oil was actually retrieved by these skimmers. So that's not even very much. Well, at least we wonder where the hell the rest of it went.

Oh, I know where it is. Where is it? Yeah, it's in the fish you're eating right now. That's where it is. I didn't have to add butter to the pan. It's just fried right up. No oil necessary. That's the self-basting fish.

Oh, that's great. Well, all right. So when we come back, more of my interview with the XPRIZE founder, Peter Diamandis. The guy's crazy. Good man. Really good. Crazy in a great way. Good crazy. Good dreamer a great one. Good crazy.

Good crazy. Good dreamer. Good guy. We'll be right back. This is Star Talk. You're back. We're back. I got Chuck Nice with me here in the studio.

Chuck, you just... You're eating oily fish. I'm still laughing about it. If you're just joining us. The self-oiling fish. Self-based. That's why I was eating shrimp the other day. It just slipped out of my hands. Exactly. Popped into the next person's bowl. Oh, why I was eating shrimp the other day. It just slipped out of my hands. Exactly.

Popped into the next person's bowl. Oh, that's good Gulf shrimp there, baby. Gulf. Well, all right. So we were interviewing, my interview with Peter Diamandis. And, you know, an interesting, I'm an astrophysicist. So one of the XPRIZEs that intrigued me was not only the one going into sort of above the atmosphere.

That was the Ansari X Prize. He also has an X Prize to land on the moon. Oh. The Lunar X Prize. Nice. Yeah. Since we haven't been back there since God knows when. We ain't been back since 1972.

That's insane. It's insane. So let's find out what that next X Prize is going to do. The other competition we have going that is a big space prize is the $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE. We have 25 teams building private lunar lander vehicles, and to win this $30

million that Google put up, all you have to do is build a robot, land on the surface of the moon, take photos and videos, row 500 meters, and take more photos and videos. And send them back to Earth? No, it doesn't have to come back to Earth. It's a one-way mission.

No, no, no, but the photos have to come back. The photos have to come back. You need evidence that it actually got there. So you're saying all you have to do is land on the moon. This is an extraordinary... Well, it is extraordinary. Maybe you need $100 million. Maybe.

At the end of the day, the $30 million prize that Google has put up is being matched with 30 million dollars of contracts from nasa nasa stepped up because ultimately if you think about who's the biggest beneficiary to really low cost reliable lunar lander capabilities that's it yeah of course this one's this one's 30 million dollars hell i'm hey you want to do i'm i'm down let Let's do it. I'm all about it. I say we get a Volkswagen and modify it. Strap some rockets on a Volkswagen and shoot that sucker up there, man. Except I live in an apartment. You live in Jersey.

You got a garage. You live in a house, right? I live in a house. You have a garage? I do not have a garage, though. Oh, man. Yeah. Okay. So, you know.

I have a basement. Does that count? Yeah, but you got to get the sucker out of the basement. That's true. That's true. But $30 million. That's something I could. Now, you know, the Chinese landed something on the moon.

Yes. Jade Rabbit. The Jade Rabbit. Isn't that cool? I'm going to tell you, that sounds like a vibrator. What? I'm sorry. It does.

The Jade Rabbit. Something you find in the nightstand of a lonely woman's bedside drawer. Well, who knows what it otherwise is in China, but I know what Jade means, and I know what the rabbit means, and I don't have the dirty mind you do. So it's very clean to me. But they couldn't win the 30 million because that's a government. Right.

And the whole point of the XPRIZE is to get private enterprise engaged so that it becomes a business. A competition and ultimately possibly a marketable product that becomes business. And so, but I can tell you, going to the moon, because we hadn't been in a long time, it's a nice nearby target.

Because you know how long it takes? It takes three days to get to the moon, because we hadn't been in a long time, it's a nice nearby target. Because you know how long it takes? It takes three days to get to the moon. Okay. We did the math on that. And so you can actually track it. It's not one of these, oh, we'll get there in four years, chill out. Until then, all missions to the moon happen within a news cycle. That's why they're good.

And that's why they're fun. And so send me. Hell, I'll go. Listen, I would go with you. Now, that's a trip. That would be a good trip. That's a good road trip. And Google's getting in on it.

You know, Google, it's about time. I said, I remember when Google began, it was like, will they ever be anything more than a search engine? Oh, God. Google, be something more to me. Come on. And yes, they are.

They're getting into all the rest. And they have the car that drives itself. Yeah. We're way past due for those. But still now, if you can make a car that drives itself, why can't you make a vehicle that drives itself to the moon? I mean, it's not too far off course. No, no.

We got that. No, what are you saying? I'm saying like- Most things in space don't have. No, what are you saying? I'm saying, like, you know, it's... Most things in space don't have drivers. Right. So, $60 million that we're talking about, $30 million from Google, $30 million from NASA. With the matched money. Right, right. So, it shouldn't be that hard. Oh, that's what you're saying.

We've already been to the moon. Not for $60 million. We've been for billions of dollars. That's the problem here. Okay, I get it now. No. Okay, it's really about cost. We know you can do it for a billion dollars. Oh, okay. Duh. No. Okay. It's really about cost. We know you can do it for a billion dollars. Oh, okay. Duh.

Right. See, that's why. Well, it's worse than that. Today, we can't even do it for billions of dollars because we don't have the spacecraft to do it. It's multiple billions of dollars to get to the moon. Really? Well, sorry, sorry. For people to get to the moon.

For people. No, for how much would it take NASA to put a bot on the moon? I don't know, but it surely would take more than $60 million. Wow. Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. Okay, so this would be truly revolutionary. Yeah.

The Hubble telescope is billions of dollars, and that didn't even go to the moon. Okay, so... I'm just saying. Okay. All right. I got it now. All right. When we come back on StarTalk Radio, more of my interview with XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis.

Stay with us. We're back on StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Chuck Nice, across the table from me. Yes, sir. We are in studio in New York City. Thanks for being here, Chuck. It's a pleasure.

More of my interview with XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis. Do you know the Lunar XPRIZE? The prize is going to go not if you just go to the moon, but there's like a bag of tricks they want you to perform when you get there. Oh, really? Yeah. As he said in the clip, you photograph the lunar surface, but there's another interesting one. So one of the extra little tricks you had to do,

if you can land close enough or rove close enough to one of the Apollo landing sites, and take pictures of it and send it back. So you get extra money. If you can land close enough or rove close enough to one of the Apollo landing sites. Right. And take pictures of it and send it back. So you get extra money. Yeah, you get some cash for that. A little extra cash. No, what worries me is I think they're only doing that because they still think there are people who don't believe we landed.

Don't feed the trolls. Leave. Right, exactly. But it would still be kind of cool to see the landings. I just love the fact that this is how much selfies have invaded our culture, is that even in something like this, you send a robot to the moon, it's like, oh, yeah, take a selfie with the Apollo. No, no, it's worse than that. Don't take a picture of the moon.

Take a picture of other robot stuff we left there. Other robot stuff that we left up there. That's great. So my favorite recent XPRIZE that they're talking about is inspired by Star Trek. Sweet. As so much of our culture is. In Star Trek, of course, the medical tricorder is that device that Bones McCoy used to use that you'd hold over a person

and you know everything about them what they had what was going on of course it's got to make the cool sound it's got to make the cool sounds but ultimately today the health care industry is way broken all right by 2020 we are going to be short 91 000 doctors the united states we can't train enough doctors and that's good compared to the rest of the world. Africa has 25 percent of the disease burden and 1.3 percent of the health care workers. 25 percent of the world disease burden. A lot of it due to unclean water by the way but different subject. So the question is could you create a device that could diagnose people accurately, rapidly, cheaply? Portably, presumably. And portably. Another factoid is that Rand Corporation did an analysis a few years back and said that 45%

of the time you go to the doctor, you get the wrong diagnosis or the wrong course of treatment. It's a coin flip. That's crazy. And the fact of the matter is when you go to a physician today, there's so much data that's collected from your blood work, your CAT scan, perhaps these days your genomic analysis. There's no way for a human doctor to be able to look at all that data, understand it, and give you accurate diagnostics. So we had been at our XPRIZE Visioneering, our annual board get-together in which we debate and we discuss what we should create as an XPRIZE. We had been thinking about the idea of an AI physician, artificial intelligent physician. I'm sure the American Medical Association was perfectly happy about this.

You guys are idiots. We're putting my guy in there, my AI dude. I'm sure they've just endorsed this completely. Go on. Remember, we're going to be short 91,000 doctors. All right. So we've got to get them to embrace this. We have to get them to utilize this technology to leverage themselves to make more efficient use of themselves where physicians

where human carbon-based life doctors can be of greater use than an artificial intelligence so anyway we've been discussing and debating this and we come up with this idea of a tricorder which conceptually would integrate a number of technologies, artificial intelligence, which might be on the cloud. Cloud, the internet cloud. The internet cloud. Total access. Lab on a chip technology, small chips that have microfluidics, the ability to move very small amounts of fluid and do an RNA or DNA analysis of a bacterium, a pathogen, if you would, or do your blood chemistries, digital imagery that could look at your skin and say that's a melanoma or something along those lines. So you could imagine technology

being integrated together to be able to analyze what's going on with a person. So I had a chance to meet Paul Jacobs, the chairman and CEO of Qualcomm Foundation, and over lunch pitched him on the idea and he said, let's do it. And less than four months later, he and I were on stage at the Consumer Electronics Show, CES, the largest show in Las Vegas, announcing the $10 million Qualcomm TriQuarter X Prize. Is it bigger than the porn show that they have? I don't know about that, but it does take place at the same time. Sorry, the Triple X Prize.

same time. Sorry, you want the triple X prize. So the Qualcomm Foundation put up 10 million bucks and this Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize is challenging teams to build a device that an average consumer can use, that you can cough on, that you can talk to, that you can do a finger blood prick to, and it can diagnose you better than a team of board-certified doctors. And here's the cool thing. Six months after we announced this in Las Vegas at CES, we have 230 teams from 30 countries around the world. It's extraordinary how many people have come to this. Star Trek is now. Yes. Got everything but the Klingons.

I love it, and I can't wait for them to show up and whip us in the shape. And I think they should give a special prize for which device has the coolest sound. Exactly, because it's got to make that woo-woo-woo. Yeah, otherwise it's not working. It's not working. A little light and everything. A little light and everything. You know, tell me about it.

So, yeah, I'm loving this XPRIZE stuff, and I'm going to try to maybe get Peter back on and find out what the latest stuff is on this because it's going daily and it could transform how we live. He is very visionary, I have to say. It is really to take competition and make it work for good. Like you said, we're all competition-based.

And at the end of the day, it's capitalist. I mean, that'll work right here in America. Yeah. You know, somebody's going to be making money on it. Absolutely. Let that be the case. Cool. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio.

We've got to bring this one to a close. Chuck, thanks for being here with me, as always. Always a pleasure. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.